Thomas Bunstead has won the $1,000 2024 Cercador Prize for Literature in Translation for his translation of The Book of All Loves by Agustín Fernández Mallo (Fitzcarraldo Editions).
Co-founded by Justin Walls, bookstore partnerships coordinator at Bookshop.org, and Spencer Ruchti, author events manager at Third Place Books in Seattle, Wash., the Cercador Prize recognizes works of literature in translation as selected by a committee of independent booksellers, which this year included Emily Tarr of Thank You Books, Birmingham, Ala.; Thu Doan of East Bay Booksellers, Oakland, Calif.; Riley Rennhack of Deep Vellum Books, Dallas, Tex.; Oscar Almonte-Espinal, formerly of Uncle Bobbie's Coffee and Books, Philadelphia, Pa., and currently public events manager for the Author Events series at the Free Library of Philadelphia; and Ruchti.
The prize committee commented: "The Book of All Loves begins at the precipice of a strange apocalypse, as two lovers parse the many facets of their love with gripping, categorical precision. The novel covers an enormous range of subjects--linguistics, metaphysics, geology, nature, poetry, artificial intelligence, deep time, philosophy--with a quality of thought that propels the reader to the book's surprising conclusion. By no means a traditional novelist, Mallo is a writer for outsiders, his complex prose and style on the cutting edge of literary form, and Bunstead's translation of The Book of All Loves balances the technical, the analytical, and the aesthetic. As Mallo's only English-language translator since Nocilla Dream was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2015 (and eventually brought to American readers in 2019 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, along with Nocilla Experience and Nocilla Lab), Bunstead's commitment to the author is clear, and his vision for the text strikes an ideal harmony. Readers of all kinds will find lasting meaning in these pages. The Book of All Loves is a sheer pleasure, a text that reminded our committee why we read, and what wonderful discoveries are available to us in the trade of bookselling."