Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize 2018: one week to go!
Just a week to go before the winner of the Oxford–Weidenfeld Prize is revealed!
Founded by Lord Weidenfeld, the prize is for book-length literary translations into English from any living European language. It aims to honour the craft of translation, and to recognise its cultural importance. It is supported by New College, The Queen's College and St Anne's College, Oxford. Recent winners include Susan Wicks for Valérie Rouzeau’s Talking Vrouz (Arc Publications), Frank Perry for Lina Wolff's Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs (And Other Stories), or Philip Boehm for Herta Müller’s The Hunger Angel (Portobello).
This year’s judges of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize are the academics Kasia Szymanska, Simon Park, Jessica Stacey, and Adriana X. Jacobs (Chair).
2018 Prize
Among the eight books shortlisted, from an outstanding entry of 112 titles in translations from 24 different languages, the Book Office is delighted to count three books translated from the French!
Émile Zola, A Love Story, translated from the French by Helen Constantine (Oxford University Press)
The eighth novel in Zola's celebrated Rougon-Macquart series, A Love Story is an intense psychological and nuanced portrayal of love's different guises. Zola's study extends most notably to the city of Paris itself, whose shifting moods reflect Hélène's emotional turmoil in passages of extraordinary lyrical description.
Louis Guilloux, Blood Dark, translated from the French by Laura Marris (New York Review Books)
Blood Dark is “war literature of the home front, a toxic zone where rumours do battle with the truth and witch hunts are carried out in the name of patriotism” describes Alice Kaplan, author of Looking For The Strange, in her introduction to this edition. Set in a single day in 1917, Blood Dark transpires in a state of persistent claustrophobia as draftees, antiwar students, pedophiles, bitter politicians, revolutionaries, and grief-stricken parents spill their way onto the stage. Here, “valor” and “the drive of revolution” are nothing but echoes, lost in a climate of moral exhaustion, disillusionment, and loss.
Édouard Louis, The End of Eddy, translated from the French by Michael Lucey (Harvill Secker)
Édouard Louis grew up in a village in northern France where many live below the poverty line. His bestselling debut novel about life there, The End of Eddy, has sparked debate on social inequality, sexuality and violence. It is an extraordinary portrait of escaping from an unbearable childhood, inspired by the author’s own. Written with an openness and compassionate intelligence, ultimately, it asks, how can we create our own freedom?
The other shortlisted books are:
Dorthe Nors, Mirror, Shoulder, Signal, translated from the Danish by Misha Hoekstra (Pushkin Press)
Yoko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky (Portobello Books)
Pablo Neruda, Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems, translated from the Spanish by Forrest Gander (Bloodaxe Books)
Andrés Barba, Such Small Hands, translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman (Portobello Books)
Daša Drndić, Belladonna, translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth (MacLehose Press)
The winner will be announced at the prizegiving and dinner at St Anne’s College, Oxford on Saturday 9 June 2018. This will be the crowning event of Oxford Translation Day, which boasts a varied programme of talks, workshops and readings. We're looking forward to this amazing opportunity to celebrate literature in translation, and excited to hear about the winner!
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