Discover the longlist: Sophie Hughes, ‘When you translate fiction, the masquerade frees you’
Hughes reveals challenges she faces in the art of translation and tells us how reading J.M. Coetzee changed her life.
Sophie Hughes
Sophie Hughes was born in Chertsey, UK. She is a literary translator from Spanish.
Her translation of Alia Trabucco Zerán’s The Remainder was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2019. In 2020, her co-translation of Enrique Vila-Matas’ Mac and His Problem was longlisted for the International Booker Prize. In the same year, she was also shortlisted for Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season, which won the 2021 Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Translation Prize.
Hughes’ translation of Paradais, the follow-up novel to Hurricane Season, was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022. The novel was also shortlisted for the 2022 Dublin Literary Award.
Her translations and writing have been published in McSweeney’s, the Guardian, The Paris Review, The White Review, Frieze and the New York Times. Hughes has also worked with the Stephen Spender Trust promoting translation in schools and is the co-editor of the anthology Europa28: Writing by Women on the Future of Europe, published in 2020 in collaboration with Hay Festival.
All nominated books
Intense, intelligent and extraordinarily sensitive, Alia Trabucco Zerán’s remarkable debut presents a new way to count the cost of generational trauma. Translated by Sophie Hughes.
Translated by Sophie Hughes
Fernanda Melchor’s formidable portrait of Mexico and its demons, written with a brutal lyricism that is as affecting as it is enthralling. The English edition is translated by Sophie Hughes
Translated by Sophie Hughes
A masterpiece of metafiction, Mac and His Problem is Enrique Vila-Matas’s testament to the power and playfulness of great literature. Translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Sophie Hughes.
Translated by Margaret Jull Costa Sophie Hughes
Written in a chilling torrent of prose by one of Mexico’s most thrilling new writers, Paradais explores the explosive fragility of Mexican society. Translated by Sophie Hughes.
Translated by Sophie Hughes
