A shortlist has been announced for the inaugural Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, which "aims 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 winner will be named November 15. This year's shortlisted titles are:
Second-hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich, translated from Russian by Bela Shayevich
Swallow Summer by Larissa Boehning, translated from German by Lyn Marven
Clementine Loves Red by Krystyna Boglar, translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and Zosia Krasodomska-Jones
The Coast Road by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh, translated from Irish by Michael Coady, Peter Fallon, Tom French, Alan Gillis, Vona Groarke, John McAuliffe, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon, Michelle O'Sullivan, Justin Quinn, Billy Ramsell, Peter Sirr and David Wheatley
Swallowing Mercury by Wioletta Greg, translated from Polish by Eliza Marciniak
Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada, translated from German by Susan Bernofsky
The judges said they "hope that the prize will encourage publishers to be more serious about translating women writers. Without deliberately aiming to do so, our shortlist shows that there is much more to translation than is usually documented. Shifting borders in the east of Europe and the contraction of countries through history and geography was a real theme in the submissions for the prize, as was the experience of migration, and this is reflected in four of the six shortlisted titles."