John Cullen (2) (1942–2021)

John Christopher Cullen III, the renowned literary translator who translated more than 50 novels and works of nonfiction into English, died on April 15, the Times-Picayune reported. He was 79 years old.

Born in New Orleans, La., in 1942, Cullen earned a Ph.D. in English literature and traveled extensively in Europe before returning to the United States and beginning his career as a translator in 1987. Fluent in German, Italian, Spanish and French, Cullen translated the work of writers such as Kamel Daoud, Martin Dumont and Véronique Tadjo. He won the French-American Prize for his translation of Philippe Claudel's Brodeck, and in 2006, two novels that he translated, The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra and Don't Move by Margaret Mazzantini, were on the shortlist for the Dublin Prize.

John R. MacArthur, journalist, author and president of Harper's magazine, wrote a tribute to Cullen, who translated MacArthur's French columns into English. He praised Cullen's sense of humor and his gifts as a storyteller, and he recalled that before they started working together, he heard the actor Robert Adrian read an excerpt of Cullen's translation of Brodeck's Report, and it struck him as "pitch perfect. My American mind heard my French understanding of the novel and read it back to me so well in English that I hardly noticed the difference in languages."

Judith Gurewich, publisher of Other Press, called Cullen "one of the greatest American translators," describing how he reinvented an author's sentences in English "while keeping the music of the original." She noted that Cullen translated only books he liked, and he often joked with Gurewich that, "this is a great book but there is no way you will sell two copies!"

Göran Rosenberg, author of A Brief Stop on the Road from Auschwitz, wrote that while the book says it was edited by John Cullen, "it should have said, this translation was made into literature by John Cullen.... And as with all miracles, you will never fully understand how it happened, except that it had to do with the extraordinary sensibilities of John Cullen, linguistic and otherwise."

Kira Wizner, co-owner of Merritt Bookstore in Millbrook, N.Y., who knew Cullen and his wife, the novelist Valerie Martin, said Cullen was a "wordsmith, and like any true master, loved language." Through his work as a translator, she wrote, "readers in English were gifted a version that worked because John was, dare I say, holistic. The words, the mood, the subtext, all accounted for."