CONCRETE BLUES. A Translation by Will Firth
Will Firth graduated in German and Russian, with Serbo-Croatian as a minor, from the Australian National University in Canberra in 1986 (BA). Today, he is an accredited translator for Croatian, German, Macedonian, and Russian, whose work is mostly focused on translation of BCMS literature. He lives and works in Berlin.
From his expansive list of translations – a small selection of titles . . .
2024 – English PEN Award for translating ‘Anomaly‘ by Andrej Nikolaidis
2022 – English PEN Award for translating the Macedonian and BCMS texts in ‘Take Six: Six Balkan Women Writers‘
2016 – Longlisted for the International DUBLIN Literary Award with Andrej Nikolaidis’s ‘Till Kingdom Come‘
2015 – Shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize and longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award with Aleksandar Gatalica’s ‘The Great War‘
What critics have to say:
A special place must also be accorded to Will Firth, who has translated the Bosnian original into an English laden with unique atmosphere, at once exotically local yet recognizably universal throughout.
Andrew Singer reviewing Faruk Šehić’s Quiet Flows the Una in World Literature Today, 2016
“Firth’s own profound knowledge of the Balkan region (…) [has] contributed to the brilliance of his rendering of Anomaly.”
Sofija Popovska reviewing Andrej Nikolaidis’s Anomaly in Asymptote, 2024
DISCOVER MORE . . .
Interview of a life in translation
Website Will Firth