John-Henri Holmberg, a Worldcon 75 guest of honor, is among the 2018 winners of De Nios översättarpris, the translation prize given by Sweden’s Samfundet De Nio (The Nine Society.) The winners were announced at the literary society’s awards meeting on November 28.

John-Henri Holmberg describes himself as “a prolific translator of Stephen King (22 books so far), Armistead Maupin, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, Tess Gerritsen’s crime novels, along with other crime novels by people like David Baldacci, David Parks, Paul Cleave, Lisa Lutz, etc, and sf by Robert A. Heinlein, Andy Weir, Philip K. Dick. As well as some very upmarket people, as Henry James. Oh well. It’s a living.”

The Nine Society is a small literary academy founded in 1913 in accordance with the will of Ms. Lotten von Kraemer, a poetess and women’s rights advocate who was also the heir to a large fortune. Her will stipulated that the Society should have nine members, all selected for life and on their literary merits. The purpose of the Society was to “further Swedish literature by awarding published work so as to give acknowledgement to deserving writers”. To this end, the Society annually awards a number of different literary prizes: the Primary award, given to one major author annually; the Essay award, to an essayist; the John Landquist award, to a particularly deserving critic, essayist or humanist historian; the Karl Vennberg award, to a young poet; the Nine’s Winter award, to deserving authors or critics; the Stina Aronsson award, to a deserving author; the Translator award, to deserving translators of literary work into Swedish; the Special award, given at the discretion of the Nine; the Christmas awards, smaller amounts given to deserving writers at thediscretion of the Nine.

So, in a given year, the Nine will hand out awards to, on the average, aroundtwenty people, each receiving from around $40,000 down to $5,000.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]