The biennial Merck Kakehashi Literature Prize is a new literary prize awarded by the Goethe-Institut Tokyo and Merck KGaA, a translation prize for making works by German authors accessible to a Japanese readership -- with €10,000 each going to the author and the translator.
They've announced the first winner, and it's Wada Jun for his ポカホンタスのいる湖の風景 -- a translation of the great Arno Schmidt's Seelandschaft mit Pocahontas (published in English in John E. Woods' translation as 'Lake Scenery with Pocahontas' in Collected Novellas (get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk)).
Schmidt's prize-money is going to the Arno Schmidt Stiftung
Given that it's the Schmidt-centennial-year (which has been under-celebrated so far -- though I'm still working on something to at least try to rouse a bit more interest ...) and very little of his work has been translated into Japanese this seems like a great choice -- one hopes it opens the Schmidt-floodgates there !
See also the Merck (English) press release (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) -- and I have to admit, it's nice that the second of their two bullet-points is: "Promotion of literature is component of corporate responsibility".
They've announced the first winner, and it's Wada Jun for his ポカホンタスのいる湖の風景 -- a translation of the great Arno Schmidt's Seelandschaft mit Pocahontas (published in English in John E. Woods' translation as 'Lake Scenery with Pocahontas' in Collected Novellas (get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk)).
Schmidt's prize-money is going to the Arno Schmidt Stiftung
Given that it's the Schmidt-centennial-year (which has been under-celebrated so far -- though I'm still working on something to at least try to rouse a bit more interest ...) and very little of his work has been translated into Japanese this seems like a great choice -- one hopes it opens the Schmidt-floodgates there !
See also the Merck (English) press release (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) -- and I have to admit, it's nice that the second of their two bullet-points is: "Promotion of literature is component of corporate responsibility".