English PEN has named 18 books from 15 countries the winners of this year’s PEN Translates awards, including novels, short story collections, journalism, poetry collections and epic verse, children’s literature, and political writing. English PEN is the founding center of PEN International, a worldwide writers’ association with 145 centers in more than 100 countries.
The winners represent 13 languages and 17 publishers, including the first children’s book in Hungarian to feature LGBTQ+ protagonists, as well as the first time English PEN has awarded work translated from the Mè’phàà and the Char-Chapori dialect of Assamese and Bengali. The list features the most publishers ever awarded in a single PEN Translates round.
PEN Translates has now supported more than 350 books translated from 60 languages, with 12 featuring on International Booker Prize longlists. In 2021, its supported titles have also been shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, the National Book Awards in the U.S., the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize, the Premio Valle Inclán, the TA First translation Prize, and the International Dublin Literary Award.
“Not only are these 18 books exceptional works of literature, but they also attest to the current vitality of translated literature publishing,” said Will Forrester, English PEN’s translation and international manager. “This is the most publishers ever awarded in a single PEN Translates round. Their books, united as works of outstanding writing and translating, span extraordinary differences in form, theme, geography, and style.”
So Mayer, co-chair of the English PEN Translation Advisory Group, said the range of submissions impressed the panel, as did “increasing numbers of independent publishers developing translation lists, enabling us to reward the literary ambition and radical interventions of writers, translators, and editors who are strengthening and expanding contemporary literature.”
Read Full Article from The Bookseller (United Kingdom) (12/22/21)
Author: Bayley, Sian
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