Stephanie Smee
Translator
Awards & Reviews
AWARDS
Winner: Australian Academy of the Humanities Medal for Excellence in Translation for Joseph Ponthus' On the Line: Notes from a Factory
Winner: CWA Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger 2020 for Hannelore Cayre's The Godmother
Winner: The JQ-Wingate Prize 2019 for Françoise Frenkel's No Place to Lay One's Head
Three times shortlisted: NSW Premier's Translation Prize in 2019 for a body of work,in 2023 for Joseph Ponthus' On the Line, and in 2025 for Marie-Hélène Lafon’s The Son’s Story
Shortlisted: Staunch Book Prize 2019 for Hannelore Cayre's The Godmother
SELECTION OF REVIEWS - click on bold title to access reviews
Sydney Morning Herald/The Age
24 December,2024
FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
Cameron Woodhead & Steven Carroll select Marie-Hélène Lafon's
THE SON'S STORY: ‘…haunting, gorgeously described… Lafon’s
beautiful prose can be charged with the fullness of time or its
radical incompleteness,… Lafon is a sharp, moody writer whose
emotional intelligence makes this family saga a rich and
melancholy enchantment.'
Sydney Morning Herald
4 December,2024
"The year in books: Writers pick the best reads of 2024"
James Bradley, author of DEEP WATER, picks Marie-Hélène Lafon's
THE SON'S STORY in 'Stephanie Smee's extraordinarily beautiful
translation of...Lafon's tiny miracle of a book...' and
Anna Funder, author of WIFEDOM,'loved Marie-Hélèneè Lafon's THE
SON'S STORY, beautifully translated by Stephanie Smee...'
Crime Fiction Lover
11 January,2024
Blizzard by Marie Vingtras, translated from the French by Stephanie
Smee, published by Mountain Leopard Press, an imprint of Headline/
Hachette UK
A '...remarkable debut. ...There is a pleasingly lyrical feel to
Vingtras’s prose and kudos must go to translator Stephanie Smee for
her work here.'
The Guardian UK
9 January,2024
Blizzard by Marie Vingtras, translated from the French by Stephanie
Smee, published by Mountain Leopard Press, an imprint of Headline/
Hachette UK
'...ably translated by Stephanie Smee.Winner of the French Book-
sellers Award, it is a chilling, tense read.'
Publishers Weekly
May,2023
In Search of Perfumes by Dominique Roques, translated from the French by Stephanie Smee, published by HarperVia
'...this rich travelogue will transport readers.'
The Sydney Morning Herald/The Age
October 14,2022
In Search of Perfumes by Dominique Roques,
NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK, reviewed by
Cameron Woodhead & Steven Carroll
'Roques is passionate about his subject, and the writing,
appropriately, often has a rich and heady quality.'
ASTRA: the international magazine of literature, Online edition
June 07,2022
"The Artist's Seven Minutes" by Ariana Harwicz and
Ariana Saenz Espinoza, transl by Sarah Moses,
considering my translation of Joseph Ponthus's On the Line".
The Sydney Morning Herald/The Age
March 25,2022
A World with no Shore by Hélène Gaudy, PICK OF THE WEEK,
reviewed by Cameron Woodhead
'Gaudy has an unerring talent for metaphor that intensifies
her descriptions of the Arctic;'
The Times Literary Supplement
February 18,2022
On the Line - Notes from a factory by Joseph Ponthus, reviewed by Hilary Davies
"That stench of whelk: Dread, poetry and fish under capitalism"
'The unadorned, direct, demotic language, expertly rendered by the translator, Stephanie Smee, is also a tribute to the lives they have to lead.'
The Saturday Paper
February 19,2022
A World with No Shore by Hélène Gaudy, reviewed by Geordie Williamson
"[Hélène Gaudy's] authorial perspective binds together past and present, human and natural worlds, solitary explorers and the civilisation they leave behind, all with knowing intelligence and plangent intensity of feeling."
The Weekend Australian
August 28-29,2021, Review
The Rome Zoo by Pascal Janovjak, reviewed by Richard King
"Immaculately conceived, constructed and paced,
its separate narratives run together with
the fluidity of a fever dream."
The Saturday Paper
August 21-27,2021
The Rome Zoo by Pascal Janovjak reviewed by Fiona Wright
"... it is at once fantastical, historical and allegorical,
... tender and hopeful but also cynical and cruel. ...
It has an eerie timeliness too ... a rich and
multilayered book."
July 23, 2021
On the Line: Notes from a factory by Joseph Ponthus,
reviewed by Rosie Eyre
"You don't need to be a poetry aficionado to be stirred
by the understated beauty of Ponthus's writing, and
Stephanie Smee's superb translation ...
A world in which the vicissitudes of factory life are
illuminated with wit and wisdom, and joy can be found
twinkling here you least expect it."
Online exclusive, May 2021
'On the Line: Notes from a factory' by Joseph Ponthus transl. Stephanie Smee reviewed by Dr Valentina Gosetti. "Few books immediately suspent time; few need no warm-up and almost demand to be read, reread, underlined. Stephanie Smee's rendition of Joseph Ponthus's multi-award-winning first solo book On the Line: Notes from a factory, is one such read."
April, 2021
On the Line: Notes from a factory by Joseph Ponthus transl. Stephanie Smee reviewed by Stephanie Bishop. "On the Line is marked by a heady admixture of brutality and tenderness, elevated throughout by Ponthus's philosophical hunger and gratitude for common life."
The Sydney Morning Herald, Spectrum
October 16, 2020
Kerryn Goldsworthy, 'The more things change, the more inequality stays the same. Hannelore Cayre's The Inheritors is Pick of the Week, transl. Stephanie Smee
December 12, 2019
Lauren Elkin,'Her Francophilia Saved her from the Death Camps but not from Great Danger' Review of A Bookshop in Berlin, by Françoise Frenkel, translated by Stephanie Smee
November 29, 2019 - 'A Bookshop in Berlin' Review: No Place to Lay Her Head
by Françoise Frenkel, translated by Stephanie Smee
November, 2019 - 100 Notable Books of 2019
The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre, translated by Stephanie Smee
The year's notable fiction, poetry and nonfiction, selected by the editors of the New York Times Book Review
31 October, 2019
Gregory Cowles, Senior Editor, Books, 'Editor's Choice: 10 New Books We Recommend This Week... The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre, Translated by Stephanie Smee'
25 October, 2019
Ivy Pochoda, 'Cunning, Damaged and Deranged: The Latest Thrillers by Women'
Review of The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre, transl by Stephanie Smee
7 February, 2020, review of The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre
Jeff Noon: 'Hitler's affair with his niece - and a failed attempt on his life - make for a sizzling thriller'
Declan Burke's Best Crime Novels of 2019
16 December, 2019
The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre
18 October, 2019
Laura Wilson, The best recent crime & thrillers - review roundup
The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre
Chat10Looks3 Podcast with Annabel Crabb and Leigh Sales
4 October, 2019
Episode 120 'I don't like the Daff' featuring
The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre
27 September, 2019
Joan Barefoot, 'Unlikely criminal key to this
award-winning novel'
The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre
20 August, 2019
Fiona Hardy, 'The Godmother' by Hannelore Cayre
September, 2019
Helen Elliott, 'A sardonic French bestseller about a godmother,
in the organised crime sense of the word'
The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre
28 August, 2019
Margaret Cannon, Seven thrillers that will keep you wanting more
The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre
7 October, 2019
Kirkus Review of 'A Bookshop in Berlin' by Françoise Frenkel
Winner of The Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize
25 February, 2019
Comments by judges awarding the JQ-Wingate Literary Prize 2019 to
No Place to Lay One's Head by
Françoise Frenkel
See also articles appearing in The Bookseller and the
10 August, 2018
Natasha Lehrer, Letters for Eternity: Tales of survival from the
Holocaust
No Place to Lay One's Head by
Françoise Frenkel
3 February, 2018
Nicholas Shakespeare, No Place to Lay One's Head by
Françoise Frenkel: The Things You Didn't Talk About.
12 January, 2018
Catherine Taylor, No Place to Lay One's Head by
Françoise Frenkel: A Silence Broken.
27 January, 2018
Emily Rhodes,Françoise Frenkel: A spirited
woman on the run in Occupied France.
25 January, 2018
Françoise Frenkel's powerful memoir
of the second world war: A remarkable
lost-then-found account that appears
in English for the first time.
21 January, 2018
Christina Patterson, Book Review: An Astonishing
memoir of escape from the Nazis has re-emerged
after 73 years.
9 March, 2018
Jeffrey Archer, Pushkin to shove:
"Three cheers for the Pushkin Press...
let this be a thousand pages..."
May, 2018
Dr Avril Alba reviews'No Place to Lay One's Head'
by Françoise Frenkel
French Australian Review, Vol.63
Australian Summer, 2017-2018
Review by Jane Gilmour pp93-96
29 December, 2015
Robert Fisk,Françoise Frenkel's escape from
the Nazis and Vichy France: A bitter,
beautiful and important book.
11 December, 2015
Constance Leisure,French Events
(A review of Françoise Frenkel's Rien où poser sa tête)
French Australian Review, Vol.60
September, 2016
Book Review:Jules Verne's Mikhail Strogoff
Reading Time, Children's Book Council of Australia
25 August, 2016
Jules Verne's Mikhail Strogoff
The Weekend Australian, Review
25 June, 2016
Australian Translator brings Jules Verne to life
Magpies Magazine Vol 31 No.2
May, 2016
A New Translation of a Classic:
Mikhail Strogoff
The Sydney Morning Herald, Spectrum
15 January, 2011
Naughty Sophie gets a New Life
14 June, 2011
The Fleurville Trilogy
19 February, 2011
The Fleurville Trilogy by Countess de Segur
Adelaide Advertiser
19 February, 2011
Sophie's Misfortunes
23 December, 2011
General Dourakine, in Short Takes
The Sydney Morning Herald, Spectrum
21 January, 2012
The Fleurville Trilogy
Good Reading
May, 2012
The Fleurville Trilogy
13 March, 2013
A Room at Guardian Angel Inn
Herald Sun, Melbourne
14 September, 2013
General Dourakine, Countess de Segur
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