English PEN Translates 2024 winners announced

Abdel Aziz Baraka Sakin, Osvalde Lewat, and Shady Lewis are among the PEN Translates winners announced on Sunday, July 14, 2024.

PEN Translates, with support from Arts Council England, has encouraged UK publishers to acquire more books from other languages since 2012. The award helps UK publishers to meet the costs of translating new works into English – whilst ensuring translators are acknowledged and paid properly for their work. The books are selected based on outstanding literary quality, the strength of the publishing project, and their contribution to UK bibliodiversity. Some previous winners have been Maryse Condé, Françoise Vergès and Abdourahman Waberi, Agnès Agboton, Djamila Morani, Ibrahima Balde and Amets Arzallus Antia as well as Maryse Condé and Stella Gaitano.

The winners for 2024 from 11 regions and 10 languages were revealed on Sunday, July 14 with the following writers of African descent benefitting from the program;

• The Aquatics, Osvalde Lewat (Cameroon), translated from the French by Maren Baudet-Lackner (Cassava Republic Press).
• On the Greenwich Line, Shady Lewis (Egypt/UK), translated from Arabic by Katharine Halls (Peirene Press).
• Samahani, Abdel Aziz Baraka Sakin (Sudan/Austria), translated from Arabic by Mayada Ibrahim and Adil Ibrahim Babikir (Foundry Editions).

Will Forrester, Head of Literature Programmes at English PEN, said: These 16 awards are selected from our largest round of submissions to date. The breadth, boldness, originality, risk-taking, spirit and quality exhibited across the submissions and award-winners is staggering – and speaks to the thriving state of translated literature publishing. We’re pleased to be a part of bringing these works to English-language readers, and to be able to support these exceptional writers, translators and publishers.

So Mayer, English PEN Translation Advisory Co-chair, said: This round of PEN Translates marks – and is marked by – powerful regional and transnational interconnections. We have five Spanish titles speaking compellingly for the linguistic, cultural and social diversity surging from Central and Latin America; new queer writing in French from Algerian and Cameroonian novelists; two highly mobile Vietnamese feminist mysteries; Arabic fiction from an Egyptian writer living in East London and a Black Sudanese writer living in Austria; the intricacies of language from a d/Deaf perspective; the sensory world of food as experienced by Malayan Communists at war; and two stunning celebrations of the art of the short story in Farsi and Kannada. They showcase the continued invention and ambition of independent publishers and translators, and how the most vivacious and essential current writing is both formally inventive and expansively committed to solidarity.

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