Reuben Woolley’s translation longlisted for International Booker Prize

Congratulations to MSt in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation student Reuben Woolley, whose Russian–English translation of Andrey Kurkov’s Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv has been longlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize!

The 2023 International Booker Prize panel of judges—chaired by the prize-winning French-Moroccan novelist Leïla Slimani, and consisting of Uilleam Blacker, one of Britain’s leading literary translators from Ukrainian; Tan Twan Eng, the Booker-shortlisted Malaysian novelist; Parul Sehgal, staff writer and critic at the New Yorker; and Frederick Studemann, Literary Editor of the Financial Times—look for the best work of international fiction translated into English. The books, authors and translators the Prize celebrates offer readers a window onto the world and the opportunity to experience the lives of people from different cultures.

Shot through with Andrey Kurkov’s unique brand of black humour and vodka-fuelled magic realism, Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv, published by MacLehose, is an affectionate portrait of one of the world’s most intriguing cities. We had the wonderful pleasure of hearing from Reuben Woolley at the OCCT Discussion Group this term, discussing the process of translating Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv.

You can read more about Woolley’s achievement on the International Booker Prize website, here.