1996

In an award ceremony on June 17, 1996, hosted by the Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany, Dr. Gabriele von Malsen-Tilborch, Mr. John E. Woods was presented with the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize 1996 for his outstanding translation of Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg/The Magic Mountain (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.) and Arno Schmidt's Nobodaddy's Kinder/Nobodaddy's Children (Dalkey Archive Press, 1995.)

Mr. Woods has distinguished himself as a translator of many German literary works, most notably Arno Schmidt's Collected Novellas (Dalkey Archive Press, 1993), for which he won the 1995 PEN West Literary Award for Translation, an ALTA Translatiion of the Year award from the American Literary Translators Association, and the American Translators Association German Literary Prize. He won both the American Book Award for translation and the PEN Translation Prize (1981) for his work on Schmidt's Evening Edged in Gold. His translation of Patrick Süskind's Perfume received the PEN prize in 1987. Woods has translated works by Raabe, Döblin, Dürrenmatt, Grass, Monikova, Ransmayr (The Last World - awarded the Schlegel-Tieck Prize, 1991), Dörrie, and others, including Richard Wagner, in the form of subtitles for a Peter Sellar's production of Tannhäuser. He has recently completed translating Schmidt's critical writings and is currently at work on Mann's Doctor Faustus.