Max Lawton

Max Lawton
Max Lawton, translator of Vladimir Sorokin
Born (1993-08-22) August 22, 1993
Brussels, Belgium
Education
OccupationsTranslator & Writer
SpouseEcem Lawton
Writing career
Notable works
Notable awards

Max Lawton is an American writer and translator of Russian literature into English.[1] He is known for translating the works of Vladimir Sorokin, whose Telluria was longlisted for the 2023 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize.[2] A total of eight of Sorokin's books are being translated into English by Lawton,[3] as well as articles[4] and short stories, including "Horse Soup," which won the O. Henry Award in 2022.[5][6]

Biography

Lawton was born in Brussels, where he lived for the first 3 years of his life.[7] His mother is the playwright and novelist Alice Austen. Lawton grew up in Chicago. He received his BA in Russian Literature and Culture from Columbia University. He received the Clarendon Fund Scholarship for his Masters of Philosophy from The Queen's College, Oxford.[8] He lives in Los Angeles.[9]

In addition to Russian, Lawton has also translated from French and German, such as Jonathan Littell's The Damp and the Dry and Michael Lentz's novel Schattenfroh.[10]

Lawton has been translating Sorokin's works since 2016, starting with novella Nastya, short story "Horse Soup", and notably completing the first English translation of Blue Lard, a more linguistically complex and longer work than the short stories.[11] Lawton's translation of Red Pyramid: Selected Stories by Vladimir Sorokin won the 2025 AATSEEL prize for Best Translation of Prose into English.[12] In 2026, Lawton's translation of Schattenfroh by Michael Lentz from German to English won the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize.[13]

Selected translations

  • Moresco, Antonio (2026), The Beginnings, Deep Vellum Publishing, ISBN 9781646053957
  • Sorokin, Vladimir (2025), The Sugar Kremlin, Dalkey Archive Press, ISBN 9781628975789
  • Lentz, Michael (2025), Schattenfroh, Deep Vellum, ISBN 9781646053827
  • Sorokin, Vladimir (2024), Dispatches from the District Committee, Dalkey Archive Press, ISBN 9781628975178, OCLC 1344422372
  • Littell, Jonathan (2024), The Damp and the Dry, OR Books, ISBN 9781682193914, OCLC 1344422815
  • Sorokin, Vladimir (2024), Blue Lard, NYRB Classics, ISBN 9781681378183, OCLC 1380391734
  • Sorokin, Vladimir (2024), Red Pyramid, NYRB Classics, ISBN 9781681378206, OCLC 1389179539
  • Sorokin, Vladimir (2022), Telluria, NYRB Classics, ISBN 9781681376332, OCLC 1340418075
  • Sorokin, Vladimir (2022), Their Four Hearts, Dalkey Archive Press, ISBN 9781628973969, OCLC 1267752875
  • Sorokin, Vladimir (2022), Nastya, The Baffler

References

  1. ↑ "About". Max Lawton. Retrieved 19 October 2025.
  2. ↑ "Max Lawton Lands on Longlist for Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize". Columbia Harriman Institute. 8 May 2023. Retrieved 3 March 2024.
  3. ↑ "Writer Vladimir Sorokin: 'I underestimated the power of Putin's madness'". Financial Times. 24 June 2022. Retrieved 4 March 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  4. ↑ "Vladimir Putin sits atop a crumbling pyramid of power". The Guardian. 27 February 2022. Retrieved 4 March 2024.
  5. ↑ "Violet Swans". Harpers. Retrieved 4 March 2024.
  6. ↑ "Announcing the Winners of the 2022 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction". Literary Hub. Retrieved 19 October 2025.
  7. ↑ "The translator bringing Vladimir Sorokin to English readers". Prospect Magazine. 24 April 2024. Retrieved 5 May 2024.
  8. ↑ "Max Lawton CC'16 wins prestigious Clarendon Scholarship". Columbia College. 18 April 2016. Retrieved 3 March 2024.
  9. ↑ "Max Lawton". NYRB. Retrieved 3 March 2024.
  10. ↑ "An interview with Max Lawton about translating Vladimir Sorokin's brilliant novel Telluria". Bibliokept. Retrieved 7 March 2024.
  11. ↑ "Vladimir Sorokin's Blue Lard and Red Pyramid — surreal Russian satire that still shocks". Financial Times. 15 March 2024. Retrieved 22 March 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  12. ↑ "Book Prize Winners for 2025". American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages. American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages. Retrieved 21 February 2026.
  13. ↑ "Max Lawton 2026 - Wolff Translator's Prize". Goethe-Institut USA. Retrieved 8 June 2026.


This page is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.