There is an international flavour to the shortlist

The Bookseller magazine has released its shortlist for the Oddest Titles prize, honouring fringe publishing.

Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium is also in the running, with a public vote due to decide the winner.

The winning author receives a bottle of champagne for their efforts.

SHORTLISTED TITLES How Green Were the Nazis? edited by Franz-Josef Bruggemeier, Mark Cioc and Thomas Zeller D. Di Mascio's Delicious Ice Cream: D. Di Mascio of Coventry: An Ice Cream Company of Repute, with an Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans by Roger De Boer, Harvey Francis Pitcher, and Alan Wilkinson The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification by Julian Montague Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan by Robert Chenciner by Gabib Ismailov, Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov and Alex Binnie Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium edited by Robert J Anderson, Juliet A Brodie, Edvar Onsoyen and Alan T Critchley Better Never To Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence by David Benatar

Last year's contest was won by Gary Leon Hill for his impressively titled The People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It.

Joel Rickett, deputy editor of The Bookseller, said: "While rival literary awards like the Costas and the Orange Broadband Prize have sold out, The Bookseller/Diagram Prize has refused all offers of corporate sponsorship for 29 years.

"It continues to celebrate the bizarre, the strange, and the simply odd. This year's shortlist shows that despite publishers cutting back their lists, literary diversity continues to flourish."

The shortlist was compiled from entries that caught the eye of publishers, booksellers and librarians across the world.

Another of this year's contenders for the prize starts off simply enough with D Di Mascio's Delicious Ice-Cream, but continues with the subtitle D Di Mascio of Coventry: An Ice Cream Company of Repute, with an Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans.

The winner will be revealed on 13 April, ahead of the London Book Fair.