André Markowicz
French translator, editor and poet
Born in 1960 in Prague to a Russian mother and a French father of Polish origin, André Markowicz was raised in the tradition of the Russian intelligentsia of the nineteenth century. Speaking Russian to his mother and French to his father, translation has always been spontaneous and necessary, representing this in-between that allows him to live in both cultures. It was in 1990 that his career as a translator took a decisive turn with the meeting of Hubert Nyssen, founder of the publishing house Actes Sud, who trusted him to rework in ten years the entire Dostoevsky. He won the Kaminsky Prize for this colossal undertaking in 1998, then, in 2011, the Nelly Sachs Translation Prize for Alexander’s The Sun, a collection of poems and texts by Alexander Pushkin. Markowicz undoubtedly wants to differentiate himself from current translation practices (source cairn.info)