At a beery-cheery award ceremony at the Bowery Poetry Club during the PEN World Voices Festival in April, this year’s winners of the Best Translated Book Awards were announced.
For poetry, this year’s winner was The Book of Things by Aleš Šteger, which was translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry.
For fiction, I was absolutely delighted that Tove Jansson’s True Deceiver, translated beautifully from the Swedish by Thomas Teal, won the award. I had a bit more stake in this one, I’ll admit: Jansson is one of my favorite newly-discovered authors. I read and reviewed True Deceiver for The L last year (read the review here) and was even more charmed by the new translation (also by Teal) of Fair Play (that review is here).
Teal’s acceptance speech was definitely the highlight of the 13 some-odd minute ceremony–he tells a great anecdote and is obviously delighted by the recognition. And, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, you don’t have to rely on the notes I took in the dark–you can watch the whole thing yourself:
