The longlist for the National Book Award for translated literature has been revealed, with 10 books representing nine different languages all in the running for the literary prize.
Two of the nominated books are also finalists for this year’s Kirkus Prize for fiction: Yoko Tawada’s Scattered All Over the Earth, translated from the Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani, and Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob, translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft.
Tawada and Mitsutani won the National Book Award for translated literature in 2018 for The Emissary. Tokarczuk and Croft were finalists for the award in 2018 with Flights, and Tokarczuk made the longlist for the prize a year after that for Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
Olga Ravn’s The Employees, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken, made the longlist this year; Aitken was shortlisted for the prize in 2018 for his translation of Love by Hanne Ørstavik.
Two of the nominated books this year were translated by Damion Searls: Jon Fosse’s A New Name: Septology VI-VII (from the Norwegian) and Saša Stanišic’s Where You Come From (from the German).
Also making this year’s shortlist were Mohammed Hasan Alwan’s Ibn Arabi's Small Death, translated from the Arabic by William M. Hutchins; Shahriar Mandanipour’s Seasons of Purgatory, translated from the Persian by Sara Khalili; Scholastique Mukasonga’s Kibogo, translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti; Mónica Ojeda’s Jawbone, translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker; and Samanta Schweblin’s Seven Empty Houses, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell.
The shortlists for the awards will be revealed on Oct. 4, with the winners announced at a ceremony in New York on Nov. 16.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
