“Distinguished through his translations over the last thirty years of the Russian canon (Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Mandelstam, Akhmatova, and many others, including contemporaries),” stated Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa in a note published on the Presidential website regarding Filipe Guerra’s work.
The Portuguese head of state emphasized the significance of Guerra’s contributions: “These translations, made in collaboration with his wife, Nina Guerra, established the excellent practice of having Russian literature translated from the original language, winning awards from the SPA and PEN, and are surely found on the shelves of thousands of readers today.”
“To Filipe Guerra’s widow and family, I extend my heartfelt condolences,” he concluded.
The publishing house Presença confirmed to Lusa the passing of the translator Filipe Guerra at the age of 77.
The translator Filipe Guerra, known in literary circles for his direct translations from Russian of authors like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, in partnership with his wife, Nina Guerra, died on Sunday, as confirmed by Presença to Lusa.
Lusa | 14:05 – 08/07/2025
Besides translating Russian classics for this publishing group, Filipe and Nina Guerra also worked with other publishers, such as Relógio d’Água and Assírio e Alvim.
Reported by the newspaper Público, citing the translator’s son, Filipe Guerra passed away on July 6th, after a prolonged illness, at the Garcia de Orta Hospital in Almada.
Born in 1948, Filipe Guerra graduated in Romance Philology from the Faculty of Letters at the Classical University of Lisbon, alongside studying Linguistics at Université Paris VIII (Vincennes).
He dedicated his entire professional career to culture and books, working with and being part of the direction at Cooperativa Livreira Esteiros since 1975.
Filipe Guerra also wrote and produced weekly radio programs about books, notably for RDP1 and Antena 2, between 1979 and 1982.
Simultaneously, he contributed to literary newspapers and magazines, publishing articles penned by himself.
Between 1986 and 1989, Filipe Guerra worked in literary translation at Editorial Progresso in Moscow, where he met Nina Guerra, who later settled in Lisbon.
From 1989 to 1991, he undertook literary review and translation at Editorial Caminho, and from 1994 onwards, he worked exclusively on Russian translations in collaboration with Nina, with over 70 titles translated together.
Individually, Filipe Guerra translated from French, Spanish, and Italian, with a total of over 40 translated titles.
The translating duo was awarded in 2002 by the Portuguese Society of Authors and the Portuguese Pen Club for their translations of Dostoevsky and Chekhov’s works, and in 2012 they received the special jury prize from LER/Booktailors for their literary translations.
Among the main works translated by Filipe Guerra in collaboration with Nina Guerra are ‘The Brothers Karamazov’, ‘Crime and Punishment’, ‘The Idiot’, ‘The Gambler’, ‘White Nights’, or ‘The Double’ by Dostoevsky, ‘War and Peace’, ‘Anna Karenina’, or ‘Resurrection’ by Tolstoy, ‘The Seagull’, ‘Uncle Vanya’, ‘Three Sisters’, or ‘The Cherry Orchard’ by Chekhov, the complete poetry of Osip Mandelstam, and ‘Heart of a Dog’ by Mikhail Bulgakov.
