The Prize for Contemporary Literatures in Translation 2026 goes to András Visky and Timea Tankó

Internationaler Literaturpreis 2026

Prize for Contemporary Literatures in Translation 2026

For Die Aussiedlung (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2025) author András Visky and translator Timea Tankó are awarded the Prize for Contemporary Literatures in Translation 2026.

The winners were announced at a festive award ceremony on 3 July 2026 at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW).

For the eighteenth 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 to the translator. 

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

Press photos: hkw.de/pressphotos

From the Jury’s Statement:

Die Aussiedlung is a singular book about captivity. A book of the covenant, forged with fierce independence: a book about the mysterious ability of human beings to bind themselves to one another in the face of devastation, when everything else is falling apart. Visky tells this story in a daring language: a language that is willing to risk itself, with a bated breath, with faltering breath, with the penultimate breath. … ‘Human beings’, Visky writes, ‘are created in such a way that they cannot hear their own hearts.’ This sentence could also describe the beginning of translation. And Tankó not only listened to the heartbeat of this novel, but also into the duration of silence—into that half-eternity that follows it.

This year's jury consisted of Joy Denalane, Maha El Hissy, Paula Fürstenberg, Hannes Langendörfer, Melody Makeda Ledwon, Cia Rinne and Senthuran Varatharajah.

Die Aussiedlung

András Visky: Die Aussiedlung (The Expulsion)

Translated from Hungarian by Timea Tankó

Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2025

More about the book from the Publisher

The Award Winners

András Visky, (born 1957 in Târgu Mureș) is a playwright and director who lives and works in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. In 2022, after decades of writing plays, poems and essays, he published his first and only novel, Die Aussiedlung. This book caused a stir on Hungary, where it is now in its fifth printing.

Timea Tankó, (born 1978 in Leipzig) spent her childhood in Hungary and Germany. She studied French, Spanish and cultural studies. Since 2003 she has been working as a literary translator from Hungarian (including works by Ádám Bodor, Andor Endre Gelléri and István Kemény) and French. In 2021, she won the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for her translation of Apropos Casanova by Miklós Szentkuthy.

Partner

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

Contact: 

Maxie Fischer

Head of Press and Communications
Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW)
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
10557 Berlin

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