2017 Best Translated Book Award Finalists [BTBA 2017]

April 18, 2017—Ten works of fiction and five poetry collections remain in the running for this year’s Best Translated Book Awards following the announcement of the two shortlists at The Millions website this morning.

A wide range of languages and writing styles are represented on these shortlists, from the more classic works of Lúcio Cardoso (1912-1968) and Antonio di Benedetto (1922-1986), to contemporary voices like Laia Jufresa, Pedro Cabiya, and Sergei Lebedev. This diversity is also present on the poetry side of things, with South Korean author Yideum Kim, Argentine author Alejandra Pizarnik, and Hungarian author Szilárd Borbély each representing a different poetic approach.

The fifteen finalists for this year’s awards are translated from nine different languages (five titles are translated from the Spanish, three from the French) and thirteen different countries (Mexico and Argentina have two authors each). A third of the books are written by women, and fourteen different presses have a book on the list (New York Review Books is the only one with two).

Thanks to grant funds from the Amazon Literary Partnership, the winning authors and translators will each receive $5,000 cash prizes. Three Percent at the University of Rochester founded the BTBAs in 2008, and over the past six years, the Amazon Literary Partnership has contributed more than $120,000 to international authors and their translators through the BTBA.

The winners will be announced on Thursday, May 4th at 7 p.m., simultaneously on The Millions and at a live event at The Folly (92 W. Houston Street, New York City). The event is free and open to the public.

This year’s fiction jury is made up of: Trevor Berrett (The Mookse and the Gripes), Monica Carter (Salonica World Lit), Rachel Cordasco (Speculative Fiction in Translation), Jennifer Croft (translator, co-founder of the Buenos Aires Review), Lori Feathers (Interabang Books), Jeremy Garber (Powell’s Books), Mark Haber (writer, Brazos Bookstore), George Henson (World Literature Today, Latin American Literature Today, University of Oklahoma), and Steph Opitz (Marie Claire).

The poetry jury includes: Jarrod Annis (Greenlight Bookstore), Katrine Øgaard Jensen (EuropeNow), Tess Lewis (writer and translator), Becka McKay (writer and translator), and Emma Ramadan (translator, Riffraff Bookstore).

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For more information, visit the official Best Translated Book Award site and the official BTBA Facebook page, and follow the award on Twitter.