Two Indian translations made the prose shortlist for the 2023 American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) National Translation Awards: B. Jeyamohan’s Stories of the True, translated from Tamil by Priyamvada Ramkumar, and Sheela Tomy’s Valli: A Novel, translated from Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil. Both were finalists, not winners; Thuận’s Chinatown, translated by Nguyễn An Lý, took the prose prize.
What the 2023 shortlist recognized
ALTA announced the shortlists on October 11, 2023. The prose category included six books, among them the two Indian translations; the poetry category also included six. The awards were announced at ALTA46 in Tucson on November 11. These are the 2023 results, not a current shortlist.
ALTA described 2023 as the National Translation Award’s 25th year and the ninth year with separate prizes for prose and poetry. The association’s shortlist announcement named five prose judges: Natascha Bruce, Shelley Frisch, Jason Grunebaum, Sawad Hussain, and Lytton Smith. ALTA’s 2023 shortlist announcement gives the complete lists and credits.
The two shortlisted books
| Book | Author and translator | Source language and publisher |
|---|---|---|
| Stories of the True | B. Jeyamohan; translated by Priyamvada Ramkumar | Tamil; Juggernaut |
| Valli: A Novel | Sheela Tomy; translated by Jayasree Kalathil | Malayalam; HarperCollins India |
Stories of the True
ALTA identifies Stories of the True as a collection of twelve stories. In its award record, the judges praised the translation’s language and its attention to caste, class, and gender; that is the judges’ assessment, rather than a neutral synopsis of the collection. ALTA’s award database records the book and award history.
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Valli: A Novel
HarperCollins describes Valli as a four-generation story set in Wayanad, spanning the 1970s to the present and told through a diary passed from a mother to her daughter. The publisher lists its English paperback at 420 pages. Its page lists a price of ₹699, but price and availability can change; check the publisher’s book page for current details.
Who won the 2023 awards?
Chinatown by Thuận, translated from Vietnamese by Nguyễn An Lý, won the prose award. ALTA’s prose-winner announcement names the winning book and translator. In poetry, the award went to Iman Mersal’s The Threshold, translated from Arabic by Robyn Creswell. ALTA’s poetry-winner announcement confirms that result.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the award is for
ALTA describes the National Translation Award as an annual prize in poetry and prose for literary translators who recreate a book’s artistic force in English. Its focus is therefore on translation as literary craft, alongside the quality of the source book. At the October 2023 shortlist announcement, ALTA President Ellen Elias-Bursać said that in the award’s first quarter-century, 38 translators had been honored for work from 18 languages. That is a historical count stated in the 2023 announcement, not a current total. ALTA reported a $4,000 prize for each winning translator that year.
For readers choosing between the two shortlisted titles, the clearest distinction in the available publisher and award descriptions is language and form: a twelve-story Tamil collection versus a Malayalam multigenerational novel set in Wayanad. The shortlist placed both in the same prose category; it did not rank one above the other.
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