BBC

Man Booker Shortlist: Translating Elena Ferrante

This month the winner of the prestigious Man Booker International Prize will be announced. Weekend is featuring all six of the shortlisted books before the winner is made public. Unusually the $72,000 prizemoney is divided equally between the writer and translator.

This week’s book is The Story Of The Lost Child by Italian writer Elena Ferrante. It’s the final part of a series known as the Neapolitan Quartet, about the sixty-year friendship between Elena, a successful writer, and her childhood friend Lila.

Weekend’s Julian Worricker spoke to the book’s translator Ann Goldstein, who says she has never met Ferrante herself. But her acquaintance with her work goes way back.

BBC

Man Booker Shortlist: Elena Ferrante On Using A Pseudonym

This month the winner of the prestigious Man Booker International Prize will be announced. Weekend is featuring all six of the shortlisted books before the winner is made public.

This week we look at one of the hot favourites: The Story Of The Lost Child by Italian writer Elena Ferrante. It’s the final part of a series known as the Neapolitan Quartet, about the sixty-year friendship between Elena, a successful writer, and Lila, her friend from childhood. Elena Ferrante refuses to have a public profile, but she does communicate via email and agreed to an exchange with the BBC. Her answers have been voiced by an actress.

Her writing is extremely intimate and emotionally honest. But she herself is pseudonymous. Weekend’s Julian Worricker asked why she keeps such a distance between life and work?

 

Literary Hub

NAPLES, THE READING LIST: YOUR GUIDE TO THE CITY OF ELENA FERRANTE

ON THE EVE OF SAN GENNARO, 15 BOOKS TO SATISFY YOUR NEAPOLITAN CRAVINGS

April 29, 2016  By John Domini

These days, plenty of people know Elena Ferrante, but not so many have heard of Januarius, patron saint of her native Naples. New Yorkers will recognize the Italian name,San Gennaro, from his festival in Little Italy, the last Saturday in April (tomorrow). Yet over by the Tyrrhenian Sea, this 4th-century martyr may have a greater physical presence than Ferrante herself.

Back when Gennaro’s head was still tumbling away from its body, the story goes, some acolyte stooped to collect vials of his blood. The reliquaries are kept in Naples, and twice a year, the Duomo is packed for the miracle of liquefaction. The more freely the stuff flows, in its gilded containers, the more it buoys up the prayers of the locals, the Napoli D.O.C. Better yet, they get two chances at a miracle, one in September and one late in April.

At some point Ferrante—then still using her actual name—must’ve been among the believers. These days she may no longer live in town, but the city remains an abiding subject for her, integral to her power. So too, as her quartet follows Lenù and Lila around Naples, as it steeps in the beauties and toxins, it generates hunger for more. Readers can take Ferrante tours, now, and they’ve begun seeking other books written in the shadow of Vesuvius.

Piacere mio, my pleasure. I’ll limit my suggestions to titles available in English and pertinent to the novelist’s generation.

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The Guardian

Elena Ferrante and Clarice Lispector up for Best Translated Book award

Alison Flood

The Story of the Lost Child and a posthumous collection of the great Brazilian author’s short stories among 10 finalists

Chinese poet Liu Xia, Brazilian author Clarice Lispector and Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa.

The Italian novelist Elena Ferrante, already in the running for the 2016 Man Booker International prize, has made the shortlist for the Best Translated Book award.

Worth $5,000 (£3,500) to both its winning authors and translators, the prize is run by the Three Percent blog at the University of Rochester, and underwritten by Amazon.com’s literary partnership programmes. Ferrante was picked by judges for The Story of the Lost Child, the final novel in her Neapolitan series, which also made the Man Booker International prize shortlist last week. Translated by Ann Goldstein, the novel was called “the first work worthy of the Nobel prize to have come out of Italy for many decades” by the Observer.

Another title shortlisted for the Man Booker International also makes the 10-strong list: A General Theory of Oblivion by Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa, translated by Daniel Hahn. The novel tells of a woman who bricks herself into her apartment on the eve of Angolan independence and lives there for 30 years.

The late Brazilian author Clarice Lispector’s Complete Stories is also a finalist for the fiction award, translated from the Portuguese by Katrina Dodson. Published last summer for the first time in English, the 85-story collection is “proof that she was – in the company of Jorge Luis Borges, Juan Rulfo and her 19th-century countryman Machado de Assis – one of the true originals of Latin American literature”, according to the New York Times.

Judge Amanda Nelson of Book Riot said that “one of the most remarkable things about this collection is that it is so complete”, and that Lispector “is simply better at portraying women than pretty much any other candidate”.

“Lispector gives us the inner lives of women from childhood through very old age,” said Nelson. “Her women are real, they wrestle with marriage, they struggle with motherhood, they make art, they are bored, they have affairs, get old, play the ‘cool girl’ game long before Gillian Flynn’s Amy gave it a name in Gone Girl. Lispector’s stories all in one place say: we have always been here.”

Three Percent also revealed the six poetry collections up for its best translated poetry prize, with China’s Liu Xia picked for Empty Chairs, translated from the Chinese by Ming Di and Jennifer Stern. Liu is the wife of the imprisoned Nobel peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo. In one of her poems, June 2nd, 1989 (for Xiaobo), she writes of how:

I didn’t have a chance
to say a word before you became
a character in the news,
everyone looking up to you
as I was worn down
at the edge of the crowd
just smoking
and watching the sky.

A new myth, maybe, was forming
there, but the sun was so bright
I couldn’t see it.

Alongside Liu’s work, a book collecting the work of eight Afghan women poets from Herat, Load Poems Like Guns, is shortlisted. The collection, edited and translated from the Persian by Farzana Marie, includes poetry by Nadia Anjuman, who wrote about the oppression of Afghan woman and was murdered by her husband in 2005. Judge, translator and publisher Deborah Smith said: “Two things about this book blew me away – one was the strength of the writing itself, and another was the astonishing work of its translator”.

Flavorwire

Who Wrote the Best Translated Book of 2016?

By |

Three Percent has released the longlist for the 2016 Best Translated Book Award, a prize that comes with a $5,000 payout (for both author and translator) from Amazon, its sponsor. The longlist is appropriately long (25 fiction titles, ten poetry titles) and filled with names famous, familiar, and obscure. Many American readers will be acquainted with the work of Elena Ferrante, Clarice Lispector, Valeria Luiselli, Andrés Neuman, and Ludmilla Ulitskaya; or they may have read last year’s profiles or reviews of Eka Kurniawan, Wolfgang Hilbig, and Yuri Herrera; but they may not be so familiar with the rest of the list. Well, now is the time to get acquainted; many of the books listed here are among the best released in the world in the last year.

There are far too many works of fiction and poetry to give a full account of the longlist, but anyone familiar with contemporary literature in translation will tell you that there are certain frontrunners. Elena Ferrante’s entry is the final volume of her Neapolitan Quartet, which may give the judges cause to award the entire series; it has lost twice in the past, once to László Krasznahorkai’sSeiobo There Below (the greatest novel of recent years), and another time to Can Xue’s worthy The Last Lover. I’d be surprised if Ferrante didn’t win this year, but Ferrante has a worthy, famous competitor in The Complete Stories of Clarice Lispector, which, it may sound strange to say, is more assuredly canonical. Valeria Luiselli’s The Story of My Teeth is excellent, but it strikes me as too project-like to convince the judges (away from Ferrante or Lispector). In poetry? I’d be surprised if Silvina Ocampo didn’t win, but I haven’t read all of the books.

Nor have I read all of the fiction. Still, my personal favorites (along with the abovementioned) are the novels by Yuri Herrera, Wolfgang Hilbig, Fiston Mwanza Mujila — who could be a dark horse here — and Eka Kurniawan, whose simultaneously released Beauty Is a Wound and Man Tiger could both have been longlisted; in short fiction: Andrés Neuman’s The Things We Don’t Do seems to me one of the finest works of that form in recent years. I don’t think it will win, but I’d be thrilled if it did.

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The Millions

And the Finalists for the Best Translated Book Awards Are…

Screen Shot 2016-04-18 at 2.37.44 PM

 

We’re very proud to announce the finalists for this year’s Best Translated Book Awards here on The Millions. This is the ninth iteration of the awards, which have honored a variety of books and authors over the years, including Can Xue (who won in 2015 for The Last Lover) and László Krasznahorkai (the only two-time winner for Satantango and Seiobo There Below). On the poetry side of things, past winners include Rocío Cerón (Diorama), Elisa Biagini (The Guest in the Wood), and Kiwao Nomura (Spectacle & Pigsty), among others.

Five years ago, Amazon started underwriting the awards through their Literary Partnership program, providing $20,000 in cash prizes every year, which is split up equally between the winning authors and translators. After this year’s awards have been granted, the Best Translated Book Awards will have given out $100,000 to international authors and translators.

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Three Percent

The Story of the Lost Child is one of 10 finalists for the 2016 Best Translated Book Award (Fiction)

19 APRIL 16

Ten works of fiction and six poetry collections remain in the running for this year’s Best Translated Book Awards following the announcement of the two shortlists at The Millions website this morning.

These sixteen finalists represent an incredible array of writing styles and reputation, and include the likes of Clarice Lispector, Elena Ferrante, Georgi Gospodinov, Gabrielle Wittkop, Liu Xia, Abdourahman Waberi, and more. These titles were selected from the nearly 570 works of fiction and poetry published in English translation in 2015.

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Korean JoongAng Daily

Korean writer Han Kang in line for prestigious award

The Man Booker Prize recently announced the final list of nominees for the 2016 Man Booker International Prize.

One of the six shortlisted authors announced last week is Han Kang, who has lately been garnering an amount of attention rare for a Korean writer from the foreign press for her novel “The Vegetarian,” which was published in English last year.

The Man Booker Prize, which began in 1969 in the United Kingdom with the aim of promoting the finest fiction, is one of the top honors for novelists. The prize is granted annually to an original novel, written in English and published in the United Kingdom.

Along with the original prize, the Man Booker International Prize was established in 2005 for translated works. The winning work is awarded 50,000 pounds ($70,900), which is equally divided between the author and the translator.

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Newsday

Elena Ferrante, Orhan Pamuk up for Man Booker International Prize

LONDON – Elusive Italian author Elena Ferrante and Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk are among six finalists for the Man Booker International Prize for fiction.

Ferrante’s Neapolitan tale “The Story of the Lost Child” and Pamuk’s Istanbul-set “A Strangeness in My Mind” are on a shortlist, announced Thursday, that includes books from Asia, Africa and Europe.

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Evening Standard

Londoner’s Diary: Sex, drugs and a locked library at the Savile

Prize could unmask Elena Ferrante

To the Kensington Orangery last night, where the champagne flowed for the Man Booker International Prize. As there wasn’t a name tag ready and waiting, The Londoner was tempted to claim to be nominee Elena Ferrante, author of the quartet of books known at the Neapolitan novels, the last of which, The Story of the Lost Child, is shortlisted for the prize.

Ferrante’s identity is a closely guarded secret and was a much discussed topic of the evening. For The Economist’s books and arts editor, Fiammetta Rocco, the prize has diplomatic possibilities. “If you believe what unites us is stronger than what divides us,” she said, “this is the prize for you.”

The big question now is: if Ferrante wins, will she be appear incognito at the prizegiving?

The Times of India

Elena Ferrante could be the first-ever anonymous Booker winner

For the first time, the Man Booker International prize could go to an anonymous writer this year, if a story of lifelong friendship in southern Italy beats the other five contestants in a short list announced this week.

“The Story of the Lost Child”, the fourth and final instalment in a tale of friendship, family and power centred on noisy Naples, is up against rivals that include Turkish Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk.

The true identity of its writer, who has published this series and three other books under the pen name Elena Ferrante, is one of the best-kept artistic secrets in modern Italy.

“Elena Ferrante was born in Naples. This is all we know about her,” the Booker Prize Foundation said on its website. A spokeswoman for the prize said no anonymous writer had ever won the Man Booker Prize or the Man Booker International Prize.

Before publishing her first novel, Ferrante is widely quoted as having said in a letter to her publishers, “Books, once they are written, have no need of their authors.”Even as the “Neapolitan Novels”, the first of which came out in Italy in 2011, drew worldwide acclaim and sales reportedly exceeded 1 million copies, she did not identify herself.

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The Wire

Culture Review: Banned Film, Lost Dutch Masterpiece, Books for Mental Health and More

2016 International Man Booker prize announced

The 2016 International Man Booker prize shortlist consists of six novels from Turkey, China, Italy, South Korea, Austria and Angola, narrowed down from an original 155 contenders. The winner will be announced in June.

Judges called Elena Ferrante’s The Story of a Lost Child “a veritable feast.” Despite her international fame, Ferrante has never been publicly identified. She interacts with her translator only through her publisher.

Yan Lianke’s The Four Books is set in a labour camp before and during the 1950s famine in China. The novel, which took Lianke 20 years to plan, was banned in China at the time of its publication.

Here’s the full shortlist:

A General Theory of Oblivion, Jose Eduardo Agualusa (Angola)

The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein (Italy)

The Vegetarian, Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith (South Korea)

The Four Books, Yan Lianke, translated by Carlos Rojas (China)

A Strangeness in My Mind, Orhan Pamuk, translated by Ekin Oklap (Turkey)

A Whole Life, Robert Seethaler, translated by Charlotte Collins (Austria)

Frontpage

Elusive Italian author Elena Ferrante and Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk are among six finalists for the Man Booker International Prize for fiction

LONDON (AP) — Elusive Italian author Elena Ferrante and Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk are among six finalists for the Man Booker International Prize for fiction.

Ferrante’s Neapolitan tale “The Story of the Lost Child” and Pamuk’s Istanbul-set “A Strangeness in My Mind” are on a shortlist, announced Thursday, that includes books from Asia, Africa and Europe.

Pamuk is one of Turkey’s best-known authors and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2006. Ferrante has topped best-seller lists around the world with her four novels of friendship and life in Naples, but her identity remains a mystery. She writes under a pseudonym and rarely gives interviews.

Also among the finalists is Yan Lianke’s “The Four Books,” one of the few Chinese novels to tackle the Great Famine of the 1950s and ’60s, in which millions died. The author’s satirical novels have frequently been banned in China.

The other nominees are Angolan revolution saga “A General Theory of Oblivion” by Jose Eduardo Agualusa; food-themed novel “The Vegetarian” by South Korea’s Han Kang; and Alpine tale “A Whole Life” by Austria’s Robert Seethaler.

Literary critic Boyd Tonkin, who chairs the judging panel, said the six finalists “will take readers both around the globe and to every frontier of fiction.”

The award is the international counterpart to Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize and is open to books published in any language that have been translated into English. The prize was previously a career honor, but changed this year to recognize a single work of fiction.

The 50,000-pound ($71,000) prize is divided evenly between the author and the book’s translator. The winner will be announced in London on May 16.

National Post

Pseudonymous author Elena Ferrante makes Man Booker International Prize shortlist, win could spell reveal

The Story of the Lost Child with faceless figures as her covers go, much like Ferrante herself.

A week of copious award announcements continued as the Man Booker International Prize shortlist was announced April 14.

The finalists are:

  • A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa, translated by Daniel Hahn (Harvill Secker)
  • The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein (Europa Editions)
  • The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith (Portobello Books)
  • The Four Books by Yan Lianke, translated by Carlos Rojas (Grove Press)
  • A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk, translated by Ekin Oklap (Knopf Canada)
  • A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler, translated by Charlotte Collins (Anansi International)

The winner of the £50,000 prize will be announced May 16, with each author and translator on the shortlist receiving £1,000.