Selja Ahava’s novel Things that Fall from the Sky, translated to English by Emily and Fleur Jeremiah and published by Oneworld, is longlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2020.
As it is stated on the official website: “The 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. In 2020 the prize is generously supported by the British Centre for Literary Translation and the British Comparative Literature Association.”
The jury has remarked the record number of submissions, totalling 132 eligible entires representing 34 languages and countries including Argentina, Brazil, China, Malaysia and Sudan. 16 titles made it to the longlist.
The judges said of this year’s nominees:
“This year’s longlist not only takes us from Sudan to Malaysia, and from Finland to Brazil. It is the most genre-bending longlist to date, encompassing lyric poetry and children’s fiction, crime writing and gastronomic memoir, an epistolary novel and a collection of letters, as well as the historical epic and the short story. On this occasion, the judges’ choices also showcase an outstanding group of previously untranslated works by great women writers of the twentieth century.”
The shortlist for the prize will be published in early November. The winner will be announced in an online ceremony on Thursday 26 November. You can read more about this year’s prize and other nominees on Warwick’s official website.
Things that Fall from the Sky has been one of the most internationally successful Finnish works of fiction, with foreign rights sold to 24 territories. Ahava’s latest novel, The Woman Who Loved Insects, came out in August to wonderful reviews and overwhelming interest from publishers around the globe.
Congratulations to the author and fingers crossed!