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...

When her students refuse to learn Kazakh at school, a young teacher loses her job and is thrown into financial difficulty in this short story by Zaure Batayeva.   My heart leapt to the top of my head. On the announcement board in the entrance hall, the principal of the school, Blizhneva, had hung a piece of paper. Shynar Sagyman is dismissed from her position as teacher of Kazakh and ethnic literature for violating labor regulations. In the middle of May? The eleventh-grade boys...

During the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a Kazakh university student in Moscow takes up work as a nanny to support herself in this excerpt from a novel by Aigul Kemelbayeva.   In September of my last year at the university, political reforms transformed the whole world. I did not immediately understand the problem, sudden as it was. The seventy-year-old fortress of the Soviet Union cracked. Each of its fifteen wings collapsed, and this resulted unavoidably in economic...

In this excerpt from the novel Shaheb Bibi Golam, Bimal Mitra examines issues of family loyalty, conflict, and guilt when a young man enables an older woman’s alcohol addiction.   It was late. Who knew where Bhootnath could buy liquor at this hour? He had no idea where the shop was. There was just one place where he might get it. Perhaps Jaba’s family cook was there right now, squatting on a brick by the road with an earthen pot, and singing his favorite devotional,...

Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s short story details a young boy’s friendship with a prostitute in a poor Calcutta neighborhood.   We lived in a single room in Hari-babu’s bamboo-and-tile house. Several families lived in the same building. One room was occupied by a bangle-seller and his wife. His name was Keshab. I addressed him as Keshab-kaka. As soon as water flowed in the pipes every morning, everyone would line up with their pitchers and bowls and cans and...

In a chance encounter in a train station, a divorced couple forced into proximity and reflection on their marriage in this story by Subodh Ghosh.   What train is this, so late at night?  The breathless, tired train rolls into Rajpur Junction in the dark, misty rain, against the cold wind, and rests at the platform. The train has probably journeyed from the banks of the Ganga. One can still hear the whistle of the steamer on the river, not so far away, the same steamer that has...

In this excerpt from a novel by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, a man visits Calcutta after his father’s death and seeks out a courtesan he knows who has fallen on hard times.   Devdas was exasperated after spending six months at home following his father's death. No pleasures, no peace, an entirely tedious existence. To add to it all, constant thoughts of Parvati, whom he remembered no matter what he was doing. And his brother, Dwijdas, and Dwijdas's devoted wife...

In this short story by Emna Belhaj Yahia, women debate freedom of dress and choice in contemporary Tunisia.   So here we are, Chokrane and I, as she’s leaving school, as I’m leaving the office. Still crushed by the disorderly memories of a sleepless night, I suddenly notice as she walks toward me, something very simple about her clothing, something I hadn’t thought of before, something that requires no explanation, no commentary: the free affirmation of liberty. The...

Ordered to shoot a protester, a Tunisian policeman struggles with his conscience in this taut short story by Emna Rmili.   The boy’s chest is mouthwatering, it’s luscious, that boy’s chest, provocative, in fact, under his simple striped shirt—damn! What’s making me focus on his chest? Since yesterday the orders have been absolutely clear: we will shoot. I look down at the weapon at my side, and feel like I’m standing on the edge of an abyss. But...

Set in post-revolution Tunisia, this excerpt from Azza Filali’s novel follows an anxious man to a dermatologist’s office.   It must have been 5 p.m. when Jaafar walked into the dermatologist’s office. “The doctor won’t be long. Have a seat.” A head shot up from behind the desk, a fair-haired young man with freckled cheeks. “I’m his secretary,” he added. Newspapers lay scattered on a table; Jaafar picked one up and settled...

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...

A group of Sami herders and their reindeer undertake their dangerous spring migration over Norway’s northern tundra to an island off the country’s coast. Soon the journey north will be complete. The destination is the island. The terrain is rocky and steep but conceals herbs and grasses that are good for the animals, salt-rich growth they need after the long trip from the inland’s snow-covered lichen plateaus. It’s daytime. The people are resting. Soon...

Boundaries between the possible and the impossible in everyday life dissolve in this short story by Gunnhild Øyehaug.   The day I saw a person disappear through the side of a moving bus, just glide smoothly through the side, I was very surprised. I’d gone into town to buy fresh meat for dinner. That day it was raining violently, rain poured down the bus window where I sat, thick runnels of rain, like someone pouring transparent paint from the bus roof, making it difficult...

Merethe Lindstrøm brings to life a mother’s terror when she is robbed at knifepoint as she holds her toddler daughter in her arms.   One time she was threatened with a knife. When other people talked about terrifying experiences, they always said it happened so fast. But this didn’t happen fast. It took its time. She was riding the metro home from a girlfriend’s. She was carrying the sleeping child. That was the reason she chose the seat next to the...

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...

Syrian writer and poet Osama Alomar conjures the transformative powers of imagination in these seven works of microfiction. Thieves of Youth A strange thing began to happen in the country. One morning, some young people woke up and found they had become old men in their eighties and nineties. Day after day, the number of those losing their youth increased, and the entire population was struck with an awful terror. People were afraid that the country would turn into an old age home. In...

Iranian author Hossein Mortezaeian Abkenar depicts an imprisoned writer’s experience of psychological and physical torture. He felt he was standing on darkness. There was no sound. It was dark and quiet everywhere. He couldn’t see anything, he was blindfolded. He was just standing there, waiting. For a long time. For hours. It was as if he had always been standing there. Time had protracted and from beneath the blindfold it had seeped into his eyes, his ears, his head. His...