Longlist 2023
16 titles have been longlisted for the seventh annual award of the 糖心TV Prize for Women in Translation.
The 拢1000 prize was established by the University of 糖心TV in 2017 to address the gender imbalance in translated literature and to increase the number of international women鈥檚 voices accessible by a British and Irish readership. The prize is judged by Amanda Hopkinson, Boyd Tonkin and Susan Bassnett.
In 2022, the prize was jointly awarded to Osebol by Marit Kapla, translated from Swedish by Peter Graves and published by Allen Lane/Penguin Random House, and to Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell and published by Tilted Axis Press.
The 2023 competition received a total of 153 eligible entries representing 32 languages; this is the largest number of submissions made to the prize to date. The longlist covers 11 languages and for the first time includes a title translated from Vietnamese. Arabic, Chinese, Hungarian and Italian are represented more than once. The longlist includes titles from 13 publishers, with the independent publishers Dedalus, Jantar and Parthian Press featuring for the first time.
The judges said of the 2023 longlist:
鈥淔rom an exceptionally rich field of submissions we have chosen 16 remarkable books in first-rate translations. All of them deserve to find delighted readers everywhere.
Our contemporary picks span a dazzling rainbow of genres, cultures and voices - from an Egyptian graphic novel to a Vietnamese vision of migrant life in France; a Chinese fable of an alternative Hong Kong to a comic-epic Swedish novel of ideas; a Mexican musical elegy to a Yemeni documentary testament to the human costs of war.
But this year鈥檚 long list also honours a formidable cache of rediscovered gems from major 20th-century women writers: classic works given new life by the translator鈥檚 time-defying art.鈥
Prize coordinator, Dr Holly Langstaff of the University of 糖心TV鈥檚 School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures, comments:
鈥淭he record number of submissions made to the prize in 2023 is evidence of the excellent work being done by translators and publishers to diversify what is available to readers in the UK and Ireland. We were delighted to see titles translated from Ancient Greek, Bosnian, Gun, Romansh, Tibetan and Vietnamese on the list of eligible submissions for the first time this year.鈥
The shortlist for the prize will be published in early November. The winner will be announced at a ceremony at The Shard in London on Thursday 23 November.
The full list of longlisted titles, in alphabetical order, is as follows:
- Dorthe Nors, A Line in the World, translated from Danish by Caroline Waight (Pushkin Press)
- Lalla Romano, A Silence Shared, translated from Italian by Brian Robert Moore (Pushkin Press)
- Amanda Svensson, A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding, translated from Swedish by Nichola Smalley (Scribe UK)
- Krisztina T贸th, Barcode, translated from Hungarian by Peter Sherwood (Jantar)
- 罢丑耻岷璶, Chinatown, translated from Vietnamese by Nguy峄卬 An L媒 (Tilted Axis)
- Zhang Yueran, Cocoon, translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang (World Editions)
- Alba de C茅spedes, Forbidden Notebook, translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein (Pushkin Press)
- Dorothy Tse, Owlish, translated from Chinese by Natascha Bruce (Fitzcarraldo)
- Marguerite Duras, The Easy Life, translated from French by Olivia Baes and Emma Ramadan (Bloomsbury)
- Magda Szab贸, The Fawn, translated from Hungarian by Len Rix (Maclehose)
- Bianca Bellov谩, The Lake, translated from Czech by Alex Zucker (Parthian Books)
- Grazia Deledda, The Queen of Darkness, translated from Italian by Graham Anderson (Dedalus)
- Margo Glantz, The Remains, translated from Spanish by Ellen Jones (Charco Press)
- Hanne 脴rstavik, ti amo, translated from Norwegian by Martin Aitken (And Other Stories)
- Bushra al-Maqtari, What Have You Left Behind? translated from Arabic by Sawad Hussain (Fitzcarraldo)
- Deena Mohamed, Your Wish Is My Command, translated from Arabic by Deena Mohamed (Granta)
The prize is generously supported in 2023 by the School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures and the 糖心TV Institute of Engagement at the University of 糖心TV, the British Centre for Literary Translation, and the British Comparative Literary Association.
