Nordic Literature in Translation:

The Land of Short Sentences. On March 5, join us for a Nordic Literature in Translation event with this year’s American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prizewinner Hunter Simpson and the author of the work in translation, Stine Pilgaard, moderated by Adam Dalva! Now in its 43rd year, ASF’s Annual Translation Competition awards prizes for outstanding translations of poetry, fiction, drama, or literary prose written by a 20th- or 21st-century Nordic author. In 2021 the 2021 Leif and Inger Sjöberg Prize was awarded to Hunter Simpson for his translation excerpt from Danish of Stine Pilgaard’s Meter i sekundet (The Land of Short Sentences). The Leif and Inger Sjöberg Prize is given to an individual whose literature translations from a Nordic language have not previously been published.

In The Land of Short Sentences, out in English translation on March 1 from World Editions, a young woman relocates to an outlying community in West Jutland, Denmark, and is forced to find her way — not only in the bewildering environment of the residential Folk High School where her partner has been hired to teach, but also in the inscrutable conversational forms of the local population. And on top of it all there’s the small matter of juggling her roles as mother to a newborn baby and advice columnist in the local newspaper.

In this understated and hilarious novel, Stine Pilgaard conjures a tale of venturing into new and uncharted land, of human relationships, dilemmas, and the ways and byways of social intercourse.

In today’s event, Pilgaard & Simpson will discuss the writing and translation of the book hailed as “a deliciously crumbly novel oozing with awkward love” (Weekendavisen) with Dalva as moderator.

This event will take place as a Zoom webinar; please ask questions in the chat or send them in advance to info@amscan.org. Registration is required; please sign up at the link. This conversation will be recorded and available later to stream on our Virtual Programming page and on our YouTube channel.