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Do Palestinian authors speak for their people, or for themselves? Should they write about politics, and if so, how? These dilemmas face many “resistance poets,” but especially Najwan Darwish, who burst onto the world stage in 2000 with his first collection, Kaan yaduqq al-baab al-akhiir (He Knocked the Final Door), and who had his English debut with a volume of selected poems in translation, Nothing More to Lose (NYRB Poets, 2014). Since then, he has been translated into ten...

Natasha Lehrer is a prize-winning literary translator from French to English. She recently translated Consent, Vanessa Springora’s memoir of her teenage relationship with the writer Gabriel Matzneff, which sent shock waves through France and triggered a rape investigation; and Pauline Harmange’s bestseller I Hate Men, a book-length essay that found unexpected success after an employee of the French ministry for gender equality attempted to have it banned. In this interview,...

In the essay below, translated from Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet, Gábor Schein discusses the impact Hungary's recent political developments have had on the country's literary landscape. Again and again in Eastern Europe, previous generations—with their mute, often invisible tragedies—suffered the truth of these lines by Anna Akhmatova: I, like a river, Have been turned aside by this harsh age. I am a substitute. My life has flowed Into another...

One of the great joys of oral storytelling is the intimacy often forged between a talented speaker and an audience, which can transform any room into a two-person confessional, a late-night phone call, or a conversation with the stranger at the nearest barstool. I’ve been thinking about this kind of intimacy while reading and rereading Wild Swims, the latest story collection by Danish author Dorthe Nors, translated confidently by Misha Hoekstra. Shortlisted for the International Man...

GOTO WARD SENT ROPY thef utur ecan goto hell andm eltt here huma nkin dcan goto thef utur ethe nrot   infa rawa yice land thet ribe obse rves asag laci erde cays thes amea sape rson   sinc eice land only bear ssan dand rock itca nnot care less ifli feis thri ving   when iwas five isaw atow erin ggla cier that late rdro wned amon gthe drif tice   Kári Tulinius trans. Larissa Kyzer   It was about four years ago, during the last summer I...

On a strange island uninhabited by adults, danger lurks in this story by Thórdís Helgadóttir.   Words Without Borders · Thórdís Helgadóttir reads "Hafið Gefur Okkur Börn" ("The Sea Gives Us Children") Listen to Thórdís Helgadóttir read "The Sea Gives Us Children" in the original Icelandic. There are no boats on the island. Sometimes, Guðrún and I go down to the beach, just to let the wind...

Activists volunteering in a Greek refugee camp confront uncomfortable questions about European guilt and the limits of good intentions in this excerpt from Steinunn G. Helgadóttir’s novel The Strongest Woman in the World.   Words Without Borders · Steinunn G. Helgadóttir reads from "Sterkasta kona í heimi" ("The Strongest Woman in the World") Listen to Steinunn G. Helgadóttir read from "The Strongest Woman in the World" in the original...

Day and night, light and dark, and humanity and the natural world converge in this poem by Bergrún Anna Hallsteinsdóttir.   Words Without Borders · Bergrún Anna Hallsteinsdóttir reads "Það er erfitt að reikna út áhrif næturmissis" Listen to Bergrún Anna Hallsteinsdóttir read "It's Difficult to Calculate the Influence of the Missus of the Night" in the original Icelandic. “Það...

Societal pressure and the corrosive effect of ambition are at the heart of this short story by Fríða Ísberg. We shell time from the nuts and teach it to walk: time returns to the shell. –– Paul Celan, “Corona” (Trans. Pierre Joris)   She’s in the middle of moving the first time she sees him. Or notices him is maybe a more accurate way to put it, you never know in Reykjavik, she’s probably seen him dozens of times over the...

A tenuous link between the corporeal and spiritual forms the backdrop of Haukur Ingvarsson's poem about our relationship to the changing natural world, from his 2018 collection Ecostentialism.     Words Without Borders · Haukur Ingvarsson reads part IV of "Allt Sekkur" ("Sinkings") Listen to Haukur Ingvarsson read part IV of "Sinkings" in the original Icelandic.   Words Without Borders · Haukur Ingvarsson reads part V of "Allt Sekkur"...

After his wife’s sudden departure, Böddi speaks to his brother over coffee in this story about regret, love, and family by Björn Halldórsson.   Words Without Borders · Björn Halldórsson reads "Eiginmaðurinn og bróðir hans" ("The Husband & His Brother")   Listen to Björn Halldórsson read "The Husband and His Brother" in the original Icelandic.   Jóhann was the first to stand up when the...

Eva Rún Snorradóttir illuminates lesbian parenthood and partnership in this poem from the 2018 Maístjarnan Award-winning collection Seeds that Impregnate the Darkness.   Two women sit on a little sofa in an office on the outskirts of the capital. Across from them, behind a desk, sits an elderly man in a white coat. A map showing the inner topography of the vagina is plastered on the wall behind him. They’d argued with the cab driver on the way. He’d...

Warning: This text includes descriptions of intimate partner abuse and may be disturbing to readers. In this excerpt from Thora Hjörleifsdóttir’s debut novel, Magma, a woman narrates the evolution of an abusive relationship.   Words Without Borders · ChlamydThora Hjórleifsdóttir reads “Klamydía” (“Chlamydia”) from "Kvika" (“Magma”) Listen to Thora Hjórleifsdóttir read...

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 Bucharest as you feel/see it? Bucharest, perhaps more than any other city in the former Eastern Bloc, became the playground of a megalomaniac with limited imagination and a passion for functionality and hyperbole. The...

WWB's March issue features writing from Galicia, an autonomous region of northwestern Spain that borders Portugal. Though the Galician language shares a common root with modern Portuguese, Galicia's position within Spain has led to a divergence between the two languages: today, Galician is generally written using Spanish orthography and is not officially recognized as a variant of Portuguese. The Reintegrationist movement, however, seeks to change this state of affairs by...

Each month, Tobias Carroll shares a handful of recently released or forthcoming titles in translation that he’s especially excited about. This month's selection includes translated books from the Philippines, Germany, Lebanon, Mexico, France, and Finland.   From Gaudy Boy | Ulirát: Best Contemporary Stories in Translation from the Philippines, edited by Tilde Acuña, John Bengan, Daryll Delgado, Amado Anthony G. Mendoza III, and Kristine Ong Muslim,...

WWB’s Translator Relay features an interview with a different translator every few months. The current month’s translator will choose the next interviewee, adding a different, sixth question. For March's installment, Sophie Duvernoy passed the baton to Julia Powers, who translates primarily from Portuguese into English. What is your connection to the language(s) you translate from and/or the place(s) where the books...

In recent years, a proliferation of books in translation for children and young adults has brought imaginative stories from around the world to new readers. We’re speaking with some of the extraordinary publishers who make these books possible about their experience working in this vital field. For the ninth installment in the series, we spoke with Isabel Malzoni, founder of Editora Caixote, a publisher of both print and digital children's books. WWB: How...

New York City, New York, March 23, 2021—WWB Campus, the online education program of Words Without Borders, announced today the launch of a new unit of literature from Iran. “Read Iran” presents a vibrant collection of contemporary, classroom-ready essays, poems, graphic literature, and stories from Iran’s most distinguished literary voices. Each piece of literature is available on the WWB Campus website for free, along with a rich array of contextualizing...

Ae-ran Kim’s debut novel, My Brilliant Life, elegantly translated by Chi-Young Kim, is narrated by a witty teenager with a rare disorder. Areum, as he’s called, suffers from progeria, a degenerative disease that causes accelerated aging from age two. At sixteen, he has the organs of an old man and is in precipitous physical decline. Despite his prognosis, Areum tells his story with wry humor, showing great curiosity about himself as well as the people around him, starting with...

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? I am always returning to it, reacquainting myself with the city each time, each new spring. I know that the way I view it is always through the gaze of impermanence—even when I’m there for months...

In the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown, classmates Kyra Ho and Maria Goikhberg created In Another Voice, a podcast dedicated to poetry in translation. In less than a year, they have worked with dozens of collaborators to publish five episodes of what they describe as "sound art," each featuring a poet working in a different language. In early 2021, Kyra spoke with WWB about the inspiration behind the podcast, the process of producing each polyphonic episode, and...

This month’s issue of Words Without Borders is graced by the art of Galician muralist Joseba Muruzábal, also known as Yoseba MP. The piece, Leiterofilia II, is one of a series of awe-inspiring murals collectively titled Fenómenos do rural (Rural Phenomena) and exhibited across Galicia, an autonomous community of Spain. The murals have garnered attention for their depictions of superpowerful grandmothers, women endemic to the region who have toiled and worked...

In her poetry pamphlet Treasure of the Castilian or Spanish Language, published by New Directions, Janet Hendrickson experimentally translates Sebastián de Covarrubias's four-hundred-year-old Spanish dictionary. In the essay below, Hendrickson describes the process of bringing Covarrubias's idiosyncratic entries into English, both erasing and translating his work to create a new poetic text. For several years, I translated a dictionary. It was the...

İlhan Sami Çomak is a Kurdish poet and Turkey’s longest-serving student prisoner. He has published eight collections of poetry over the past twenty-seven years of his sentence. His latest book, Geldim Sana, won the prestigious Sennur Sezer prize. İlhan was arrested while studying geography in Istanbul in 1994 and sentenced to life in prison for the alleged crime of separatism. He maintains his innocence. In 2020, PEN Norway began to campaign for his...