Charlotte Mandell
Charlotte Mandell (born 1968) is an American literary translator. She has translated many works of poetry, fiction and philosophy from French to English, including work by Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, Jules Verne, Guy de Maupassant, Marcel Proust, Maurice Blanchot, Antoine de Baecque, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Jean-Luc Nancy, Mathias Énard and Jonathan Littell.
Life
Charlotte Mandell was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1968,[1] the child of two academics.[2] She was educated at Boston Latin School, Université de Paris III, and Bard College, where she studied French literature and film theory.[1] She is married to the poet Robert Kelly.[3]
Awards and honours
Mandell's translations have twice been recognised by the International Booker Prize. In 2017, her translation of Mathias Énard's Compass (Boussole) was shortlisted for the prize.[4] In 2026, her translation of Mathias Énard's The Deserters (Déserter) was longlisted.[5][6]
In 2021 she received a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French government. In 2024 she received the Thornton Wilder Translation Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[7][8]
In addition, she was awarded the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Scholarly Study of Literature for 2001-2002 by the Modern Language Association for her translation of Maurice Blanchot’s Faux Pas. She received a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for her translation of Mathias Énard's Zone. Her translation with Lauren Elkin of Jean Cocteau by Claude Arnaud received a 2017 French-American Foundation Translation Prize. Her translation of Mathias Énard's Compass won a 2018 ALTA National Translation Award in Prose.[8][7]
Translations
- Jean Cocteau: A Life. Co-translated with Lauren Elkin. Yale University Press, 2016.
- The Girl with the Golden Eyes. Melville House, 2008.
- Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles. Bloomsbury, 2008.
- Geography of Hope. Stanford University Press, 2008.
- Facing the Torturer. Knopf, 2012.
- The Work of Fire. Stanford University Press, 1995.
- Faux Pas. Stanford University Press, 2001.
- The Book to Come. Stanford University Press, 2003.
- A Voice from Elsewhere. State University of New York Press, 2007.
- The Magnetic Fields. New York Review Books, 2020.
Roland Buti
- The Year of the Drought. Old Street Publishing, 2017.
- War. New Directions, 2024.
- My Spiritual Journey. HarperOne, 2010.
- The Jewish Prison. Melville House, 2005.
Antoine de Baecque
- The Body Politic: Corporeal Metaphor in Revolutionary France, 1770-1800. Stanford University Press, 1997.
- Glory and Terror: Seven Deaths under the French Revolution. Routledge, 2001.
- The Little Girl and the Cigarette. Melville House, 2007.
- Zone. Open Letter Books, 2010.
- Street of Thieves. Open Letter, 2014.
- Compass. New York: New Directions, 2017.
- Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants. New Directions, 2018.
- The Deserters. New Directions, 2025.
- A Simple Heart. Melville House, 2004.
- Fragments of the Artwork. Stanford University Press, 2003.
- The Criminal Child: Selected Essays. New York Review Books, 2020.
- War, Evil, and the End of History. Melville House, 2004.
- American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville. Random House, 2006.
- Nothing Serious. Melville House, 2005.
- The Kindly Ones. HarperCollins, 2009.
- The Invisible Enemy. Amazon Kindle Singles series, January 2011.
- The Fata Morgana Books. Two Lines Press, 2013.
- Syrian Notebooks: Inside the Homs Uprising. Verso, 2015.
- An Inconvenient Place. Fitzcarraldo, 2024.
- The Horla. Melville House, 2005.
- The Malady of Islam. Co-translated (as Ann Reid) with Pierre Joris. Basic Books, 2003.
- Tombeau of Ibn Arabi and White Traverses, with an afterword by Jean-Luc Nancy. Fordham University Press, 2009.
- Listening. Fordham University Press, 2007.
- The Fall of Sleep. Fordham University Press, 2009.
- After Fukushima: The Equivalence of Catastrophes. Fordham University Press, 2014.
- Coming. Fordham University Press, 2016.
- On Poetry and Politics (co-translated with Jennifer Bajorek and Eric Trudel). University of Illinois Press, 2008.
- The Lemoine Affair. Melville House, 2008.
- In the Shadow of Girls in Blossom, Oxford World Classics, 2025.
- The Flesh of Words. Stanford University Press, 2004.
- Listen: A History of Our Ears. Fordham University Press, 2008.
Sima Vaisman
- A Jewish Doctor in Auschwitz. Melville House, 2005.
- Monsieur Teste. New York Review Books, 2024.
- The Castle in Transylvania. Melville House, 2010.
References
- ^ a b "Charlotte Mandell: Bibliography". Archived from the original on 2012-07-19. Retrieved 2012-08-12.
- ^ Interview at Maitresse Archived July 10, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Interview with Mark Thwaite". Archived from the original on 2016-10-23. Retrieved 2012-08-12.
- ^ "The Man Booker International Prize 2017 shortlist announced". themanbookerprize.com. Archived from the original on 25 January 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2017.
- ^ "The International Booker Prize 2026". The Booker Prizes. Retrieved 25 February 2026.
- ^ Creamer, Ella (24 February 2026). "Witches, Nazi collaborators and banned books: International Booker prize announces 2026 longlist". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 February 2026.
- ^ a b "Charlotte Mandell". The Booker Prizes. Retrieved 28 February 2026.
- ^ a b "The American Academy of Arts & Letters Presents the 2024 Wilder Prize for Translation". Wilder The Official Site of the Thornton Wilder Family. Retrieved 28 February 2026.