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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...

"An Apocryphal History of the Discovery of Migration, or The Sacrifice of the Pfeilstörchenn" is one of four winning poems selected by the editors and guest judge Mónica de la Torre for the Words Without Borders—Academy of Americans Poets Poems in Translation Contest. Listen to Jacob Rogers read his translation of Galician poet Alba Cid's "An Apocryphal History of the Discovery of Migration, or The Sacrifice of the Pfeilstörchen." Listen to Alba Cid read...

“Roommate, Woman” by Lee Young-ju, translated from Korean by Jae Kim, was one of four winners of WWB’s poetry in translation contest, presented in partnership with the Academy of American Poets. The winning selections will be published in Poem-a-Day and in Words Without Borders every Saturday this September. Join WWB and AAP on September 17 for “World in Verse: A Multilingual Poetry Reading,” a celebration of the contest winners...

Wang Anyi’s novel Fu Ping is a coming-of-age tale set in the midst of the turbulent years of China’s Cultural Revolution. Its narrative arc—that of a young girl who learns to challenge convention and follow her heart—may not be wholly original, but its presentation, full of detours and side stories, makes for a memorable, smart study of the lives of ordinary people in Shanghai in the 1960s, during the second decade of Communist rule in China. Wang’s frequent...

“Tomboy” by Claudia Masin, translated from Spanish by Robin Myers, was one of four winners of WWB’s poetry in translation contest, presented in partnership with the Academy of American Poets. The winning selections will be published in Poem-a-Day and in Words Without Borders every Saturday this September. Join WWB and AAP on September 17 for “World in Verse: A Multilingual Poetry Reading,” a celebration of the contest winners at...

“Cloth Birds” by Dorothy Tse, translated from Chinese by Natascha Bruce, was one of four winners of WWB’s poetry in translation contest, presented in partnership with the Academy of American Poets. The winning selections will be published in Poem-a-Day and in Words Without Borders every Saturday this September. Join WWB and AAP on September 17 for “World in Verse: A Multilingual Poetry Reading,” a celebration of the contest...

  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 Turin as you feel/see it? Torino wears an elegant three-piece suit of the most beautiful fabric but it’s frayed at the cuffs, missing some buttons. It hasn’t bathed in days, nails and beard unkempt, comfortable in...

  "Cloth Birds" is one of four winning poems selected by Mónica de la Torre for the Words Without Borders—Academy of Americans Poets Poems in Translation Contest.   Listen to Natascha Bruce read her translation of Hong Kong poet Dorothy Tse's "Cloth Birds."     Listen to Dorothy Tse read "Cloth Birds” in the original Cantonese.   There's no cloth hawker in the bazaar  willing to make dirty deals  with the...

Damion Searls won the 2019 Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize for his monumental translation of Uwe Johnson’s Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl (New York Review Books). Published in Germany in four volumes between 1970 and 1983 and in Searls’s translation in two volumes, the book records, in exquisite detail, the daily life of the title character, a German émigré living in New York in 1967 and 1968. She shares...

We are pleased to announce that Edith Grossman will receive the 2019 Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature. “In a career that spans over half a century—translating, teaching the art of translation, and advocating for the value of translators—Edith has truly shown us all why translation matters,” said Words Without Borders Board Chair Samantha Schnee. Edith Grossman has earned renown as one of the most distinguished literary translators of our...

This year, we partnered with the Academy of American Poets for our first ever poetry in translation contest. We received 717 poems from 282 poets from 87 countries translated from 55 languages. The four winning poems will be published in Words Without Borders and the Academy of American Poets’s “Poem-a-Day” throughout the month of September. Published alongside the poems will be the original language texts and recordings of both the original poems and their...

This Norwegian edition of Words Without Borders has been put together to coincide with Norway being Guest of Honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2019. And that honor could not have come at a better time for Norway, when there are so many good books being published and more translation rights being sold than ever before. Norwegian literature just seems to go from strength to strength. And what an honor to be asked to make this selection. And what good fortune to be offered a place in the...

In this extract from Monica Isakstuen's novel, a wife and mother of three struggles to contain her fury. The story of us, how did it go again. You say: Why do you think I left work so early that day, why do you think I felt such a sudden urge to read up on ginkgo trees and primeval forests, why do you think I got into my car and drove to the neighboring town when I could just as easily have borrowed what I needed from a library closer to home, why do you think I visited your library,...

Andreas Tjernshaugen details the new industrialized whaling of the nineteenth century and early warnings that the industry might lead to extinction of its quarry. ​  Early one Sunday morning in October 1865, a fisherman called Olof Larsson was hunting small game among the smooth rocks on the coast at Askimsviken outside Gothenburg, Sweden. There he spied something unusual sticking up out of the sea some forty meters from the shoreline. At first he thought it was...

My Norwegian ex-boyfriend always accused me of selective comprehension. If he said something I didn’t want to hear, he claimed, I would forget the vocabulary necessary to translate it. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps that is the chief luxury of socializing in a foreign language: it’s easier to pretend ignorance. We were living together in Oslo, on his turf and in his mother tongue. I’d argue that I was being extra cautious in order to avoid a potentially...

Roskva Koritzinsky's short story portrays a young dancer's alienation in a Stockholm gripped by a lurid trial. At the age of nineteen, I went to Stockholm to attend the Ballet Academy. It was around that time when people had started doubting whether or not Sture Bergwall had really committed the murders he had been accused of. The TV reporters followed him from crime scene to crime scene. He went around in a daze, bug-eyed behind thick lenses and looking like a dying giant insect...

Jan Kristoffer Dale's short story follows a weekend trip derailed by an unexpected participant. They picked him up on Friday afternoon. Kenneth had thought it was only going to be Terje, Tor André, and him on the trip to the cabin in Kverve. But sitting down in the backseat, he saw that Tor André had brought along his workmate, Espen. He looked a few years younger than Kenneth and the others, and dressed differently too. Not to mention his posh, Eastern Norwegian way of...

On Christmas Eve, a bus driver transports a fragile passenger in Levi Henriksen's short story.   Listen to Levi Henriksen read "All the Way Home" in the original Norwegian.   I don’t know how she managed to get out, but suddenly she’s just standing there. Again I am struck by how well she has aged. Every time I look at myself in the mirror, my face looks like a photograph of drought-stricken flatlands in Africa, where the earth is full of cracks and nothing...

In this extract from Linn Strømsborg’s novel, a woman just out of graduate school moves back in with her parents and resumes her adolescence. Høybråtenveien 23 K It starts again, this feeling in the pit of my stomach, as soon as I’m alone in my old room at home: the feeling that time is standing still, that I’m the same as when I was eleven and fifteen and twenty-four. I lie on my bed, then get up and walk around a bit. I look out of the window...

In an excerpt from Mona Høvring's novel, two sisters gingerly renegotiate their relationship after one's breakdown. Martha had managed to convince Father to drive her all the way up to the hotel. Or perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps Father was the one who suggested it. He loved going wherever the wind blew or visiting places where he’d heard there was a grand old bureau, a rustic writing desk or some antique decorations.     When we were children,...

This year, we partnered with the Academy of American Poets for our first ever poetry in translation contest. We received 717 poems from 282 poets from 87 countries translated from 55 languages. We are thrilled to announce the four winning poems, selected by the editors of WWB and guest judge Mónica de la Torre. The winning selections will be published in Poem-a-Day and in Words Without Borders every Saturday this September....

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 Lisbon/Orkney as you feel/see it? They’re very different places but for me their mood is the same: calm. It’s about vistas, water, and changing light.   What is your most heartbreaking memory in this city? Leaving...

It is 2019 and Nabarun Bhattacharya’s  Harbart reappears in a fresh English translation by Sunandini Banerjee. Since its initial publication, the novel has repeatedly returned in English like the future that is imagined by the book’s own ending. The afterlife of this spectral and political novel maintains its uncanniness. This is the third translation of the book into English (after Jyoti Panjwani’s in Sahitya Akademi’s 2004 edition and Arunava...

There will be a screening of The Miracle of the Little Prince at the Film Forum in New York City on Friday, August 30, followed by a Q&A with Marjoleine Boonstra.    “What planet have I landed on?” asked the prince.  “Planet Earth,” replied the snake. “This is Africa.”  “Aha. But is there no one living on this planet Earth?” “We’re in the desert. Nobody lives here. But planet Earth is...

Each month, Tobias Carroll shares a handful of recently released or forthcoming titles in translation that he’s especially excited about.   From Open Letter | The Translator’s Bride by João Reis, translated from the Portuguese by the author | Fiction | 118 pages | ISBN 9781940953 | US$14.95 What the publisher says: “Darkly funny, filled with acidic observations and told with a frenetic pace, The Translator’s...