Image: Wu Tsang, Damelo Todo (Give Me Everything), HD Video, 2010
This month WWB presents its second annual queer issue. We're delighted to again give voice to a literary tradition that examines the world through an unaccustomed lens and with uncommon clarity and vigor. The writers in this issue present a broad and complex perspective on identity, gender, politics and sexuality.
Moroccan writer in exile and 2010 Prix de Flore winner Abdellah Taïa recounts the surge and ebb of power in a lost relationship. Italian writer Marco Di Marco describes a professor's chance encounter with a memory of days gone by, and Palestinian poet and playwright Raji Bathish sees bad news at the doctor's office collide with relentless consumerism. Tamil poet Prema Revathi speaks of love under the cover of night, Brazilian writer Caio Fernando Abreu sketches an interlude between an idealistic youth and a military recruiter, German graphic novelist Elke Steiner recounts the story of Catharina Margaretha Linck, executed for having sex with a woman, and Austrian writer Clemens Setz sketches a portrait of a man caught between two worlds. Chinese writer Liao Yiwu rounds out our company with an interview with Ni Dongxue. We hope you'll enjoy these vibrant examples of an international queer sensibility.
The Algerian and the Moroccan
I opened my body to this crazy story, to this great love, the greatest and strongest that I’ve ever known.
bilingual
Moving Like Geckos
That was me once, soaking wet in the rain, one fall long ago; that was me taking a beating from some fat, greasy, gray-haired guy,
Life without Me
What hurts me in all this is that my parents will be forced to bury me before themselves.
bilingual
She
Love sowed its blue stars On our private night
The Story of a Homosexual: An Interview with Ni Dongxue
Just hold my hands tightly. I won’t force you to kiss me or do anything.
Sergeant Garcia
The men stirred, restless. Romans, they wanted blood. The whip, the boot, the snap.
Catharina Margaretha Linck
Catharina Margaretha Linck, executed for sodomy in Halberstad, 1721
The World of Men and the World of Women
What type did he prefer, Orlando Bloom or Benicio del Toro?
bilingual
Performing Language: An Interview with Abdellah Taia
Where, they ask, does one place the sun? And where does Allah go—behind the sun, or beside it?
Book Reviews
Enrique Vila-Matas’s “Never Any End to Paris”
Reviewed by Anderson Tepper
“Am I a lecture or a novel?” the narrator asks himself
Mihail Sebastian’s “The Accident”
Reviewed by Oana Sanziana Marian
Eerily prophetic in its title, "The Accident" was the last work Sebastian published under his own name
Shigeru Mizuki’s “Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths”
Reviewed by Deji Olukotun
"Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths" fictionalizes the real-life experiences of the author while he was stationed on the Pacific island of New Britain