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PEN Translation Prize Longlist 2023

January 2023

The covers of Pina, All Your Children, Scattered, Jawbone, Moldy Strawberries, and Motherfield

We present five excerpts from titles longlisted for the 2023 PEN Translation Prize for Fiction and the 2023 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.

Sunset over a field with melting snow

Photo by Vitali Adutskevich on Unsplash

Umbilical

By Julia Cimafiejeva

I thought I unburdened / myself / but even invisible / the braid grows / with memory

Translated from Belarusian by Valzhyna Mort & Hanif Abdurraqib

Multilingual

A cobblestone street in Rwanda at sunset with a few pedestrians and motorcycle riders

Photo by Michael Muli on Unsplash

No Familiar Faces

By Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse

I had the look of a Westerner fresh off the boat, with my wrinkled trousers, tourist backpack, and it didn’t tally with my fluency in Kinyarwanda.

Translated from French by Alison Anderson

Palm trees along the shoreline in Huahine, Tahiti

Matthew Dillon from Hollywood, CA, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Two Birthdays

For weeks, Ma didn’t feel a shred of warmth for the baby.

Translated from French by Jeffrey Zuckerman

A Landscape of Claws

By Mónica Ojeda

That’s how it felt to sleep handcuffed to a table.

Translated from Spanish by Sarah Booker

Beauty, a Terrible Story

By Caio Fernando Abreu

“Who cares about an old wreck?”

Translated from Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato