The Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize 2009 shortlist has been announced!

The judges said:

This year, recent prose writing was exceptionally strong. All the books on the shortlist were published in their original languages in the last forty years; almost all are here translated into English for the first time. The shortlist also demonstrates the importance of small presses, alongside larger publishers with a longstanding commitment to translation, in bringing significant European writing into English.

The shortlist is as follows (with the name of the translator presented first):

• Anthea Bell for Sasa Stanisic's How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone
• David Colmer for Gerbrand Bakker's The Twin
• Sarah Death for Alexander Ahndoril's The Director
• Christine Donougher for Sylvie Germain's Magnus
• Michael Hofmann for Fred Wander's The Seventh Well
• Marek Tomin for Emil Hakl's Of Kids and Parents