By the Rivers of Babylon (Sôbolos Rios Que Vão) by António Lobo Antunes, translated from Portuguese into English by Margaret Jull Costa and published at Yale University Press, has been longlisted for the 2024 National Translation Awards (NTA) in Prose.
Established in 1998, the NTA, which is administered by American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), is an American national award for translated fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction that includes a rigorous examination of both the source text and its relation to the finished English work.
The 2024 NTA longlists feature authors writing in 17 different languages and books from 21 different presses, celebrating the diversity of literature in translation in English and the large, vibrant community of translators, publishers and readers. This year’s prose judges are Philip Boehm, Shelley Fairweather-Vega, Will Forrester, Joon-Li Kim, and poupeh missaghi.
Lobo Antunes is one of the most well-established and important figures in contemporary Portuguese literature. His prolific output, which has earned him numerous awards, has been translated into more than 30 languages and has made him a firm candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. By the Rivers of Babylon is his twenty-second novel in a vast body of work that includes more than forty titles.
The shortlists for the NTA will be announced on October 10th, and the winners will be announced on October 26th at an Awards Ceremony as part of ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA47: Voices in Translation, in Milwaukee, WI.