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A nameless town grows into a mythic city in this excerpt from Dina Salústio's novel Veromar. The residents of See-the-Sea, most of whom hailed from distant places, made friends easily and had no qualms about baring their lives to anyone who passed by. They particularly liked telling stories about the place, as though sharing its secrets imbued their words with new meaning, bridged distances, and, most importantly, cast tired objects and situations in a fantastical new...

Far from the sun of my home running to Africa running to Europe running to America running across the map running across the globe —Corsino Fortes, “Recode d’Umbertona” (Message to Umbertona)1 in Pão & Fonema (Bread & Phoneme), 1974 The Cabo Verde islands have been a historically important piece on the geopolitical chessboard, variously employed as a map reference point, a supply port, and a link between continents and coasts. The Cabo Verdean...

Filinto Elísio meditates on the border between existence and nonexistence in this short poem. A cry, at birth, and, then, only silence. Inert stone, atomic, nuclear before life. © Filinto Elísio. Translation © 2020 by Jethro Soutar. All rights reserved.

Camões Prize–winner Germano Almeida traces the formation of a new Cabo Verdean identity in this short essay. It was when I was in grade four that I learned that, in addition to being a Cabo Verdean from Boa Vista, I was also a Portuguese from Portugal. It was an extremely gratifying discovery. In the first place because we had just been learning that Portugal possessed numerous immense lands both within and beyond the seas, in Africa and in other parts of the world, and that...

Camões Prize–winner Germano Almeida reflects on his childhood discovery of the world beyond the Cabo Verdean islands in this short essay. In the days of my childhood we used to go and play around the edges of a grave that lay isolated nearly two kilometers from the small town of Sal Rei on the island of Boa Vista, and which we called the “Maria de Patingole” cemetery. We already knew how to read Portuguese relatively well, but this business of “Maria de...

In this poem, Camões Prize–winner Arménio Vieira writes of drifting and belonging in a foreign land. For Ovídio Martins and Osvaldo Osório In point of fact, Lisbon was not waiting there                                                   [to greet us. There we stood, at last, shivering, adrift in the middle of Portela with its...

In this poem, Camões Prize–winner Arménio Vieira imagines a different future for the Esplanada Morabeza in the capital of Cabo Verde. The Esplanada in Praia, on Santiago de                                             [Cabo Verde on January 29th, 1971 is a sketch for a hydrogen bomb with no frequency calculations it’s a moon-bound      ...

Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father” inspires childhood dreams and adult reflections in this poem by Filinto Elísio. We talked about “the first man” to walk on the moon. And that the music played on Apollo 11, it turned out, was “Georgia On My Mind,” sung by Ray Charles. Nha Gina, who worked for us as a housemaid, refused to believe, looking up at the moon, that the Americans had finally gotten there. This was an argument she'd picked...

A woman wanders through an apocalyptic dream in this short story by Fátima Bettencourt. A dream: From the window of my room, I watched the great massacre that I believed was the Last Judgment. Everything around me was being destroyed. Works of art emerged from the ruins. I took one, but it ended up falling and shattering into pieces. From my window, protected by the glass, I looked on, astounded, as the greatest massacre this planet had ever seen took place. Without any further...

A bride, a groom, a priest and his mule: in this short story by Luís Romano, tragic events on the eve of a wedding spell the beginning of one man’s undoing. Words without Borders · Maria Teresa Assunção reads "Old Isidoro" by Luís Romano   Nowadays, it’s as if he were doing penitence here on Earth! They say it’s because of a priest, who excommunicated the man in the early hours before sunrise, when the priest’s mule took...

A poet considers anonymity and solidarity in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy.   Maria Borio reads "From the Red Desert" in the original Italian. In the red desert I’m a single dot: my size today, a dot without length, width, depth, fallen from the sky’s highest point on an earth filled with silence and suddenly pure. I write to you from the red zone, and here’s the truth: the borders are drawn, the red has filled the space without entry or exit, and...

Amanda Michalopoulou's latest novel, God's Wife, was published by Dalkey Archive Press in Patricia Felisa Barbeito's translation late last year. In today's interview, the author and translator discuss the novel's themes of isolation in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, its exploration of gender dynamics and rebellion, and their own collaborative relationship. Patricia Felisa Barbeito (PFB): God’s Wife came out in Greece in 2014, during the Greek...

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 Annaba as you feel/see it? Annaba is steadfast under palpitations, she is definitely a woman; a seaport city leaning in each night to a wardrobe of embroidered gowns. The French called her Bône, the Romans reigned over her...

Felipe Restrepo Pombo reflects on his quiet days of COVID-19 quarantine in Bogotá, normally one of the most bustling cities in Latin America. “If I was in hell I would always feel I had a chance of escaping.”  —Francis Bacon, in an interview with David Sylvester A few months ago I was invited to teach a course at a university in Indianapolis. After class I headed for the outskirts of that small American city, where I would be spending the first night...

María Fernanda Ampuero's debut story collection, Cockfight, translated by Frances Riddle and out next week from the Feminist Press, exposes the violence and cruelty underlying domestic life in Latin America and throughout the world. In “Auction,” the first story in the collection, a woman is kidnapped and put up for sale at a black-market auction. There are roosters around here somewhere. Kneeling, with my head down and covered by a...

Kosef J is an inmate at an unnamed Romanian prison, where he serves his sentence for an undisclosed crime. One day, after failing to give him breakfast, and later to drag him to the fields to work with the rest of the prisoners, a guard casually mentions that as of that morning, Kosef J is free. Yet the wary inmate knows nothing of the world beyond the high prison walls, having spent the better part of his adult life behind bars. Instead of marching out the front gate, Mr. K claims he...

Rubem Fonseca, one of Brazil's most beloved contemporary writers, died in Rio de Janeiro on April 15, 2020. His translator and friend, Clifford Landers, remembers him in this short tribute.  I will leave to literary critics an appraisal of Rubem Fonseca the author and focus on Rubem Fonseca the man and his impact on my life as a translator. Private yet outgoing to his intimates, a polymath endowed with blazing intelligence, an incisive sense of humor, and an affability...

A boy explains the coronavirus to his younger brother with the help of a dodgeball metaphor in this children's story by Maria Parr. “Corona is a ball with spikes,” said Oskar. He was in the lower bunk, jabbering away as usual. “Corona is a virus,” I said. “It looks like a ball with spikes on,” said Oskar. “Yes, but it’s a virus,” I said, feeling annoyed. I wondered if all seven-year-olds are that stupid, or if it’s just...

This year, World Book Day comes at a difficult moment for book publishers, as well as for writers, translators, and readers. We thought we’d take the occasion to trumpet some of our favorite indie publishers of translated literature and to give you an excuse to treat yourself to a beautiful new book (as if you ever need an excuse for books). We asked eleven nonprofit small presses we love to recommend a book in translation from their catalog. We encourage you to support...

To celebrate National Poetry Month and the #shelterinpoems movement this April, Words Without Borders is leaning into poetry's ability to fill the void of isolation. Idra Novey, Forrest Gander, Emily Wilson, Sholeh Wolpé, and Valzhyna Mort read you their own work or other favorites from the WWB archive in an effort to forge connection amid the solitude of social distancing. Check back each day throughout the week for an additional video reading from one of our...

Each month, Tobias Carroll shares a handful of recently released or forthcoming titles in translation that he’s especially excited about.    From Seven Stories Press | No-Signal Area by Robert Perišić, translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać | Fiction | 480 pages | ISBN 9781609809706 | US$22.95 What the publisher says: “At once a savage send-up of our current political moment and a rueful elegy for what might have been, this sprawling...

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 Paris as you feel/see it? It’s very strange to think of Paris now, to think of anywhere, really—elsewhere is firmly in the category of before. The Paris I grew to love isn’t gone, but right now it is shutting down,...

Sonnet Mondal meditates on the lockdown in India and its possible aftermath in three short poems.   Lockdown Where roads do not unfurl the need for limits breathes through dry tears. Where Solitude takes wing  for the falling Sun amnesia shrouds a generation. Caged, wingless, a bird waits for the last dusk as a forsaken boatman rows for food in the twilight.     The Answer A dry land seeking liberty to wet itself wonders about the quiet after this storm. The...

We're all familiar with the classic tale of Aladdin, which has been retold countless times since its first print publication in 1712 (most recently, in Disney's top-grossing 2019 film remake). Despite Aladdin's popularity, few people are aware of the story's origins, the encounters between cultures, languages, and storytellers that shaped it into the tale we know today. In this essay, Paulo Lemos Horta, author of Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights and...

This month’s feature brings together excerpts from three Arabic young adult novels in which young women defy expectations set by their families, society—and even themselves. While Arabic publishing has historically focused on literature for adults and young children, recent years have seen an increasing number of titles aimed at a young adult readership. “Since the middle of the last decade . . . tens of innovative novels for tweens and teens have started appearing...