A work of poetry awarded for the first time:  The Prize for Contemporary Literatures in Translation 2025 goes to Kim Hyesoon and Sool Park and Uljana Wolf for Autobiographie des Todes

Internationaler Literaturpreis 2025
Prize for Contemporary Literatures in Translation 2025

For the first time in the prize's history, a work of poetry is being awarded. For Autobiographie des Todes (S. Fischer Verlag, 2025) author Kim Hyesoon and translators Sool Park and Uljana Wolf are awarded the Prize for Contemporary Literatures in Translation 2025.

The winners were announced at a festive award ceremony on 17 July 2025 at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW).

For the seventeenth time, HKW and the foundation Elementarteilchen awarded the Prize for Contemporary Literatures in Translation. The award honours an outstanding work of contemporary international literature that has been translated into German for the first time. In this way, the prize recognizes both the original work and the work of translation. This dual focus makes the prize unique to Germany. Since 2023, German first translations of international poetry can also be submitted. The Prize for Contemporary Literatures in Translation is endowed with 35,000 euros. Of this, 20,000 euros will go to the author and 15,000 euros will be divided equally between the translators. 

More about the prize and this year’s shortlist: hkw.de/literatureaward
Press photos: hkw.de/pressphotos

From the Jury’s Statement:

In the wonder of Hyesoon's poetry, meaning is often revealed precisely in the enigmatic. The texts open up as we follow their rhythm and read them over and over again, the images reveal themselves like directions that only become visible when the right direction has already been taken.(...) The fact that these poems (...) can be given their own new frame of reference in German is thanks to the translation by Uljana Wolf and Sool Park.

This year's jury consisted of Asal Dardan, Cia Rinne, Deniz Utlu, Elisabeth Wellershaus, Hannes Langendörfer, Khuê Phạm and Paula Fürstenberg.

Autobiographie des Todes

Kim Hyesoon: Autobiographie des Todes
Korean: Sool Park and Uljana Wolf
Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 2025
More about the book from the publisher

The Award Winners

Kim Hyesoon, born in Uljin in 1955, is a poet, essayist, and critic. She studied Korean literature. Themes such as emancipation and freedom, and recurring references to historical and socio-political issues are central to her unconventional works. She is one of Korea’s most important modern poets, was the first author to receive the Midang Award, and teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.

Sool Park, born in the Republic of Korea in 1986, has been a junior professor of intercultural philosophy at the University of Hildesheim since 2023. He has translated the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Friedrich Hölderlin into Korean, among others, and writes philosophical and literary texts in German and Korean.

Uljana Wolf, born in Berlin in 1979, is a multi-award-winning poet and translator. Her most recent publications are the essay collection Etymologischer Gossip, which won the Leipzig Book Fair Prize, and the poetry collection muttertask. She has translated Valzhyna Mort, Erín Moure, Don Mee Choi, and others into German.

Partner

The Internationaler Literaturpreis is awarded by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) and the foundation Elementarteilchen (Hamburg).

Visit Information

Opening Times
Wed.–Mon. 12:00–19:00
Free admission on Mondays

Extended opening hours during evening programmes
 
Childcare
HKW offers free childcare for many of its programmes. For further information visit hkw.de
 
Current information about visiting and accessibility.
 
Weltwirtschaft Restaurant is open daily, from 12:00.

 

Contact

Jan Trautmann

Pressesprecher
Lead Communications Officer
Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW)
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
10557 Berlin

T: + 49 (0) 30 397 87 157
presse@hkw.de