SOURCE: EBRD

• €20,000 prize split evenly between the writer and translator
• Prize recognises best work of literary fiction from the EBRD’s regions translated into English

The Orphanage, a novel written by Serhiy Zhadan and translated from Ukrainian by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler, has won the 2022 EBRD Literature Prize.

The €20,000 prize will be split between the author and translator.

This is now the fifth year of the EBRD Literature Prize which celebrates the very best in translated literature from the nearly 40 countries where the Bank invests: from central and eastern Europe to Central Asia, the Western Balkans and the southern and eastern Mediterranean.

The €20,000 Prize is awarded to the best work of literary fiction originally written in a language from one of these countries, which has been translated into English and published by a UK or a Europe-based publisher.

The international prize was created in 2017 by the EBRD, in cooperation with the British Council. It is one of the few international literature prizes which recognises both author and translator in equal measure.

The Orphanage (published by Yale University Press) is written by the widely acclaimed Ukrainian novelist and poet, Serhiy Zhadan. Set in contemporary eastern Ukraine, the book is a raw, compelling story of a civilian’s desperate journey through conflict zones to reach home.   

Toby Lichtig, Chair of the independent judging panel, said: “ A schoolteacher travels across the war-torn Donbas in Ukraine to pick up his nephew from a residential school. The pair then travel back home together. Belying the simplicity of this storyline is Serhiy Zhadan’s extraordinary, explosive, tender, angry and poetic novel of a country riven by conflict, and the absurdities, banalities, horrors and moments of human connection that war occasions. The Orphanage was timely when it first appeared in Ukrainian in 2017, it was timely when it first appeared in Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler’s excellent translation last year, and it is even more grimly timely now.”

Announcing the winner of this year’s Literature Prize at a virtual Award Ceremony today, Odile Renaud-Basso, EBRD President, said:  “With all of the world’s attention on many of our EBRD’s countries of operations, for devastating reasons, the EBRD Literature Prize reminds us of the power of literature to convey urgent experiences, bridge cultural divides and unite us in our shared humanity.”

Serhiy Zhadan is is widely considered to be one of the most important contemporary writers in Ukraine. In March 2022, the Polish Academy of Sciences nominated Zhadan for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Zhadan is the author of five novels, more than a dozen books of poetry, as well as many plays, short stories and political essays. His work has been translated into 17 languages and he is a winner of more than a dozen literary awards. For example, his novel Voroshylovhrad (2010) won the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature in Switzerland, BBC Ukrainian's "Book of the Decade" Award and the Brücke Berlin Prize, and his book Mesopotamia (2014) won the Angelus Central European Literature Award in 2015. Aside from being a major literary figure, Zhadan is front-man and lyricist for the ska-punk band, Zhadan and the Dogs. He has remained in Kharkiv since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, undertaking humanitarian work and doing interviews in the city.

Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler are a team of literary translators who work with both Russian and Ukrainian, best known for their renderings of novels by the Ukrainian author Serhiy Zhadan, including Voroshilovgrad (Deep Vellum Publishing) and Mesopotamia (Yale University Press). Wheeler is also a poet and an editor at Two Chairs, a new online poetry journal.

The two runner-up titles for the EBRD Literature Prize 2022 received €8,000, also split between writer and translator. These were The Book of Katerina by Auguste Corteau, translated from Greek by Claire Papamichail (Parthian Books); and Boat Number Five by Monika Kompaníková, translated from Slovak by Janet Livingstone (Seagull Books).

Many of the finalist writers and translators were present at the EBRD virtual ceremony on 13 June, during which fellow judges Toby Lichtig, Alex Clark and Kathryn Murphy discussed the winning book and the art of literary translation.

The independent panel of judges for this year’s EBRD Literature Prize chose the three finalists from 10 shortlisted titles, announced on 23 March 2022.

About the EBRD Literature Prize

The EBRD Literature Prize is a project of the Bank’s Community Initiative, which provides a framework for the engagement of staff and the institution in philanthropic, social and cultural activities in the regions where the Bank works.

The 2022 edition was awarded to the best work of literary fiction translated from the original language into English and published for the first time by a UK or Europe-based publisher between 15 November 2020- 31 December 2021.