Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2021 announces longlist

The 2021 edition of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation has released the longlist for the fifth annual award. 

Making the announcement in a statement that organisers said the £1000 prize was established by the University of Warwick in 2017 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. 

“For the second year running, the prize is generously supported by the British Centre for Literary Translation and the British Comparative Literature Association. The 2021 prize is judged by Amanda Hopkinson, Boyd Tonkin and Susan Bassnett,” said the statement.. 

The 2021 competition received a total of 115 eligible entries representing 28 languages. In what has undoubtedly been a difficult period for publishing, the number of submissions to the prize dipped slightly from 2020, but this still represents a substantial increase on the first three years of the competition. 

The longlist covers 10 languages with French, German, Japanese and Russian represented more than once. Translations from Georgian and Thai are represented on the longlist for the first time in 2021.

Last year the prize was awarded to The Eighth Life (Scribe UK), written by Nino Haratischvili and translated from German by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin. 

The shortlist will be published in early November. The winner will be announced at a ceremony on Wednesday 24 November.

The full list of longlisted titles, in alphabetical order, is as follows:

Nana Ekvtimishvili, The Pear Field, translated from Georgian by Elizabeth Heighway (Peirene Press, 2020)

Annie Ernaux, A Girl’s Story, translated from French by Alison L. Strayer (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2020)

Jenny Erpenbeck, Not a Novel, translated from German by Kurt Beals (Granta, 2020)

Yan Ge, Strange Beasts of China, translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang (Tilted Axis Press, 2020)

Hiromi Kawakami, People from My Neighbourhood, translated from Japanese by Ted Goossen (Granta, 2020)

Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs, translated from Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd (Picador, 2020)

Esther Kinsky, Grove, translated from German by Caroline Schmidt (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2020)

Camille Laurens, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, translated from French by Willard Wood (Les Fugitives, 2020)

Scholastique Mukasonga, Our Lady of the Nile, translated from French by Melanie Mauthner (Daunt Books Publishing, 2021)

Duanwad Pimwana, Arid Dreams, translated from Thai by Mui Poopoksakul (Tilted Axis Press, 2020)

Olga Ravn, The Employees, translated from Danish by Martin Aitken (Lolli Editions, 2020)

Judith Schalansky, An Inventory of Losses, translated from German by Jackie Smith (MacLehose Press, 2020)

Adania Shibli, Minor Detail, translated from Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2020)

Małgorzata Szejnert, Ellis Island: A People’s History, translated from Polish by Sean Gasper Bye (Scribe UK, 2020)

Maria Stepanova, In Memory of Memory, translated from Russian by Sasha Dugdale (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2021)

Maria Stepanova, War of the Beasts and the Animals, translated from Russian by Sasha Dugdale (Bloodaxe Books, 2021)

Alice Zeniter, The Art of Losing, translated from French by Frank Wynne (Picador, 2021)

For the longlist announcement in full and more details about the prize in 2021, see our press release.

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