Margaret Jull Costa

Who is Margaret Jull Costa?

Margaret Jull Costa OBE is a British translator of Portuguese and Spanish fiction and poetry, including the works of Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, Eça de Queiroz, Fernando Pessoa, Javier Marías, Bernardo Atxaga and José Régio.

Jull Costa 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 Eça de Queiroz and The Migrant Painter of Birds by Lídia Jorge.

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

In recent years she has been noted for her work in translating the novels of José Saramago. Her translation of All the Names won the 2000 Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize, while her translation of Death at Intervals, about a country where death ceases to exist, was published in 2008.

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.