John Nieuwenhuizen

Text from NSW PREMIER'S TRANSLATION PRIZE AND PEN MEDALLION

John Nieuwenhuizen has made an outstanding contribution as a literary
translator by introducing to readers in the English-speaking world a range of novels by authors writing in Dutch. These include Lydia Rood (A Mouthful of Feathers), Jan Simoen (And What About Anna?), Anton Quintana (The Baboon King) and especially Anne Provoost (Falling and In the Shadow of the Ark). A significant part of John Nieuwenhuizen's achievement as a translator is the high literary quality of the books he has chosen to translate. He is also to be commended for venturing into the field of fiction for young adults and scoring two major successes with Falling and The Baboon King. It is significant that both of these novels have also been read and praised as books for the adult market. Whilst it appeared in 1997, the translation of Falling remains one of the most topical and provocative books available to readers of English on such issues as nationalism, the genesis of brutality in society and the ineluctable past.
In 2004 John Nieuwenhuizen's translation In the Shadow of the Ark made Anne Provoost's challenging tangential narrative on the biblical myth of the Flood, which was published in Dutch in 2001, a literary event that was acclaimed throughout the English-speaking world.

John Nieuwenhuizen's mastery of English prose is such that one needs to be reminded one is reading a translation. He has developed an ear for the stylistic values of his second language that, combined with his felicitous choice of works to translate, has led reviewers to class his translations as 'page turners'. To become 'invisible' in this sense is the greatest triumph to which a translator of narrative fiction can aspire.