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NTA Winner 1999
National Translation Award

The 1999 National Translation Award winner is Peter Constantine for his translation of Anton Chekhov’s The Undiscovered Chekhov: Thirty-Eight New Stories .

Peter Constantine is an author, translator, and editor. He has published several books as well as numerous translations of fiction, poetry, and drama from various European languages including Russian, German, and French. His translations have been published in literary magazines in the United States, Britain, and Australia. Since the publication of his first book-length translation, Thomas Mann: Six Early Stories in 1997, he has worked almost exclusively as a literary translator.

In 1998 Constantine received the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for his translation of Thomas Mann: Six Early Stories, and the New York Times chose it as a Notable Book of the Year. In 2002, Constantine’s translation of The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, edited by Nathalie Babel, received a Koret Jewish Book Award and a National Jewish Book Award citation. His translation of the Modern Greek poet Stylianos Harkianakis’s collection Mother received the 2004/2005 Hellenic Association of Translators of Literature Prize. In 2007 Constantine was the recipient of the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for his translation of Benjamin Lebert’s novel The Bird is a Raven. His translation of The Essential Writings of Machiavelli was a finalist for the 2008 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize.

“Master translator Peter Constantine resurrects 38 of Chekhov’s early, innovative short stories and makes them available to English-language readers for the first time.” -– Donna Seaman, Booklist

“Constantine’s fine translation adds to the accessibility and attraction of the pieces, making this collection essential for all academic and large public libraries.” –- Anna M. Falbo, Library Journal

“The Chekhov who emerges from the cache of stories Constantine discovered is an ebullient spirit, wickedly funny, writing stories that occasionally seem like ‘Monty Python’ skits….That Chekhov was a great innovator in style is well known, but these stories enlarge for us the picture of this Russian genius.” — David Bowman, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review