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The Weight of History: Writing from Vietnam

Image: Do Thanh Lang, Emotion Chart 5, acrylic on glossy pp synthetic paper, April 2014. By arrangement with the artist.

Nonfiction by Nhã Thuyên and Kaitlin Rees

Presences, Ruins, Silences: Writing from Vietnam

Silence, among Vietnamese authors, seems to have become a compelling tradition.

bilingual

Fiction by Bùi Ngọc Tấn

Endless Universe

The passion and blind devotion are no longer. The ending is near.

Translated from Vietnamese by Nguyễn Hoàng Quyên

Nonfiction by Nhã Thuyên

(Un)contextualizing Underground Poetry: Reimagining a Critical Community

I don't want to put underground poetry into a concrete conflict with mainstream poetry.

Translated from Vietnamese by David Payne

Poetry by P.K.

A Chair on a Highway on a Rainy Afternoon

a chair standing by itself on a highway means its life is over

Translated from Vietnamese by P.K.

bilingual

Fiction by Trần Thị NgH

The Sitting Woman

I had just finished reading Francoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse and he had imagined me as Odile from André Maurois’ Climats.

Translated from Vietnamese by Kaitlin Rees

feature

The Departed

Nonfiction by Susan Harris

Honor Thy Father and Mother: In Mourning

All people mourn in their own ways.

Nonfiction by Marcin Wicha

The Urn

It's vile to disregard somebody's sense of aesthetics just because they're dead.

Translated from Polish by Marta Dziurosz

Fiction by Ariel Urquiza

Remains of a Party in Condesa

The clown had put the platter of coke on his head, like a waiter carrying a tray.

Translated from Spanish by Samantha Schnee

Nonfiction by José Luís Peixoto

You Died on Me

And I neither want nor can forget what I once felt from your gaze.

Translated from Portuguese by Robin Patterson

Drama by Mishka Lavigne

Condolences

Gabrielle Sauriol lies in the Pacific Ocean now.

Translated from French by Neil Blackadder

WWB Daily

November 12th, 2018

The Emerging Literary Translator Valley of Death

by Anton Hur

Anton Hur, translator of Kyung-Sook Shin’s The Court Dancer and Kang Kyeong-ae’s The Underground Village, offers insights into the challenges facing literary translators and…read more

November 9th, 2018

The City and the Writer: In Hong Kong with Nicholas Wong

by Nathalie Handal

If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have learned the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains. —Italo…read more

November 8th, 2018

What the Mountains Remember: An Interview with Paolo Cognetti

by Francesca Pellas

WWB contributing writer Francesca Pellas spoke with Italian writer Paolo Cognetti about his novel The Eight Mountains, translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre and published this year by…read more

November 6th, 2018

On Translating Armonía Somers’s “The Naked Woman”

by Kit Maude

­ The Naked Woman is out today with the Feminist Press. When it was originally published in 1950, critics doubted a woman writer could be responsible for its shocking erotic content. In…read more

November 2nd, 2018

The Translator Relay: Ellen Cassedy

by Jessie Chaffee

WWB’s Translator Relay features an interview with a different translator every other month. The current month’s translator will choose the next interviewee, adding a different, sixth…read more

October 29th, 2018

The City and the Writer: In Melbourne with Susan Bradley Smith

by Nathalie Handal

If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have learned the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains. —Italo…read more


Book Reviews

Atrocity at a Distance, Absurdity Up Close in Dubravka Ugresic’s “American Fictionary”

Reviewed by Jeff Tompkins

In this book of essays, Ugresic juxtaposes reflections on the fate of her country with observations on everyday life in America.

In “Resistance,” Julián Fuks Takes the Fiction of Failed Writing a Step Further

Reviewed by Lily Meyer

The Brazilian-Argentine writer's novel resists drama. It resists the impulse to exaggerate, maybe even the impulse to tell stories.

“What’s Left of the Night,” by Ersi Sotiropoulos, Reimagines C.P. Cavafy’s Feverish Days in Paris

Reviewed by Lynne Diamond-Nigh

In this fictional account of the last days of a long journey through Europe undertaken by Cavafy in 1897, the Greek poet's struggle against conventions, social and personal, takes center stage.

“Do You Hear in the Mountains…,” by Maïssa Bey, Probes the Untold Pasts of Algerian History

Reviewed by Jocelyn Frelier

In this charged work of autofiction, Bey explores her ties with the Algerian War for Independence, during which her father was killed.

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