We now know the 115^th and 116^th Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature. The Swedish Academy decided to honour Olga Tokarczuk and the Austrian Peter Handke. Tokarczuk received the award for 2018 and Handke for 2019. The Academy decided to award Olga Tokarczuk for “narrative imagination that with encyclopaedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life”. Peter Handke was awarded for “an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience”. The ©Poland Translation Programme, conducted since 2004 by the Book Institute, has supported 91 translations of the Polish Nobel Prize winner into 28 foreign languages over the last two decades, including five into English and seven into Swedish.

Two translations of Polish books have been included in the shortlist of translations nominated for the prestigious National Translation Award granted by the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). Among the nominees, there are Madeline G. Levine, a winner of Found in Translation Award for her translation of Bruno Schulz, and Bill Johnston, a Transatlantyk Award winner for his translation of Adam Mickiewicz. Both translations have been published with the support of the Book Institute as part of the ©POLAND Translation Programme.

Hendrik Lindepuu received this year’s August Sang Award for his translation of Anna Świrszczyńska’s poem Chłopka (“A Peasant Woman “) from the collection Budując barykadę (“Building the Barricade”) or Ma ehitasin barrikaadi in Estonian.