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I’m sure this has been written about already, but I just received the invitation to the 21st Annual Translation Prize ceremony sponsored by the French-American Foundation and Florence Gould Foundation.
Every year these two foundations give out a prize to the best fiction and non-fiction translations from French into English. Here are this year’s finalists:
Fiction:
- Allah Is Not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma, translated by Frank Wynne;
- Kick the Animal Out by Veronique Ovalde, translated by Adriana Hunter
- Place Names by Jean Ricardou, translated by Jordan Stump;
- Ravel by Jean Echenoz, translated by Linda Coverdale;
- Solea by Jean-Claude Izzo, translated by Howard Curtis.
Non-fiction:
- The Curtain by Milan Kundera, translated by Linda Asher;
- Divagations by Stephane Mallarme, translated by Barbara Johnson;
- How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard, translated by Jeffrey Mehiman;
- Life Laid Bare by Jean Hatzfeld, translated by Linda Coverdale;
- A Voice from Elsewhere by Maurice Blanchot, translated by Charlotte Mandell.
All are worthy titles, although I’m pulling for Ravel and Life Laid Bare so that Linda Coverdale can walk away with a dual victory . . .
Winners receive a cash prize of $10,000 each, and in case you’re interested, the ceremony takes place Wednesday, May 28—the day before the start of BookExpo America.
Reviewed by Carley Parsons
Outcast for his seemingly baseless anger issues, fourteen-year-old Lorenzo Cumi lies to his worried mother about being invited on a ski trip with the ‘in-crowd’ in order to ease her concerns about him. After seeing how happy and relieved it. . .
Reviewed by Phillip Witte
Javier Marias’s greatness in the world of world literature seems pretty much unquestioned. And I’ve always thought of him as a pretty cool guy—for boycotting the United States for as long as Bush was president, for example, which was. . .
Reviewed by Brian Libgober
In 2002, Les Ombres Errantes won the Prix Goncourt—possibly the most prestigious award a French literary work can receive—despite the fact that it is not a novel. Before considering The Roving Shadows in its own right, it is worth pausing. . .
Reviewed by Larissa Kyzer
The fictional world of Québécois novelist Jacques Poulin can, poetically speaking, be likened to a snow globe: a minutely-detailed landscape peppered with characters who appear to be frozen in one lovely, continuous moment. Mister Blue, recently published in a new. . .
Reviewed by Vincent Fancone
Recently, one of my coworkers asked me what I like to read. I mentioned that I am primarily interested in literature in translation. He promptly showed me his Kindle full of translated Italian mystery novels.
While I do not. . .
Reviewed by Monica Carter
“Memory is the greatest liar.” – Leeches, David Albahari
For his follow-up to Götz and Meyer, Serbian David Albahari plunges forward in time to Belgrade, 1998. Another war is going on, although the nameless narrator is not directly involved, he becomes. . .
Reviewed by Monica Carter
Fiction post-Berlin Wall (and I am referring to immediately post-Berlin Wall) is rarely told in the way that Inka Parei has done in The Shadow-Boxing Woman. The prose imitates the dark, crumbling and ravaged atmosphere of East Berlin as well. . .
Reviewed by Will Eells
Paul Scheerbart was a German writer and artist who lived around the turn of the twentieth century. He was perpetually broke, even though he was constantly writing books, newspaper articles, and plays. Even when he was alive he was not. . .
Reviewed by Kaija Straumanis
Jules Verne was a French master of fictional works portraying the fantastical that were primarily geared toward young readers, literary escapists/adventure seekers, and adults who want to experience a taste of their childhoods. Three of his best-known works are probably. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
Gelasimov embraces the “show, don’t tell” dictum effectively throughout this short novel from the unique start. The first person narrator, later identified as Constantine or Kostya, has just returned to his home and is trying to fit a lot of. . .
Three Percent is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.
