“One thing that makes 'Kibogo' such a compelling work is the critical distance it maintains from all the power structures it describes.”

I’m always a little amazed at the subtlety of Samanta’s language, how much she can convey in so few words—that hasn’t changed over all the books of hers I’ve translated.

I always say to myself that Jawbone came to me as a nightmare, a vision full of fear and desire, but I really can’t remember how it started.

I started working on [the book] in 2016 when my grandmother was showing the first serious signs of dementia. I wanted to create an archive of sorts, in which her life was told in stories.

I think my task was less linguistic than it was a matter of representing the environment in my mind and sensing its moods emotionally, entering that strange atmosphere so it could seep through into the translation.

your mother like Mecca is a promised land—you must go there only once

When we celebrate the increasing visibility of translation, we should also ask about what languages and literatures—and, consequently, what human experiences—are afforded visibility.

Show me to those southerners / Tell them about all the tongues that are mine / all the nature that’s mine

I stood in the red church, / its tiny domes like buds / blossoming in stone

I was assigned to work in the propaganda group to recruit more people to our cause.

In celebration of #WorldKidLitMonth, Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp recommends 12 international books for young readers with an interest in world history.

“Do you know what your grandmother’s mother did to avoid being subjected to speaking Japanese at school? She sliced off part of her own tongue.”

bloodrush like the swell of desire in a room / surging higher and higher to my eyes, craving life

The way the sunset sometimes Tiepolos the clouds.

With this needle she can create anew what would otherwise disappear.

For days, / years, they walked with jade beneath their tongues, seeking / home.

In 2014, translating Uyghur knowledge into English felt like a subversive act in itself.

When I first read Identitti, I thought, “Is the author using this in earnest or is this meant to be funny?”

Tobias Carroll recommends new and exciting books in translation from Sudan, Belgium, Haiti, France, and South Korea.

Are there homosexual reindeer herders?

I thought I could create a space for sharing women’s global experiences through literary fiction. 

Her mother was dead, she knew that, but she did not know why her aunt and her uncle were the ones who took her in.

I had the look of a Westerner fresh off the boat, with my wrinkled trousers, tourist backpack, and it didn’t tally with my fluency in Kinyarwanda.

we take to the poem, a miracle with no church, with no witness.

Reading Roth’s Berlin miniatures, a sense of the dynamic between sociability and justice feels essential to the urban experience.

When they chucked me out in the middle of the goddamn winter, you gave me your coat and seven euros.

The subjects of Claudia Becerra’s three poems, translated here by Jacqui Cornetta, are bounded by the shores of real and imaginary islands as they observe the arrivals and departures of others.

Empire made English my mother tongue—and the only one I have any real dominion over.

My mother and I will burn it all.

For weeks, Ma didn’t feel a shred of warmth for the baby.