In my recent correspondence with translator par excellence Suzanne Jill Levine, she wrote:
We who love books are all happy that translation is finally being honored and given its place, albeit belatedly, in this culture.
[….]
Just think: translation’s role is very much about rescuing great works, whether of the past from oblivion or in the present, bringing to the public significant unknown writers.
Indeed, and this profound act and art of rescue puts the “world” in “literary world,” this world enlarged and enriched by so many under-recognized translators, among them phenomenal exemplars like Levine, to whom we’ve awarded a 2021 Big Other Literary Citizenship Award.
All to say, we are excited to announce the finalists for the 2021 Big Other Book Award for Translation. The winner will be announced June 24, 2022 at 7:00 p.m. at the 2021 Big Other Book Awards Ceremony, which will be aired virtually.
Without further ado, here are the finalists for the 2021 Big Other Book Award for Translation:
César Aira‘s The Divorce (New Directions), translated by Chris Andrews
António Lobo Antunes‘s Warning to the Crocodiles (Dalkey Archive), translated Karen C. Sherwood Sotelino
Magda Cârneci’s FEM (Deep Vellum), translated by Sean Cotter
Éric Chevillard’s The Posthumous Works of Thomas Pilaster (Sublunary Editions), translated by Chris Clarke
Donatella Di Cesare’s Immunodemocracy: Capitalist Asphyxia (Semiotexte), translated by David Broder
Marguerite Duras’ The Darkroom (Contra Mundum), translated by Alta Ifland and Eireene Nealand
Anne Garréta’s In Concrete (Deep Vellum), translated by Emma Ramadan
Yanko González’s Upper Volta (Ugly Duckling Presse), translated by Stephen Rosenshein
Bohumil Hrabal’s The Gentle Barbarian (New Directions), translated by Paul Wilson
László Krasznahorkai’s Chasing Homer (New Directions), translated by John Batki
Julia Kristeva’s Dostoyevsky, or The Flood of Language (Columbia University Press), translated by Jody Gladding
Maurizio Lazzarato’s Capital Hates Everyone: Fascism or Revolution (Semiotexte), translated by Robert Hurley
Jacques Lesage de La Haye’s The Abolition of Prison (AK Press), translated by Scott Branson
Ricardo Jesús Mejías Hernández’s Libro de Perchances / Book of Mishaps (Mayapple Press), translated by Don Cellini
Jordi Nopca’s Come On Up (Bellevue Literary Press), translated by Mara Faye Lethem
Dorthe Nors’s Wild Swims (Graywolf Press), translated by Misha Hoekstra
Salvador Puig Antich: Collected Writings on Repression and Resistance in Franco’s Spain (AK Press), translated by Peter Gelderloos
Pierre Reverdy’s Georges Braque: A Methodical Adventure (Black Square Editions), translated by Andrew Joron with Rose Vekony
Yi Won’s The World’s Lightest Motorcycle (Zephyr), translated by Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello and E. J. Koh
Trees Grow Lively on Snowy Fields: Poems from Contemporary China (Twelve Winters Press), translated by
