OCTOBER 31, 2022 — Syrian novelist Samar Yazbek and translator Leri Price have made the diverse and star-studded 14-book longlist for this year’s Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.
The £1000 prize, which is now in its sixth year, aims “to address the gender imbalance in translated literature and to increase the number of international women’s voices accessible by a British and Irish readership.” It’s judged by Amanda Hopkinson, Boyd Tonkin, and Susan Bassnett.
The 2022 longlist includes The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, in translation by Jennifer Croft, the joint winners of the 2018 International Booker; Men Don’t Cry by beloved Algerian-French author Faïza Guène, in translation by Sarah Ardizzone; and Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, as translated by Daisy Rockwell. Their work won this year’s International Booker.
In a prepared statement, the judges said of the 2022 longlist:
Our longlist this year showcases the enormous range and strength of translated writing by women from around the world. It covers not only a huge span of languages and cultures, from Hindi to Catalan, Arabic to Japanese, but a spectrum of genres that runs from supernatural stories to sensual verse, historical epic to micro-biological investigation. Some are relayed through multiple alternating voices; others by protagonists who reveal disquieting and haunting inner worlds of dreams, amnesia or elective silence. Fiction long and short, poetry, oral history and scientific narrative all find a place in this feast of literary creativity.
More than ever, this year’s Warwick Prize for Women in Translation longlist defies any assumption that globalisation spells convergence with its exciting and often startling choice of literary diversity at the cutting edge of genre-bending experimentation and innovation.
Organizers reported receiving, this year, a record number of entries, the list of which they have made available on their website.
The shortlist for the prize will be published in mid-November. The winner will be announced at a ceremony in London on November 24.
The complete longlist:
Violaine Huisman, The Book of Mother, translated from French by Leslie Camhi (Little, Brown Book Group (Virago), 2021)
Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob, translated from Polish by Jennifer Croft (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2021)
Selva Almada, Brickmakers, translated from Spanish by Annie McDermott (Charco Press, 2021)
Katja Oskamp, Marzahn, Mon Amour, translated from German by Jo Heinrich (Peirene Press, 2022)
Faïza Guène, Men Don’t Cry, translated from French by Sarah Ardizzone (Cassava Republic Press, 2021)
Marit Kapla, Osebol: Voices from a Swedish Village, translated from Swedish by Peter Graves (Penguin Random House (Allen Lane), 2021)
Samar Yazbek, Planet of Clay, translated from Arabic by Leri Price (World Editions, 2021)
Susanne Wedlich, Slime: A Natural History, translated from German by Ayça Türkoğlu (Granta, 2021)
Kyoko Nakajima, Things Remembered and Things Forgotten, translated from Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori and Ian McCullough MacDonald (Sort of Books, 2021)
Margarita Liberaki, Three Summers, translated from Greek by Karen Van Dyck (Penguin Random House (Viking), 2021)
Diana Bellessi, To Love A Woman, translated from Spanish by Leo Boix (Poetry Translation Centre, 2022)
Geetanjali Shree, Tomb of Sand, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell (Tilted Axis Press, 2021)
Irene Solà, When I Sing, Mountains Dance, translated from Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem (Granta, 2022)
Diana Anphimiadi, Why I No Longer Write Poems, translated from Georgian by Natalia Bukia-Peters and Jean Sprackland (Bloodaxe Books and Poetry Translation Centre, 2022)
