Early the next morning, I got a call from Mom. The first words out of her mouth: Will you take me to the hospital today?

Tobias Carroll recommends exciting new books in translation from Mauritius, Romania, Japan, Spain, Germany, and Puerto Rico.

Every time I write something in English, I’ve been left feeling guilty, as if I had betrayed someone.

Words Without Borders (WWB) seeks an individual or agency to manage technology needs for its website, wordswithoutborders.org.

Ten recent books in translation that the readers in your life are sure to enjoy this holiday season.

We shall see if the hype in the United States reaches the levels Cărtărescu garners in Colombia, where he needed a police cordon to get through his crowd of fans.

The thing that surprises me the most is that parchment paper was invented in Izmir.

Those days of leaping carefree into the Sabarmati / Are long gone

“Do not make the water angry,” they say.

Today, you finally saw the earth after its rebirth.

I thought I unburdened / myself / but even invisible / the braid grows / with memory

Even under a most repressive censorship regime or even in a most watched jail cell, writers and artists will find channels to express themselves.

Dreams, denied, / turned into maps.

There is a restlessness in the city that I have grown to love—it’s like a swaying cat’s tail.

Just what she needed. An outing with a man just released from prison.

The boy lay down in the middle of the street. All alone.

I thought about the eyes of the girl standing tall with her cut hair. Suddenly, the sun rose.

He needed a phone more than anyone in our prison ward.

Tobias Carroll recommends exciting new books in translation from Denmark, Argentina, Palestine, Mexico, and Poland.

It’s about showing how poetry in translation is intertwined with innumerable parts of society, and can create resonances and collaborations that are precious, that last, that matter.

The bazaar reveals this to us: / I sell / Get sold / Someone buys me / and I buy someone else

As a writer, the only fidelity you swear is to the text: the text is king and you have to be careful not to frighten it away with your preconceptions and expectations.

Fiction came to us from the West. Creativity did not.

Once a book is published, the story no longer belongs to me.

“Shame on you, boys. Dullards. A girl has outdone you all.”

No matter where you are in the city, the time of year or weather, the sky at dusk will stop you in your tracks.

and where do they make this tenderness / as the war rages on around them?

For Sámi literature to continue playing its essential role in our culture and to expand its benefits, we need more writers, readers, and translators, which is impossible without support—both financially and through the education system.

Languages are particularly challenging to exhibit physically in museums—how then to tell the story of our most precious forms of intangible cultural heritage in a tangible form?

Love doesn’t exist before marriage, Ramla. It’s time you come back down to earth.