She received the accolade for her translation of The Books of Jacob by Nobel Prize-winning Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk.
Published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in Britain in 2021 and by Riverhead Books in the United States this year, the book was earlier this month shortlisted for the UK’s International Booker Prize.
Tokarczuk’s opus magnum, The Books of Jacob is a 900-page historical novel about an 18th-century Eastern European cult leader named Jacob Frank, whose story unfolds through diary entries, poetry, letters and prophecies.
According to Anna Zaranko, one of the jurors for the Found in Translation Award, “Jennifer Croft’s translation rises brilliantly to the considerable challenge of sustaining the registers and many voices making up the enormous cast of characters in this demanding novel. The tone and range of perspective is handled with sensitivity, wit and conviction.”
Another jury member, Megan Thomas, praised Croft’s translation as “both a great accomplishment, and an enthralling reading experience.”
It is Croft’s second Found in Translation Award. In 2018, she won the honour for translating one of Tokarczuk’s earlier books, Flights.
The Found in Translation award is the highest distinction given to translators of Polish literature abroad. Launched in 2008, it is sponsored jointly by the Polish Cultural Institutes in London and New York, and the Polish Book Institute based in Kraków, southern Poland.
Previous winners include Bill Johnston for his translation of New Poems by Tadeusz Różewicz, Antonia Lloyd-Jones for Paweł Huelle’s The Last Supper, Piotr Florczyk for Anna Świrszczyńska’s Building the Barricade, and Madeleine G. Levine for Bruno Schulz’s Collected Stories.
(mk/gs)