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Presented here for the first time in English, the cult writer Charles Chahwan—"Lebanon's answer to Charles Bukowski"—tells a tale of rival militiamen euphoric with violence.   Under the gentle afternoon sunlight, Serge’s body appeared limp and more slouched than usual as he rested against the back seat of the shared taxi, a Morris Princess. He was the sole passenger in the service as it made its way down the coastal highway, as if other potential...

Each month, Tobias Carroll shares a handful of recently released or forthcoming titles in translation that he’s especially excited about.   From Riverhead | Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft | Fiction | 416 pages | ISBN 9780525534198 | US$26.00 What the publisher says: “Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it...

As we celebrate Women in Translation Month, we’re looking back at exciting works by women writers from around the world published this past year. Here are 31 to add to your reading list for #WITMonth.   1947: Where Now Begins by Elisabeth Åsbrink Translated from the Swedish by Fiona Graham Other Press, 2018   Swedish journalist Elisabeth Åsbrink chronicles the pivotal post-World War II year in a global portrait that incorporates both personal...

In Virginie Despentes’s Pretty Things, translated from the French by Emma Ramadan and forthcoming from the Feminist Press, twins Claudine and Pauline hatch a plan to create the “perfect woman,” with alarming results. The excerpt below reveals the backstory of the mismatched pair.   Window open opposite, the street acts like a loud speaker, Claudine hears a song as if she were listening to it in her own apartment. Sharp attacks tearing her apart, the same headaches...

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   Could you describe the atmosphere of Buenos Aires as you feel/see it? Though Buenos Aires, like all cities, modernized, my perception is of a Buenos Aires that has not changed. Since I was born, I have lived in the same neighborhood, Caballito, on a quiet street....

Norah Lange’s People in the Room, translated by Charlotte Whittle and introduced by César Aira, is forthcoming from And Other Stories. You can read an excerpt from People in the Room in Words without Borders.    The circumstances of Argentine women writers in the first half of the twentieth century were not politically correct. Political incorrectness, in this case, meant that women writers were limited to the conventionally feminine subject...

Guest editor Jeremy Tiang kicks off our Macau issue with a look at the contradictions of this tiny yet complex territory and its literature Macau is tiny: an area of forty-five square miles, home to half a million residents. It was a Portuguese colony from the sixteenth century to 1999, before being handed over to China. This territory has long been a crucible of language and culture. It was here that the British missionary Robert Morrison holed up in the early nineteenth century to...

The guest editors for Words Without Borders’s August feature of Panamanian short fiction discuss the project’s genesis and give readers an insider’s look at the country’s literary scene.   Pam Carmell: As often happens, this project got its start at an ALTA conference. In 2015, you read a compelling short story by Panamanian Melanie Taylor Herrera. Coincidentally I was headed to Panama on a hiking and boating trip a few months later.  ...

Panamanian writer Melanie Taylor Herrera looks on as two assassins kill time at a nightclub​.   Two men head for the table in front of the dance floor. They sit down in the aluminum chairs silently and in unison. The man wearing the skintight black shirt orders two drinks. The bar is empty. It’s almost nine on a Wednesday night—a lazy night that slips through the waitresses’ and bartender’s fingers like thick wet sand. The men watch the few...

Panamanian writer Cheri Lewis observes a household inexplicably deluged with infants.   The babies started arriving that summer. I remember the first one so well. I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth when, in the mirror, I spotted the reflection of a shadow making its way down the hall. I leaned out the door and saw a baby, naked and covered in dirt. He crawled right down the center of the living room and headed straight for my sister, who was sitting on the couch, reading a book....

An anxious woman awaits her lover in Panamanian writer Carlos Oriel Wynter Melo’s exploration of jealousy and doubt​ If you look at the park head on, stare straight at it, look with more than your eyes, imagining it or linking it to a memory, you’ll see a tunnel of trees that ends in a hole of light. If your gaze is colored by some melancholy thought, that spot of light might suggest several interpretations. One possibility is that everything comes to an end. On the...

A couple bets on success in the casino industry in Koh Choon Eiow and Mok Sio Chong’s play.     Read by Ma Wal-in and Koh Choon Eiow in Mandarin and Cantonese. CHORUS     His name is Ken. He’s from Muar, Johor State, Malaysia, Southeast Asia. He came to work in Macau a year ago.                      He came to Macau a year ago, to work as a casino fixer.        ...

An ambitious young woman learns the hideous secret behind the success of her cutthroat Macanese company in Eric Chau’s tale, illustrated by Chi-Wai Un.   There was once a little fishing port, nestled between two little hills. On the eastern hill was a lighthouse, its beam piercing the stillness of the night, lighting up the west. One day, the fishing port started to change. All kinds of skyscrapers began to spring up, blocking the hills. The lighthouse disappeared from view....

Poet Agnes Lam turns a cold eye on contemporary Macau.   1. Two Worlds this city I come from when I come here its deep recesses wield twilight like a knife slicing the world in two the world begins with a slot machine but its end is nowhere to be found within the world someone detonates the night knocks at the gates of ruin a flash of fortune and the night is purgatory hot in the city's heart people and fire are as one “Save me! Oh, save me!” the flash bulbs no longer...

A moth, a light, a universal yearning feature in Yao Feng’s contemplative poem.   The light retires to the lamp and suddenly all is dark again who out there has caught the night-moth and instructs it in shadow? After countless drills the torn-winged moth no longer knows how to fly and trails through the twilight crawling snail-slow toward the light.   © Yao Feng. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2018 by Julia Sanches. All rights reserved.

Leading Macanese poet Un Sio San considers an abandoned hotel and the demolition of a city’s history​.   His body Was born in a barn His virginity Vanished with the summer Becoming an octopus, a peacock While his heart turned holy Setting down its complex baggage To embark on The slow Sermon of the world A cocktail of enlightened spirits and sweat The choppy world has no buoys No lifeguards, no lanes His nakedness is naked His laziness is lazy Soaking in youth,...

“You have the perfect golf swing in you, you just have to find it.” That’s the set-up line of choice for writer Kåre, one of the protagonists of Gunnhild Øyehaug’s novel Wait, Blink, to pick up girls and make audiences laugh. Golf can’t be this simple is the title of the self-help book he likes to quote derisively during dates or lectures, before remarking that “life is not always as simple as golf” and turning to a...

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 Kruja as you feel/see it? Kruja is a small town in the middle of Albania. It leans on a mountain and faces the sea and is surrounded by a range of hills covered in olive trees. The town is identified with its castle, which became...

Olivia Snaije attended the 2018 Litlink Festival, which ocurred June 29–July 1 in Croatia.   Just days before Croatia’s incredible performance in the 2018 World Cup, the sixth annual edition of the Croatian Litlink Festival brought together authors and publishers for a literary road trip that included readings in the cities of Pula, Rijeka, and Zagreb. Founded by author, editor, publisher, and literary agent Ivan Sršen and author, poet, and...

Each month, Tobias Carroll shares a handful of recently released or forthcoming titles in translation that he’s especially excited about.   From Coffee House Press | Comemadre by Roque Larraquy, translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary | Fiction | 152 pages | ISBN 978-1566895156 | US$16.95 What the publisher says: “The world of Comemadre is full of vulgarity, excess, and farce: strange ants that form almost perfect circles, missing body parts,...

In Gabriela Alemán’s Poso Wells, translated from the Spanish by Dick Cluster and forthcoming with City Lights Publishers, a journalist explores the disappearance of a leading presidential candidate following a macabre accident and uncovers the community’s violent, lawless underworld. The excerpt below is the novel’s opening chapter. The Candidate Poso Wells does not appear on any map. How could it? The last time anyone did a topographical survey, that...

This spring the US book distribution company Ingram Publisher Services (IPS) announced its “Be Worldly. Read Lit in Translation” initiative. Lori Feathers, co-owner of Interbang Books in Dallas, TX, spoke with IPS’s VP of marketing, Jennifer Swihart, about the campaign.   Lori Feathers (LF): At this year’s Book Expo, Ingram Publisher Services introduced its “Be Worldly” campaign to encourage booksellers to sell more books in translation. What...

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 Belgrade as you feel/see it? Belgrade is very much loved and despised by its citizens—you can see and feel this when in the city. Belgrade is loved by those who try to reconnect the fragile ties that link place with identity....

In 1927, the Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga—often compared to Poe for his horror stories and to Kipling for his stories of the jungle—left us his famous “Decálogo para el perfecto cuentista” (translated most frequently as “Ten Commandments for the Perfect Storyteller”). There, he offers a series of essential recommendations for anyone wishing to become an expert in the art of the short story. His list begins not with formal elements or questions...

Lucas Iberico Lozada recalls his encounter with Demetrio Túpac Yupanqui, who translated Don Quixote into Quechua and who passed away on May 3, 2018.   By the time I met him, Demetrio Túpac Yupanqui was ninety-two years old, partially deaf, and mostly blind. Still, he seemed to wear his age lightly. Three days a week, he hosted twelve students—of all ages, and from all over the city—around a long table on the second story of his home in the quiet La Perla...