Announcements

Every so often we survey new translations on the market for our English-language readers, and are happy to bring you a look at some upcoming titles.

A new face on the scene is Ror Wolf, whose novel Two or Three Years Later (Open Letter, 2013) appears in a translation by Jennifer Marquardt. This series of observations of daily life has been compared to the work of Robert Walser, who is also represented here by New Directions' A Little Ramble: In the Spirit of Robert Walser. Translated by Susan Bernofsky and Christopher Middleton, Ramble is the result of gallerist Donald Young's invitation to artists to respond to Walser’s writing, resulting in over 50 works by such artists as Peter Fischli, David Weiss, and Thomas Schütte.

A new Joseph Roth title translated by Michael Hofmann, who also supplies an introduction, is always welcome, and this time it's The Emperor's Tomb (New York Review Books, 2013). Covering the two and a half decades that precede WWII, the novel relates the journey of a callow young man as he is introduced to financial ruin and the barbarism growing around him. NYRB is also bringing out, in its Classics series, Anna Seghers' Transit, with English by Margot Dembo, based on a new, definitive German edition of this story of exile.

And finally, there's a new Simon Brenner Krimi out as part of Melville House's International Crime series. The Bone Man is Annie Janusch's second Wolf Haas title in English, with hopefully more to follow.

In an earlier post we reported that translations of four German novels had made the longlist of the Best Translated Book Awards, established in 2007 by Three Percent. Now that the shortlist has been announced we're happy to see that two titles are still in the running for the fiction award: The Hunger Angel (Metropolitan Books), Philip Boehm's translation of Herta Müller's Atemschaukel, and My Father's Book by Urs Widmer, in a translation for Seagull Books by Donal McLaughlin.

In addition, Rosmarie Waldrop's translation, Almost 1 Book / Almost 1 Life (Burning Deck), of a collection by Elfriede Czurda, is on the shortlist for the BTBA for Poetry, just announced by the Poetry Foundation.

Each winning author and translator receives a $5,000 cash prize at an awards ceremony to be held in New York City on May 3, time and place to be announced.

Among the Adult Fiction finalists for this year's Indies Choice Book of the Year Awards just announced by the ABA is The Art of Hearing Heartbeats (Other Press), by Jan-Philipp Sendker in a translation by Kevin Wiliarty. Book of the Year winners and Honor Award recipients are chosen from titles nominated by ABA member booksellers to the Indie Next Lists.

Set in Burma, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats covers the six decades from the 1950s to today. The story centers on a love letter a New York lawyer who has gone missing wrote years before to a Burmese woman. When the lawyer's daughter decides to locate the woman, her search leads her to a remote village and an incredible tale of hardship and love from her father's past.

The Indie Choice winners will be announced on April 18.

Twenty-five titles have made the longlist for the 2013 Best Translated Book Award for Fiction, established in 2007 by Three Percent. Among the many excellent titles are four novels translated from the German: Awakening to the Great Sleep War by Austrian Gert Jonke, translated by Jean M. Snook (Dalkey Archive Press); The Hunger Angel by Nobel-Prize winner Herta Müller, translated by Philip Boehm (Metropolitan Books); Island of Second Sight by Albert Vigoleis Thelen, translated by Donald O. White (Overlook); My Father’s Book by Switzerland's Urs Widmer, Donal McLaughlin, translator (Seagull Books),

The shortlist for the separate fiction and poetry awards will be announced on April 10, and the award ceremony takes place in New York City in early May. Each winning author and translator receives a $5,000 cash prize.

Judges this year are Monica Carter, Salonica; Tess Lewis, translator and critic; Scott Esposito, Conversational Reading and Center for the Art of Translation; Susan Harris, Words Without Borders; Bill Martin, translator; Bill Marx, Arts Fuse; Michael Orthofer, Complete Review; Stephen Sparks, Green Apple Books; and Jenn Witte, Skylight Books.

The jury for the 2013 Leipzig Book Fair Prizes, headed by literary critic Hubert Winkels, has chosen five authors each in three prize categories: Fiction, Non-Fiction/Essay and Translation.



Fiction nominees are: Ralph Dohrmann: Kronhardt (Ullstein Verlag); Lisa Kränzler: Nachhinein (Verbrecher Verlag); Birk Meinhardt: Brüder und Schwestern (Carl Hanser Verlag); David Wagner: Leben (Rowohlt Berlin); and Anna Weidenholzer: Der Winter tut den Fischen gut (Residenz Verlag).

As usual, readers may cast a vote for their favorite work of fiction, announced as the Publikumspreis.

Winners will be announced during the Leipzig Book Fair, on March 14 at 4pm German time. The ceremony will be livesteamed for those who wish to view it.

Among the 75 titles the bimonthly magazine of international literature and culture, World Literature in Translation, chose as the best translations of 2012 are a number by German-language authors. Two novels from Germany made the list: Benjamin Stein's The Canvas (Die Leinwand), translated by Brian Zumhagen; and Marcel Beyer's Kaltenburg (Kaltenburg), translated by Alan Bance.

Austria provides a literary classic as well as the only comic: Franz Werfel's, Pale Blue Ink in a Lady’s Hand, a 1941 novel translated by James Reidel, and Angelman (Engelmann), a superhero satire by cartoonist Nicolas Mahler, translated by Kim Thompson.

Switzerland is represented by two works: Sea of Ink (Meer der Tusche) by Richard Weihe, about 17th-century Chinese artist, Bada Shanren and translated by Jamie Bulloch; and Zbinden's Progress (Spaziergänger Zbinden) by Christoph Simon, translated by Donal McLaughlin, in which an elderly man muses on his life during his walks.

You will find German and English copies of Kaltenburg and The Canvas in our library, along with a number of Franz Werfel's works and biographies on the author in both langauges, and a number of comics in German by Nicholas Mahler, including Engelmann.

The first translation competition organized by the German Book Office in New York ended with the announcement of a winner on Wednesday night. Riky Stock, director of the GBO, named the winner during an event and reception held at the Goethe-Institut New York.

Kurt Beals, a PhD candidate in German Literature and Culture at UC Berkeley, has been awarded $600 to translate the first 15 pages of Nora Bossong’s novel, Gesellschaft mit beschraenkter Haftung, into English. Translator Elizabeth Janik was named runner-up.

"I’m pleased," Beals said, "that the German Book Office has offered translators at an early stage in their careers an opportunity to test their skills and receive recognition for their efforts."

The competition, which brought aspiring German language translators into contact with U.S. editors, involved translating a 700-word excerpt into English, and was limited to U.S.-based translators with no more than one title translated into English. A panel of three American editors selected a shortlist of 9 candidates from nearly 60 submissions, and then 3 accomplished translators - Susan Bernofsky, Burton Pike, and Ross Benjamin - chose the winner and runner-up.