The nerve. Everyone cheers for him on the Heldenplatz and then he goes and cuts deals with the Russians.

The first thing I saw when jolted from sleep was my father throwing books out of the window.

In the sky, never much. In the streets, always too much.

My Jacob still wants to be a cow.

my swollen tongue twitched / in my dry mouth.

The variety and exuberance of contemporary Austrian writing is little known among English readers.

No Japanese person would call a cat Thomas Jefferson.

What! Who could this strange man be?

Every issue from the last ten years of graphic novels in translation.

As Argentina battles a plague of locusts of biblical proportions, we’re happy to return to a much more benign insect visitation. Japanese graphic artist Akino Kondoh’s “Ladybirds’…

If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have learned the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains.—Italo Calvino,…

Photo: Barry Domínguez Ana Clavel is considered one of the most prominent writers of her generation in Latin America. Her novel Las ninfas a veces sonríen (Nymphs Sometimes Smile),…

Just over five years ago, a young Tunisian named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire and sparked the sequential uprisings that came to be known as the Arab Spring. The conflicts could not be contained…

Words Without Borders is seeking nominations for the 2016 Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature. Named in honor of our first board chair, James H. Ottaway, Jr., the Ottaway Award…

If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have learned the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains.                             …

Are you a teacher of English, world literature, global history, or a related subject? Do you enjoy the literature published in Words without Borders and want to use it in your classroom? Sign up to be…

I drink with my hands and dance with my feet, Hans says, look over here, I’m right here. There’s nothing to see over there. A plastic bottle drifts along the shore and Richard says: the current is fast…

As the world mourns, nostalgic misfits jockey for the claim to Most Bereaved (e.g., the Telegraph’s “Why those who were teenagers in the 70s will feel the loss of David Bowie the…

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JULY 31, 2016!Calling all literary translators, radio dramatists, and international radio drama enthusiasts! Play for Voices seeks radio play scripts in English translation.Play…

We’re pleased to welcome M. Bartley Seigel as the new book review editor of Words without Borders.Matt comes to us with experience as poet, writer, literary editor and publisher, journalist, and…

The following is an excerpt from Nicola Gardini’s novel Lost Words, translated by Michael Moore and out January 25 from New Directions.The novel is a meditation on class…

We here in the twenty-first century want heroes with a rebellious spirit and abhor empires for their oppression of native peoples. No, the Aeneid’s politics are not for us.

“It might seem as though everything follows some kind of order, but no, it’s all chaos.”—Israel Centeno, “A Pornomilitary Romanza,” translated by Valerie MilesIf you’re…

In the Beginning Was the Sea is Colombian writer Tomás González’s first novel, written in 1983 and only recently published for the first time in English by Pushkin Press (in Frank…

Before the proliferation of digital images began to pixelate our lives, filmmaker Wim Wenders voiced mistrust in the explosion of the electronic image at the beginning of his 1989 Notebook on Cities and…

They were travelers and were looking for accommodation for the night. They would leave early in the morning.

There was no one to tell him what to do.

Those people there have broken off all ties to God or humanity!

She couldn’t bear living with any of her own sons or daughters.

There was no avoiding the fact that Paco Parra wanted Muriel all to himself.