Join us as we count down to the ALTA43: In Between awards ceremony with the National Translation Award in Poetry and Prose longlisted titles! We will be featuring the titles in alphabetical order alongside blurbs penned by our judges for the National Translation Awards in Poetry and Prose. This year’s judges for prose are Amaia Gabantxo, Emmanuel D. Harris II, and William Maynard Hutchins. This year’s judges for poetry are Ilya Kaminsky, Lisa Katz, and Farid Matuk.

The awards ceremony will air on October 15, 2020 on ALTA’s Crowdcast page: you can register to attend the NTA in Prose announcement here, and the NTA in Poetry announcement here. Find the full list of longlisted titles here.

Today we’re shining the spotlight on NTA in Prose longlisted title Beyond Babylon:

Beyond Babylon
by Igiaba Scego
translated from the Italian by Aaron Robertson
(Two Lines Press)

I’ve always pitied Spain.

Beyond Babylon is a polyphonic, transoceanic, fragmented family epic spanning three continents with the Mediterranean Sea at its core—the blue mass that defines the Somali-Italian relationship, the mare nostrum: both a grave and a passage to hope. Through half-sisters Mar and Zuhra, Igiaba Scego explores the history of Italian colonialism and the uneven power relations that define it. It’s a story of migration and identity, of the so-called marginal condition—marginal through race, gender, religion, and language. It is also a Great Italian Novel, in the biggest sense of the word.Aaron Robertson navigates the polyglottic nature of the text wonderfully, letting the rhythms of Italian and the sounds of Somali, Arabic, and Amharic swim across his translation.