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This is really exciting news, and most likely Jon Fine and I are announcing this to the crowd at the ALTA conference right about now . . . I know the press release below is a bit stiff in comparison to the usual Three Percent post, but it has all the appropriate info about Amazon’s underwriting of the 2011 Best Translated Book Awards, which will finally allow us to award cash prizes to all the winners!
Also, if you’re a publisher/author/translator and want to submit a book for consideration, be sure to check out this page, where you’ll find the mailing addresses for all of the judges. More info on our judges and the award next week when I finally (hopefully) have a chance to post an update to the translation database. But for now, here’s the official press release . . .
October 20, 2010—Amazon.com has awarded the University of Rochester/Three Percent website a $25,000 grant in support of the 2011 Best Translated Book Awards. This grant will support $5,000 cash prizes for both the winning translators and authors.
Launched by Three Percent in 2007, the Best Translated Book Awards aim to bring attention to the best original works of international fiction and poetry published in the U.S. during the previous year. Judges base their decision on both the quality of the original work and the quality of the English translation. Until this year, however, the award carried no cash prize.
“Over the past few years, the awards have grown in stature, and the introduction of a cash prize for the winners will greatly enhance the reputation and reach of the award,” said Chad W. Post, director of Open Letter Books and Three Percent.
According to fiction panelist Matthew Jakubowski, “Without a doubt, this level of support for translated literature helps enrich book culture in our country. Publishers, authors, translators, and of course the growing number of readers attuned to new literature from around the world will benefit. And best of all, every year the BTBAs provide a great way to learn about dozens of great new books that we’d otherwise hear little about.”
On January 27, 2011, the twenty-five-title fiction longlist will be announced on the Three Percent and Best Translated Book Award websites, and over the following month each title will be individually highlighted through short write-ups by the various judges. The ten-title shortlists for both fiction and poetry will be announced on March 24th, and the winning titles will be celebrated at a special reception during the PEN World Voices Festival at the end of April.
Recent winners for fiction include Tranquility by Attila Bartis, translated from the Hungarian by Imre Goldstein (Archipelago), and The Confessions of Noa Weber by Gail Hareven, translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu (Melville House). In poetry, The Russian Version by Elena Fanailova, translated from the Russian by Genya Turovskaya and Stephanie Sandler (Ugly Duckling), received the award in 2010, and For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut by Takashi Hiraide, translated from the Japanese by Sawako Nakayasu (New Directions), received the award in 2009.
Information about how to submit a title for the 2011 Best Transalted Book Awards can be found on the BTBA website.
In addition to sponsoring the Best Translated Book Awards, Amazon.com has awarded grants to a diverse range of not-for-profit author and publisher groups dedicated to fostering the creation, discussion, and publication of new writing and new voices, including Ledig House, Milkweed Editions, Copper Canyon Press, Open Letter, Archipelago Books, PEN American Center, Words Without Borders, and the Center for the Art of Translation, all of which are committed to the international exchange of literature and the work of translators.
Reviewed by Jeremy Osner
“The small stone plaza was floating in the midday heat. The Christ of Elqui, kneeling on the ground, his gaze thrown back on high, the part in his hair dark under the Atacaman sun—he felt himself falling into an ecstasy.. . .
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
This slender, uncanny volume—the second, best-selling collection of stories by Russian author Ludmilla Petrushevskaya to appear in the U.S.—has already received considerable, well-deserved praise from many critics and high profile publications. Its seventeen short tales, averaging ten pages each, are. . .
Reviewed by Rachael Daum
The Urdu word basti refers to any space, intimate to worldly, and is often translated as “common place” or “a gathering place.” This book by Intizar Husain, who is widely regarded as one of the most important living Pakistani writers,. . .
Reviewed by Vincent Francone
The Whispering Muse, one of three books by Icelandic writer Sjón just published in North America, is nothing if not inventive. Stories within stories, shifting narration, leaps in time, and characters who transform from men to birds and back again—you’ve. . .
Reviewed by Camila Santos
Luis Negrón’s debut collection Mundo Cruel is a journey through Puerto Rico’s gay world. Published in 2010, the book is already in its fifth Spanish edition. Here in the U.S., the collection has been published by Seven Stories Press and. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
“South”
To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars
from the bank of shadow to have watched
the scattered lights
my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations
to have heard the ring of. . .
Reviewed by Larissa Kyzer
When Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason first published LoveStar, his darkly comic parable of corporate power and media influence run amok, the world was in a very different place. (This was back before both Facebook and Twitter, if you can. . .
Reviewed by Tiffany Nichols
When starting Hi, This Is Conchita and Other Stories, Santiago Roncagliolo’s second work to be translated into English, I was expecting Roncagliolo to explore the line between evil and religion that was front and center in Red April. Admittedly, I. . .
Reviewed by Josh Billings
Christa Wolf’s newly-translated City of Angels is a novel of atonement, and in this way the work of art that it resembles most to me is not another book, but the 2003 Sophia Coppola film Lost in Translation. Like that. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
French author—philosopher, poet, novelist—de Roblès writes something approaching the Great (Latin) American Novel, about Brazilian characters, one of whom is steeped in the life of the seventeenth century polymath (but almost always erroneous) Jesuit Athanasius Kircher. Eleazard von Wogau, a. . .
Three Percent is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.
