{{Short description|Scottish translator, editor and literary critic}} {{Use dmy dates|date=March 2018}} {{Use British English|date=March 2018}} {{BLP sources |date=April 2026}} {{Infobox person | name = David McDuff | image = David-McDuff.jpg | birth_date = {{birth year and age|1945}} | birth_place = Sale, Cheshire, England, U.K. | alma_mater = University of Edinburgh | occupation = translator, editor and literary critic }} '''David McDuff''' (born 1945, Sale, Cheshire, England) is a Scottish translator, editor and literary critic.
==Life== McDuff attended the University of Edinburgh, where he studied Russian and German, gaining a PhD in 1971.<ref>{{Cite web |last=McDuff |first=D. |date=1971 |title=Poetry and aesthetics of Innokenty Annensky |url=http://hdl.handle.net/1842/17392 |language=en |hdl=1842/17392}}</ref> He married mathematician Dusa McDuff, but they separated around 1975.<ref>{{citation|first1=Donald J.|last1=Albers|first2=Gerald L.|last2=Alexanderson|author2-link=Gerald L. Alexanderson|year=2011|title=Fascinating Mathematical People: interviews and memoirs|contribution=Dusa McDuff|pages=215–239|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-0-691-14829-8}}.</ref>
After living for some time in the Soviet Union, Denmark, Iceland, and the United States, he eventually returned to the United Kingdom, where he worked for several years as a co-editor and reviewer on the literary magazine ''Stand''. He then moved to London, where he began his career as a literary translator.<ref>{{Cite web |title=David McDuff |url=https://swedishenglish.org/user/david.mcduff/ |access-date=2026-05-16 |website=SELTA |language=en-GB}}</ref>
McDuff's translations include both foreign poetry and prose, including poems by Joseph Brodsky and Tomas Venclova, and novels including Fyodor Dostoevsky's ''Crime and Punishment'', ''The Brothers Karamazov'', and ''The Idiot'' (all three in Penguin Classics). His ''Complete Poems'' of Edith Södergran (1984, 1992) and ''Complete Poems'' of Karin Boye (1994) were published by [http://www.bloodaxebooks.com Bloodaxe Books]. McDuff's translation of the Finnish-language writer Tuomas Kyrö's 2011 novel ''The Beggar and the Hare'' was published in 2014.<ref name="yle"/>
Among literary awards, he has received the 1994 TLS/George Bernard Shaw Translation Prize for his translation of Gösta Ågren's poems,'' A Valley in the Midst of Violence'', published by Bloodaxe, and the 2006 Stora Pris of the Society of Swedish Authors in Finland.<ref>{{Cite web |title=David McDuff {{!}} Bloodaxe Books |url=https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/category/david-mcduff |access-date=2026-05-16 |website=www.bloodaxebooks.com}}</ref>
From 2007 to 2010, David McDuff worked as an editor and translator with [https://www.watchdog.cz Prague Watchdog], the Prague-based non-governmental organization (NGO) which monitored and discussed human-rights abuses in Chechnya and the North Caucasus.<ref>{{Cite web |title=David McDuff {{!}} Bloodaxe Books |url=https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/category/david-mcduff |access-date=2026-05-16 |website=www.bloodaxebooks.com}}</ref>
McDuff was honoured with the Finnish State Award for Foreign Translators in 2013.<ref name="yle">[http://yle.fi/uutiset/david_mcduff_honoured_with_state_translators_prize/6831259?origin=rss David Mcduff Honoured With State Translators Prize], Yleisradio News in English</ref>
In November 2019, his new translation of Karin Boye's dystopian novel ''Kallocain'' was published by [https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/309767/kallocain/9780241355589.html Penguin Classics].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Kallocain by Karin Boye: 9780241608302 {{!}} PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books |url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/617550/kallocain-by-karin-boye-translated-with-an-introduction-by-david-mcduff/ |access-date=2026-05-16 |website=PenguinRandomhouse.com |language=en-US}}</ref>
McDuff was honoured with the Swedish Academy's [https://www.svenskaakademien.se/press/svenska-akademiens-tolkningspris-2021 Interpretation Prize (Tolkningspris) 2021].
His translation of ''Anteckningar'' by Tua Forsström (''I Walked On into the Forest'', Bloodaxe, 2021) was The Poetry Book Society's [https://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/blogs/news/winter-2021-selections Translation Choice for Winter 2021].
==Works== *Osip Mandelʹshtam ''Selected poems'', Writers and Readers, 1983, {{ISBN|9780863160530}} *Edith Södergran ''Complete poems'', Bloodaxe Books, 1984, {{ISBN|9780906427385}} *Marina Tsvetaeva, ''Selected Poems'', Bloodaxe Books, 1987, {{ISBN|9781852240257}} *''Ice around our lips: Finland-Swedish poetry'', Bloodaxe Books, 1989, {{ISBN|9781852240110}} *Tua Forsström, ''Snow leopard'', Bloodaxe, 1990, {{ISBN|9781852241117}} *{{cite book|author=Isaak Babel|title=Collected Stories|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OPZGLukDQF4C|year=1994|publisher=Penguin|isbn=978-0-14-018462-4}} *Andrei Bely ''Petersburg'', Penguin. 1995. {{ISBN|014-01-8696-4}} *Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, ''Rudin: On the eve'', Oxford University Press, 1999, {{ISBN|9780192833334}} *Fyodor Dostoyevsky (30 January 2003). ''[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Punishment-Penguin-Classics-Fyodor-Dostoyevsky/dp/0140449132/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=mcduff+penguin+crime+and+punishment+dostoyevsky&qid=1593943643&sr=8-1 Crime and Punishment.]'' Penguin Books Limited. {{ISBN|978-0-14-044913-6}} *{{cite book|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=The Brothers Karamazov|url=https://archive.org/details/brotherskaramazo00dost_1|url-access=registration|date=27 February 2003|publisher=Penguin Books Limited|isbn=978-0-14-191568-5}} *{{cite book|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=The Idiot|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2-ly7aL57XgC|date=31 August 2004|publisher=Penguin Group US|isbn=978-1-101-16055-8}}<ref>{{cite news|work=The Guardian|title=Prince of Fools|last=Byatt|first=A.S.|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jun/26/highereducation.classics |date=25 June 2004|quote=I had known, without fully understanding before I read this excellent new translation, that the idea of death in this novel is peculiarly pinned to the idea of execution - what I had not thought through was that in a materialist world the dead man in the painting is an executed man, whose consciousness has been brutally cut off.}}</ref> *Fyodor Dostoyevsky (2003) The House of the Dead. Penguin Books Limited. ISBN 978-0-14-044456-8 *Tua Forsström, ''I studied once at a wonderful faculty'', Bloodaxe, 2006, {{ISBN|9781852246495}} *Karin Boye, ''Kallocain'', Penguin Classics, 2019, {{ISBN|9780241355589}} *Tua Forsström, I walked on into the forest, Bloodaxe, 2021, {{ISBN|9781780375823}}
==See also== {{Portal|Biography|Linguistics|Literature|Scotland}} * List of critics * List of translators * List of University of Edinburgh people {{Clear}}
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== * [http://wordpress.englishphrasings.co.uk/publicat.htm The complete list of McDuff's published books of translation] *[https://web.archive.org/web/20110927180957/http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/personpage.asp?author=David+McDuff Database entry at Bloodaxe Books] *[http://www.watchdog.cz/?show=000000-000015-000008-000001&lang=1 Prague Watchdog's select bibliography of Chechnya-related works, compiled by David McDuff and others]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:McDuff, David}} Category:1945 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century Scottish male writers Category:20th-century Scottish translators Category:21st-century Scottish male writers Category:21st-century Scottish translators Category:Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Category:British expatriate writers in Denmark Category:British expatriates in the Soviet Union Category:British literary editors Category:British literary translators Category:Expatriate writers in the United States Category:Finnish–English translators Category:Russian–English translators Category:People from Sale, Greater Manchester Category:Reeves family Category:Scottish expatriates in Denmark Category:Scottish expatriates in Iceland Category:Scottish expatriates in the United States Category:Scottish literary critics Category:Scottish magazine editors Category:Swedish–English translators Category:Translators of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Category:Writers from Cheshire Category:Writers from Edinburgh Category:Writers from Greater Manchester Category:Writers from London