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 shining the spotlight on The World Goes On, longlisted for the National Translation Award in Prose:

The World Goes On
by László Krasznahorkai
translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes, Ottilie Mulzet, and John Batki
(New Directions)

Strange, bewildering, and as multifarious as the world itself, this book is a thrill ride – one moment we are in the middle of a tangle of Shanghai expressways, the next on the banks of the Ganges. The language is beautiful and fluid, and despite being the work of three separate translators, achieves a glorious unity. The reader is led through fantastical landscapes and convoluted scenarios, constantly thrown off balance but never allowed to get lost. The long sentences and complex thought processes are a risky high-wire act that pays off, a breathless adventure that we can only surrender to.