"Chronicle of the Murdered House" Wins 2017 BTBA for Fiction

We are proud and thrilled to share that Open Letter's Chronicle of the Murdered House by Lúcio Cardoso, trans. from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson, was named the 2017 Best Translated Book Award winner for the fiction category! The winners were announced on May 4th, simultaneously at a live event at The Folly in NYC, and online at The Millions.

From the press release shared on The Millions:

*

The 10th annual Best Translated Book Awards were announced this evening at The Folly in New York City. Lúcio Cardoso’s Chronicle of the Murdered House, translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson, won for fiction, and Alejandra Pizarnik’s Extracting the Stone of Madness, translated by Yvette Siegert, won for poetry.

With four books on the Best Translated Book Award Fiction longlist, Margaret Jull Costa had pretty good odds that one of her projects would win the prize. This is the first time Jull Costa, Robin Patterson, and Open Letter Books have received the award.

According to BTBA judge Jeremy Garber (Powell’s Books), “Though it took longer than 50 years to finally appear in English, Lúcio Cardoso’s Chronicle of the Murdered House was well worth the wait. Epic in scope and stunning in its execution, the late Brazilian author’s 1959 masterpiece is a resounding accomplishment. Thanks to the translational prowess of Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson, Cardoso’s saga of familial scheming and salacious scandal deservingly comes to an even wider audience.”

Fellow judge Mark Haber (Brazos Bookstore) adds “Chronicle has hints of Dostoevsky, García Márquez, and William Faulkner, yet the DNA is wholly Cardoso’s, who was not only a friend, but a mentor to Clarice Lispector. This novel is not only beautifully written and strangely profound, but a joy to read. The dramas of a prestigious family in a provincial Brazilian jungle, complete with gossip, backstabbing, cross-dressing and suicide attempts all take place beneath a single roof. There’s a fully-formed universe in this run-down mansion rotting away in the woods. Chronicle of the Murdered House is a novel about family, trust, madness, betrayal, human nature, all heavy themes really, yet handled with aplomb. . . . Its translation feels long overdue.”

For the sixth year in a row, the winning books will receive $10,000 each (split equally between the authors and translators) thanks to funding from the Amazon Literary Partnership. Over this period, the Amazon Literary Partnership has contributed more than $120,000 to international authors and their translators through the BTBA.

*

Congratulations to both Margaret and Robin for this recognition of their hard work, and to Lúcio's family for the recognition of this brilliant novel.