The longlist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature has been revealed, with 10 books originally published in seven different languages contending for the annual literary prize.
The School of Night, written by Karl Ove Knausgaard and translated from Norwegian by Martin Aitken, made the longlist, as did My Dreadful Body, written by Egana Djabbarova and translated from Russian by Lisa C. Hayden; Now I Surrender, written by Álvaro Enrigue and translated from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer; Eden at Dawn, written by Karim Kattan and translated from French by Jeffrey Zuckerman; and To the East of the East, written by Ping Lu and translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang.
Centroeuropa, written by Vicente Luis Mora and translated from Spanish by Rahul Bery, was longlisted, as were Night of a Thousand Hells, written by Intan Paramaditha and translated from Indonesian by Stephen Epstein and Tiffany Tsao; Pure Men, written by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr and translated from French by Lara Vergnaud; The Disappearing Act, written by Maria Stepanova and translated from Russian by Sasha Dugdale; and Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life: Voices of Survival and Witness in Gaza, written by Samar Yazbek and translated from Arabic by Leri Price.
The judges for this year’s prize are Shelley Fairweather-Vega, Javier García del Moral, John Keene, Christopher Merrill, and Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi.
Previous winners of the National Book Award for Translated Literature include The Emissary, written by Yoko Tawada and translated from Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani; Seven Empty Houses, written by Samanta Schweblin and translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell, and Taiwan Travelogue, written by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and translated from Chinese by Lin King.
The shortlist for the award will be unveiled on Oct. 6, and the winner will be announced at a ceremony in New York on Nov. 18.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
