Carol Brown Janeway, award-winning editor and translator, dead at 71

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Carol Brown Janeway, a prize-winning editor, executive and translator for Alfred A. Knopf whose authors ranged from biologist E.O. Wilson to Nobel Prize-winning fiction writer Imre Kertesz, has died, Knopf said Monday. She was 71.

Knopf chairman Sonny Mehta released a companywide memo saying Janeway died early Monday at a New York hospital where she was being treated for cancer.

Janeway joined Knopf in 1970 and eventually became a senior vice-president and senior editor who worked with writers from all over the world.

In 2013, Janeway received the inaugural Friedrich Ulfers Prize for her translations of German literature, including her edition of Bernhard Schlink’s novel “The Reader,” which Oprah Winfrey chose for her book club in 1999.