Prix des Phares du Nord 2009 awarded to Anita Concas

The jury of the Prix des Phares du Nord 2009 has awarded the prize to Anita Concas for her translation into French of Het huis van de Moskee (La maison de la mosquée, Paris: Gallimard, 2008) by Kader Abdolah. However, the prize was also explicitly awarded on the basis of her entire translation oeuvre. This year the jury comprised Danielle Bourgois, Margot Dijkgraaf and Annie Kroon.

The Prix des Phares du Nord is a biennial prize for the best French translation of a major Dutch-language work, and was established by the Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature and the Flemish Literature Fund Foundation. The name - literally ‘Lighthouses of the North’ - is the same as the one under which the Netherlands and Flanders presented themselves as ‘guest of honour’ at the Salon du Livre in Paris in 2003. The Prix des Phares du Nord also carries prize money of € 5000. The first winner, in 2005, was Philippe Noble; the second, in 2007, Annie Kroon.

Anita Concas (1932, Ben-Arous, Tunisia) has been living in the Netherlands since 1957. From 1963 to 1991 she was a teacher at the Institute for Translation Studies and the Institute for Translation Theory, respectively, at the University of Amsterdam. In addition to work by Kader Abdolah she has translated books by H.M. van den Brink, Karel Glastra van Loon, Arnon Grunberg, Marek van der Jagt, Oek de Jong and Harry Mulisch, among others.

The prize-giving ceremony for the Prix des Phares du Nord 2009 will be held in Paris on 29 January 2010.

Published: November 23, 2009 news