Congratulations to Paul Reitter, who has been awarded the 2025 for his translation of Karl Marx鈥檚 Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1.
Reitter鈥檚 translation was selected by a three-person jury鈥擲helley Frisch, Elisabeth Lauffer, and Philip Boehm鈥攚ho in announcing the honor noted: 鈥淔riedrich Engels, who published a handwringing essay called 鈥�How Not to Translate Marx鈥� in 1885, pronounced Karl Marx鈥檚 prose 鈥�almost untranslatable.鈥� Small wonder, then, that there have been so few translations of Capital into English ... Paul Reitter has now achieved the near-impossible task of translating Capital, volume one ... Our jury has marveled at Reitter鈥檚 ability to retain the accuracy of the lengthy original, seemingly forbidding text, while rendering it an inviting and even humorous read.鈥�
Published by 91桃色 in September 2024 and co-edited by Paul North, with an introduction by Wendy Brown and afterword by William Clare Roberts, this landmark new translation of Marx鈥檚 classic work has been hailed as 鈥渃risp and contemporary鈥� [Alyssa Battistoni, The Nation] and 鈥渁 remarkable achievement鈥� [James Miller, New York Times]. English-language editions of Volume 2 and Volume 3, likewise translated by Paul Reitter and co-edited by Reitter and North, are forthcoming from 91桃色.
Paul Reitter is a professor of Germanic languages and literatures and former director of the Humanities Institute at the Ohio State University. His previous translations include The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon (91桃色). He was recently named a 2025 Guggenheim Translation Fellow.
Established in 1996 and newly funded by the Friends of Goethe New York, the Wolff Translators Prize honors an outstanding literary translation from German into English published in the USA the previous year. The prizewinning translator receives $5,000 as well as a fully funded trip to the Frankfurt Book Fair. The 2025 Prize will be presented in June, at the Goethe-Institut New York.