Christina MacSweeney has won the $1,000 Cercador Prize for her translation from the Spanish of The Queen of Swords by Jazmina Barrera (Two Lines Press). Founded in 2023, the Cercador Prize recognizes works of literature in translation and is selected by a committee of independent booksellers in the U.S. The Cercador is the only bookseller-led prize for literature in translation.
The judges wrote: "The Queen of Swords, presented here in a lyrical translation by Christina MacSweeney, astounded the committee. Jazmina Barrera's study on Elena Garro, a maligned pioneer of magical realism, defies convention and embraces contradiction. This is a book of reversals and research, an unwaveringly brilliant portrait of a complex and undone life, captured in art and destruction, love and pain, faith and persecution."
The Queen of Swords is a portrait of Mexican writer Elena Garro (1916-1988), a founder of magical realism, a socialite, and an activist on behalf of indigenous Mexicans. Garro's work has been overshadowed by her turbulent relationship with her husband, Octavio Paz, and other male writers of her generation. Jorge Luis Borges once called her "the Tolstoy of Mexico."
MacSweeney has translated three other books by Barrera, including Linea Nigra, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle's Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Autobiography Prize. She has also translated works by such authors as Elvira Navarro, Valeria Luiselli, Daniel Saldaña París, Julián Herbert, and Karla Suárez and has contributed to several anthologies of Latin American literature.
The judging committee members were Javi Tapia of Third Place Books, Seattle, Wash., Dylan McGonigle of Wayfinder Bookshop, Fairfax, Calif., Beatriz Quiroz García of Skylight Books, Los Angeles, Calif., C. Rees of Alienated Majesty Books, Austin, Tex., and chair Emily Tarr of Thank You Books, Birmingham, Ala.