Ursula Phillips has been awarded the 2026 Found in Translation Award (FiTA) for her translation of Ice by Jacek Dukaj, which was published last year by Head of Zeus in the UK.

“Ursula Phillips has worked on the translation of Jacek Dukaj’s novel Ice for nearly a decade. The scale of this translation challenge was monumental, in fact quite incomparable to anything else. This is a truly exceptional book,with a complex narrative and linguistic structure, filled with neologisms for which the translator had to find solutions in English. Thanks to Phillips’talent, experience and persistence, Dukaj’s remarkable novel has found a suitable, inspiring literary form in English” – says Grzegorz Jankowicz, the director of the Polish Book Institute, which supported the translation and publication of the novel.

This is the second time Ursula Phillips receives this award, after winning Found in Translation Award in 2015 for her translation of Zofia Nałkowska’s Choucas (Northern Illinois University Press).

The Found in Translation Award was established in 2008. It is given every year to an author or authors of the best translation of Polish literature into English that was published in book form in the previous calendar year. 

The winner is chosen by The Polish Book Institute, the Polish Cultural Institute London (PCI London) and the Polish Cultural Institute New York (PCI New York) and the translators, the laureates of two previous editions.

Ursula Phillips/ photo: Edyta Dufaj

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