Best Literary Translation Prize in US – The book of Krasznahorkai has a good chance of winning

The American edition of the Seibo There Below book of László Krasznahorkai is in the long list of those books which have been nominated for the Best Literary Translation Prize – according to the magyarno.com.  The translation of the book called Sátántangó from the Hungarian author was awarded last year.

The Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai was born in a Hungarian city called Gyula on 5th of January, 1954. After finishing the elementary and high school he was studying law first in Szeged, then in Budapest between 1974 and 1976. In 1977 he graduated with Master’s Degree in Hungarian Literature at the Faculty of Humanities of Eötvös Loránd University. His first writing with the title “I believed in you” was published in the journal Mozgó Világ in 1977. Before becoming a freelance writer, he was doing administrative work at the Publisher Gondolat between 1977 and 1982. Several works of him were adopted for screen by his famous Hungarian director-friend, Béla Tarr.

When he could first leave the communist Hungary in 1987, he spent one year in West Berlin as a DAAD guest (German Academic Exchange Service). He has often been changing his place of residence since the decay of the Soviet Empire.  He has lived for shorter or longer periods in France, Spain, Greece and England as well as in Italy, China and Japan, and also in The Netherlands and USA. However, he regularly returns to Germany and Hungary.

The Three Percent literary Website of Rochester University published the list of the 25 nominated books for the Best Literary Translation Award. While the finalist from the Poetry and Prose category will be announced on 15th of April, the winners will be named on 28th of April. Both the author and the translator of the best books from the previously mentioned categories will be rewarded with $ 5.000 along with the prize. Interestingly, it is unprecedented in the history of this award that books from 23 different publishers are nominated! Besides that the authors of the candidate books and novels came from twenty different countries, the professional translators translated the works from 16 languages to English! According to the magyarno.com, two winners of the literary Nobel-prize are selected: the Sandalwood Death written by the Chinese Mo Jen, translated by Howard Goldblatt and the Her Not All Her written by the Austrian Elfriede Jelinek, translated by Damion Searls.

Among many other nominated authors there is an unusual, Arabic work of Ahmed Faris al-Shidyaq from the 19th century which was published in English first as Leg Over Leg by Humphrey Davies – it has a good chance of winning. Ottilie Mulzet made the English translation of Seibo There Below of Krasznahorkai which was published by an independent publisher of New York last year.

The magyarno.com website highlighted that the English translation of the book of László Krasznahorkai called Sátántangó was the last year’s winner in Prose category thanks to George Szirtes who made this translation. Moreover, the novel called Tranquility by Attila Bartis, Hungarian author was also awarded in 2009. The English edition of this novel was translated by Imre Goldstein.

All in all, the Three Percent online journal founded in 2007 focuses on the international literature. The name of the magazine refers to the fact that only the 3% of the books published in the United States are translations!

based on article of magyarno.com

by Valentina Leanyfalvi

Photo: elteonline.hu

Source: http://dailynewshungary.com/