Explore in translation
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
Peter Stamm & Michael Hofmann
Peter Stamm on the oldest barber in Switzerland, and Michael Hofmann on translating Peter Stamm.
How to Take a Literary Selfie
Sylvie Weil
Sylvie Weil on what it means to take a literary selfie. Translated from the French by Ros Schwartz.
Real Men
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
Anna Leader’s translation of ‘Real Men’ by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr is the winner of the 2019 Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize.
Careless
Hiroko Oyamada
‘As I lay on the mattress, the white toe pads of the gecko floated up before me, against the vastness of the blue-black night. Rather than a presence, it seemed to me more like a trace, a barely discernible odour that flooded in on the air.’
The Fallen
Carlos Manuel Álvarez
Read an excerpt from The Fallen by Carlos Manuel Álvarez, translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne and available now from Fitzcarraldo Books.
The Water Tower and the Turtle
Kikuko Tsumura
‘It was safe to say I didn’t really know anybody in this town at all.’ New fiction translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton.
The Biggest House on Earth
Choi In-Ho
‘What is happiness? Nothing other than pausing at the bottom of the stairs to admire the portrait of a beautiful queen from some distant, foreign land.’
Death Customs
Constantia Soteriou
Constantia Soteriou’s ‘Death Customs’, translated from the Greek by Lina Protopapa, is the regional winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2018 for Canada and Europe.
How I Write My Books
Anne Serre
Anne Serre on how she writes. Translated from the French by Mark Hutchinson.
To Zinder
Sven Lindqvist
Obsessed with a single line from Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness – Kurtz’s injunction to ‘Exterminate All the Brutes’ – Sven Lindqvist set out across Central Africa, and wrote a book that revealed precisely what Europe’s imperial powers had exacted on Africa’s people over the course of the preceding two centuries.
Pajtim Statovci | Notes on Craft
Pajtim Statovci
‘My childhood was pierced not only by the violence in Kosovo but also by the violence my immigrant family was confronted with in Finland.’
A Man’s Life
Pajtim Statovci
‘I wished my family would die, my friends too, everybody I knew, because only that way could they never follow me wherever I went.’
My Enemy’s Cherry Tree
Wang Ting-Kuo
‘And the truth is, my heart was tied in knots, and pain bored into the marrow of my bones when I heard about his illness.’
The Pine Islands
Marion Poschmann
‘Gilbert Silvester woke up distraught. Mathilda’s black hair lay spread out on the pillow next to him, tentacles of a malevolent pitch-black jellyfish.’
Animalia
Jean-Baptiste Del Amo
An excerpt from Animalia by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, translated from the French by Frank Wynne.
Vintage 1954
Antoine Laurain
An extract from Vintage 1954 by Antoine Laurain, translated from the French by Emily Boyce and Jane Aitken.
At the Edge of Night
Friedo Lampe
An excerpt from Friedo Lampe’s At the Edge of Night, translated from the German by Simon Beattie.
Objects in Mirror
Maxim Osipov
‘He runs through the events of the day in his mind. Fairly frightening, really: the sudden request for his file, the question about the government. And the silence.’
Ten Thousand Feet
Ariana Harwicz
‘I go up and watch the avenue through the window. Noise and more noise. An avenue of insects, stray bullets and snipers sprawled on the rooftops.’
Imperium
Ryszard Kapuściński
Ryszard Kapuściński, once the only foreign correspondent for the Polish Press Agency, on the concept of borders.
Portion of Jam
Mazen Maarouf
‘My father no longer goes to the hospital to work, because you don’t find nurses in wheelchairs working in hospitals.’
Man of Principle
Roy Chicky Arad
A novelette by Roy Chicky Arad, written after one of the wars of Israel in Gaza. Translated from the Hebrew by Maayan Eitan and Oded Even Or.
The Panther
Sergio Pitol
‘Haste did not grip the animal. He paced before me languidly, tracing small circles; then, in a single pounce he reached the fireplace.’
Sobre Cardi B
Rita Indiana
‘Es un himno crudo y catchy escrito por una mujer que ha confesado que escribe sobre lo que le gusta y que lo que le gusta es “fighting bitches”.’
On Cardi B
Rita Indiana
‘A crude, catchy hymn written by a woman who’s confessed to writing about what she likes, and that what she likes is “fighting bitches”.’
Fyodor Denisovich Konstantinov
Lev Ozerov
‘A piece of boxwood, gripped in a vise, / waits on the workbench for his knife.’ Poetry by Lev Ozerov, translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk, and introduced by Robert Chandler.
I’ll Go On
Hwang Jungeun
‘Swish-swish, swish-swish. The sound fills the large space around them, and Nana finds this deeply satisfying.’
The Seafood Buffet
Pirjo Hassinen
‘Things that felt like cold stones began to be piled around her ankles. Lemon halves.’
Florianópolis
Paulo Scott
‘Even in a year in which Brazilians are not that excited about the competition, once the ref whistles and the match kicks off, an entire nation is frozen, hypnotised before their television screens. It’s the great truce, the great anaesthetic.’
Karl Kraus and Veza
Elias Canetti
‘It was natural that the rumors about both these people should reach me at the same time; they came from the same source, from which everything new for me came at that time.’
Brother in Ice
Alicia Kopf
‘My brother is a man trapped in ice. He looks at us through it; he is there and he is not there.’
Terminus
Pedro Rosa Mendes
‘We hope that the copilot knows the terrain well. That his mask of youth conceals the face of a seasoned veteran of war. That he knows the minefields because he helped plant them.’
