Interview with Aneesa Abbas Higgins P ’07 ’09 (ASL 1980-2012)

For more than 30 years, Aneesa Higgins taught French to generations of ASL high schoolers. When she retired from full-time teaching in 2012, Madame Higgins realized she wasn’t quite ready to embrace a life of leisure and decided to embark upon a second career in translating modern French literature into English. After studying translation at City University, Madame Higgins successfully broke into the publishing world in 2015 with her translation of What Became of the White Savage by François Garde. 

Her latest achievement, and for which we are enormously proud of our former modern languages teacher, is winning the prestigious National Book Award for her translation work on French-Korean author Elisa Shua Dusapin’s debut novel, Winter in Sokcho. 

No one is more surprised than Madame Higgins at her rise to fame in her newfound career. Speaking shortly after the announcement, she said, “I am truly honored and utterly amazed to be awarded this wonderful accolade and to share it with the immensely talented Elisa Shua Dusapin.”

Over the course of the past nine years, Madame Higgins has translated a total of seven books from French into English and is an emerging light in a competitive field. Check out a full list of her accomplishments. She has been nominated for the prestigious Scott Moncrieff Prize a whopping three times: first in 2018 for her work on Seven Stones by Vénus Khoury-Ghata, and then in 2020 for A Girl Called Eel by Ali Zamir, which she went on to win. This year, she has been nominated yet again—for Winter in Sokcho. The winner will be announced in February, so the best of Eagle luck to Madame Higgins!

Her interest in Winter in Sokcho was piqued on finding the slim tome in a bookshop, in the French town of Uzès—close to the house she and her husband, former ASL HS science teacher Ethan Higgins P ’07 ’09 (ASL 1979-2009), share and where they spend much of their time. Madame Higgins explains, “I was drawn to this short novel and read it in an afternoon. I loved it, and wondered if the English rights were available. On discovering from the Swiss publisher, Editions Zoé, that they were, I decided to translate a decent snippet and pitch it to UK publishers who might be interested. To cut a long story short, Daunt Books bought the world English rights and invited me to produce the English translation.”

The timing of the book’s release in the UK was unfortunate; it came out in February 2020, just before the rise of COVID-19. There were no in-person events to launch and promote the book, but there was still much interest and a number of glowing reviews, including the Guardian and Asian Review of Books. Once Open Letter Books of Rochester University picked up the rights to the US version, things really took off. Madame Higgins shares, “First, Winter in Sokcho was longlisted for the National Book Awards, which I thought was a great achievement! Then it was shortlisted. No one was more astonished than I was when they announced that we had won the prize! It’s still sinking in.”

When she’s not winning international prizes, Madame Higgins is oft found rehearsing in London with the Medici Choir for an upcoming concert. Catch Madame in fine voice at the choir’s upcoming performance on Saturday, 27 November, at Holy Trinity, Sloane Square!

We wish Madame Higgins the best of luck with her translating career and look forward to seeing more of her work in bookshops around the globe in the future. 

Aneesa Higgins with husband Ethan and daughter Anna ’09 at Anna’s graduation