Latvian author Alise Redviņa portrays a socially awkward office worker searching for true love.   Before Lynn came into my life, I only knew how to love people from a distance, only in my mind, and it was torture to bring myself to demonstrate verbal or physical affection. My mother was convinced that I did not love her. Even the time when I gave her a bouquet of white lilies and an amber necklace I’d bought by saving my lunch money for a...

Forgetting   Listen to Arvis Viguls read his poem "Forgetting" in the original Latvian The pawn shop, where we sold your rings, was shuttered. The silver spoons that you got for your baptism have disappeared. Oblivion smells like ammonia. We scattered salt on the floor and our memories and poured chlorine—on our history. We buried you so deep, but you still come to us in our dreams and don’t say a word. Home The key jiggles in the door. The dinner table is...

Zira Naurzbayeva pays homage to an older generation of women struggling to make the transition from village communities to urban living in contemporary Kazakhstan. Listen to Zira Naurzbayeva reading an excerpt from "The Beskempir" in Russian.   The roar, filled with anger and a hot wrath, changed into a long, sad howl. My horror was quickly replaced by doubt, because that scream had sounded on a sunny summer day in Academgorodok, somewhere among the brand-new, pink...

A stranger follows an old woman through a city’s streets at night in this charged work by Tunisian master of the short story Noura Bensaad.   “What do you know?”  “Nothing.”  “What do you hear?” “Silence.” “What do you see?” “Transparency.” “Where are you going?” “Where my feet take me.” The stranger walks through the city. He comes across an old lady. In her...

Marco Avilés grapples with questions of difference and discrimination for immigrants in Peru and the US in this essay from his book No soy tu cholo, published in Peru by Debate, an imprint of Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial. An earlier version appeared originally in Ojo Publico. An American couple relocated to Lima and opened a hamburger joint in one of the city’s culinary hotspots: the formidable Calle Dante, in Surquillo, a neighborhood full of...

Two men in a devout Muslim community face drastic consequences when they publicize their relationship in this excerpt from a novel by Egyptian writer Ezzedine Fishere. Shareef can’t believe how much he loves Bahaa and how little he cares about the consequences. This love was maybe his last chance to get a good grip on his emotional security and self-confidence. But to do that, Shareef knew he had to do something else—he had to come out of the closet. The problem was that Bahaa...

A family must learn to adapt when their house takes on a life of its own in this playful homage to Julio Cortázar by Mexican author Yuri Herrera, winner of the 2016 Best Translated Book Award for Fiction.   &°°° couldn’t be happier. @°°° couldn’t be happier. The twins *~ and #~ couldn’t be happier. Roanoke, the dog, was less enthusiastic, but agreed to lie in a corner of the laundry room, which elegantly hollowed out a spot as...

A local madman in Bonanjo, Cameroon, regales a stranger with stories about his country’s history, and his own, in this short story by Congolese author and 2015 Man Booker International finalist Alain Mabanckou. “The untold want by life and land ne’er granted Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find”                             —Walt Whitman, “Leaves of Grass”  ...

Reckoning with the loss of his grandmother, a young man inquires into the nature of memory and cultural identity in this excerpt from a novel by Palestinian writer Ibtisam Azem.   Listen to Ibtisam Azem reading from "The Book of Disappearance".   It is close to midnight now and I feel so tired I cannot fall asleep. Do you remember that evening when I slept at your place in Jaffa, a month before you moved to live with my parents? I was tossing and turning and I had gone to...

Japanese poet Hiromi Itō meditates on dislocation, violence, and shifting terrains of language in this narrative poem.  It was the year the Persian Gulf War started and came to an end I came on my own to California I had no roots, no family with me, I felt like I could do no wrong One day someone bewildered me by asking What brought you here? Translating it literally, the question sounded like What transported you to this place? It wasn’t someone specific from somewhere,...

Tuhin Das reflects on a writer’s struggle against censorship in Bangladesh and the power of words and empathy in difficult times.    Listen to Tuhin Das reading "The Assassin" in Bengali.   I give you these lines For you deserve them Many years later you will come to know Someone wrote these for you one day. I write when a dark night Has gathered over Bangladesh My writer friend is afraid A mournful clock by his bed Rings out suddenly He wakes up His eyes...

In this excerpt from A Crime in Ramallah, Abbad Yahya's narrator Noor remembers his adolescence in Palestine, marked by the second intifada.  At its peak, the intifada took over my parents’ lives. They weren’t explicitly affiliated with any one faction, but they tended to support anything Islamic, and the intifada fueled the continued rise of Hamas. My older brother's wife was an activist, a leader in fact, and our family was very proud of...

Never mind how it got here. If the previous tenant left it behind thoughtlessly or on purpose, if it sneaked in through a window while we weren’t looking, if, maybe, the neighbor who hates our vinyl collection put it here to fuck us over or was it maybe the man in the blue overalls who comes monthly to check the water, the gas, the electricity meters. I’ve consulted my favorite thinkers: Wittgenstein, Cioran, Steiner, but they have no answers. All I know is there is a tiger in...

They told us to be careful, that men would do nasty things to us at the smallest slip-up.  The saying carried the sound of sewer waters, of something dirty, and dark, like forest tracks. Despite this, we let it nestle in our mouths, to have a feel of its viscous, foreign nature. In hallways, sprawled under weak light bulbs, the hard coldness of the floor tiles traveled up our buttocks, and we pressed our legs tight to conjure up a spark from our rosy pearl. We checked the limpets on...

The Argentine national food is the asado. I won’t go on about its mystery and metaphors, because that tends to be mere decoration, sometimes exaggerated, other times just rubbernecking. Really, it’s a simple custom. You cook meat on a parrilla (grill), or on a disc, or even stuck onto metal spears if the asado is out in the open. In Argentina, we eat the whole cow. Its intestines, which we call chinchulines. Its glands, or sweetbreads, which we call mollejas and are...

  I. Exile Let’s see. I grew up in Tel Aviv, in a neighborhood where almost everyone was Ashkenazi. I remember a literature teacher at school who claimed that mothers in fiction control their children through food. And indeed, my childhood friend’s Polish-Jewish mother used to say: “If they want to eat—they’ll eat. If they don’t want to eat—they’ll also eat.” Another neighborhood mother would fling open the window and yell in a...

Translator's Note: Discovering Prasanta Mridha's essay series "Lost Livelihoods" was a delight. The first one I spotted was about black market Indian mill-woven cotton saris—a flourishing business during the early eighties. I was instantly transported to my childhood. There were many products being smuggled from India, but saris are the contraband I have a direct memory about. Bangladeshi mill cottons, according to my grandmother, had not achieved the softness of...

The postwar ruins (Roofs ripped off, The charred walls.) do not resemble Skeletons, stripped by the predators— The gnawed-upon scraps of ribs, Crushed to dust cranial bones. Only that the same birds Flock to the remains As to scorched ground. 2003   To be struck in the forest by a flash of light, where there’s crunch And crackling, rustle and creaking underfoot, and the hush That brings to mind wheezes and groans, whispering and sighs, Where every measly bush is...

On the Death of Jean Vigo  The day was silent to distraction,  only the dog’s growl traveled beyond the window  undulating slightly, barely eschewing  the bellows of the echo. A person—  that’s something interior (therefore, incapable of habituating itself to Being).  To rise, get out of bed, handle a book, open a responsive door—  no more than trifles,  but these ministrations are mystical rites when  they are inspired...

Businessman from Mongolia. Irkutsk Like a raven on a stripped branch, sitting alone on the roof of    a highrise. Having lost everything, from the height of the thirteenth floor,    dangles his feet. The angels of death—the photographers, TV journalists—    have already turned on their cameras, The embassy, the other side of the sacred shore, has already been    notified. Enkh Etrech, dear one, what have you...