French translator wins Polish award

Her output includes about sixty books, primarily of 20th and 21st-century writers such as the playwright Sławomir Mrożek, the Nobel Prize-winning poet and prose writer Czesław Miłosz, sci-fi writer Stanisław Lem, as well as Andrzej Bobkowski, Leopold Tyrmand, Adam Zagajewski, Jerzy Pilch, Leszek Kołakowski, and Andrzej Sapkowski.

Born in 1950, Laurence Dyevre studied Polish language and literature at the Sorbonne. In 2004-2008 she served as deputy director of the French Institute in Kraków.

Launched 11 years ago, the ‘Transatlantyk’ Prize is awarded annually by the Polish Book Institute to foreign translators, editors and critics for the promotion of Polish literature abroad.

Last year it went to Bill Johnston, Professor of Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington, who has translated works by the poets Juliusz Słowacki and Tadeusz Różewicz, the novelists Boleslaw Prus and Stefan Zeromski, the avant-garde playwright and prose writer Witold Gombrowicz and books by contemporary Polish authors Andrzej Stasiuk and Magdalena Tulli. (mk/nh)