An Israeli novel translated from Hebrew and a collection of Russian poetry have won an American prize for best translation.

Winners of the prize, founded three years ago by Three Percent, a group that encourages translation, were announced Wednesday at the University of Rochester in New York.

The fiction winner — Gail Hareven's novel The Confessions of Noa Weber — traces the life of a successful writer and feminist who has spent her life obsessed with one man. It won the Sapir Prize in Israel for its portrayal of the tenor of 1970s Israel.

The novel was translated into English by Dalya Bilu, a veteran translator of Israeli fiction, for Melville House Press.

The poetry prize went to Elena Fanailova's The Russian Version, translated by Genya Turovskaya and Stephanie Sandler and published by Ugly Duckling Presse.

Fanailova is a Russian poet, doctor and radio reporter whose poems brood on bloody, wrenching changes of the last 30 years in Russian history.

With files from The Associated Press