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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.

Animals

Michel Laub

‘I only stopped playing with him when he began biting the fingers of anyone who tried to pet him.’

Vintage 1954

Antoine Laurain

An extract from Vintage 1954 by Antoine Laurain, translated from the French by Emily Boyce and Jane Aitken.

Blue Self-Portrait

Noémi Lefebvre

‘One piece of luck: I didn’t explain to the pianist how to play the piano.’ Translated from the French by Sophie Lewis.

The White Dress

Nathalie Léger

Nathalie Léger, translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer.

An As-Yet-Undiscovered Land Mammal

Mariana Leky

An excerpt from Mariana Leky’s What You Can See From Here.

Blazing Sun

Tatiana Salem Levy

‘It’s never easy to trade one love for another.’

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.

Swimming Underwater

Merethe Lindstrøm

‘When I picture my childhood, it’s like I’m swimming underwater.’ Merethe Lindstrøm’s story is translated from the Norwegian by Marta Eidsvåg, and is the winner of Harvill Secker’s Young Translators’ Prize 2016.

The Story of Anya

Mazen Maarouf

‘The dreams were packed together like coloured soap bubbles.’

Short fiction by Mazen Maarouf, translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright.

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.’

Dancing for the Avatar

Kō Machida

‘If I let myself sink down into this I’m never coming back up.’

Beirut Fragments, 2021

Charif Majdalani

‘We live with the permanent sense of imminent disaster.’

Charif Majdalani on the situation in Beirut. Translated from the French by Ruth Diver.

Words for Woman

Susana Moreira Marques

‘What we need, now, is: Mrs Dalloway in London, but as an immigrant’