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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...

As the year draws to a close, our staff, contributors, and board members share their favorite works-in-translation of 2018 and the titles they’re looking forward to in 2019.   Elisa Wouk Almino Contributing Writer Ana Cristina Cesar’s At Your Feet (Parlor Press) introduced a tremendous voice in Brazilian literature to an English-reading audience. Ana Cristina Cesar, or Ana C. as she is known in Brazil, published her poetry in the 1970s and early...

Each month, Tobias Carroll shares a handful of recently released or forthcoming titles in translation that he’s especially excited about.   From Archipelago Books | The Barefoot Woman by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated from the French by Jordan Stump | Nonfiction | 146 pages | ISBN 9781939810045 | US$16.00 What the publisher says: “The Barefoot Woman is Scholastique Mukasonga’s loving, funny, devastating tribute to her mother, Stefania, a tireless...

In the past, I often felt lost buying books for the kids of friends and families. Goodnight, Moon may be inexhaustibly good, but everyone already has it; same with The Phantom Tollbooth; same with most all of the (sadly few) books I remember from my own childhood. But once I had my own kid, I started not only reading children’s books anew but wishing I could talk all my friends into reading them, too, so that somebody could speak with me about these stories that read like...

18ème arrondissement To Nuno Júdice The sculptors of Montmartre must have studied anatomy (in depth) to chisel such beauty into their sacred figures. Or else wandered around (from brothel to brothel) until there was no doubt (down to the last detail) of such chaste anatomy. It is not believed that nuns had ever willingly posed (naked like this) so that thighs and breasts might be born from hands of sculptors with such precision. The reader will surely agree with me that...

The following excerpt is from Jana Beňová’s Away! Away!, translated by Janet Livingstone and out tomorrow from Two Dollar Radio. With Beňová’s signature effervescent prose, the story follows Rosa, who ditches her husband and takes off on the road, where she encounters the owner of a puppet theater intent on conquering the world through his production of “The Snow Queen.” In this section, Rosa reflects on her...

John Minford reflects on his experience with Taoism and as a translator of Taoist texts, including Lao Tzu’s the Tao Te Ching, out this week with Viking.   When the Oxford police arrested me in 1970, they thought that the battered copies of the Tao Te Ching on the back seat of my old Citroen 2CV were Maoist revolutionary pamphlets. It had, after all, been only a short while since the 1968 Maoist-inspired “events” of Paris. Decades later, I have had the...

Tobias Carroll explores Pablo Martín Sánchez’s recently released The Anarchist Who Shared My Name (tr. Jeffrey Diteman, Deep Vellum Publishing) within the context of the Oulipo collective and contemporary creative nonfiction.   The experience of reading Pablo Martín Sánchez’s newly translated book, The Anarchist Who Shared My Name, is a fascinating immersion into historical documentation and imagined history. In a prologue, Martín...

Akram Aylisli’s Farewell, Aylis: A Non-Traditional Novel in Three Works was recently published by Academic Studies Press. Katherine E. Young, who translated the novel from the Russian, explores the origins of Farewell, Aylis; the social and political context of and response to Aylisli’s work; and his experience, as a writer who has faced persecution for the last six years, of being a stranger in the land he calls “home.” You can read an...

References and Further Reading  Alves, Miriam.Mulher Mat(r)iz. Belo Horizonte: Nandyala, 2011. Alves, Miriam. Entrevista. Duke, Dawn (Org.). A escritora afro-brasileira: ativismo e arte literária. Belo Horizonte: Nandyala, 2016.  Barretto, Lima. Obras Completas. Barbosa, Francisco de Assis (Org.). São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1956. Cruz e Sousa, João da, 1861-1898. Obra Completa. Organização de Andrade Murici. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Aguiar, 1995....

In this excerpt from Yu Miri's Tokyo Ueno Station, forthcoming in 2019 from Tilted Axis Press, a homeless man remembers a parental failure.     There’s that sound again. That sound— I hear it. But I don’t know if it’s in my ears or in my mind. I don’t know if it’s inside me or outside. I don’t know when it was, or who it was either. Is that important? Was it important? Who was it? *** I used to think life was like...

Sam Bett deconstructs the myth of an ethnically homogenous Japan and illuminates its rich, if underrepresented, diversity.   An image has been circulating of a bold red circle paired with a dizzying caption: “Did You Know? Japan's flag is also a pie chart of how much Japan is Japan.” This incidental graph has one value, comprising 100% of its total, as indicated by the redundant data caption: “Japan is Japan.” While humorous for its discovery of...

Rainbow Bird tells the story of Katsuya, a young Okinawan man longing to escape his life in the criminal underworld of the island where he grew up. Set in 1995 shortly after three U.S. servicemen stationed in Okinawa kidnapped and raped a twelve-year-old girl, the story unfolds against a backdrop of protests and mass demonstrations. Katsuya’s job is to force women to prostitute themselves while he photographs the transaction, then blackmails the clients. When his newest girl,...

When a lawyer and his interpreter visit a Hazara woman in a Japanese prison, they discover there are questions she can't—or won't—answer.   Mr. Tanaka filled in two copies of the visitors’ application form and passed them to the man on the other side of the small reception window. A few minutes later, a heavy iron door opened in front of us, and a tall, sturdy policeman appeared. He was almost too well built to be Japanese, his muscles bursting out...

Little more than a month removed from the election of Jair Bolsonaro—who, in addition to being homophobic and misogynist, has adopted openly racist positions—Words Without Borders brings you this issue of Afro-Brazilian writing.  To assert that Bolsonaro is these things is not reducible merely to a political argument: he has repeatedly made derogatory references about minority groups, including insults about residents of quilombos, the maroon communities...

Franciane Conceicao Silva considers how racial relations in Brazil have affected literary history.  As the inquisition questions my existence and belittles the blackness of my body-word in the semantics of my verses, I carry on [ . . .] I carry on in search of other words, words that are still damp, voices drowned.   —Conceição Evaristo In my take on Afro-Brazilian literature in Brazil, I chose to consider first the works that had the most cultural...

A mugging reveals a man robbed of more than his money. For Edgard Hasselman Of all my acquaintances, I’d known this young man the longest. Forged on the street, in brief encounters in the cafés, our relations became increasingly friendly. At first, I took him for an invariably jovial person, indifferent to the more inconsequential things of this world, a skeptic in his own way; but before long, beneath this polite mask, I began to realize he was something of a whiner, a...

At a time when public education and a rise in the rate of literacy were changing the audience demographic in Brazil, one writer challenged the increasing classism and elitism of the literary establishment by writing for the people.  Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto (1881–1922) was born to a generation that grew up in Brazil with two important words reverberating ideas of equality among the members of society: abolition and republic. On the one hand, the demand for...

In the following three micro-stories from Aflitos by Jean Wyllys, men and women handle defeat with toxic—even murderous—reactions. The Course of Happiness The room in disarray, two used condoms strewn on the floor. The sun, which entered through the wide open window, aggravated her headache. She tasted bitterness in her mouth and heard the shower running. She quickly ran to the bathroom and came across a masculine silhouette behind the box. The still unknown person...

In these three poems, Ricardo Aleixo explores how to be a black man, how to know someone, and how to protest and resist.   Video: Ricardo Aleixo reads “My Man” in Portuguese.   My Man I am whatever you think a black man is. You almost never think about black men. I will always be what you want a black man to be. I am your black man. I’ll never be only your black man. I am my black man before I am yours. Your black man. A black man is always...

In these four poems, Christiane Sobral breaks down the door, is spat on by a dragon and deliberately burns the beans in the pot.   Black Eye I am a black renegade I refuse the mirror daily Which tries to massacre me inside Which tries to deceive me with white lies Which tries to discolor me with its rays of light I am a black renegade Determined to face the system I drum up the black without a hitch I bum-rush the stage I am a black renegade I advocate a necessary...

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 Rome as you feel/see it? Rome is a splendid mess of a city—simultaneously chaotic and soothing. Cars and scooters zip past, thimbles-full of espresso are tilted back in an instant, but the historic weight of Rome’s ruins...

Each month, Tobias Carroll shares a handful of recently released or forthcoming titles in translation that he’s especially excited about.   From Semiotext(e) | Seasonal Associate by Heike Geissler, translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire | Nonfiction | 240 pages | ISBN 9781635900361 | US$16.95 What the publisher says: “No longer able to live on the proceeds of her freelance writing and translating income, German novelist Heike Geissler takes a seasonal job at...

One tends to forget, particularly in the United States where fluency in foreign languages runs low, that Surrealism began and had it widest influence as a literary movement. Poetry, reviews, short stories, essays, novels and various forms of experimental writing were at the core of its revolutionary practice and the radical notions they promoted were embedded in the very form these texts took on. Mary Ann Caws, distinguished scholar and beloved doyenne of all things surrealist, has edited a...

Danish poet Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s Third-Millennium Heart (Action Books, 2018), translated by Katrine Øgaard Jensen, received the 2018 National Translation Award for Poetry. Ursula Andkjær Olsen will be appearing at this year’s New Literature from Europe Festival, November 27–29 in NYC.   Noor Naga (NN): One of the oldest clichés to describe the writing process posits the book as baby and the writer as mother laboring to bring it into the...