Titles from Rwanda and Kazakhstan awarded PEN Translates awards for first time

Books from 12 countries and nine languages have been awarded English PEN translation awards, with titles from Rwanda and Kazakhstan among the recipients for the first time.

This round’s winners also include the first novel by a Comorian woman to be translated into English and the first time English PEN has awarded titles translated from Eastern Armenian and Kazakh. They include novels, short story collections, YA and experimental autofiction.

Books are selected for PEN Translates awards on the basis of outstanding literary quality, the strength of the publishing project, and their contribution to UK bibliodiversity.

PEN Translates has now supported over 350 books translated from over 90 languages, awarding over £1.1m in grants. Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, a PEN Translates-supported title, won the 2022 International Booker Prize. Seventeen other PEN Translates books have appeared on International Booker Prize longlists, with two shortlisted for the 2023 prize.

Last year, 11 writers and translators who have received PEN Translates awards – Geetanjali Shree, Daisy Rockwell, Juan Pablo Villalobos, Rosalind Harvey, Anton Hur, Paulo Scott, Daniel Hahn, Maya Abu Al-Hayat, Yasmine Seale, Krisztina Tóth and Peter Sherwood – contributed to All Walls Collapse: Stories of Separation, a collection of new short fiction in translation from English PEN and Comma Press, marking 10 years of the PEN Translates programme.

The latest tranche of winners can be found in full below. Will Forrester, translation and international manager at English PEN, said: “These 13 books are significant works of literature – individually, in their quality; and collectively, in how they help shift the UK literary landscape. We have major figures – International Booker-winning authors and translators – sitting alongside exciting debut voices, with stunningly experimental work. The range of language and regions represented is remarkable, but so too is the range of form, readership, theme and style. We’re thrilled to support these books, and excited for English-language readers to be able to buy them and enjoy them.”

So Mayer, co-chair of the English PEN Translation Advisory Group, said: “These books truly have ‘the fire within’, to borrow from Touhfat Mouhtare and Rachael McGill’s title. They offer intimate, piercing connections to characters and locales, from the artistic whirl of interwar Paris to resonant visions of colonial and post-colonial Mauritania, Eritrea, Rwanda, Argentina and Kazakhstan. There is particular attention to rural communities that have been neglected for too long in literary culture, and several works that confront the challenges faced by writers – from government censorship to systemic racism. It’s an honour to be able to assist readers on the look-out for an unexpected encounter with – to quote the title of Sushan Avagyan and Deanna Cachoian-Schanz’s work – A Book, Untitled.”

The latest PEN Translates award winners are: