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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...

Jokha Alharthi’s Man Booker International Prize–winning Celestial Bodies, translated from Arabic by Marilyn Booth and out this month with Catapult, follows the stories of three sisters—Mayya, Asma, and Khawla—and their families in a rapidly changing Oman. In the excerpt below, Mayya, who has just given birth, is cared for by her mother, Salima, as she receives her first visitors, including Zarifa, a former slave who is now in charge of Mayya and her husband’s...

Each month, Tobias Carroll shares a handful of recently released or forthcoming titles in translation that he’s especially excited about.   From Other Press | I Will Never See the World Again: The Memoir of an Imprisoned Writer by Ahmet Altan, translated from the Turkish by Yasemin Çongar | Nonfiction | 224 pages | ISBN 9781635420005 | US$15.99 What the publisher says: “Confined in a cell four meters long, imprisoned on absurd, Kafkaesque charges, novelist Ahmet...

Ours is an age when criticism often celebrates fat-free sentences, restrained ironies, and hope that’s caged in self-awareness—novels that walk before us like sunken-cheeked, unsmiling catwalk models. Huzama Habayeb’s Velvet, by contrast, is unafraid of its fullness: its gold jewelry, its fleshy abundance, its black velvet, and most of all, its melancholic and romantic lyrics, as sung by legendary Lebanese diva Fairouz. Velvet is a novel crammed with love and loss as it...

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 New York City as you feel/see it? This city/every mood/every tongue/every dark and light, every between. Gripping the wrist of the grisly wrenching past, abandonment, and also lights and noise, artifacts, the glitter and promise,...

In the winter of 2003, I was on a first-ever visit to Beirut. I’d come from Cairo, where I was living, and was a bit stunned by the cold. So it happened that I found myself in a shop, trying to buy a heavy sweater. I don’t remember what I said to the proprietor, although I’m sure I must’ve spoken in a heavy Egyptian Arabic. In my memory, he raised a finger and pointed at me, laughing: “Adel Emam!” Although I’m approximately the same height as the...

India’s vast and varied story traditions continue to exist orally across languages, cultures, and religions. Folktales featuring village deities and spirits, riddles that reference local flora and fauna, songs of specific marriage customs and rituals sit side by side with the grand narratives of pan-Indian epics and myths. But even the epics are brought down to earth, as it were, when we are told that the god-human heroes and heroines rested a while under the village tree during their...

Translated by Noor Zaheer, this folktale of treachery and thwarted romance—from the Kunju Pass Area in Lahoul, eastern Himachal Pradesh—explores the question of whether love can survive after death.   Outside a cave, three men crouched around a fire on that fateful night. Winter is severe in the upper Himalayas, but nowhere is it as harsh as when you have crossed the Great Himalayan ranges and reached Lahoul. Dotted with fields of potatoes and maize in the summer, when...

In this short story by Najwa bin Shatwan, a Daesh attack forces George to flee the Christian cemetery and take refuge among the Muslim dead of Benghazi. It was customary for the dead of Benghazi to visit their families whenever they pleased, sticking their noses into every affair—big or small—and, if a revolution were to break out, they would join its ranks, having no qualms about dying twice over. Such was, without fail, the habit of all the dead in Benghazi: those whose...

A young woman finds love where she least expects it in this folktale from the Kinnaur Valley, translated by Noor Zaheer.   This story was narrated by an old man of the village to a group of young people to make them understand that all living beings are inherently equal. “On the way to Rekong Peo, if you take a diversion off the road onto the goat path and climb uphill for about five miles, you arrive at an unexpected expanse of blue. Still, clear, shining: this...

A side hustle among a group of quarry laborers balloons into a bureaucracy of shocking proportions in this short story by Muhammad Mustajab. Whatever else the case, we wish ill on no man, not even those who give us orders, and I would like to begin here by saluting, enthusiastically, any person who is given the chance to do good and takes it. Good being, in its fullest sense, much like these far-flung red wastes studded with rocks and stones and camel thorn, in drifts of which lie...

Tradition and modernity clash in this folktale from the Spiti region of the Himalayas, translated by Noor Zaheer.   There is a village named Tabo in the Spiti region of the Himalayas. The village is shaped like a cup, a huge tract of flat land surrounded by high, rocky mountains. The Spiti river cuts this cup-shaped land in half, gushing and rushing for a couple of miles before slowing down to the leisurely gait of a pregnant woman as it reaches the flatlands. The Tabo monastery,...

This witty, irreverent poem by Ahmed Fouad Negm takes aim at the corruption and hypocrisy of people in power. Upsidedownistan here.  Your oldies but goodies station. Coming to you from Cairo and Kordofan From every Arab country and Japan From Venezuela and even Iran And any country open to the rule Of tourism à l’américaine.   Tumblestan here.  Your good ole radio station. We present to you, in every language Plays and movies and all the arts And press...

In an excerpt from his twelfth-century taxonomy of morons, Ibn al-Jawzi proves that idiocy is always a current event. The terms “stupidity” and “nitwittedness” refer to miscalculation in the means and ways to a goal, although with good intentions, as opposed to “insanity,” which refers to a fault in both the means and in the intentions. For the stupid person has good intentions, but the manner he goes about achieving them is rotten, and his plans to...

Despite her family’s disapproval, a young woman pursues her career ambitions and resists monogamy in this piece by Sahar Mandour.   I was twenty-two and my husband, Yussef, was five years older than me. I always liked his first name but not his last, Bazaza, which made me Mrs. Bazaza. Me? Mrs. Bazaza? His house on the waterfront used to overlook the Raouche rock before someone stuck a building right in the middle of the view. He also had a ton of money before inflation turned...

In this short play by Wajdi al-Ahdal, the colonel’s wedding night is hijacked by an assassination attempt and a case—or two—of mistaken identity.   Translator’s Note: Wajdi al-Ahdal’s The Colonel's Wedding won first prize for scriptwriting at the Ninth Arab Youth Theatre Festival in Alexandria in 1997. At that time, its central trope—the struggle to consummate, or to avoid consummating, a marriage between two characters who are...

Eliane Brum’s The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil’s Everyday Insurrections, translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty and forthcoming with Graywolf Press, features the acclaimed investigative journalist’s reporting on Brazil’s most marginalized groups. In “The Middle People,” she recounts the history and precarious present of an Amazon forest community.   The Middle People Raimundo Nonato da Silva doesn’t know...

"Tomboy" 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 Robin Myers read her translation of Argentinean poet Claudia Masin's "Tomboy" Listen to Claudia Masin read "Tomboy” in the original Argentinean Spanish. I don’t understand how we walk around the world as if there were a single way for each of us, a kind of life stamped into us like...

We spoke with Brazilian photographer Eliseu Cavalcante—whose work focuses on marginalized groups, environmental issues, and social change—about his photo series documenting life in the Amazon, the recent Amazon rainforest fires, and the possibility of effecting change through art.   Words Without Borders: Eliseu, you’re originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and though you’ve lived in New York for a over a decade now, your work as a photographer has largely...

Welcome to America is a sad lament, a tale of a family in private crisis told by an eleven-year-old girl who has decided to stop talking. Reluctance to interact with other people seems to run in the family: her brother nails his bedroom door shut and urinates into bottles so that he can be undisturbed in his room, alone with his music. Their father is dead, as we soon discover, but mourning is only part of the reason for the children’s behavior. We gradually piece together a...

In the “Best of the B-Sides” series, critic and bookseller Lori Feathers recommends a new work in translation along with a number of backlist (“B-Side”) titles that you might have missed.  Confidence in our ability to exercise free will is the cornerstone of personal happiness and emotional well-being. But the power to direct how our life will unfold, at least in an absolute sense, is illusory. Call it what you like—fate, destiny,...

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? Athens is full of energies and contrasts. For ancient Greeks, “hope” (elpis) was a mixed emotion rather than a purely optimistic one: “anxiety about the future” as well as the...

"Pillow" is a poem by 2019 Poems in Translation Contest winner Lee Young-ju, translated into English by Jae Kim. Listen to Lee Young-ju read her poem "Pillow" in the original Korean. Listen to Jae Kim read the English translation of Lee Young-ju's "Pillow." Down in this sewer, have I become my friend? By the manmade waters where my school principal killed himself, geese cried. On the other side of the barbed-wire fence is a large cloudchimney. I put on a straw hat I...

"Roommate, Woman" is one of four winning poems selected by Mónica de la Torre for the Words Without Borders—Academy of Americans Poets Poem-in-Translation Contest. Listen to Lee Young-ju read her poem "Roommate, Woman." in the original Korean. Listen to Jae Kim read the English translation of Lee Young-ju's "Roommate, Woman." On waking, I see my body has been rearranged. I’m reminded of the tongue you, having cried so much, dropped under the cypress...

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 | When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back: Carl’s Book by Naja Marie Aidt, translated from the Danish by Denise Newman | Memoir | 152 pages | ISBN 9781566895606 | US$22.95 What the publisher says: “In March 2015, Naja Marie Aidt’s twenty-five-year-old son, Carl, died in a tragic accident....