October, 2020 A New Short Story Anthology Sheds Light on the Aftermath of War in Vietnam (Book Reviews) By Reviewed by Sarah Moore | October 30, 2020 This new anthology of Vietnamese short stories, published by Columbia University Press, unites twenty diverse voices from contemporary Vietnamese literature on the topic of the American military action in the country. While the war officially ended in 1975, Other Moons' narratives demonstrate its enduring consequences in Vietnamese life and thinking. Published in English translation for the first time, these works offer a fresh perspective on the conflict that took place between... The Watchlist: October 2020 (WWB Daily) By Tobias Carroll | October 29, 2020 Each month, Tobias Carroll shares a handful of recently released or forthcoming titles in translation that he’s especially excited about. From Valancourt Books | The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories, Vol. 1 by James D. Jenkins and Ryan Cagle (editors), translated from multiple languages by multiple translators | Fiction | 420 pages | ISBN 9781948405645 | US$19.99 What the publisher says: “For this groundbreaking volume, the first of its kind, the editors of... A Pre-Columbian Bestiary: Tepeyólotl (WWB Daily) By Ilan Stavans | October 28, 2020 In A Pre-Columbian Bestiary: Fantastic Creatures of Indigenous Latin America, Ilan Stavans collaborates with illustrator Eko to tell the stories of religious and mythical creatures from various Indigenous cultures of Latin America. In the excerpt below, Stavans describes Tepeyólotl, the Aztec god of earthquakes. Tepeyólotl (teh-peh-yoh-loh-tl, Aztec) This is the god of echoes and earthquakes. The word is derived from the Nahuatl words tepētl... Conjuring Up a Nocturnal Montreal: Stéphane Larue and Pablo Strauss on Translating “The Dishwasher” (WWB Daily) By Pablo Strauss Stéphane Larue | October 20, 2020 When Stéphane Larue’s The Dishwasher won the 2020 Amazon.ca First Novel Award (formerly the Books in Canada First Novel Award), it was the first translated novel selected in the prize’s forty-four-year history. Originally released as Le plongeur in 2016, the novel has won multiple awards, including Quebec’s prestigious Bookseller’s Award and the international Prix Senghor. Le plongeur, and now The Dishwasher, have also attracted an unusually broad and loyal... New Ways of Saying “We” (WWB Daily) By Jenny Hval | October 19, 2020 Girls Against God, the latest novel from Norwegian writer and musician Jenny Hval, came out earlier this month with Verso Books. Translated by Marjam Idriss, the novel blends experimental horror, feminist theory, and reflections on magic, music, and art. In the excerpt below, the protagonist describes her first meeting with the women who will become her band members. The word BAND is quite similar to the word BOND. Have you thought about that? A band is a bond between people. A... Sexism and Science Fiction: An Interview with Tang Fei (WWB Daily) By Natascha Bruce Nicky Harman | October 16, 2020 Tang Fei (the pen name of Wang Jing) was born in 1983 in Shanghai. She is well known as a writer of science fiction and fantasy and is also a literary critic and essayist. Tang Fei was one of our star interviewees in Paper Republic's collection Chinese Women Writers Speak, 2020, in which we asked women to share their experiences of being (and becoming) writers in China. Here, Tang Fei reflects on recent changes in the literary landscape, entrenched gender stereotypes, and the... What Happens When We Sleep? (WWB Daily) By Haytham El Wardany | October 15, 2020 Egyptian writer Haytham El Wardany's The Book of Sleep, translated from Arabic by Robin Moger, is out today with Seagull Books. Throughout the book, and in the four fragments below, El Wardany blends genres, drawing on philosophy, poetry, and narrative to interrogate the nature of sleep. Anonymous Night falls and the earth turns. A world departs and another appears. In this other world, the dark blots out features, dulls edges, softens boundaries; it repairs what the... Introducing WWB’s Editorial Fellow, Varun Nayar (WWB Daily) By Words Without Borders | October 13, 2020 We're pleased to welcome Varun Nayar as a WWB editorial fellow. Varun is a writer, editor, and researcher from Delhi, India. He was most recently the nonfiction editor of Asymptote, and has written for publications including Pacific Standard, Himal Southasian, and National Geographic Traveller India. He currently works at the Museum of Art & Photography, Bengaluru, as well as at WWB. Varun spoke with us about his relationship to... What Turned Mexico Into a ‘Visceraless’ State? Cristina Rivera Garza Has a Few Ideas (Book Reviews) By Reviewed by Jeremy Klemin | October 9, 2020 In the early 1980s, Mexico was bailed out of a foreign debt crisis by the IMF and the World Bank so that it could continue paying back interest on loans from US banks. The condition for this financial relief was a set of sweeping structural adjustments which, under the banner of neoliberalism, created the perfect storm of conditions that, in the decades to come, would facilitate the rise of the modern Mexican cartels, and consequently, the border crisis with the US. In Grieving: Dispatches... The City and the Writer: In Athens with Amanda Michalopoulou (WWB Daily) By Nathalie Handal | October 8, 2020 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 Calvino, Invisible Cities Can you describe the mood of Athens as you feel/see it? Sweet anarchy. Athens is about instant decisions, constant change, boldness and confusion and nerve. Parthenon makes Athenians feel imperfect, inadequate, creating and recreating a longing for... Climates: On Environment (Magazine) By Susan Harris | October 7, 2020 As I write, the West Coast of the US is ravaged by wildfires; the Gulf Coast, still recovering from Hurricane Laura, braces for Hurricane Sally’s potential destruction; an enormous chunk of Greenland’s icecap has broken free; the Northern Hemisphere has sweated through the hottest summer on record—and that’s just today. Temperatures swing between extremes, violent weather becomes the norm. In this daunting context, we present a double issue of writing on... The Water Man (Magazine) By Ariadna Castellarnau | October 7, 2020 Father wants to teach me to conjure water with his staff, like he does. This is his gift, and he wants it to be mine. Every morning, the same thing. The scene is reiterated on the slope in front of the house: “Take the staff,” he tells me, “trust me, it doesn’t bite, now lift it and stroke the earth, don’t think about water, if you think of what you want to achieve, the thing will slip away from you.” But the thing always gets away from me. We’ve... Farewell to the White Giants (Magazine) By Andri Snær Magnason | October 7, 2020 In the future, glaciers will be an alien phenomenon, rare as a Bengal tiger. Having lived in the time of the white giants will become swaddled in a fairytale glow, like having stroked a dragon or handled the eggs of the great auk. Glaciers will certainly be found in the Arctic, Greenland, and Antarctica for a few thousand more years, but probably not in the Alps and the Andes; they will disappear in most parts of the Himalayas and Iceland. People will ask, how were glaciers described at the... All Trash on the Eastern Side (Magazine) By Duanwad Pimwana | October 7, 2020 My mother and father disappeared amid the trash. My siblings and relatives, too, one by one. I have nobody. Trash is everywhere around me: the ground, the hollows, the hills are all trash. It doesn’t matter where I look, or how far, I see nothing but an unending series of overlapping mountains, trash upon trash. Trees have been flattened, homes have collapsed, rivers have been buried under piles of trash. Everything is gone; everything is trash. I look down at myself: I’m filthy... Climate Fiction for Climate Action (Magazine) By Amy Brady | October 7, 2020 In early June of 2020 the Yakutia region of Siberia hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit, causing the permafrost to melt and the dry soil beneath to burst into flames. Thick white smoke spread across the country’s green expanse, releasing more carbon emissions into the atmosphere than any other wildfire on Earth in the last two decades. These fires are a clear sign that the planet is in crisis. It is particularly worrisome that the Arctic is warming at least two and a half times faster than... Liberty and Hope (Graphic Lit) By Francisco de la Mora | October 7, 2020 So this is how it all ends . . . An Interview with WWB Poetry Contest Winners Enrique Villasis and Bernard Capinpin (WWB Daily) By Words Without Borders | October 6, 2020 "Birds in Flight, 1965" by Enrique Villasis, translated from Filipino by Bernard Capinpin, was one of four winners of WWB’s 2020 Poems in Translation contest, presented in partnership with the Academy of American Poets. The winning selections will be published in POETS.org's Poem-a-Day series and in Words Without Borders every Saturday this September, which is National Translation Month, and into the first week of October. Enrique... The Garúa and the Sky: On Translating Doris Moromisato’s “Here in Chorrillos” (WWB Daily) By Margaret Wright | October 5, 2020 Margaret Wright's translation of Doris Moromisato's "Here in Chorrillos" appears in the September 2020 issue of Words Without Borders. This is an untested theory, but I bet if you read Doris Moromisato's poem "Aquí en Chorrillos" to an audience of listeners who spoke no Spanish, they could guess that it deals in watery landscapes and acute longing. The poem, from Moromisato's 2004 collection Diario de la mujer es ponja,1 doesn't adhere to a strict form or... Birds in Flight, 1965 (Magazine) By Enrique Villasis | October 3, 2020 "Birds in Flight, 1965" is one of four winning poems selected by David Tomas Martinez for the 2020 Words Without Borders—Academy of American Poets Poems in Translation Contest. Words without Borders · Poems-in-Translation Contest: "Birds in Flight, 1965, " by Enrique Villasis, tr. Bernard Capinpin Listen above to Bernard Capinpin read his translation of Enrique Villasis's "Birds in Flight, 1965" Not as a multitude, but as one. Caught in... “This Catastrophe That Is Called Lebanon”: A Conversation with Mazen Kerbaj (WWB Daily) By Words Without Borders | October 2, 2020 Lebanese comics artist and musician Mazen Kerbaj first appeared in Words Without Borders in February 2008, in our second graphic novel issue. Since then he’s contributed six more pieces, most recently “A Subjective History of Lebanon,” published in September. WWB spoke with Kerbaj on Zoom on September 4, 2020. This interview has been edited and condensed. WWB: Your “Subjective History of Lebanon” juxtaposes Lebanon's political history with your... September, 2020 New Canons: 9 Anthologies of Translated Literature (WWB Daily) By Words Without Borders | September 30, 2020 In honor of International Translation Day, we’ve compiled a list of nine of the most innovative anthologies of translated literature from the past two decades. These collections move beyond the traditional anthology mold to offer new perspectives on global literature and create space for a rising generation of international writers. Though our list is by no means exhaustive, we hope it will inspire you to dive into an anthology (or two!) this International Translation Day. 1.... An Interview with WWB Poetry Contest Winners Yau Ching and Chenxin Jiang (WWB Daily) By Words Without Borders | September 29, 2020 "Trial Run" by Yau Ching, translated from Chinese by Chenxin Jiang, was one of four winners of WWB’s 2020 Poems in Translation contest, presented in partnership with the Academy of American Poets. The winning selections will be published in POETS.org's Poem-a-Day series and in Words Without Borders every Saturday this September, which is National Translation Month, and into the first week of October. Yau Ching and Chenxin Jiang will be... In ‘The Death of Comrade President,’ A Sophisticated Portrait of a Country in Crisis (Book Reviews) By Reviewed by Kevin Canfield | September 29, 2020 Alain Mabanckou’s new novel begins on a Saturday and ends the following Monday, a compressed timeline that suggests a story of limited scope. Told from the perspective of an adolescent boy who hopes to track down a missing family pet, this book brims with the kind of private longings and granular observations that are often associated with small, intimate works of fiction. And yet, in under 250 pages, Mabanckou imbues his narrative with the qualities of a minor epic, placing his young... The Watchlist: September 2020 (WWB Daily) By Tobias Carroll | September 28, 2020 Each month, Tobias Carroll shares a handful of recently released or forthcoming titles in translation that he’s especially excited about. From Open Letter Books | The Clerk by Guillermo Saccomanno, translated from the Spanish by Andrea G. Labinger | Fiction | 138 pages | ISBN 9781948830256 | US$15.95 What the publisher says: “The Clerk tells a story that happened yesterday, but that still hasn’t happened, and yet is happening now. A story we didn’t even... Trial Run (Magazine) By Yau Ching | September 26, 2020 Words without Borders · Poems in Translation Contest: "Trial Run, " by Yau Ching, tr. Chenxin Jiang Listen above to Chenxin Jiang read her translation of Yau Ching's "Trial Run" as a door-nail and gone to the world air broke drop nothing is... Page 1 of 224 pages 1 2 3 > Last ›
