Ross Benjamin is an award-winning translator of German-language literature.
Recent Work
The Diaries of Franz Kafka
Schocken Books, January 2023
An essential new translation of the author’s complete, uncensored diaries—a revelation of the idiosyncrasies and rough edges of one of the twentieth century’s most important, influential, and visionary writers.
“Essential . . . The new volume, in a sensitive and briskly idiomatic translation by Ross Benjamin, offers revelation upon revelation. It’s an invaluable addition to Kafka’s oeuvre.”
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
The Director
Summit Books, May 2025
"Ross Benjamin’s translation is superb, possibly even better than the original . . . The Director, Kehlmann's stunning tale of what failure looks like, is a call to strengthen our spines."
—Susan Neiman, The New York Review of Books
Benjamin’s translation of Tyll was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker International Prize.
"Kehlmann's shrewd translator, Ross Benjamin, vigorously grasps the offered challenges."
—James Wood, The New Yorker
Tyll
Pantheon, 2020
Bio
Ross Benjamin’s translations include Franz Kafka’s Diaries (Schocken, 2023), Daniel Kehlmann’s The Director (Summit Books, 2025), Tyll (Pantheon, 2020), and You Should Have Left (Pantheon, 2017), Clemens J. Setz’s Indigo (Liveright, 2014), Joseph Roth’s Job (Archipelago Books, 2010), Kevin Vennemann’s Close to Jedenew (Melville House, 2008), and Friedrich Hölderlin’s Hyperion (Archipelago, 2008).
His translation of Tyll was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker International Prize. He received a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship. He was awarded the 2010 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize for his rendering of Michael Maar's Speak, Nabokov (Verso Books, 2009), a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship to translate Clemens J. Setz's The Frequencies, and a commendation from the judges of the 2012 Schlegel-Tieck Prize for his translation of Thomas Pletzinger's Funeral for a Dog (W.W. Norton & Company, 2011).
His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, Bookforum, The Nation, and other publications. He is coeditor of the Substack FRANZ, where he regularly posts new translations of Kafka’s complete letters in chronological order. He was a 2003–2004 Fulbright Scholar in Berlin and is a graduate of Vassar College.