On Translation and Enchantment

Natasha Lehrer is a prize-winning writer, translator and editor. Her long form journalism and book reviews have appeared in the Guardian, the Observer, the Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, Haaretz, and Fantastic Man, among others. She has contributed to several books, including most recently Looking for an Enemy: 8 Essays on Antisemitism, edited by Jo Glanville (Short Books (UK) 2021/Norton (US) 2022). She is literary editor of the Jewish Quarterly. Her co-translation (with Cécile Menon) of Suite for Barbara Loden won the 2016 Scott Moncrieff translation prize. She was a finalist for the 2017 Albertine Prize, the 2017 French American Foundation Translation Prize and the 2018 Wingate Prize. The White Dress received a 2020 French Voices award and was longlisted for the Believer 2021 fiction prize. Memories of Low Tide was shortlisted for the 2020 Scott Moncrieff translation prize. The Last Days of Ellis Island was shortlisted for the 2021 French American Foundation Translation Prize. She won a Rockower award for journalism in 2016. In 2017 she was a jury member for the JQ–Wingate Literary Prize. Natasha’s full-length translations include Suite for Barbara Loden and The White Dress, by Nathalie Léger (Les Fugitives / Dorothy) Memories of Low Tide, by Chantal Thomas (Pushkin Press), Chinese Spies, by Roger Faligot (Hurst), A Call for Revolution, by the Dalai Lama (Rider), Journey to the Land of the Real, by Victor Segalen, Robert Desnos’ The Punishments of Hell, and Georges Bataille’s The Sacred Conspiracy (all three published by Atlas Press), The Most Beautiful Job in the World: Lifting the Veil on the Fashion Industry, by Giulia Mensitieri (Bloomsbury), Villa of Delirium, by Adrien Goetz (New Vessel Press), The Sailor from Casablanca, by Charline Malaval (Hodder and Stoughton), The Last Days of Ellis Island, by Gaëlle Josse (World Editions), I Hate Men, by Pauline Harmange (4th Estate), Consent, by Vanessa Springora (HarperVia), The Vanished Collection, by Pauline Baer de Perignan (New Vessel Press) and Absence, by Lucie Paye. Her short translations have appeared in the Times, Granta, Harpers, 3am magazine, Concrete and Ink, and Paris Review.