Cherie Jones and Mohamed Mbougar Sarr are on the shortlist for the Internationaler Literaturpreis 2023 announced on Wednesday, August 16, 2023.
Internationaler Literaturpreis (English: International Literature Award) is a German literary award for international prose translated into German for the first time. It has been awarded annually by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the foundation “Elementarteilchen” since 2009. Some of the previous winners have been Fatima Daas, Chigozie Obioma, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Teju Cole, and Marie Ndiaye.
The jury for the 2023 edition consists of Deniz Utlu, Juliane Liebert, Ronya Othmann, Ibou Coulibaly Diop, Ricardo Domeneck, Deniz Utlu, Asal Dardan, and Khuê Phạm. On Wednesday, they announced the shortlist for the prize.
“The works of this year’s shortlist encounter the multiplicity of violence of our time with a polyphonic experience,” said Deniz Utlu for the jury. “The violence is gross and subtle, physical and verbal, urban and rural, political, historical, interpersonal. It takes place in love, in the male gaze, in racist seeing and being overlooked, in the transition from the individual to the masses, in the memories of those who were tortured and in the conditions of oppression. The throbbing of a historical wound may rhythmize itself into a lamentation, a village community may be elevated to the role of storyteller. Tenderness can be inherent in violence as its other and can be felt in the poetics of encounters through humor, affection or sadness. The translations create a linguistic space for what is expressed, in which its meaning can unfold. Understated and subtle in some texts, in others as a poetologically palpable debate – especially where the translation work itself is inherent in the expression of the original text; for example between drawing and word or oral expression and writing.
The following writers of African descent made the cut;
- How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps the House, Cherie Jones, translated by Karen Gerwig (CulturBooks)
- The most secret memory of the people, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, translated from French by Holger Fock and Sabine Müller (Hanser)
Cherie Jones said, “I got this amazing news today! So thrilled and thankful! ❤️”
The winners, who get 20,000 for the author and 15,000 euros for the translator, will be announced on September 9.
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