2001

Translator Krishna Winston has been selected by a five-member jury to receive the sixth annual Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize 2001. Her outstanding translation of Günther Grass's novel Too Far Afield was published in 2000 as a Helen and Kurt Wolff Book by Harcourt. The prize, which is administered by the Goethe-Institut Chicago, was presented to Krishna Winston by the German Consul General of Chicago at an award ceremony on Monday, June 4, 2001, at Gallery 37, 66 East Randolph Street, Chicago.

The jury commented that "Krishna Winston's translation rises splendidly to the challenge of rendering into English the many twists and turns of Günther Grass's dissection of life in the former German Democratic Republic after the fall of the wall in 1989, thus opening up Grass's novel for the English-speaking reader."

Krishna Winston has been a professor of German language and literature at Wesleyan University in Connecticut for thirty years. She began translating while still a graduate student, and has translated over twenty books and numerous shorter works by authors such as Oskar Schlemmer, Siegfried Lenz, Golo Mann, Goethe (Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre), Grete Weil, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Peter Handke, and Günther Grass. In 1994 she received the Schlegel-Tieck Translation Prize for her version of Ralf Georg Reuth's Goebbels. Professor Winston, whose parents, Richard and Clara Winston, were also distinguished translators, (notably of Thomas Mann), is currently engaged in translating Martin Geck's new book on Johann Sebastian Bach. During the 2000-2001 academic year she was a visiting fellow at Smith College's Kahn Liberal Arts Institute, where she participated in a project titled Anatomy of Exile. Her research focused on some of the less prominent literary exiles from Hitler's Germany and their relationships with their American publishers and translators. Ms. Winston knew Helen and Kurt Wolff personally and greatly admires their work.

The jury awarded Honorable Mention to John Felstiner for his translation of Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan, published by W.W. Norton, New York, commenting that "John Felstiner, who has lived with and explored Celan's poetry for many years, has succeeded in re-creating it from the inside."

(Picture of Krishna Winston © by William Burkhart)

Jury Members:
Burton Pike, Chairman
Michael Heim
Susanne Höbel
Peter Jansen
Breon Mitchell