Vinicius Jatobá and his translator Jethro Soutar discuss the challenges of translating his story ‘Still Life’ the role of China in the story and the intimate bond between author and translator.
‘These students only learn about Mauritius through our country’s literature; they are taught little to no Mauritian history.’
Ariel Saramandi visits a lycée in Mauritius.
‘The next editor of the university newspaper was chosen each year by a panel.’
A short story by Frances Leviston, set in the cut-throat world of student journalism.
‘He began to feel less like he was delivering a speech and more like a speech was delivering him.’
An extract from Ben Lerner’s latest novel, The Topeka School.
‘I thought she was the prettiest girl in our school. No one else seemed to think so.’
A short story about a high school friendship, by Che Yeun.
‘After my first day of clown school I tried to drop out.’
Nuar Alsadir goes to clown school at Yale.
‘So that was betrayal: in a magical realm, assassins and elves were involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the king. Or something like that.’
‘You see that the only thing that seems to move in its atmosphere is dust suspended against a fine thread of sunlight, that time itself sleeps lazily on the stupefied clocks.’
‘You see the house and its time, the house and the house alone, though your secrets, your fears and silences still exist there, locked away behind the denseness of the closed doors’
‘It seems to be more than he can cope with.’
An excerpt from Ulitskaya’s newly translated novel Just the Plague.
‘To read Baudelaire, he said, is to gather up the world and bring it inside.’
Jeet Thayil on remembering Baudelaire in Paris and Cochin.
Louise Stern on why Pedro Páramo is the best book of 1955.
