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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 Antananarivo as you feel/see it? Antananarivo is a city filled with life and activity, a place where the crowd unfolds, recognizes itself, asserts itself some days until it invades and envelops all the roads and sidewalks. It is a...

This month, WWB took a look back at some of the important writing on race and racism to be found in the magazine's archives. In the wake of 2020's racist violence, and subsequent organizing by the Black Lives Matter movement and others to combat white supremacy, literary magazines and publishers everywhere have, to differing degrees, made efforts to publish more Black writers. But as some Black writers and editors have pointed out, it is equally as important that we evaluate...

Institutional transformation often begins at the grassroots, argues translator and editor Aaron Robertson as he considers a roadmap for bringing Black writers and translators into an industry in which they are statistically underrepresented. Over the last year and a half, since the publication of my first translated book, I’ve felt it necessary to preface my conversations with aspiring translators by telling them that I know less than they think. This isn’t necessarily a...

Drawing on examples from the US and Haiti, author Évelyne Trouillot considers how Anglophone publishers can better represent the complex and diverse contexts from which Black authors around the world are published in translation.   In 1979, Octavia Butler’s widely read novel Kindred, was published in the United States. The novel tells of a young African-American woman living in California in 1976 who travels back and forth through time. Toggling between 1976 and the years...

Sandra Tamele, publisher of Mozambique-based Editora Trinta Nove Zero, argues that better publishing Black writers from around the world begins with increased support, locally and globally, for Africa-based literary projects. It’s amazing how simple events can trigger a turning point in one’s journey. Mine was a few years ago when, while listening to the radio at work, I came across a podcast about Ann Morgan, a British author who went on a quest to find and read books from...

On January 20 and 21, the UK-based theater company Foreign Affairs will present a digital showcase of six plays translated by its first-ever virtual cohort of theater translation mentees. In today's essay, Foreign Affairs Co-Artistic Director Trine Garrett reflects on how the mentorship program has evolved since its launch in 2016 and what theater translation looks like in the age of COVID-19. Rehearsals are just wrapping up for Foreign Affairs' upcoming Theatre...

In November of 1922, the young poet Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899–1976) was arrested in Calcutta, India, accused of sedition by the British government. He had recently published the poem “Anandomoyee Agomone” (“The Coming of Anandamoyee”), invoking the Hindu goddess Durga, who is beloved and celebrated with particular verve across Bengal. In the poem, however, Nazrul summons the warrior goddess to fight against imperial rule, denouncing the “butchery” of...

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 January's installment, Jack Jung passed the baton to Sophie Duvernoy, who translates from German to English. What is your connection to the language(s) you translate from and/or the place(s) where the books you translate are written? I grew up...

Communications Internship | Words Without Borders Remote Part-Time Words Without Borders (WWB) seeks a creative and highly organized intern for the spring of 2021. Working closely with our communications and editorial teams, the intern will assist in the promotion of our monthly online magazine of international literature. They may also have opportunities to assist in our public events, education programs, and editorial work. This is a great opportunity for an individual...

Why is the film industry suddenly concerned about the whitewashing of Asian stories? In this essay, Yuma Terada, the cofounder of Tokyo- and New York-based literary agency and production company CTB Inc., reflects on the probable cause of Hollywood's newfound interest in fidelity to Asian source texts. At the interview’s conclusion, the journalist asks abruptly what I think about the “problem of whitewashing of Asian stories” in Hollywood....

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 Sharjah as you feel/see it? I am deeply connected to the tempo and pulse of the city, where the rhythms of the sea, desert, and urbanity create a diversity of life and culture. Residents from all continents can be found here....

Salvadoran author Claudia Hernández's first novel, Slash and Burn, is out this week with And Other Stories. Translated by Julia Sanches, the book follows several women through a brutal war and its lingering traumas. In the excerpt below, a woman is given an opportunity that could lift her family out of poverty. She’s never been to Paris. She knows it’s the capital of a very old country because it was a question on a test in her early days of...

Our annual January archive issue this year comes at a moment of urgency: in two weeks, the US’s first Black vice president, Kamala Harris, will be sworn in, after four years of divisive politics in which racism figured heavily. Less than a year after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor led to renewed Black Lives Matter protests and a reckoning across American society, literary publishers—including this magazine—are seeking to address the deficit of Black writers...

Each month, Tobias Carroll shares a handful of recently released or forthcoming titles in translation that he’s especially excited about.    From Tilted Axis Press | Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge, translated from the Chinese by Jeremy Tiang | Fiction | 320 pages | ISBN 9781911284444 | UK£9.99 What the publisher says: “In the city of Yong’an, an amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts. These...

As the year comes to an end, our staff, contributors, and board members share their favorite international reads from 2020 and the titles they’re looking forward to in 2021.   Eric M. B. Becker Editor This year, I'm keeping my recommendations to the Southern Cone, perhaps out of the wistful recollection that as we face gray, blustery afternoons here in New York, warmer climes hold elsewhere. Daniel Tunnard's Escapes (Unnamed Press), set in a world in...

Much like the books he published, John O’Brien (1945–2020) was a complicated man. He was an idealist who devoted his life to a self-described “quixotic enterprise” of creating a repository for strange, innovative fiction from around the world—fiction that would stay in print forever, for future generations of readers to discover and wonder at. John had impeccable taste in literature. He especially liked French and Eastern European literature that toyed 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 Oxford as you feel/see it? Oxford is made up of large slabs of sunlit stone and broad tree-lined streets leading to narrow cobbled passageways cluttered with bicycles. It is dotted with Saxon churches and Gothic towers whose bells...

We were delighted, and intrigued, when artist Yasmeen Abdullah told us her painting “The Butterfly Effect,” the cover art for our December 2020 issue of writing by Sudanese women, was based on Mahmoud Darwish’s poem of the same name. The artist kindly answered our questions over email. WWB: When did you first read Darwish's poem "The Butterfly Effect"? Yasmeen Abdullah (YA): Five years ago I started to read Darwish's poetry. “The Butterfly...

As we approach the end of 2020, we’ve been speaking with translators, critics, publishers, writers, and booksellers about outstanding books in translation that readers might have missed this year. Read on for recommendations from Daniel Hahn, Maya Jaggi, Meng Jin, Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, Boyd Tonkin, and more.   In the City a Mirror Wandering By Upendranath Ashk, tr. from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell Recommended by Jeffrey Angles Like the...

Doek! Literary Magazine, Namibia’s first online literary magazine, was named Brittle Paper's Literary Platform of the Year on Monday. It was founded in 2019 by Rémy Ngamije and Mutaleni Nadimi to center work by writers across Africa and its diaspora, with a focus on contemporary Namibian literature. The writing and visual art collected in Doek! defy categorization, bursting open geographic and linguistic boundaries as well as delineations...

Words Without Borders is pleased to announce the election of Tara Parsons, Associate Publisher of the HarperOne Group, to its Board of Directors.  "Tara's expertise and leadership in the field of international publishing will make her an invaluable member of the Words Without Borders Board of Directors," said Samantha Schnee, Chair. "We are delighted to welcome her to WWB." Tara Parsons was named Associate Publisher of the HarperOne Group at HarperCollins Publishers in...

There is a legend about a Persian traveler who comes to an Afghan village in search of a good poet. First, he visits the shopkeeper who tells him he is a poet but that the farmer is a better one; then the farmer sends the visitor to the tailor, assuring him that he is really the best poet in the village. And on it goes. Poetry, memoir, fables, proverbs, and stories sit at the heart of Afghanistan, a nation founded by a poet, Ahmad Shah Abdali (also known as Ahmad Shah Durrani), and the...

Tragedy strikes a newsroom in Kabul as a journalist scrambles for safety in Sharifa Pasun’s short story set during the Soviet-Afghan War. She opened the wardrobe, took out her skirt and suit jacket, and shut the doors. After getting dressed, she looked at herself in the three-piece mirror, brushed her hair, and looked again. She admired herself, she thought she looked really good. Her long hair touched her shoulders, shining as the afternoon sun caught it through the window. There...

Presumed dead, a man returns from war to find that his wife and daughter have moved on with their lives in this short story by Batool Heydari.   He called, but nobody answered. He tried the number again and again. He then kept calling the whole day, but all he could hear was the sound of the phone ringing. He could not remember the last time she stayed out of the house for this long. He speculated. Maybe Khurshid is ill. Maybe something has caused her to stop her answering the...

A young man makes his way to work in Kabul, preoccupied with the thought of his own death, in this story by Maryam Mahjube.  Sir, please turn the air conditioner on. If he says this out loud, everyone around him will scold him. Or they will ridicule him about how cold the weather is at this time of year, happy that space is tight in the car and they have to sit close to one another. As the number of vehicles grows and traffic gets worse, his sweat increases and a warmth spreads from...