Samar Yazbek’s ‘Planet of Clay,’ tr. Leri Price, Longlisted for National Book Award

Author Samar Yazbek and translator Leri Price have been longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award in the “Translated Literature” category:

The pair are have made the prize’s 10-book longlist for the luminous, synesthesiatic Planet of Clay (المشاءة). Yazbek’s novel follows a wise-fool character who can’t stop walking and remembering as she makes her way through the devastated and devastating landscape of the Syrian civil war.

Planet of Clay joins novels translated from the French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Chinese on the 2021 longlist. Price is one of three translators honored by the prize a second time; previously, she was shortlisted, in 2019, for her translation of Khaled Khalifa’s Death is Hard Work.

The judges for the category this year are Stephen Snyder, Jessie Chaffee, Sergio de la Pava, Madhu H. Kaza, and Achy Obejas.

The shortlisted is set to be announced October 5.

The rest of the longlist:

Maryse Condé‘s Waiting for the Waters to Rise, translated, from the French, by Richard Philcox (World Editions)

Elisa Shua Dusapin‘s Winter in Sokcho, Translated, from the French, by Aneesa Abbas Higgins (Open Letter)

Ge Fei‘s Peach Blossom Paradise, translated, from the Chinese, by Canaan Morse
New York Review Books

Nona Fernández‘s The Twilight Zone, translated, from the Spanish, by Natasha Wimmer (Graywolf Press)

Bo-Young Kim‘s On the Origin of Species and Other Stories, translated, from the Korean, by Joungmin Lee Comfort and Sora Kim-Russell (Kaya Press)

Benjamín Labatut‘s When We Cease to Understand the World, translated, from the Spanish, by Adrian Nathan West (New York Review Books)

Elvira Navarro‘s Rabbit Island: Stories, translated, from the Spanish, by Christina MacSweeney (Two Lines Press)

Judith Schalansky‘s An Inventory of Losses, translated, from the German, by Jackie Smith (New Directions)

Maria Stepanova‘s In Memory of Memory, translated, from the Russian, by Sasha Dugdale (New Directions)