More on the NTA for ATBTM

The news that All This Belongs to Me is the winner of this year's National Translation Award was officially announced by ALTA yesterday, with repeats of the news at the Literary Saloon, a three-liner at Words Without Borders, and of course the notice from our steadfast supporter Stephan Delbos at the Prague Post.

(Delbos, who did an interview with me in September, also notes that Petra will be appearing in Prague Nov. 17 at Veletržní palác as part of a discussion on the state of literature in the digital age.)

And the ever-growing, bilingual Portál české literatury/Czech Literature Portal, ably (inside joke) managed by Jaroslav Balvín and Viktor Debnár, has posted the magnificent news in Czech and English alike.

The ALTA press release quotes from the lovely comments in the reader's report that jury member Sidney Wade read out loud to the audience at the award ceremony last Thursday night, describing All This Belong to Me as a:

“beautifully fluent translation that portrays each character in convincingly idiomatic English, and yet still manages to distinguish the five closely related main characters according to their individual temperaments. The story is compelling on personal and broader, political levels, the characters are deeply human, and their difficult choices are portrayed with great dignity. All in all, this is a book to be savored and treasured.”

As Borat would say, very nice!