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PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize ($3,000)
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The PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize is given for
a distinguished book-length translation from any language into English.
The PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize, the oldest award for
literary translation in the United States, was first given in 1963, and
is made possible by the ongoing support of the Book-of-the-Month Club.
2005 Judges: Ivan Sanders, Oonagh Stransky and Stephen Snyder
Please click here for more information on the award. |
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2005 Awardees
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Presented by Oonagh Stransky and Victoria Skurnick, Editor-in-Chief, Book-of-the-Month Club
Winner:
Tim Wilkinson: Fatelessness by Imre Kertész (Vintage)
translated from the Hungarian
The style of Imre Kertész's novel Fatelessness is
at once transparent and complex. Tim Wilkinson conveys with great
effectiveness the oddly detached stance of the novel's emotionally
guarded yet highly perceptive adolescent hero. The voice we hear is
perfectly credible, but the boy's matter-of-fact recounting of his
journey to the concentration camp universe and his return home is
disquieting. The young hero struggles to relate his story in his own
way, with words that at first sound curiously out of place but which
actually rebel linguistically against a discourse that has already
conventionalized the Holocaust experience. The narrator comes up with a
language that communicates the incommunicable. With precision and
sensitivity, Tim Wilkinson captures not only the strangeness of this
language but also its subtle ironies and understated, bashful lyricism.
Finalists:
Andrew Shields: The Cello Player by Michael Krüger (Harcourt)
translated from the German
Andrew Shields succeeds beautifully in capturing the music of Michael Krüger’s The Cello Player.
The heavily cadenced sentences reflect the narrator's complex thoughts;
the ironic yet gentle tone relays his madcap tenderness; there is a
force and clarity of language that resounds throughout the novel. The Cello Player is a brilliant example of the translator’s art.
Zack Rogow: Green Wheat by Colette (Sarabande Books)
translated from the French
Zack Rogow's translation of Green Wheat,
by Colette, is a work of sheer beauty. Thanks to his skillful
rendering, Colette's sensuous and tormented adolescents, Philippe and
Vinca, come to life and we are able to fully experience the harsh
pleasures of the Brittany landscape.
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