Damion Searls is an American writer and translator. He grew up in New York and studied at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

and the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. He specializes in translating literary works from Western European languages such as German, Norwegian, French, and Dutch. Among the authors he has translated are

Marcel Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...

, Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Walser,

Ingeborg Bachmann Ingeborg Bachmann (25 June 1926 – 17 October 1973) was an Austrian poet and author. Biography Bachmann was born in Klagenfurt, in the Austrian state of Carinthia, the daughter of Olga (née Haas) and Matthias Bachmann, a schoolteacher. Her fa ...

Thomas Bernhard Nicolaas Thomas Bernhard (; 9 February 1931 – 12 February 1989) was an Austrian novelist, playwright and poet who explored death, social injustice, and human misery in controversial literature that was deeply pessimistic about modern civilizat ...

Kurt Schwitters Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters (20 June 1887 – 8 January 1948) was a German artist who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including dadaism, constructivism, surrealism, poetry, sound, pain ...

Peter Handke Peter Handke (; born 6 December 1942) is an Austrian novelist, playwright, translator, poet, film director, and screenwriter. He was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored t ...

Jon Fosse Jon Olav Fosse (born 29 September 1959) is a Norwegian author and dramatist. Biography Jon Fosse was born in Haugesund, Norway. A serious accident at age seven brought him close to death; the experience significantly influenced his adulthood wr ...

, Heike B. Görtemaker, and Nescio. He has received numerous grants and fellowships for his translations. Searls published the first English-language biography of

Hermann Rorschach Hermann Rorschach (; 8 November 1884 – 2 April 1922) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. His education in art helped to spur the development of a set of inkblots that were used experimentally to measure various unconscious parts of the s ...

, inventor of the

Rorschach test The Rorschach test is a projective psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both. Some psychologists use this test to examine a pe ...

, in 2017. He won the

Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize The Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize is an annual literary prize named for the German–American publishers Helen and Kurt Wolff "honoring an outstanding literary translation from German into English" published in the USA the previous year ...

in 2019 for

Uwe Johnson Uwe or UWE may refer to * Uwe (given name) * University of the West of England, Bristol * UML-based web engineering * University Würzburg's Experimental miniaturized satellites for space research UWE-1 and UWE-2 * Uwe - Wreck in Blankenese Blank ...

's ''Anniversaries: from a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl''. In April 2022, the English translation by Searls of

's novel ''A New Name: Septology VI-VII'' was shortlisted for the

International Booker Prize The International Booker Prize (formerly known as the Man Booker International Prize) is an international literary award hosted in the United Kingdom. The introduction of the International Prize to complement the Man Booker Prize was announced ...

. Searls lives in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, New York City.

Selected works

Author

* ''Everything You Say Is True: A Travelogue'' * ''What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going'' * ''The Inkblots''

Translator/editor

* Alfred Döblin, ''Bright Magic: Stories'' *

André Gide André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947). Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the Symbolism (arts), symbolist movement, to the advent o ...

, ''Marshlands'' (New York Review Books, 2021) *

Christa Wolf Christa Wolf (; née Ihlenfeld; 18 March 1929 – 1 December 2011) was a German novelist and essayist.
Barbara Gard ...

, ''City of Angels or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud'' * Clemens Berger, ''Angel of the Poor, a comedy'' *

Dubravka Ugrešić Dubravka Ugrešić (; born 27 March 1949) is a Yugoslav and later Croatian writer. A graduate of University of Zagreb, she has been based in Amsterdam since 1996 and refuses to identify as a Croatian writer. Early life and education Ugrešić ...

, ''Thank You For Not Reading'' (co-translated with the author and Celia Hawkesworth) * Dubravka Ugrešić, ''Lend Me Your Character'' (co-translated with the author and Celia Hawkesworth and Michael Henry Heim) *

Elfriede Jelinek Elfriede Jelinek (; born 20 October 1946) is an Austrian playwright and novelist. She is one of the most decorated authors writing in German today and was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature for her "musical flow of voices and counter-voi ...

, ''Her Not All Her'' (winner of the 2011 Austrian Cultural Foundation NY Translation Award) * Hans Keilson, ''Comedy in a Minor Key'' (

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Schlegel-Tieck Translation Prize) * Hans Keilson, ''Life Goes On'' * Heike B. Görtemaker ''Eva Braun : Life with Hitler'' (Vintage Books, New York 2011) *

Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading Transcendentalism, transcendentalist, he is best known for his book ''Walden'', a reflection upon simple living in natural su ...

, ''The Journal'' (NYRB Classics) *

Hermann Hesse Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include ''Demian'', ''Steppenwolf (novel), Steppenwolf'', ''Siddhartha (novel), Siddhartha'', and ''The Glass Bead Game'', ...

, ''Demian'' (

Penguin Classics Penguin Classics is an imprint of Penguin Books under which classic works of literature are published in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean among other languages. Literary critics see books in this series as important members of the Western ...

) *

, ''Letters to Felician'' *

, ''Aliss at the Fire'' (PEN Center USA Translation Award) * Jon Fosse, ''Melancholy'' (co-translated with Grethe Kvernes) *

and

John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and politi ...

, ''On Reading'' *

Mirjam Pressler Mirjam Pressler, born Mirjam Gunkel (18 June 1940 – 16 January 2019) was a German novelist and translator. Being the author of more than 30 children's and teenage books, she also translated into German more than 300 works by other writers from ...

with Gerti Elias, ''Anne Frank's Family: The Extraordinary Story of Where She Came From'' *

Nescio Jan Hendrik Frederik Grönloh (born 22 June 1882 in Amsterdam; died 25 July 1961 in Hilversum), known by his pen name of Nescio (Latin for "I don't know"), was a Dutch writer. Grönloh was a businessman by profession, but as Nescio he is mainl ...

, ''Amsterdam Stories'' (NYRB Classics; winner of awards from PEN Translation Fund, the Netherland America Foundation, and the Dutch Literature Fund) * Rainer Maria Rilke, ''The Inner Sky: Poems, Notes, Dreams'' (2007 National Endowment for the Arts in Translation) * Robert Walser, ''A Schoolboy's Diary and Other Stories'' (

NYRB Classics New York Review Books (NYRB) is the publishing division of ''The New York Review of Books''. Its imprints are New York Review Books Classics, New York Review Books Collections, The New York Review Children's Collection, New York Review Comics, ...

) * Susanne Kippenberger, ''Kippenberger: The Artist and His Families'' *

, ''A Trip to Klagenfurt: In the Footsteps of Ingeborg Bachmann'' with ''Youth in an Austrian Town'' by Ingeborg Bachmann * Uwe Johnson, ''Island Stories: Writings from England'' * Uwe Johnson, ''Anniversaries: from a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl'' (NYRB Classics, 2018) *

Saša Stanišić Saša Stanišić ( sr-cyr, Саша Станишић; born 7 March 1978) is a Bosnian-German writer. He was born in Višegrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina as the son of a Bosniak mother and a Serbian father. In the spring of 1992, he fled alongside ...

, ''Where you come from''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Searls, Damion American translators Harvard University alumni People from Brooklyn Year of birth missing (living people) Living people