A young Iranian author and translator Farid Qadami, is a recipient of the Swiss International James Joyce Foundation prize.
Qadami won the award for his translation of the play ‘Exiles’ by James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (1882 –1941), an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century.
In addition to a cash prize, he gets a month-long opportunity to work at the foundation and stay at the Looren Translation House in Switzerland, which opened in 2005 and offers literary translators from around the world residencies of varying length, Honaronline reported.
Pointing to his unfinished work, ‘James Joyce’s Life and Works’, Qadami said: “This will be a good opportunity to complete my studies.”
Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer’s Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles. His other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ (1916) and ‘Finnegans Wake’ (1939).
The International James Joyce Foundation was created in 1967 and aims at encouraging scholarship, criticism and study concerning the life, work, and career of the writer, whom many regard as the preeminent figure in modern literature.
Qadami, 30, writer, translator and literary critic has authored over 25 books and translations including ‘The Dharma Bums’ by American novelist Jack Kerouac and ‘Sombrero Fallout’ by American novelist and short story writer Richard Brautigan.
He has also translated works by international poets and authors such as American Walt Whitman, Henry Miller, Allen Ginsberg, African-American Amiri Baraka, Russian Osip Mandelstam and Palestinian Mahmoud Darwish.
His first poetry collection, ‘The Lie I Say is Dirtier than Tehran’s Sky’ was electronically published in 2003.
‘Apartment story in Karimkhan Avenue’ is among Qadami’s numerous novels. In addition, he has written a book on literature and philosophy. He currently teaches mechanical engineering at Tehran’s Islamic Azad University.
