Nelly Sachs's collected poems win the 2024 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation

The University of Warwick announced on 21 November 2024 that the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation had been awarded to Revelation Freshly Erupting by Nelly Sachs, translated from the German by Andrew Shanks and published by Carcanet Press. The prize is worth £1,000.

The collection gathers all the lyric poetry Sachs published in her lifetime, together with posthumous poems and an introductory essay. Sachs, born in Berlin in 1891, fled to Sweden in 1940 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966. She died in 1970.

The judges were Amanda Hopkinson, Boyd Tonkin and Susan Bassnett. They gave a special commendation to Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann (Granta). The prize received 147 entries from 35 languages, and the shortlist of six drew on French, German, Korean, Polish and Portuguese.

Why it matters: the prize draws attention to women writers in translation, whose work is still less visible in English than it should be. A complete poetry collection from a Nobel laureate who remains little read in English is exactly the kind of book that depends on committed translators and small presses to reach readers at all.

Sources: University of Warwick: 2024 winner announced; Warwick Prize for Women in Translation: 2024 winner.