Jessica Cohen
Photo by Tamara Mahoney Kneisel
Bio
Jessica Cohen was born in England, raised in Israel, and lives in Denver. She translates contemporary Israeli prose, theater, and other creative work. She shared the 2017 Man Booker International Prize with David Grossman for her translation of A Horse Walks Into a Bar, which also won a National Jewish Book Award and was shortlisted for the PEN Translation Prize. Her translations include works by major Israeli writers including Amos Oz, Etgar Keret, Ronit Matalon, and Nir Baram, as well as Golden Globe-winning director Ari Folman. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, World Literature Today, and Two Lines, among others. She is a past board member of the American Literary Translators Association and has served as a judge for the National Translation Award.
Project Description
To support the translation from the Hebrew of the fictionalized autobiography Rose of Lebanon by Israeli writer Leah Aini. The daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Aini (b. 1962) experienced intergenerational Holocaust trauma at the hands of her deeply scarred and violent father. He recounted his suffering in horrific detail to a young Aini, insisting she grow up to be a writer to tell the story of the victimization of Greek Jews during the Holocaust and to memorialize his Saloniki community. Told in a series of candid monologues to a wounded soldier that the protagonist visits weekly during the first Lebanon War, Rose of Lebanon is Aini's take on fulfilling her father's request through the lens of his cruelty and her mother's indifference.
When I first read Leah Aini’s Rose of Lebanon in 2009, I was immediately captivated by its unique voice, its incredible depth of emotion, and its frank insights into the inherent contradictions of contemporary Israel. I knew two things with great certainty: that this masterpiece had to be translated into English, and that I had no idea how one would go about it. Over the years, I periodically tried my hand at translating different parts of it, approaching the text from different angles until I felt I was beginning to find its voice in English. But it became increasingly clear that translating the whole novel would be a monumental undertaking, and that given the financial realities of my life as a freelance translator, and the author’s similar limitations, funding would need to be secured. Being awarded an NEA grant to finally undertake this translation, a decade after the novel lodged itself firmly in my mind, will enable me to provide English-language readers with a book that deserves an audience beyond its small Israeli readership. In addition to the crucial financial support, the fellowship also provides a very welcome endorsement of the importance of the book itself, and of my own translation skills. I have published over 20 book-length translations, and numerous shorter ones, in a wide variety of genres and styles, but I anticipate this translation being one of the more demanding and significant projects of my career. It is very heartening to have the NEA’s backing as I set off on this challenging and somewhat daunting path.