World Literary Awards

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National Book Award for Translated Literature なしょなるぶっくしょう(ほんやくぶんがく)

Edition 6 (2023)

Translated literatureFictionNonfiction

Winners

10 people
The Words That Remain

A tender story of queer life in Brazil that follows love, loss, and the echoes words leave behind.

Even after words fade, feeling leaves a shape behind.

132 pages
queer lifememorylosslovelanguage
Bora Chung Nominee
Cursed Bunny

A genre-bending story collection that mixes horror, fable, and black humor to expose violence embedded in family, consumer culture, and the body.

The strange starts to throw the real world back into view.

199 pages
short storieshorrorfablethe bodyviolence
David Diop Nominee
Beyond the Door of No Return

A historical novel that traces the memory of slavery and colonial violence through a journey to the African coast, where the living and the dead are forced into the same frame.

Beyond the door of no return, history's wounds accumulate.

179 pages
historical fictionslaverycolonialismmemoryjourney
Pilar Quintana Nominee

An autobiographical novel about the collapse of a house and a family in Medellín, where grief, rage, and memory collide around a dying brother and a violent country.

Beneath the rage, a trace of love and memory remains.

185 pages
autofictionfamilyMedellíngriefviolence
Astrid Roemer Nominee

A fragmentary novel about Noenka, a Black woman who leaves home after her husband's refusal to grant a divorce, and begins a new life shadowed by colonial history, desire, and isolation.

New freedom does not shake off the past so easily.

265 pages
queer literaturecolonial historywomenfragmentary formfreedom
Juan Cárdenas Longlisted
The Devil of the Provinces

A biologist returns to his hometown and confronts grief, failure, and the eerie transformations of a provincial place.

Going home means being pulled back into the past.

96 pages
return homegriefprovincial lifescienceunease
Jenny Erpenbeck Longlisted
Kairos

Set against the collapse of East Germany, a love story gradually turns into a study of power, manipulation, and the way memory can trap people in time.

Love reveals another face as the era collapses around it.

336 pages
love storypowermemoryEast Germanycollapse
Khaled Khalifa Longlisted
No One Prayed Over Their Graves

A Syrian novel haunted by war, dictatorship, and the dead, where grief, memory, and disappearance remain inseparable.

The absence of the unprayed-for dead keeps sounding beneath the story.

345 pages
Syriawarlossmemorythe dead
Fernanda Melchor Longlisted
This Is Not Miami

A collection of true stories and literary sketches from Mexico that captures violence, fatigue, and the unstable life of the city.

This is both a city record and a record of wounds.

160 pages
Mexicoreportageviolencecity lifeliterary nonfiction
The Most Secret Memory of Men

A meta-novel about a young Senegalese writer that probes literary memory, legacy, plagiarism, and the burden of authorship.

The most secret memory hides inside the written word.

378 pages
metafictionSenegalliteraturememoryauthorship