Max Lawton Wins the Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize for Schattenfroh

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—

Max Lawton has won the Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for his translation of Michael Lentz’s Schattenfroh. The honor will be presented to him at an award ceremony at the Goethe-Institut New York on June 10, 2026, followed by a trip to the Frankfurter Buchmesse in October 2026.

Established in 1996 and generously funded by the Friends of Goethe New York, the Prize honors an outstanding literary translation from German into English published in the USA the previous year. It is one of the mot prestigious German-to-English translation prizes in the world,

The jury—composed of Shelley Frisch (Chair), Elisabeth Lauffer, and Philip Boehm—has released the following statement:

“The jury for the Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize is pleased to award the prize for 2026 to Max Lawton for his translation of Schattenfroh, by Michael Lentz, published by Deep Vellum. Lentz’s thousand-plus-page work opens with the words, Man nennt es schreiben, or “One calls this writing.” Narrating this metafictional odyssey across non-linear time and multiple dimensions—from two-dimensional worlds contained in maps and paintings to a three-dimensional “cell” to a Swiftian fourth dimension—is Nobody, a cipher imprisoned and compelled to write by a menacing yet similarly immaterial presence known as Schattenfroh. The formidable text, written in “flinty though extravagant German” (NYRB), is by turns illusive, allusive, and elusive, and Lawton’s sure-footed translation is creative in the truest sense, “untranslatable” terms and imagery giving rise to neologisms and metaphors that are no less assertive for their abstruseness. The task of the translator in tracking down countless references, from the familiar (Kafka) to the obscure (Harsdörffer), and deciphering arcana is enormous, yet Lawton manages the task with aplomb—and evident pleasure. The narrative voice shifts frequently—at times frenetically—between archaic forms, colloquialism and dialect, fairy-tale, Christian or kabbalistic incantation, rumination or ribaldry, even poignance, and the jury marveled at Lawton’s agility in capturing each change of shade. Max Lawton’s Promethean translation brings Lentz’s extraordinary literary experiment to life for readers of English the world over. Man nennt es Übersetzen—one calls this translating.”

A statement from Max Lawton:

“This is truly the honor of my career. None of this would have been possible without my editor Matthias Friedrich, a fantastic translator in his own right (I really hope a German house signs him up to do Iron Age Dream by Steinar Løding so that I can read it!) who served as the Schattenfroh to my Nobody throughout the entire translation process from 2021 to 2025. He shares in this accomplishment with me (just as I am proud to be sharing a substantial portion of the prize money with him). As a team, we are now turning our attention to Hans Henny Jahnn and his baggy-monster masterpieces from the first half of last century..“

We congratulate Max on this enormous achievement.