Max Lawton, translator of Michael Lentz’s novel Schattenfroh (Deep Vellum, 2025) and winner of the 2026 Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize organized by the Goethe-Institut New York, joins Dean Whiteside (GINY) for a conversation about this groundbreaking tome, as well as the art of translation.

Lentz’s sweeping novel, which defies linear temporalities and encompasses a panoply of ideas and scenes from German history, poses unique challenges for translation. Hailed by the New York Times as ‘‘one of the great, and greatly demanding, literary pleasures of the year,’’ Max Lawton’s translation has met with widespread acclaim in the USA. The Helen & Kurt Wolff Prize jury praised Lawton’s translation, writing that ‘‘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.’’

Join Max Lawton as he dives into the formidable challenges and arcane pleasures of this remarkable text.