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Light
Eng
Eng
- Independent judges choose novels translated into English from Ukrainian, Croatian and Polish
- Six finalist authors and translators are all women for the first time in the history of the prize
- The winning book will be announced on 24 June at a public awards ceremony, with the prize shared equally between author and translator
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is delighted to announce the three finalists for this year’s EBRD Literature Prize. They are:
- Forgottenness by Tanja Maljartschuk, translated from the Ukrainian by Zenia Tompkins and published by Bullaun Press in Ireland and by Liveright, an imprint of W.W. Norton & Company, in the United States.
- Sons, Daughters by Ivana Bodrožić, translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać and published by Seven Stories Press UK.
- The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story by Olga Tokarczuk, translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.
The finalists were chosen by this year’s independent panel of judges: writer, critic and cultural journalist Maya Jaggi (chair); writer and editor Selma Dabbagh; translator and Associate Professor in Ukrainian and East European Culture at University College London, Uilleam Blacker; and writer and foreign correspondent for BBC News, Fergal Keane.
Dr Jaggi said: “Our three finalist books emerged from a formidable shortlist of 10 – chosen from a record number of submissions – in which women’s voices rose powerfully to the fore.
“Resurrecting the past through an imaginative act of will, Tanja Maljartschuk’s Forgottenness, translated from the Ukrainian by Zenia Tompkins, moves between two lives a century apart to explore a land carved up between empires, and the persistence of inherited trauma.
“With invigorating candour, Ivana Bodrožić’s Sons, Daughters, translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać, is an immersive narrative of three lives linked by differing manifestations of ‘locked-in’ syndrome, and a love story fraught with tenderness, pain and the malign pressure to conform.
“Set in a tuberculosis sanatorium on the eve of the First World War, Olga Tokarczuk’s masterfully paced, sharply satirical The Empusium, translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, is a suspense-filled murder mystery of the mind, propelled by mysterious forces of nature and natural justice, that guards its secrets until the end.”
The winner will be revealed on 24 June at a public awards ceremony and reception at the EBRD’s headquarters in London, attended by the judges and the finalist authors, translators and publishers. Anyone wishing to join can register here.
The EBRD Literature Prize has been running since 2018 and is an annual award for a work of literary fiction originally written in a language of a country where the Bank invests, translated into English and published in the past year. It aims to champion the literary richness of the EBRD’s diverse regions of operation across three continents and to celebrate the role of translators as “bridges” between cultures. To date it has helped to highlight writing from Albania, Croatia, Czechia, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Morocco, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Türkiye, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.