Translating Paul Lynch

Each year, to celebrate European Day of Languages (26th September) and International Translation Day (30th September), the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation works with EUNIC Ireland (the EU National Institutes for Culture) to bring together an outstanding Irish writer with some of their European translators, to discuss how Irish literature is made available to people living in different cultural contexts.

This year, our special guest is award-winning writer Paul Lynch and his translators into Bulgarian, French, Polish and Romanian, Iglika Vassileva, Marina Boraso, Kaja Gucio and Iulia Gorzo. The conversation between Paul and his translators will be hosted by Professor Michael Cronin of Trinity College Dublin.

This event takes place in hybrid format, so you may choose to attend in-person or online. It is organised in partnership with EUNIC Ireland, and is kindly supported by the Bulgarian, French, Polish and Romanian embassies in Ireland, along with the Alliance Française Dublin. The event itself will take in the Robert Emmet Theatre, located in the Arts Block at Trinity College Dublin.

Paul Lynch is the author of five internationally acclaimed novels: Prophet Song, Beyond the Sea, Grace, The Black Snow, and Red Sky in Morning. Widely celebrated for his lyrical style and emotional intensity, Lynch’s novels explore universal themes of the human condition, and his work has drawn comparisons to that of literary greats such as William Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy, Seamus Heaney, and Samuel Beckett.

His most recent novel, Prophet Song, won the 2023 Booker Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Prix des Libraires Best Foreign Novel. It was described as “a prophetic masterpiece” by The Washington Post and “soul-shattering” by the Booker Prize jury. The novel was also shortlisted for several major international awards, including the Dublin Literary Award, Italy’s Strega European Prize, and the Kirkus Prize in the United States.

Lynch’s earlier novels have earned similar acclaim. Beyond the Sea (2019) was called “mesmerising” by The Wall Street Journal and won France’s 2022 Prix Gens de Mers. Grace (2017) won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize and the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. The Black Snow (2014) received France’s Prix Libr’à Nous for Best Foreign Novel and was hailed as “masterful” by The Sunday Times. His debut novel, Red Sky in Morning (2013), was a finalist for France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger and earned praise from NPR as the work of “a lapidary young master.”

In 2024, Paul Lynch was appointed Distinguished Writing Fellow at Maynooth University where he teaches on the creative writing programme. The same year, he was elected to Aosdána, the Irish academy of artists who have made exceptional contributions to the creative arts. In 2025, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by University of Limerick for his "remarkable contributions to literature". His work has been translated into over 40 languages.

This event is made possible thanks to our collaboration with EUNIC Ireland

Iglika Vassileva is a member of the Bulgarian Translators’ Union. She was born in Sofia, Bulgaria and graduated from Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Department of English and American Studies in 1970. 

She began her professional career as translator at the Bulgarian News Agency, where she was promoted to the rank of senior translator. In 1981, after winning a contest, she took up the position of an editor at the “Panorama” Magazine for foreign literatures in translation, where she did selections of short stories, essays and excerpts from contemporary and classical novels to be translated from the English language into Bulgarian and often did some of these translations herself.

In 1986 she became an editor in the English language section of  “Narodna Kultura”, the largest Bulgarian Publishing House for world literature. She moved to the Zlatorog publishing house in 1989 and in 2005, she retired from the publishing industry and almost immediately took up a job as a lecturer at Sofia University, doing master classes in literary translation.

Iglika is the Bulgarian translator of James Joyce’s Ulysses, of almost all novels by Virginia Woolf, prose works by Walt Whitman, novels by Vladimir Nabokov, Henry James, Paul Auster, John Banville, Frank O’Connor, Mary Lavin, John McGahern, Neil Jordan, John Boyne and other distinguished writers. She is the recipient of numerous translation and literary prizes, among which the Prize of the Bulgarian Translators’ Union, which she has won four times, the Prize of the Ministry of Culture, the “Hristo G. Danov” National Prize for Literary Translation which she has received twice, and the Sofia City Prize for Achievements in the field of Literature. 

French translator, Marina Boraso specialised in English and American studies and developed a passion for Victorian England, illustrated books and New York's underground art scene. She has been Paul Lynch's French voice for more than ten years. In 2020, they both received the Prix des Ambassadeurs de la Francophonie/Literature Ireland for the novel Grace. In 2025, Prophet Song won the Prix des Libraires in France. Among the other authors she has translated are Stephen King, Anthony Doerr, Donal Ryan, Peter Robinson, Charles C. Mann, Edmund de Waal and Christian Kiefer.

Kaja Gucio is a Polish-English translator and interpreter with over twenty years’ experience. She is the translator of more than 200 journal articles and papers on the subjects of literature, cultural studies, social science, arts, and history, as well as over 30 fiction, non-fiction and academic books. She has translated Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, Miriam Teows’ Women Talking, Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea, E. Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and three of Toni Morrison’s books. She has translated work by Irish writers including Liz Nugent (Strange Sally Diamond), Louise Kennedy (Trespasses), Anne Enright (The Wren, The Wren), as well as Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. 

Iulia Gorzo began translating 20 years ago, first as a hobby, after obtaining a bachelor’s degree in psychology. The hobby became a profession and she now translates films and TV shows from English, French and Italian to Romanian and books mainly from English to Romanian. Her favourite translated authors include writers such as Cormac McCarthy, Paul Auster, Anthony Doerr, Alice Walker and Frank McCourt. In 2014 she was awarded the “Andrei Bantaș Translation Prize” for the Romanian version of Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth. Since 2022 she has written about her work in her translator’s diary published by the Romanian cultural platform Scena9. Her translation of Anne Enright’s The Wren, The Wren was shortlisted for the Best Literary Translation Awards - USR 2025.  Prophet Song by Paul Lynch is one of her favourite works for its exquisite rhythm and style, and it is a novel much enjoyed and discussed by its Romanian readers since its publication in Romania in February 2025.