Those Cool Scandinavians

Poetry by David Rothenberg

Avatud!

On April 27th the Estonian government took down a statue of a Russian soldier in a small park next to the national library in the capital city of Tallinn. Local Russians, nearly a third of

Poetry by Gunnar Harding

The Northwest Express

to my wife and to Blaise Cendrars even in our sleep there are cables between us. we are coupled to each other like the railway cars on their way to the sea outside the window

Translated from Swedish by Roger Greenwald

Poetry by Harry Martinson

Far from Here

I want to send a dream far from here. The swallows fly high there. Perhaps your wheat ripens and through the yellow oceans of rye a slow humming sound of bread can be heard. This is a

Translated from Swedish by Lars Nordstrom

Fiction by Willy Kyrklund

Heart’s Desire

Eliza 812 is a psychiatric computer. All female psychiatric computers are named Eliza, in accordance with a fine old tradition. All males are named Higgins. Eliza is a research project,

Translated from Swedish by Paul Norlén

Poetry by Cathrine Grøndahl

How Is One to Hang Up?

It should be well known that the voices can be piercing, but they also have inside curves I can't negotiate They run rings around me, I can't take them I grow smaller and

Translated from Norwegian by Roger Greenwald

Poetry by Cathrine Grøndahl

Let the Small Words Come to Me

Let the small words come to me Don't let the demanding ones stop them If I get everything I have a right to, but not love, then I get too little Praised be the children I will never

Translated from Norwegian by Roger Greenwald

Poetry by Håkan Sandell

Twenty-two Things Not to Be Trusted

Twenty-two things not to be trusted: not night-old ice, not a winter in Skåne with the ice shining and as yet untrodden to a confidence inspiring terra firma. Not winter in

Translated from Swedish by Bill Coyle

Poetry by Tomas Tranströmer

Prelude

After / the plunge through death's whirling vortex, will / a great light unfurl over his head?

Translated from Swedish by Rika Lesser

Fiction by Per Petterson

from “Out Stealing Horses”

We were going out stealing horses. That was what he said, standing at the door to the cabin where I was spending the summer with my father. I was fifteen. It was 1948 and one of the first

Translated from Norwegian by Anne Born

Fiction by Helle Helle

It Could be Grass

So now we've begun packing. I've carried empty cardboard boxes home from the supermarket. Erik would rather throw everything into black trash bags. To me that's being sloppy.

Translated from Danish by Mark Kline

Fiction by Jonas Karlsson

The Raffle Ticket

The moment Patrik Ohlsson unfolded the raffle ticket and saw the number for the first time, he noticed the intriguing ambiguity. "Come and look at this, Linn," he shouted to his daughter.

Translated from Swedish by Laurie Thompson

Fiction by Matti Yrjänä Joensuu

Tweety

A faint sound emerged from the night; or maybe it was an almost imperceptible smell that drifted out of the darkness, soothing somehow, like the smell that comes off of boats and wet wooden

Translated from Finnish by Lola Rogers

Fiction by Johan Harstad

Ambulance

I'm lying on my back in the ambulance, firmly strapped to the stretcher and we're driving very fast through town, somebody's placed an oxygen mask over my mouth, and the man

Translated from Norwegian by Deborah Dawkin and Erik Skuggevik

Fiction by Levi Henriksen

The Bergkvist Sisters

I’ve had a lot of time lately, and I’ve been thinking about the King and Queen. They were Crown Prince and Princess then, of course, but what if they hadn’t had a son second

Translated from Norwegian by Deborah Dawkin and Erik Skuggevik

Fiction by Marie Darrieussecq and Rick Moody

from As You Were Saying

The collection As You Were Saying: American Writers Respond to Their French Counterparts presents stories begun by French writers and then responded to by their American opposite numbers.

Translated from French by Esther Allen