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 high ...

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 En ...

Rainer Maria Rilke René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), shortened to Rainer Maria Rilke (), was an Austrian poet and novelist. He has been acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, and is widely recog ...

, 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 f ...

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 civilizati ...

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, Jon Fosse, 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, 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 ...

, in 2017. He won the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize in 2019 for Uwe Johnson's ''Anniversaries: from a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl''. In April 2022, the English translation by Searls of Jon Fosse's novel ''A New Name: Septology VI-VII'' was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. Searls lives in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Kings County is the most populous Administrative divisions of New York (state)#County, county in the State of New York, ...

, 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 symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism ...

, ''Marshlands'' (New York Review Books, 2021) * Christa Wolf, ''City of Angels or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud'' *

Clemens Berger Clemens Berger (born 20 May 1979, in Güssing) is an Austrian writer. Since 2017 he is a contributor and co-editor of ''Versopolis, The European Review of Poetry, Books and Culture'', a pan-European online literary magazine. He grew up in Oberwa ...

, ''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 Ugreši ...

, ''Thank You For Not Reading'' (co-translated with the author and

Celia Hawkesworth Celia Hawkesworth (born 1942) is an author, lecturer, and translator of Serbo-Croatian. Biography Celia Hawkesworth graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge in 1964 and was awarded a British Council scholarship to study in Belgrade for 10 mo ...

) * Dubravka Ugrešić, ''Lend Me Your Character'' (co-translated with the author and Celia Hawkesworth and Michael Henry Heim) * Elfriede Jelinek, ''Her Not All Her'' (winner of the 2011 Austrian Cultural Foundation NY Translation Award) *

Hans Keilson Hans Alex Keilson (; 12 December 1909 – 31 May 2011) was a German-Dutch novelist, poet, psychoanalyst and child psychologist. He was best known for his novels set during the Second World War, during which he was an active member of the Dutch re ...

, ''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 The Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German Translation is a literary translation award given by the Society of Authors in London. Translations from the German original into English are considered for the prize. The value of the prize is £3,000.

) * Hans Keilson, ''Life Goes On'' * Heike B. Görtemaker ''Eva Braun : Life with Hitler'' (Vintage Books, New York 2011) * Henry David Thoreau, ''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'', '' Siddhartha'', and '' The Glass Bead Game'', each of which explores an individual' ...

, ''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 West ...

) *

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

Grethe Kvernes Grethe is a given name. Notable people with the name include: * Grethe and Jørgen Ingmann, Danish singers and musicians *Grethe Fossli (born 1954), Norwegian politician for the Labour Party * Grethe Grünberg (born 1988), Estonian ice dancer *Gre ...

) *

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 po ...

, ''On Reading'' * Mirjam Pressler with Gerti Elias, ''Anne Frank's Family: The Extraordinary Story of Where She Came From'' * Nescio, ''Amsterdam Stories'' (NYRB Classics; winner of awards from PEN Translation Fund, the Netherland America Foundation, and the Dutch Literature Fund) *

, ''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, N ...

) *

Susanne Kippenberger Susanne Kippenberger (born 29 August 1957 in Dortmund) is a German journalist and author. She grew up in Essen and studied German, English and American studies in Tübingen. She is a former Fulbright scholar. Having worked at various German news o ...

, ''Kippenberger: The Artist and His Families'' * Uwe Johnson, ''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, ''Where you come from''

References

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