Urszula Poprawska
Winner of the Karl Dedecius Prize for 2024
Urszula Poprawska works as a freelance translator in Krakow. She studied Polish philology at the Catholic University of Lublin and then worked as an editor at the Polish Language Institute PAN in Krakow. Since 2001, she has been translating German-language literature for leading Polish publishing houses such as Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Wydawnictwo Czarne, Znak, Otwarte, WAM. Her bibliography includes works by well-known German-language authors - Daniel Kehlmann, Uwe Timm, Arthur Koestler and Friedrich Reck-Malleczen.
The prize jury particularly appreciated the Polish translations of Katia Petrowska's novels "Maybe Esther" and "The Eighth Life (for Brilka)" by Nino Haratischwili. Both works were extremely popular with Polish readers, which is rather rare for German literature. Of particular note is the edition of Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, translated for the first time from the German-language original! Also published in translation by Urszula Poprawska are reportages by Günter Wallraff and Adrian Geiges, popular science books on historical topics: Jörg Baberowski on Stalin, Ulrich Völklein on Josef Mengele and Asfy-Wassen Asserate on Emperor Haile Selassie. Most notable is the exceptional quality of Poprawska's translations, whose texts in Polish have a particular tone and style.
The prize jury particularly appreciated the Polish translations of Katia Petrowska's novels "Maybe Esther" and "The Eighth Life (for Brilka)" by Nino Haratischwili. Both works were extremely popular with Polish readers, which is rather rare for German literature. Of particular note is the edition of Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, translated for the first time from the German-language original! Also published in translation by Urszula Poprawska are reportages by Günter Wallraff and Adrian Geiges, popular science books on historical topics: Jörg Baberowski on Stalin, Ulrich Völklein on Josef Mengele and Asfy-Wassen Asserate on Emperor Haile Selassie. Most notable is the exceptional quality of Poprawska's translations, whose texts in Polish have a particular tone and style.