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Contributor

Rohan Kamicheril

Contributor

Rohan Kamicheril

Rohan Kamicheril is a writer, editor, and cook. He is the founder and editor of Tiffin, a Web site dedicated to showcasing regional Indian food through interviews, recipes, and travel stories. His writing has appeared in Gastronomica, the Margins, Hemispheres, Asymptote, and elsewhere. He is the editor of The Wall in My Head, a Words Without Borders anthology of writing commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain. 

Articles by Rohan Kamicheril

Just Dinner, but Oh, What a Feast
By Rohan Kamicheril
Though food may fail to broker communication, this is often one of its major supposed roles.
Help Yourself: An Interview with Alona Kimhi
By Rohan Kamicheril
I met with Alona Kimhi at a Czech café in New York’s West Village on a furiously rainy day this past spring. She was still shaking the rain off her trenchcoat as we sat down to talk about…
Carol Brown Janeway to Receive 2014 Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature
By Rohan Kamicheril
Carol Brown Janeway, senior vice-president and senior editor at Alfred A. Knopf, and distinguished literary translator, will be the recipient of the 2014 Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International…
The Queer Issue V: Impressions from a Passing Train
By Rohan Kamicheril
The appeal of the Queer Issue is in seeing that great ambition writ small, in discovering the swarm of details and experience that cohere into the big picture of world writing.
Talking about Taboos: Dutch and Flemish Writers at BookCourt, Tomorrow May 1
By Rohan Kamicheril
163 Court Street, Brooklyn, NYThis event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited–please RSVP. Join us for a lively panel discussion and reading in celebration of the May 2014…
NYC Event: An Evening with Leonardo Padura, February 26
By Rohan Kamicheril
Where: 61 Local, 61 Bergen Street, BrooklynWhen: February 26, 7 PMIn The Man Who Loved Dogs, Leonardo Padura explores one of the most compelling and complex political plots of the last century—the…
Hunting for Trilobites: An Interview with Dror Burstein
By Rohan Kamicheril
I met Dror Burstein on a cool May morning on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. His wry, slow-burning humor is easy to relate to the gently idiosyncratic style of his writing. Words without Borders published…
An Introduction to Our Fourth Annual Queer Issue
By Rohan Kamicheril
The queer world is shaking.
An Orange Lemon
By Alla Pyatibratova
“Orange is for another country. The color for our revolution is yellow.”
Translated from Russian by Rohan Kamicheril
Multilingual
Old Fazyl’s Advice
By Ilya Odegov
“God’s punishment comes through the hands of the insulted,” said Fazyl, sighing.
Translated from Russian by Rohan Kamicheril
Multilingual
From the Translator: David Homel on Translating Dany Laferrière’s “Tout bouge autour de moi”
By Rohan Kamicheril
Toward the end of his chronicle of the January 2010 Port-au-Prince earthquake and its aftermath, called Tout bouge autour de moi, Dany Laferrière entitles one of his sections “La notion de…
Susan Harris on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Here on Earth”
By Rohan Kamicheril
A heads-up to all WWB readers, radio fans, and nature lovers: WWB Editorial Director Susan Harris will be on Wisconsin Public Radio's “Here on Earth” at 4 p.m., EDT, today, talking with…
Rotten English
By Rohan Kamicheril
Amitava Kumar and Michael Ryan edit the Rotten English issue of Politics and Culture. The issue takes its cue from Dohra Ahmad’s book Rotten English: A Literary Anthology. The title of the book…
Long-list for Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
By Rohan Kamicheril
The longlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize has been announced. It’s gratifying to see so many fine writers in translation all lined up. Just as heartwarming to have featured work by…
Found in Translation (Now With Cash Prize)
By Rohan Kamicheril
Happily on theme for this month’s focus on Polish literature, the Polish Book Institute, Polish Cultural Institute in London, Polish Cultural Institute in New York and W.A.B. Publishing House in…
Chtenia, Nomer 1
By Rohan Kamicheril
The editors of Russian Life magazine announce the first ever issue of their companion publication, Chtenia. From the Russian word for “readings,” Chtenia‘s aims are the logical extension…
A Green Interloper in the Court of Arthur
By Rohan Kamicheril
For those of you who love a good tale of knights errant who chop the heads off of mysterious green strangers, take a look at the review of Simon Armitage’s new translation of Sir Gawain and the…
Guernica Magazine
By Rohan Kamicheril
In more late-in-the day news, Guernica magazine’s fantastic new issue is up, with Francisco Goldman acting as guest fiction editor. Kim Hyeeson advocates for the beleaguered Buddha in Why Can’t…
Traveler IQ
By Rohan Kamicheril
Fancy yourself a seasoned explorer? Think you've been there, done that, and could find it on a map? Test your Traveler-IQ over at Travelpod.com. You're being timed, so warm up your clicking finger…
Indigenous African Languages
By Rohan Kamicheril
Tolu Ogunlesi talks about indigenous African languages over at the Sun News online. The piece looks at the contentious topic of how African a work of literature can claim to be when it is written in the…
Dispatches from the Urals
By Rohan Kamicheril
Chad Post comments on the variety and freshness that Russian authors from the Urals bring to the literary scene, over at Three Percent: The distancing of the Russian provinces from Moscow has thus far…
Permission to Speak Aphoristically?
By Rohan Kamicheril
Here’s a quirky—and handy—piece on the compelling history of aphorism-writing in Serbia. The theory goes that the zingers in questions—laced with dark humour—thrive in times…
Ka-pow! It’s Literature!
By Rohan Kamicheril
Love classic literature but wish it had a little more visual flair? Big fan of nuanced story-telling and solid dialogue, but wish more of it came in speech balloons? Well, then head on over to Again with…
Huang Xiang and City of Asylum
By Rohan Kamicheril
Head on over to You Tube and take a look at this video by Jose Muniain on City of Asylum, Pittsburgh and poet Huang Xiang, a former artist in residence at the Sampsonia Way centre. The video highlights…
Dos Obras
By Rohan Kamicheril
2 Obras, the monthly art and literature publication founded in Buenos Aires is now soliciting the help of interested translators in their international art and letters project. 2 Obras collaborator and…
French/American and Florence Gould Foundation Translation Prize
By Rohan Kamicheril
The French American and Florence Gould Foundations have just announced their annual prize for translation. The prize (which comes with a 10,000-dollar bonus on the side) rewards a recent translation of…
All the Bad Young Literary Women
By Rohan Kamicheril
Last Sunday’s NYT Book Review has a front page feature on Edith Grossman&#39s new translation of The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa. The review looks at the influence of Flaubert at play in…
Celan’s Schneepart
By Rohan Kamicheril
A short while ago Patrick Kurp wrote a piece on Primo Levi’s conflicted perspective on the work of Paul Celan. More recently, James Buchan at the Guardian’s Book Blog discusses Ian Fairley’s…
To Write is to Transmit
By Rohan Kamicheril
Patrick Kurp at Anecdotal Evidence has an illuminating piece on Primo Levi’s inclusion of Paul Celan’s Todesfuge in his anthology-as-biography The Need for Roots: A Personal Anthology. Levi…
Panel Discussion at the Americas Society
By Rohan Kamicheril
The Americas Society is hosting a panel discussion on Argentine Literature, Culture and Society on the 28th of September. Essayist Jorge Monteleone and literary critic Gabriela Nouzeilles (Princeton University),…
Boris Akunin
By Rohan Kamicheril
I was delighted to see that Josh Spero at the Guardian’s Book Blog has written about the Russian writer Boris Akunin in a recent post. Akunin is a figure familiar to many English-language readers,…
Young-ha Kim’s “Empire of Light”
By Rohan Kamicheril
Publishers Marketplace reports that WWB author Young-ha Kim's latest book, Empire of Light, was just picked up by Harcourt. The brief reads:“Young-ha Kim's EMPIRE OF LIGHT, Manhae Prize-winning…
Susan Sontag Prize for Translation
By Rohan Kamicheril
The Susan Sontag Foundation has just officially announced that it’s now open season for the 2008 Susan Sontag Prize for Translation. The prize invites undergraduate students and graduate students…
Reading the World with Georges Simenon
By Rohan Kamicheril
We’re very pleased to announce the launch of our September Book Club on Georges Simenon’s The Engagement, as part of the Reading the World series. This month, discussion will be headed by…
The Maias by Eça de Queiros
By Rohan Kamicheril
This review of Margaret Jull Costa’s translation of Eça de Queirós’s The Maias from the International Herald Tribune comes just in time for our monthlong celebration of writing…
Open Call for Manga
By Rohan Kamicheril
Ned Beauman at the Guardian‘s Book Blog gives us a refresher course in Japanese Manga and polls his readers in his most recent post. The perplexing and often misunderstood Japanese narrative art…
Bill Marx on Dating Dürrenmatt
By Rohan Kamicheril
Bill Marx has a great piece over at the Arts Fuse on the role that timeliness plays in a work’s reception and how books come into and go out of fashion. Marx dishes on reviews of the Williamstown…
Paradiso Re-translated
By Rohan Kamicheril
Jean and Robert Hollander have just come out with the last installment of their translation of the Divine Comedy. The release of the final canticle of the Hollanders’ triad is discussed in this…
Strange Book in a Strange Land
By Rohan Kamicheril
If the life of the mind is what binds us across differences of nation, belief and race, then surely bookstores are the outposts of that warm and inviting brotherhood. Maud Newton has been running short…
Burning Down Madurai
By Rohan Kamicheril
In honour of a trip to Chennai tomorrow, here’s a post dedicated to a gem of Tamil literature that I recently revisited after many years. R. Parthasarathy’s translation of Ilango Adigal’s…
Googlies in Dublin and Madrid
By Rohan Kamicheril
The Guardian has a story on Ian Gibson’s Viento del Sur (Wind of the South), which was recently published in Spain and is rapidly selling out its printrun. The twist in this otherwise ordinary publishing…
Writing 60 Years Later
By Rohan Kamicheril
It’s the eve of Indian Independence Day, and a round-up of some of the current writing on the occasion of the nation’s 60th year of independence seems to be in order: Pankaj Mishra speaks…
Bud Parr on Witold Gombrowicz
By Rohan Kamicheril
Bud Parr, over at Chekhov’s Mistress has a brief review of Witold Gombrowicz’s short story collection Bacacay (Archipelago Books) that’s a great preview of the quirky, beautiful style…
Jack Kerouac Sur la Route
By Rohan Kamicheril
It seems like everyone is celebrating the 50th anniversary of On the Road by recreating Jack Kerouac’s trip across America, but Pierre-Olivier Labbe’s blog at Le Monde Online is a wonderful…
New Fiction from Daniil Kharms
By Rohan Kamicheril
Look out for never-before-translated short fiction by Russian absurdist and Words without Borders author Daniil Kharms in this week’s issue of the New Yorker. Kharms’ work, suppressed by the…
A Visa Success?
By Rohan Kamicheril
Over at Inside Higher Ed, they're reporting a visa success story that goes to show mostly just how hard it is to get a visa in the current environment. Waskar Ari, a Bolivian national and professor…