{"id":284566,"date":"2011-04-30T01:21:04","date_gmt":"2011-04-30T01:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2011\/04\/30\/2011-best-translated-book-award-winners-ales-stegers-the-book-of-things-and-tove-janssons-the-true-deceiver\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:39:34","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:39:34","slug":"2011-best-translated-book-award-winners-ales-stegers-the-book-of-things-and-tove-janssons-the-true-deceiver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2011\/04\/30\/2011-best-translated-book-award-winners-ales-stegers-the-book-of-things-and-tove-janssons-the-true-deceiver\/","title":{"rendered":"2011 Best Translated Book Award Winners: Ale\u0161 \u0160teger\u2019s "The Book of Things" and Tove Jansson\u2019s "The True Deceiver""},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

April 29, 2011 \u2014<\/strong> The winning titles and translators for this year\u2019s Best Translated Book Awards were announced earlier this evening at the Bowery Poetry Club as part of the PEN<\/span> World Voices Festival. In poetry, Ale\u0161 \u0160teger\u2019s The Book of Things<\/em>, translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry, took the top honor. In fiction, the award went to Thomas Teal\u2019s translation from the Swedish of Tove Jansson\u2019s The True Deceiver<\/em>. Organized by Three Percent<\/a> at the University of Rochester, the Best Translated Book Award is the only prize of its kind to honor the best original works of international literature and poetry published in the U.S. over the previous year<\/p>\n

Lorin Stein, editor of the English translations of Roberto Bola\u00f1o\u2019s The Savage Detectives<\/em> and 2666<\/em>, and now publisher of The Paris Review<\/em>, hosted the celebration, which was held in collaboration with the PEN<\/span> World Voices Festival for the first time this year. Thanks to the support of Amazon.com, the awards came with $5,000 cash prizes for each winning author and translator.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s really no better time for this ceremony to take place,\u201d said BTBA<\/span> co-founder Chad W. Post, \u201cthis festival is the<\/em> premiere festival for international literature taking place in America today. And by highlighting two fantastic works of translated literature, the BTBA<\/span> adds something special to the week-long festivities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born into the small Swedish-speaking community in Finland, fiction winner Tove Jansson is most well known for inventing the Moomins, a group of large-nosed creatures that starred in a series of children\u2019s books and a comic strip that Jansson worked on for almost fifty years. Toward the end of her life, she started writing books for adults, several of which have been recently translated into English and published by New York Review Books. <\/p>\n

Jeff Waxman of the BTBA<\/span> fiction committee describes Jansson\u2019s most recent English-language publication as \u201ca slender and modern novel about the relationship of two women in a small Scandinavian fishing community: one is cold, practical, and brutally honest; the other is an older, infantile children\u2019s book illustrator. As the story unfolds in Jansson\u2019s simple, understated prose, Katri Kling strives to provide a home and perhaps a livelihood for her younger brother; Anna Aemelin wants only to live life with her eyes closed, insulated by her money and her art. This panel found itself engrossed as their relationship grew tense and aggressive and their fields of battle expanded from Aemelin\u2019s household finances to Katri\u2019s brother and her pet dog. Subtle, engaging and disquieting, The True Deceiver<\/em> is a masterful study in opposition and confrontation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The author of four books of poetry, The Book of Things<\/em> is poetry winner Ale\u0161 \u0160teger\u2019s first collection to be published in English translation. Steger\u2019s book was published by BOA<\/span> Editions as part of its \u201cLannan Translations Series,\u201d which was made possible by support from the Lannan Foundation. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe poems in Ale\u0161 \u0160teger\u2019s The Book of Things<\/em> focus with nearly comic intensity on an array of everyday objects\u2014an egg, a coat, a toothpick, a stomach. Here, a potato recollects the soil it came from. Or a hand dryer speaks a windy language we can\u2019t quite understand. Or a doormat forgives us all. But \u0160teger\u2019s poems go far beyond mere comic description, personification, or metaphor,\u201d said poetry committee member Kevin Prufer. \u201cRather, his objects reflect our own strange complexities\u2014our eagerness to consume, our rationalizations and kindness. Our many cruelties and our grandiosities. \u0160teger\u2019s The Book of Things<\/em> is harrowing and hilarious, unnerving and weirdly familiar\u2014and, most of all, ambitious in its attempt to look anew into our all-too-human darkness. And translator Brian Henry (himself a poet of significant talent) renders these poems beautifully into an English that is both colloquial and disconcertingly plainspoken.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each winning author and translator will receive a $5,000 cash prize thanks to the support of Amazon.com<\/a>). The BTBA<\/span> is one of several non-profit programs supported by Amazon.com that are focused on bringing more great works from around the world to English-language readers. Other recipients include the PEN<\/span> America Center Translation Fund, Words Without Borders, Open Letter Books, the Center for the Art of Translation, Archipelago Books, and the Ledig House International Writers Residency.<\/p>\n

The fiction judges for this year\u2019s awards were: Monica Carter (Salonica), Scott Esposito (Conversational Reading and Center for the Art of Translation), Susan Harris (Words Without Borders), Annie Janusch (Translation Review<\/em>), Matthew Jakubowski (writer and critic), Brandon Kennedy (bookseller\/cataloger), Bill Marx (PRI\u2019s The World: World Books and The Arts Fuse), Michael Orthofer (Complete Review) and Jeff Waxman (Seminary Co-op and The Front Table).<\/p>\n

The poetry judges were Brandon Holmquest (poet, translator, editor Asymptote Journal), Jennifer Kronovet (poet, translator), Erica Mena (poet, translator, host of the Reading the World Podcast), Idra Novey (poet, translator, Executive Director of Literary Translation at Columbia), and Kevin Prufer (poet, academic, essayist).<\/p>\n

Additional information about the Best Translated Book Award finalists can be found on the BTBA<\/span> website<\/a>. For additional information about the award, panelists, and ceremony, please contact Chad W. Post at 585.319.0823 or chad dot post at rochester dot edu.<\/em><\/p>\n

(Download a PDF<\/span> of this press release.)<\/txp_file_download_link><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April 29, 2011 \u2014 The winning titles and translators for this year\u2019s Best Translated Book Awards were announced earlier this evening at the Bowery Poetry Club as part of the PEN World Voices Festival. In poetry, Ale\u0161 \u0160teger\u2019s The Book of Things, translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry, took the top honor. In fiction, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[40006,1646],"class_list":["post-284566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-btba-best-translated-book-award","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320806,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284566\/revisions\/320806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}