The Birdcage Archives

Sunday, 31 May 2020

The Best Translated Book Award Winners, 2020


Hello Gentle Reader

Yesterday through a electronic announcement, followed by a equally distant and electronic based afterparty; the Best Translated Book Award announced the two winners for two-thousand and twenty:

Fiction went to the late Croatian writer: Daša Drndić with her novel: “E.G.G.”

Poetry went to the Lebanese born multi-language Poet: Etel Adnan for her poetry collection: “Time.”

Seeing Daša Drndić win the prize comes as no surprise. Throughout her lifetime, the late writer was noted for her powerful poignant narratives, excavating the crimes of the Twentieth Century and seeking to provide honor and memory to the nameless lost. “E.G.G,” is by no means any different. It is a brutal account of all those lost to time, and the criminals who have found exemption and reward, despite their crimes. “E.G.G,” it’s a historically dense novel, riddled with research; endowed with a scholar’s cold analysis, but simmers with the imbued outrage of demanding moralistic perspective to remember those lost, and continue to vilify those rewarded. In the end, Drndić accepts the past as it is; but celebrates those lost. In receiving the prize posthumously, Daša Drndić is remembered as powerful and historically invested writer, whose sough to wrong the injustices of the past by celebrating and naming those who had existed and suffered them.

Etel Adnan is perhaps the oldest writer to receive the Best Translated Book Award at the age of ninety-five years old. Along with Stéphane Bouquet and his poetry collection: “Next Lovers,” Etel Adnan was one of the strongest contenders for the poetry section of the prize.

Congregations to both writers and their respective translators.

On a side note, there has still been no word on when the International Booker Prize will announce its winner.

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary

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