Unveiling the 2026 Albertine Translation Fund Grantees — Session I

Nonfiction
Translated by Samuel E. Martin
1997/2024 (Macula | Zone Books)

The Fayum portraits are a silent population, a mass of faces that excavations over recent centuries have brought out of the tomb and into the light. Painted in Roman Egypt during the first three centuries of the Common Era and blending Greek mimetic tradition with Egyptian funerary ritual, the portraits were never intended to be seen, yet ever since their discovery, our fascination with them has only grown. Today, although they are scattered in museums throughout the world, their enigma remains intact. A threshold lies between us and the portraits; from the realm of death into which they have passed, they gaze at us with eyes wide open, seemingly still alive. Emerging from the swathes of bandages in which the mummies were wrapped, their features and finery transport us to a long-vanished world. The history of portraiture and its connection to death begins here.

In A Silent Apostrophe, Jean-Christophe Bailly sets out to explore our relationship to the faces of the Fayum and to reconstruct the conditions in which the portraits were conceived and produced. This classic study from 1997 is translated into English for the first time, along with a new preface highlighting these ancient portraits’ resonance for our contemporary world.

Poetry
Translated by Lizza Tripp
2019 (Le Castor Astral) 

This collection, winner of the 2021 Copo prize, delves into body politics, motherhood, and the contradictory roles women hold. Initially focusing on the days after Battal’s two pregnancies—her experience being pregnant, giving birth, and the transformation of both body and life after those births, the collection quickly expands into broader territory, zigzagging between Morocco and Paris, and flashing back and forth between herself as a young teenager and her current roles as daughter, wife, lover, and now mother. 

Rim Battal has published eight poetry collections and one autobiographical novel, which was recently awarded the 2025 prix de la littérature arabe des lycéens. Vogue Magazine named her “one of the most powerful voices in young Francophone poetry.”

Fiction
Translated by Nancy Pick
2024 (Les Lettres Nouvelles | Bellevue Literary Press)

Ressacs is an exceptional, intimate story of the intergenerational impact of the historic, violent radeau de la Méduse tragedy in 1816, of which Clarisse Griffon du Bellay’s great-great-grandfather was a survivor. His annotated version of the official account was passed down to her through the generations as a well-kept family secret, until it invaded her dreams and was transfigured by her imagination into her sculpture, and ultimately, this book. 

Fiction
Translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman
2024 (Elyzad | Restless Books)

In the midst of a strange sandstorm, two men converge at Aunt Fatima’s house in Jerusalem, a city rich with history and intrigue. As night falls, the air thickens with desire as they weave tales of jinn, lions, and legendary knights. 
 
During this tumultuous season, Gabriel and Isaac experience soaring passion, heart-wrenching loss, and ultimately, a reconnection that defies the odds. Despite the swirling sands and the ever-present checkpoints, they resolve to embark on an unexpected vacation. But can this adventure truly unfold in a fragmented and tumultuous landscape? 
 
Their journey takes them from Jerusalem to Jericho, to a mysterious village where memories of death fade, and finally to the serene Solomon’s Pools. This is not just a love story; it’s a quest for light, freedom, and the enduring power of love against the backdrop of a complex and evolving world. 

Fiction
Translated by Holly James
2025 (Verdier) 

Hélène Laurain’s Tambora explores the turmoil of maternity through the metaphor of the Indonesian volcano whose 1815 eruption transformed the world’s climate. The image of Tambora—vast, violent, and world-shifting becomes the writer’s lens through which she explores the magnitude of what happens inside women’s bodies. The narrator, mother of a young daughter, longs for another child with her partner. But a silent miscarriage shatters this hope, forcing her to confront the unspoken grief of “births without cries,” and the unsettling question of when motherhood truly begins.

The book received the Wepler Literary Prize in 2025.

Fiction
Translated by Natasha Lehrer
2022 (Gallimard)

At the heart of Nina Leger’s award-winning novel is Sophia-Antipolis, a utopia fashioned in the 1960s by a visionary engineer, Pierre Lafitte, inspired by Lafitte’s intellectual Russian exile wife, Sophie. This new town, hailed as ‘the Florence of the 20th century,’ was to bring together nature, science, and culture, and to be entirely dedicated to research. Although its beginnings sound like a tall tale, Lafitte’s determined endeavors to convince the French authorities to bring his idea to fruition was eventually successful. 

Fifty years later, Sonia, a young woman who grew up in Sophia-Antipolis in the 1980s, is heading a real estate development project, whose purpose is to breathe new life into the now somewhat shabby town. But the project is being challenged by descendants of the Harkis, native Algerians who left for France after their country’s independence. For Sophia-Antipolis, allegedly built on virgin territory, was in fact constructed upon a secret: that of the existence of a large Harkis camp, La Bouillide, whose inhabitants were evicted when the new city was built.

Leger’s riveting narrative tells the story of Sonia’s undertaking. Combining the complexities of urban planning and politics, it is as much about the wounds of memory as environmental concerns and the disenchantments of modernity. Drawing on historical fact, the author offers a narrative which subtly ventures into fiction to deliver a poetic and contemporary reflection on our relationship with our lands. 

The book received the Ecrire la Ville Literary Prize in 2024 

Nonfiction
Translated by Marie Satya McDonough
2025 (Albin Michel | Stanford University Press)

L’Invention du Judaïsme, or The Essence of Judaism, offers a long-term history of a recurring problem within the rabbinic tradition: how Jews have kept questioning what they are, or what fundamentally distinguishes them as a group, while never providing a unique answer, or an unequivocal response to this ever-renewed question. Here, the author takes the phrase “the essence of Judaism” as a reference to the various ways in which Jews have posed the question of what ultimately defines them, and the various answers they have given to it. 

The point of this study is not to give a new answer to the question of what makes Judaism what it is, nor a fortiori to contribute to its essentialization, but rather to question the meaning of the reiteration of this question, which hints both at the necessity of asking it and at the impossibility of answering it. If no answer to the question of what makes Judaism has ever been definitive, what is at stake in the permanent revival of this question, as regards the very constitution of the Jewish tradition? 

Graphic Novels
Translated by Jeffrey K. Butt
2021 (Delcourt | Helvetiq)

What if fairy tales weren’t quite what you remembered? From ancient myths to Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, in this original graphic novel best-selling French artist Lou Lubie explores the original, unvarnished versions of classic tales such as Cinderella and Bluebeard—where princes aren’t always charming and “happily ever after” isn’t guaranteed. 
 
With sharp humor, satire, and in-depth storytelling, this book uncovers the surprising truths behind the stories you thought you knew and playfully critiques the Disney-fied versions that softened their edges. Along the way, the author explores big questions about the ethics of these stories: the violence, sexism, and cultural biases hidden in these classics and their newest interpretations. 
 
Smart, funny, and thought-provoking, this book is a deliciously entertaining journey through the history of storytelling, perfect for curious readers who love to laugh—and think—while they read. 

Nonfiction
Translated by Zakiya Hanafi
2018  (Presses Universitaires de France | Fordham University Press)

This book, assembled by Jean Terrier and Marcel Fournier, is a version on the basis of an assemblage of all the materials in the Fonds Marcel Mauss at the lnstitut des Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine at the Ardenne Abbey. It was first published in French in 2013, with a substantial introduction that situates Marcel Mauss’ writings on nationalism in relation to his intellectual development under the influence of Emile Durkheim, and then during the course of the War in which he lost so many of his colleagues and friends. It also describes his journalistic interventions and engagements with various socialist and working class movements in France, elements of his work that have remained largely invisible to English readers.