Shortlist Announced for 2024 Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize

The shortlist for the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize was announced on December 2, highlighting classic and contemporary fiction and nonfiction translated from Japanese into English. The prize, launched last year by the foundation in association with the Society of Authors, considers books published in Britain between April 1, 2023, and March 31, 2024. The results are due to be announced on February 12, 2025; the translator of the winning title will receive £3,000 and the runner-up £1,000.

Last year’s winning translator Alison Watts appears on the shortlist again for What You Are Looking for Is in the Library, translated from a novel by Aoyama Michiko about a librarian who transforms a series of visitors’ lives through her perfectly pitched book recommendations. The 2023 runner-up David Boyd is also shortlisted in 2024, again for a translation of a book by Oyamada Hiroko. The Factory zooms in on the absurdity of the workplace via three characters with mundane jobs in a surreal setting.

Kappa, a collaboration by Allison Markin Powell and Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda on Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s classic novella, is a Swiftian satire skewering human society through an imagined visit to the realm of the mythical water-dwelling creatures. Nails and Eyes, translated by Kendall Heitzman, collects unsettling short fiction by Fujino Kaori; the title novella about a girl’s claustrophobic observation of her stepmother won the Akutagawa Prize.

Slow Down: How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth (Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto in some markets) is translated by Brian Bergstrom from a bestselling work by Marxist scholar Saitō Kōhei advocating the slowing of economic activity to tackle climate change. The Kobe Hotel: Memoirs translated by Masaya Saito brings together two works by the haiku poet Saitō Sanki recording his hard wartime days in a run-down hotel in Kobe.

The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize Shortlist (2024)

• What You Are Looking for Is in the Library translated by Alison Watts from Osagashimono wa toshoshitsu made (2020) by Aoyama Michiko
• The Factory translated by David Boyd from Kōjō (2013) by Oyamada Hiroko
• Kappa translated by Allison Markin Powell and Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda from Kappa (1927) by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke
• Nails and Eyes translated by Kendall Heitzman from Tsume to me (2015) by Fujino Kaori
• Slow Down: How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth translated by Brian Bergstrom from Hito shinsei no shihonron (2020) by Saitō Kōhei
• The Kobe Hotel: Memoirs translated by Masaya Saito from Kōbe and Zoku Kōbe (1975) by Saitō Sanki

The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize is one of eight Society of Authors translation prizes for different languages.

(Originally published in English. Banner photo © Natalie Thorpe.)