Margaret Jull Costa

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Margaret Jull Costa is a translator of Portuguese and Spanish fiction and poetry, including the works of Eça de Queiroz, Fernando Pessoa, Javier Marías and José Régio. She was joint-winner of the Portuguese Translation Prize in 1992 for The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa, and was runner-up in 1996 and 2002 for The Relic by Queiroz and The Migrant Painter of Birds by Lidia Jorge.

With Spanish novelist Javier Marías she won the 1997 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for the Harvill edition of A Heart So White.

In recent years she has been noted for her work in translating the novels of José Saramago, with her translation of All the Names winning the 2000 Weidenfeld Translation Prize.

As part of its Europe 1992-2004 programme, the UK publishers Dedalus embarked on a series of new translations by Jull Costa of some of the major classics of Portuguese literature, including four works by Queiroz: Cousin Bazilio (1878, translation published 2003, funded by the Arts Council of England), The Mandarin (and Other Stories), The Relic and The Crime of Father Amaro.

In 2006 she was shortlisted for the Oxford Weidenfeld translation prize for her translation of Javier Marías's Your Face Tomorrow 1: Fever and Spear, and won the Arts Council, Spanish Embassy and Instituto Cervantes translation prize for the same work.