2004 Advisory Board: Esther Allen, Sara Bershtel, Barbara Epler, Michael Henry Heim, and Eliot Weinberger

Andrea Berger for her translation from the Hungarian of Bestiarium Transylvaniae, vol. I: The Birds of the Air, by Zsolt Lang. In this novel-in-stories, the first volume in a celebrated trilogy, Lang cunningly resurrects the medieval bestiary form with ingenious storytelling, exceptional knowledge of history and place, rich, mythical imagery, and a thoroughly contemporary wit. (No publisher)

Philip Boehm for his translation from the German of Settlement by Christoph Hein, a novel that uses the voices of five narrators spread over five decades to tell the story of the war refugee Bernhard Haber as he works his way up from shunned outsider to local kingpin. Settlement is a nuanced portrait of a man caught between the struggle for acceptance and the urge to reject all who once rejected him. Published by Metropolitan Books in 2008, Settlement was shortlisted for the 2010 Dublin IMPAC award.

Peter Cole for The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, c.950–1492, a comprehensive anthology containing nearly 400 poems, a detailed historical introduction, short biographical essays on each of the 54 writers in the volume, and extensive annotation. The book tells the story of the renaissance of a literary culture that, as it fused elements of sacred and profane, East and West, Arabic and Hebrew, gave rise to what is arguably the most powerful body of literature in the post-biblical Jewish canon. Published by Princeton University Press in 2007, The Dream of the Poem won five national awards, including the 2007 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry, and the R.R. Hawkins Award from the Association of American Publishers.

Kent Johnson and Forrest Gander for their translation from the Spanish of the long poem “The Night,” the last work produced by Bolivia’s foremost 20th-century writer Jaime Saenz (1921–1986), a true poète maudit, whose lifelong struggle with alcoholism was wedded to a monastic dedication to writing. (Princeton University Press, 2007)

Idra Novey for her translation from the Portuguese of a selection of poems by Paulo Henriques Britto (b. 1951), one of the outstanding poets of his generation, particularly admired for his keen sense of the relationship between form and content. Her project, The Clean Shirt of It: Selected Poems of Paulo Henriques Britto, was published by BOA Editions in 2007 as part of the Lannan Translation Selections Series.

Joonseong (Jason) Park for his translation from the Korean of Diary of a Vagabond, a collection of contemporary short stories and novellas by Song Yong depicting a Kafkaesque world of ordinary people trapped in an authoritarian society. (Codhill Press, 2008; bilingual edition published in Seoul, Korea by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Press, 2008)

Kristin Prevallet for her translation from the French of The Other World: Unpublished Writings, a selection of beautiful, dense lyric prose pieces found among the papers of Congolese novelist, playwright and poet Sony Labou Tansi, who died of AIDS in 1995. (No publisher)

Timothy Sergay for his translation from the Russian of Aleksandr Pavlovich Chudakov’s prize-winning “memoiristic novel” A Gloom Descends Upon the Ancient Steps (2000), set in northern Kazakhstan, which centers on the relationship between a Moscow historian and his grandfather, a titan of physical and intellectual rigor, and depicts many facets of daily life under Stalin in a new light. Chapters of the novel have been excerpted on WordsWithoutBorders.org. (No publisher)

Gerald Turner for his translation from the Czech of a prize-winning satirical jaunt through the last century by Patrik Ourednik, Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century. (Dalkey Archive Press, 2005)

Elizabeth Winslow for her translation from the Arabic of The War Works Hard, a collection of innovative, subversive poems by contemporary Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail, currently living in exile in the United States. Published in 2005 by New Directions, The War Works Hard was chosen by the New York Public Library as one of the 25 Books To Remember of 2005. It was also one of four books short-listed for Canada’s prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize in 2006.