Translated Lit

Wiesław Mysliwski’s Stone Upon Stone (translated by Bill Johnston) has won the Best Translated Book Award for fiction. The poetry prize went to Kiwao Nomura’s Spectacle & Pigsty translated by Kyoko Yoshida and Forrest Gander)

The annual award is offered by Three Percent at the University of Rochester, honoring “the best original works of international literature and poetry published in the U.S. over the previous year.” The winning translators and writers will share a $20,000 award donated by Amazon.

Here’s more about Mysliwski’s novel: “Stone Upon Stone—his first work to be translated into English—is narrated by Syzmek, a Polish farmer determined to build a tomb for himself after a life of boozing, brawling, fighting in the resistance, serving as a marriage officer, and exaggerating his way through the twentieth century and the modernization of his small town … This is the second book published by Archipelago, the Brooklyn-based nonprofit press, to win the award. (Attila Bartis’s Tranquility won in 2009.)”

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The winners of this year’s Best Translated Book Awards have been revealed. Writers and translators will each receive $5000 as prize money.

Aleš Šteger’s Slovenian collection, The Book of Things, won in the poetry category; Brian Henry served as translator. Tove Jansson’s Swedish novel, The True Deceiver, won in the fiction category; Thomas Teal served as translator.

According to Publishing Perspectives: This awards ceremony was held as a part of the PEN World Voices Festival. The awards’ co-founder Chad W. Post had this statement in the press release: “This festival is the premiere festival for international literature taking place in America today. And by highlighting two fantastic works of translated literature, the BTBA adds something special to the week-long festivities.”

Chinese novelist Bi Feiyu (pictured, via) has won the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize for his novel, Three Sisters. The author accepted the award and $30,000 in prize money during a ceremony held in Hong Kong.

The novel’s translators, Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin, split a $5,000 award. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt published an English translation of Three Sisters last August.

Here’s more from the press release: “The Man Asian Literary Prize was founded in 2007. It is an annual literary award given to the best novel by an Asian writer, either written in English or translated into English, and published in the previous calendar year. The judges choose a longlist of 10 to 15 titles announced in December, followed by a shortlist of 5 to 6 titles announced in February, and a winner is awarded in March.” (via Shelf Awareness)

Indian comic writer and illustrator Anant Pai (known fondly as Uncle Pai) passed away this week at 81-years-old.

According to the Associated Press, Pai would’ve been presented with a lifetime achievement award at India’s first-ever Comic Con this weekend. The video embedded above features a tribute from a fan.

Uncle Pai began the popular Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) series in 1967 to teach Indian children about their culture and heritage. The series has spawned more than 400 titles and sold more than 100 million comics.

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In 1999, Russian scientist Kirill Yeskov wrote The Last Ring-Bearer, a 139,000-word novel that re-wrote The Lord of the Rings trilogy–re-imagining J.R.R. Tolkien‘s heroic epic as a bloody war with unrecorded consequences. Now Yisroel Markov has released a translation of the novel (with Yeskov’s help).

The translator explained his his labor of love (published for non-commercial distribution only): “Several publishing houses have considered a commercial translation of this book, which had been published in several major European languages, but abandoned the idea out of fear of the Tolkien estate, which rigidly controls all derivative works, especially in English.”

In the 15-year-old book, Yeskov re-wrote Tolkien’s masterpiece from the point of view of  Mordor, a region defeated in the war to control Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings. It focused on a single question: “what was that war really about?”

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Knopf publicity director Paul Bogaards revealed that Haruki Murakami‘s highly anticipated three-volume novel will come out October 25 in a single volume.

Here’s the tweet: “Haruki Murakami’s long-awaited magnum opus, 1Q84, out from Knopf 10/25. In one volume. Booyah! Midnight store openings for this one?”

In an interview last year, translator Jay Rubin shared thoughts about working with the novelist–revealing the impending deadlines for the English translation of Murakami’s three-volume novel. (Via Michael Orthofer)

A New York Times review once described Carlos Fuentes’ work as “Joycean in Christopher Unborn, Jamesian in Aura, Faulknerian in The Death of Artemio Cruz.” Now we can add “Dickensian” to that list of influences.

Before his 92Y reading tonight, the novelist explored the influence of Charles Dickens in his new novel. Fuentes (pictured, via) recently published the English version of his novel, Destiny and Desire (La Voluntad y la Fortuna in Spanish, translated by Edith Grossman).

Q: What can you tell me about your new book?

A: It’s called Destiny and Desire. It’s basically a Cain and Abel story; that is the larger frame of the book. It’s two brothers who love each other and hate each other in the end. They’re called Jericó and Josué. That is the larger frame of the book.

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Golden Globe-winner Sacha Baron Cohen (pictured, via) will star in an adaptation of Zabibah and the King, a novel that may have been written by Saddam Hussein. The film will be called The Dictator, and release is set for May 2012.

The book spotlights Zabibah, an Iraqi peasant in an abusive marriage who falls in love with the country’s head monarch. The Guardian explained: “It was intended to be read as an allegory for Iraq in the years following the first Gulf war, with the king representing Saddam, Zabibah embodying the Iraqi people and her husband standing in for the cruel and evil US forces.”

There is some debate about whether or not Hussein actually wrote the book. According to a New York Times article, the  C.I.A. believes that ghostwriters wrote it–directed by the late Iraqi leader.

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A new manuscript for Federico Garcia Lorca‘s “Oficina y denuncia” (“Office and Denunciation”) has been uncovered. Professor Christopher Maurer discovered the draft in the Library of Congress’ music division.

The Guardian reports: “‘Oficina y denuncia’ captures an important moment in Lorca’s career, as the poet turns away from brief lyrical poetry towards an engagement with broad social issues, and begins to write more openly about his love of men.”

The published version of Lorca’s poem appeared in his collection, Poeta en Nueva York (Poet in New York). Lorca had traveled to New York in 1929 to take an English course at Columbia University and wrote about Great Depresssion-era America. Currently, Maurer is working with Andrew Anderson on a book about Lorca’s time spent in America and Cuba.

Hongying Yang (pictured, via) has been dubbed “China’s J.K. Rowling,” selling 40 million books in China. In the past few years, HarperCollins has found an audience for her work in the English-speaking world.

Harper Collins China Business Development managing director Stella Chou told the Beijing Review: “The performance of Yang’s books is the best among the books we’ve introduced from China to the English-speaking world … Yang’s books offer insight into contemporary society through a typical Chinese child, and a typical Chinese cat.”

The article called Yang the first Chinese kidlit writer to find a place in the mainstream English market. A former elementary school teacher, Yang primarily writes for the 6-to-12-year-old age group. Her titles include: Girl’s Diary, the Mo’s Mischief series and the Diary of a Smiling Cat series.