In the winter of 2003, I was on a first-ever visit to Beirut. I’d come from Cairo, where I was living, and was a bit stunned by the cold. So it happened that I found myself in a shop, trying to buy a heavy sweater. I don’t remember what I said to the proprietor, although I’m sure I must’ve spoken in a heavy Egyptian Arabic. In my memory, he raised a finger and pointed at me, laughing: “Adel Emam!” Although I’m approximately the same height as the...

India’s vast and varied story traditions continue to exist orally across languages, cultures, and religions. Folktales featuring village deities and spirits, riddles that reference local flora and fauna, songs of specific marriage customs and rituals sit side by side with the grand narratives of pan-Indian epics and myths. But even the epics are brought down to earth, as it were, when we are told that the god-human heroes and heroines rested a while under the village tree during their...

In an excerpt from his twelfth-century taxonomy of morons, Ibn al-Jawzi proves that idiocy is always a current event. The terms “stupidity” and “nitwittedness” refer to miscalculation in the means and ways to a goal, although with good intentions, as opposed to “insanity,” which refers to a fault in both the means and in the intentions. For the stupid person has good intentions, but the manner he goes about achieving them is rotten, and his plans to...

This year, we partnered with the Academy of American Poets for our first ever poetry in translation contest. We received 717 poems from 282 poets from 87 countries translated from 55 languages. The four winning poems will be published in Words Without Borders and the Academy of American Poets’s “Poem-a-Day” throughout the month of September. Published alongside the poems will be the original language texts and recordings of both the original poems and their...

This Norwegian edition of Words Without Borders has been put together to coincide with Norway being Guest of Honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2019. And that honor could not have come at a better time for Norway, when there are so many good books being published and more translation rights being sold than ever before. Norwegian literature just seems to go from strength to strength. And what an honor to be asked to make this selection. And what good fortune to be offered a place in the...

Andreas Tjernshaugen details the new industrialized whaling of the nineteenth century and early warnings that the industry might lead to extinction of its quarry. ​  Early one Sunday morning in October 1865, a fisherman called Olof Larsson was hunting small game among the smooth rocks on the coast at Askimsviken outside Gothenburg, Sweden. There he spied something unusual sticking up out of the sea some forty meters from the shoreline. At first he thought it was...

My Norwegian ex-boyfriend always accused me of selective comprehension. If he said something I didn’t want to hear, he claimed, I would forget the vocabulary necessary to translate it. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps that is the chief luxury of socializing in a foreign language: it’s easier to pretend ignorance. We were living together in Oslo, on his turf and in his mother tongue. I’d argue that I was being extra cautious in order to avoid a potentially...

Religious life in China has been the subject of much speculation, misunderstanding, and projection by the West. In the present day, much of what we receive is filtered either through news stories about the officially atheist state or through (usually older) translations of Tang Dynasty poets such as Han Shan, who have come to be known as free-thinking Chan masters wandering through the mountains. Their sound is familiar to us from the Beat Generation of poets, who gave them a particular...

It was one of those double-edged moments when you catch a glimpse of yourself as others see you. Sitting in a crammed Trinity College bar, fifteen years ago now, following a seminar on Branwen ferch Llŷr, a friend was asking about the difference between contemporary and Middle Welsh, how much of a leap was required for me to read this iconic medieval text. As I considered, a voice cut in from the table next to us: “Welsh?” I knew his face but not his name. I’d seen...

Translator Anton Hur on the increased visibility of queer Korean writers​.   Am I proud of this mini-feature of Korean queer literature in translation courtesy of Words Without Borders?  Hell yeah!  We have Lee Jong San, the second out queer Korean writer to publish a book of fiction, and an excerpt from that very book in question: Customer!  We have Kim Bong-gon, the third out queer Korean writer to publish a book of fiction, and an excerpt...

Susan Harris introduces our tenth Queer issue. Nearly a decade ago, our former editor Rohan Kamicheril planned an issue of queer writing. The issue proved so popular, and so reflective of our editorial vision, that we decided to make it an annual event. You’ll find queer writing at WWB throughout the year, but our June issues have provided a space to bring this multiplicity of voices into conversation with each other and with readers. This month we bring you our tenth Queer issue....

Speculative fiction is alive and well in Italy, with its Urania Prize for the best Italian science fiction going back to 1989 and a whole host of publishers and gatherings that highlight sf occurring throughout the year. And yet, given the fact that Anglophone sf has dominated world markets during the twentieth century, and that Italian is not as widespread as, say, English or Spanish, Anglophone readers have yet to read much Italian speculative fiction. That is slowly changing, though,...

As we put together this issue on Arabic-language literature from the Sultanate of Oman, a country located on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, our aim was simple: provide a space for underrepresented literary voices. The writing of Omani authors is scarcely circulated in translation, especially when it comes to book-length work, a sterling exception being Jokha Alharthi, who is featured in this issue. Similarly, Omani authors are barely featured in anthologies dedicated to...

The paradox doesn’t escape me: I was born and bred in Mozambique, known as the homeland of poets, and yet for a long time I didn’t consider myself up to the task of truly appreciating poetry in all its depth. This belief was first challenged in early 2017 with the launch of an independent press, Cavalo do Mar, which has published eighteen titles thus far, including the work of the three poets here, whose works haunted me and set me on this ambitious quest of translating...

I  For the longest time, Chile was said to be a “land of poets.” And truly, we have an extraordinary lyric tradition that has varied in style and purpose throughout the centuries. Written poetry is a foundational genre in Chile that emerged with the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors: among them was the poet Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, who wrote one of the most beautiful books of his time in praise of the newly “discovered” Chile and its...

In October 2015, Indonesia made its appearance as the guest of honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair—the first country from Southeast Asia to be so honored.  Words Without Borders celebrated with our August 2015 issue, which offered work by nine poets and fiction writers. Now, three and half years later, Indonesia heads to London to appear in the same role at the London Book Fair, and we’re marking the occasion by presenting four authors, two of whom will participate in the...

Indonesian poet and cultural critic Nirwan Dewanto explores metaphors of geography and geology.    Geography is what our eyes can catch as far as vision takes them—to the surface of the earth disappearing beyond the horizon. We try to touch that surface, to own it, but in the end, what is high and what is low admits defeat to the sheer breadth of that expanse. Such relief is important only to state that horizontal motion is far more important. Rivers move from the mountains...

This issue started with a question that sharpened to a point in the autumn of 2017, when a neo-Nazi organization was given a permit for a protest that would begin outside the annual Göteborg Book Fair. Leading up to this moment was the Book Fair’s controversial decision to yet again allow Nya Tider (New Times), a far-right extremist publication, to exhibit on the convention center floor. Debates raged for months and months in Sweden, as well as in Finland, the 2017...

In this essay, Mathias Rosenlund reflects on the intersection of poverty, mental health, and masculinity.    I fear the day I find myself bending under everything about which I am writing. Under the weight of depression. Under the yoke of poverty. Under hopelessness. *** I have on occasion—when I’ve been called up and asked, but not often enough to earn a decent side income—worked as a helper on a truck. I don’t have a driver’s license so I...

With Sara Nelson I saw him on the subway. He was sitting across the aisle, a man my age, West African, dressed in clothes that reminded me of glossy paper—they were made of a stiff, waxed fabric so white it was incandescent in the vibrating darkness of the subway car. He was talking to the friend sitting next to him, his cap pulled low over his brow. He just came from the mosque, he said. He went there every so often to help with vacuuming and stuff.  It was a few years into...