Allan Blunden wins Schlegel-Tieck Prize

Allan Blunden's translation of Nightmare in Berlin by Hans Fallada has won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for translation from the German. The £3000 prize was awarded at the 2018 Translation Prizes ceremony at the British Library on March 1.

The Schlegel-Tieck prize is an annual award for translations into English of full length German works of literary merit and general interest. Of the winner, the judges said: ‘Allan Blunden has made an outstanding contribution to the accessibility of the author’s late works for English-language readers … Through Blunden’s work Fallada offers us insights not only into the immediate days, weeks and months following the capitulation of May 1945 but also in the environment of the Soviet zone of occupation which was only a few years later to develop into the German Democratic Republic.’

Nightmare in Berlin is an unforgettable portrayal of the physical and psychological devastation wrought in the homeland by Hitler’s war. It was published by Scribe in 2016.