Indie publishers dominate shortlist for Warwick Prize for Women in Translation

Zhang Yueran’s Cocoon, translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang (World Editions) and Dorthe Nors’ A Line in the World, translated from Danish by Caroline Waight (Pushkin Press), are on the eight-strong shortlist for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.
The £1,000 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 153 eligible entries representing 32 languages – the largest number of submissions to date.

The 2023 shortlist was selected from a longlist of 16 titles and includes eight books from seven languages. Arabic is represented twice on the list, which is wholly made up of titles from independent publishers.

Lalla Romano’s A Silence Shared, translated from Italian by Brian Robert Moore (Pushkin Press), is one of the books that made it on this year’s list, shortlisted alongside Amanda Svensson’s A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding, translated from Swedish by Nichola Smalley (Scribe UK). Krisztina Tóth’s Barcode, translated from Hungarian by Peter Sherwood (Jantar) is also selected, as is Margo Glantz’s The Remains, translated from Spanish by Ellen Jones (Charco Press).

Bushra al-Maqtari’s What Have You Left Behind?, translated from Arabic (Yemen) by Sawad Hussain (Fitzcarraldo Editions), is also vying for the prize, as is Deena Mohamed’s Your Wish Is My Command, translated from Arabic (Egypt) by Deena Mohamed (Granta).

The winner will be announced on the 23rd November 2023 at a ceremony in London.

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."

Prize co-ordinator Holly Langstaff, of the University of Warwick’s School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures, commented: “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 (Allen Lane/Penguin Random House), and Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell and published by Tilted Axis Press.