Bill Johnston has received the 2012 Translation Prize from the PEN American Center for his rendering of a novel by Polish author Wiesław Myśliwski.

Johnston’s translation of Stone upon Stone (Kamień na Kamieniu), marks the first time that a work by the acclaimed 80-year-old writer has been rendered into English.

The prize, which was founded in 1963, is open to book-length translations into English from any language.

The judges described the novel, which was originally published in 1984, as “a passionately colloquial and abundantly rich account of life in a small Polish village during the darkest decades of 20th century Eastern Europe,” shot through with “clarity, humour, and emotional candour.”

The panel reflected that Johnston had done “a truly remarkable job rendering this beautiful novel into English.

“His translation is pitch-perfect, seamless and extraordinarily precise. Johnston shows breathtaking versatility and enables us to hear, sense, and feel the narrator’s whirlwind monologue across diverse characterizations, story-lines, tones, and dramatic modalities.” More.

See: The News