One novelist spotlights an object, feeling, or sensation where the relay between past and present, or present and future, becomes visible.
Literature in Translation
Editors: Bonnie Chau & Bécquer Seguín
Past Editor: Stephen Twilley
“I Began With Sound”
"My task was to make this ancient poem about death feel vividly, unarguably alive."
Literature: What to Make of Complicity?
Turkish literature shows how difficult it is to balance political critique with literary experimentation. But it can—and, perhaps, must—succeed.
“Tomb of Sand” Brings Hindi Literature to the World
Despite the fact that Hindi is the language of more than 400 million people, Hindi fiction is rarely translated.
Crossing “The Tartar Steppe”: A New Buzzati
Did this 1940 novel use symbolism not for aesthetic purposes, but, instead, to conceal its critique of Italian fascism from the regime’s censors?
Growing Up in the World Made by Femicide
A dystopian buddy story shows misogynist violence emerging spontaneously—almost casually—from male camaraderie, from ennui, from dipshit youth.
A Novel the CIA Spent a Fortune to Suppress
Mr. President shows widespread corruption around a fictional Guatemalan dictator. This did not please the country’s real dictators.
Death in Mexico Means Something Different Now
Mexico once cultivated a “special relationship” with death. But cultural globalization and rising violence is weakening that bond.
Reading by Translating: Ann Goldstein Talks with Saskia Ziolkowski
Into the Woods with Yiyun Li
Fairy tales—like Li’s Book of Goose—are so scary because there is no cushion between you and the will of the world, no room for mistakes.
Eager or Reluctant? A Translator’s Dilemma
The translator can’t go where the writer hasn’t gone. But it feels good to bound eagerly toward a text’s limits.
Light and Sound: Boubacar Boris Diop with Sarah Quesada
“I was more impressed by what I heard from my mother than by what I read in the library.”
“Beowulf”: A Horror Show
Maria Dahvana Headley’s translation of “Beowulf” forces us to think about what we need to be true about the past, and our access to it.
The Stories Women Tell of Loneliness
“I have an appetite for silence,” Emily Dickinson wrote, for “silence is infinity.” But are women today relishing in their solitude?
This Review Should Not Exist
Latin American authors must defer to “Latin America”—as imagined by centers of literary power—to be translated, to sell, to make money.
Healing through Ordinary Stories
What Chinese readers consume diverges from what is translated into English. Writers of ordinary life are often left untranslated—until now.
Miguel de Unamuno in Spain’s Memory Battle
As fascist armies conquered much of Spain, a writer publicly and famously denounced high-ranking officers right to their faces. Or did he?
Did Don Quixote Long for Muslim Spain?
Between the lines, Cervantes critiqued the Catholic church, and lamented over the systematic destruction of Islamic culture in Spain.
Subaquatic Homesick Blues
A Taiwanese scifi novel—set under the sea, after the surface becomes unlivable—reveals the remarkable burst of cultural freedom in 1990s Taiwan.
When the Vibe Is Off
Which matters more, intent or interpretation? What if a juxtaposition of images in literature or art is just that—a chance encounter?