Join us as we count down to ALTA41: Performance, Props, and Platforms with the National Translation Award in Poetry and Prose long- and shortlisted titles! We will be featuring the titles in alphabetical order, moving first through the longlisted and then the shortlisted titles, alongside blurbs penned by our judges for the National Translation Awards in Poetry and Prose. This year’s judges for poetry are Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Jennifer Feeley, and Sawako Nakayasu, and this year’s prose judges are Esther Allen, Tess Lewis, and Jeremy Tiang.

For quick reference, you may find the NTA longlists here, and the NTA shortlists here. Today we’re kicking off our countdown with a spotlight on Affections, longlisted for the National Translation Award in Prose:

Affections
by Rodrigo Hasbún
translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes
(Simon & Schuster)

The remarkable saga of the Ertl family, brilliantly evoked by Hasbún in a compact kaleidoscope of fragmented perspectives, runs from Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi documentaries to Che Guevara’s Communist insurgency in Bolivia. The many distinct voices Sophie Hughes skillfully interweaves make each character’s trauma palpably unique.