Prize winner announced! Daša Drndić's Belladonna, translated from Croatian into English by Celia Hawkesworth. Click here to read more...

Six titles were longlisted for the second annual award of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.

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.

The 2018 prize was once again judged by Amanda Hopkinson, Boyd Tonkin and Susan Bassnett. In 2017 the inaugural prize was awarded to Memoirs of a Polar Bear (Portobello Books, 2017), written by Japanese-German writer Yoko Tawada and translated from German by Susan Bernofsky.

The competition received a total of 53 eligible entries representing 22 languages. The longlisted titles included 9 novels, 3 collections of short stories, 2 memoirs and one work of literary non-fiction, and covered 9 languages, with German, Polish, Croatian and Swedish being the most represented. 10 publishers have had their titles included on the list, with Maclehose Press, Portobello Books, Fitzcarraldo Editions and Norvik Press submitting multiple nominees.

The judges said of this year’s longlist:

“Ranging from South Korea to Argentina by way of Poland and Croatia, the long-list selections for this year’s prize have a truly global spread. Equally diverse are the forms of literature represented: from short stories to family sagas, interior journeys to topical fables, scorching satire to historical epic, with a welcome showing for creative non-fiction as well.

“It has been fascinating reading some of the really unusual books that cross genre boundaries and resist being pigeon-holed as fiction, history or memoir. The task facing translators has been immense and the success in English of some of these complex novels and collections of short stories testifies to the translators' skill. A cornucopia of shocks and delights to judge, and for many new readers to discover and enjoy."

Prize coordinator, Dr Chantal Wright of the University of Warwick’s Department of English, added:

“We are thrilled to be taking the prize forward into a second year, signalling to publishers and the literary marketplace that The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation is here to stay and will continue to push for an improvement in the situation of international female writers in translation. We thank the literary translation community in the UK and Ireland for its ongoing support.”

Shortlisted titles:

Belladonna by Daša Drndić, translated from Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth (Maclehose Press, 2017)

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, translated from Polish by Jennifer Croft (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017)

Go Went Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from German by Susan Bernofksy (Portobello Books, 2017)

River by Esther Kinsky, translated from German by Iain Galbraith (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2018)

The House with the Stained-Glass Window by Żanna Słoniowska, translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Maclehose Press, 2017)

The White Book by Han Kang, translated from Korean by Deborah Smith (Portobello Books, 2017)