The prize, awarded by the BHF Bank Foundation in cooperation with the Goethe Institute, the Literary Colloquium Berlin and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, recognises a ?significant contemporary work from the literature of Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe and its outstanding translation into German?. It comes with a 20,000 euro purse that is shared by the author and translator.
Christina Viragh, who was born in Hungary but moved to Switzerland with her family as a young girl, translated Parallel Stories into German. The book, which is more than 1,500 pages in Hungarian, took her five years to complete.
Viragh, who lives in Rome and is a writer herself, called Parallel Stories a ?very long, very difficult book?, adding that one does not ?jump at such a chance right away?.
The German translation came to more than 1,700 pages.
?There were moments when I was really tired, and I had had enough of the whole thing, but I don?t regret the decision,? Viragh said. She added that Parallel Stories was an ?important book? which was a rarity nowadays in Europe.
?I had to translate it ? it was obvious that it had to be presented in German-speaking areas,? she said.
The ?Brücke Berlin? prize will be awarded on June 6.
Viragh was recently named the winner of this year?s European Translator Award Offenburg for her work on Parallel Stories, a book that took the author 18 years to write.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
