Last fall I briefly met the American author Benjamin Kunkel in a hotel in Amsterdam. All foreign authors who come to Amsterdam stay, for some reason, in the Ambassade Hotel, and since I don’t have…

What are you willing to do for your favorite book? If you consider yourself a book lover, think again. What follows is the most incredible story I've ever heard about loving a novel. Last December,…

Last Monday, I had lunch in London with the Lebanese-Palestinian author Samir El-Youssef. We were supposed to go to a Lebanese restaurant called Beirut Express, but since it was too crowded there, he…

Waking up is a jump, a skydive from the dream.

The tracheotomy left him hoarse for a long time but in the end he got his normal voice back.

On April 27th the Estonian government took down a statue of a Russian soldier in a small park next to the national library in the capital city of Tallinn. Local Russians, nearly a third of the 1.5 million…

We were going out stealing horses.

All female psychiatric computers are named Eliza, in accordance with a fine old tradition.

So now we've begun packing. I've carried empty cardboard boxes home from the supermarket.

But mostly it nested inside his chest, stirring in there like something alive.

I'm lying on my back in the ambulance, firmly strapped to the stretcher and we're driving very fast through town...

The moment Patrik Ohlsson unfolded the raffle ticket and saw the number for the first time, he noticed the intriguing ambiguity.

I’ve had a lot of time lately, and I’ve been thinking about the King and Queen.

You're not going to cause me any trouble now, are you, the conductor said.

A warden takes me by the arm as I slip on my blindfold and step out of the cell.

The departure came in the month of March, when the thaw opened up the passes, which in our mountains were like gateways toward the countries of central Europe.

Listen, child, to a wise old wolf: / in dance everything has its own meaning.

That prisoner dreamed that he was in prison. Naturally, the dreams had details and patterns.

Nevertheless this howling struck terror to the heart, especially in that bitter weather.

Fire? / No: light.

It took me some long months to realize that I was incarcerated.

There are so many book fairs out there that you could keep yourself busy for one year traveling from one book fair to the next.Last I weekend, I was in Turin, Italy for 48 hours at the Turin Book Fair.At…

I am writing to you from the Ruukkijoki prison barracks because the guard gave me paper and told me to write my last letter ever, home or to a lover.

My angel . . . Were you ever a Communist?

The Brooklyn Rail has boldly launched a new initiative to publish translations of both short fiction and plays online. In Translation promotes literary translations and encourages collaboration between…

There, where my body seemed to lay a great distance from me, I put my hand on my leg, on my fingers, and I couldn't tell they were mine.

Bare chests will be covered up, pretentious laughter gasps its last; late nights, idleness, sleeping late-gone!

When they reached Via Merulana: the crowd. Outside the entrance, the black of the crowd, with its wreath of bicycle wheels.

Quiet, you say. /     I hardly hear you.