Congratulations to Andrew Shanks, who has been shortlisted for the 2024 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation with Revelation Freshly Erupting by Nelly Sachs!

The £1000 prize was established by the University of Warwick in 2017 to address the gender imbalance in translated literature and to increase the number of international women’s voices accessible by a British and Irish readership. The prize is judged by Amanda Hopkinson, Boyd Tonkin and Susan Bassnett.

The judges said of the shortlist, 'In addition to the special showcase it provides for women writers in translation from around the world, this vital prize also stands out for its freedom to celebrate outstanding achievement in every corner of the literary scene.

'This year’s genre-spanning shortlist features not just novels and poems but short stories, creative memoir and newspaper columns. That huge diversity of form also means that the judges can salute the many facets and varied challenges of the translator’s art.'

Prize coordinator, Dr Holly Langstaff of the University of Warwick’s School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures, commented:

'These six shortlisted titles reflect the variety of submissions made to the prize this year, from a record number of languages. For the first time in 2024, titles published by Carcanet Press and MTO Press feature on the shortlist. This list demonstrates the excellent work done by translators and publishers - small, medium and large - and their continued commitment to a vibrant and enriching translating culture in the UK and Ireland.'

The winner of the prize will be announced at a ceremony at The Shard in London on Thursday 21 November.

The full shortlist can be found here.

Well done to Andrew, and all the other shortlisted translators and publishers!

The Jewish poet Nelly Sachs (1891–1970) writes in direct response to the Holocaust. She is uniquely a 'prophetic' poet, one of the greatest of that species in the twentieth century.

Her first book appeared in the immediate wake of the Second World War, in 1946. Since that time, Hans Magnus Enzensberger declared, 'she has been writing fundamentally a single book'. That book is represented in this volume which reveals her whole progression rendered into English. Unlike earlier translators, Andrew Shanks calls his versions 'translations/imitations', moving away from the doggedly literal to render more faithfully the sense and intention of the originals.

Sachs escaped Berlin in May 1940. She found refuge in Sweden. Her major work is an evolving response to the trauma of the Holocaust. In 1966 she received the Nobel Prize for Literature. This book includes all the lyric poetry Sachs published in her lifetime and adds the posthumous collection Teile dich Nacht, an introductory essay, and notes.

Her poetry begins as a monumental lament for the victims of the Holocaust. Other themes develop: biblical, Kabbalist and religious allusions, personal bereavement, mental breakdown. And there are reflections on poetic vocation in the darkness of recent history.