BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 25. Sons, Daughters, a
novel by Ivana Bodro啪i膰, translated from the Croatian by Ellen
Elias- Bursa膰 and published by Seven Stories Press UK, has won the
EBRD Literature Prize 2025, Trend reports, citing EBRD’s latest reports.
The winning work, published in English for the first time last
year, was chosen by an independent panel of judges: the writer,
critic, and cultural journalist Maya Jaggi (chair); translator and
Associate Professor in Ukrainian and East European Culture at
University College London, Uilleam Blacker; writer and editor Selma
Dabbagh; and writer and foreign correspondent for BBC News, Fergal
鈥淲ith invigorating candor and freshness, Ivana Bodro啪i膰鈥檚 Sons,
Daughters is a tale told through three perspectives, each voice
distinctively rendered in Ellen Elias-Bursa膰鈥檚 supple translation
from the Croatian: a young woman with 鈥榣ocked-in鈥 syndrome, her
lover trapped in a body he cannot recognize as his own, and a
mother entombed by her upbringing. Hinting at the parts of
ourselves we stifle and censor to fit in, its immersive narrative
is alert to how past war and trauma infect the present,” Jaggi
Jean-Dominique Bauby鈥檚 stroke memoir The Diving-Bell and the
Butterfly meets Jeanette Winterson鈥檚 Oranges Are Not the Only
Fruit, this is fiction that has the power to transform how we see
the world, others and ourselves.鈥
“Always when you are in some kind of final, there is a little
hope, but I’m really so happy to be among these beautiful writers,
and I’m so honored to be selected for the longlist and then the
shortlist, and then as a finalist. I think that we are much more
similar than we think sometimes and that art and literature is that
base where we can understand each other because the most powerful
tool of literature is this process of identification while we are
reading something,” Bodro啪i膰 said.
鈥淚 was hopeful, but I hadn’t expected it. And so it was
astonishing. It’s deeply gratifying to be involved in a process
where translation is playing such a major role. As a finalist
alongside two other such excellent books that I read and really
enjoyed and admired the translations of. I think that for some
reason these three books have such a focus on character, and I love
that because so much of what’s written these days is auto-fiction,
and the idea of these wonderful characters that were developed in
these novels is terrific,鈥 Elias-Bursa膰 noted.
The authors and translators of the other two finalist books were
also awarded trophies and 鈧2,000 each by EBRD Secretary General
Kazuhiko Koguchi. They were: Forgottenness by Tanja Maljartschuk,
translated from the Ukrainian by Zenia Tompkins and published by
Bullaun Press in Ireland and by Liveright, an imprint of W.W.
Norton & Company, in the United States; and The Empusium: A Health
Resort Horror Story by Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk,
translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and published by
Fitzcarraldo Editions.
Now in its eighth year, the EBRD Literature Prize celebrates the
creativity of the regions where the bank operates. With entrants
from across three continents, it helps to bring literature from a
wide range of countries to a global readership through the art of
translation.
The prize has already featured a broad range of novels and
short-story collections from countries including Albania, Croatia,
Czechia, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania,
Moldova, Morocco, Poland, the Slovak Republic, T眉rkiye, Ukraine,
and Uzbekistan.
The EBRD Literature Prize is funded by the bank鈥檚 shareholders
and forms part of its Community Initiative, which engages the
institution and its staff in philanthropic, social, and cultural
activities.
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