29/06/2026
Congratulations to Margherita Podestà Heir, whose Italian translation of Jon Fosse’s "Vaim" (La nave di Teseo 2025) won the fourth edition of the ‘Mario Lattes’ Prize for Translation. From the jury’s motivational statement:
"Jon Fosse’s text, characterized by the evanescence of the omnipotent author and the coalescence of times and figures in a narrative flow punctuated by repetitions, analogies, suspensions and sometimes imperceptible references, traces a particularly arduous path for the translator, whose breath must first be recreated, adapting not only to a – so to speak – non-Euclidean linguistic geometry, but modeling the translation with logical (and illogical) pauses that are not always sustained, in the original, with the aid of grammatical punctuation" According to the jury, Margherita Podestà Heir has "largely overcome these difficulties, managing to return a version which, starting from the most essential and rough neo-Norwegian linguistic constructs, in the leap into the Italian language, preserves the incisiveness and inspiration of Fossi’s narration, expertly balancing its characteristic common language with the metaphysical efflorescences that still vibrate in it."
Margherita Podestà Heir is the winner of the fourth edition of the biennial ‘Mario Lattes’ Prize for Translation, translator of “Vaim” by the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, Nobel Prize for Literature 2023. In Italy the novel is published by the publishing house La Nave di Teseo. Created by the...
