Eight titles have been shortlisted for the 2023 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. Now in its seventh year, the prize has received a record-breaking 153 eligible entries representing 32 languages – the largest number of submissions to date.

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

• Dorthe Nors, A Line in the World, translated from Danish (Denmark) by Caroline Waight (Pushkin Press)
• Lalla Romano, A Silence Shared, translated from Italian (Italy) by Brian Robert Moore (Pushkin Press)
• Amanda Svensson, A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding, translated from Swedish (Sweden) by Nichola Smalley (Scribe UK)
• Krisztina Tóth, Barcode, translated from Hungarian (Hungary) by Peter Sherwood (Jantar)
• Zhang Yueran, Cocoon, translated from Chinese (China) by Jeremy Tiang (World Editions)
• Margo Glantz, The Remains, translated from Spanish (Mexico) by Ellen Jones (Charco Press)
• Bushra al-Maqtari, What Have You Left Behind? translated from Arabic (Yemen) by Sawad Hussain (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
• Deena Mohamed, Your Wish Is My Command, translated from Arabic (Egypt) by Deena Mohamed (Granta)
  
  

The winner will be announced on the 23^rd November 2023 at a ceremony in London. The winning author and translator will receive £1000.

Judge Boyd Tonkin said of the 2023 shortlist:

“This year’s eclectic shortlist travels far and wide – not only in the cultural and linguistic background of the authors chosen but in the genres and forms they use. From Yemen to Denmark, and from China to Mexico, our finalists confirm that outstanding women’s writing from around the world now reaches English-language readers in books of every kind.

A wildly inventive graphic novel; a devastating documentary account of civilian casualties of war; an ideas-packed comic family saga; a haunting memoir of landscape, nature and history; a witty and caustic suite of linked short stories: the shortlist embraces all this and much more, with each work carried into English by translators of exceptional skill and flair.

We hope that our selection shows that, in English, translated work by women has become as rich and broad a field as literature itself.”

Prize coordinator, Dr Holly Langstaff of the University of Warwick’s School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures, comments:

“Since the inaugural year of the prize in 2017, the number of eligible submissions to the prize has increased by almost threefold – from 58 to 153 submissions – a statistic which highlights the excellent work being done by translators and publishers to bring a wider range of writing by women to a UK and Ireland readership.”

Last year the prize was jointly awarded to 'Osebol' by Marit Kapla, translated from Swedish by Peter Graves and published by Allen Lane/Penguin Random House, and 'Tomb of Sand' by Geetanjali Shree, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell and published by Tilted Axis Press.

The prize is judged by Amanda Hopkinson, Boyd Tonkin, and Susan Bassnett. The 2023 shortlist was selected from a longlist of 16 titles and includes eight titles from seven languages, with Arabic represented twice, and is wholly made up of titles from independent publishers.

The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation is generously supported in 2023 by the School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures and the Warwick Institute of Engagement at the University of Warwick, the British Centre for Literary Translation, and the British Comparative Literary Association.

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Notes to Editors:

For more info contact Katherine Beauchamp, Communications Officer on Katherine.Beauchamp@Warwick.ac.uk

Tickets for journalists or media interested in attending the prize ceremony on 23rd November in The Shard are available. Please contact Holly Langstaff at womenintranslation@warwick.ac.uk

More details are available at the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation webpage.