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World through the Eyes of Writers

December 2011–September 2013

Welcome to the multiple year installment of the World Through the Eyes of Writers column, in which established writers recommend new and emerging international authors.

December 2011

About the Young Writer Zheng Xialou
By Can Xue
Zheng Xiaolu, editor of a literary magazine, is only twenty-five years old. He was probably twenty-two when he wrote this story.
Translated from Chinese by Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping
The Festival of Ghosts
By Zheng Xiaolou
On the evening of the tenth day of the seventh lunar month, we “invited” all the ancestors to our home.
Translated from Chinese by Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping
Multilingual

February 2012

Necessary or True Happenstances: An Introduction to the Work of Hye Young-Pyun
By Jo Kyung Ran
A prominent Korean literary critic once said of Pyun that her stories presented “a risky path” in Korean literature.
Translated from Korean by Heinz Insu Fenkl
O. Cuniculus
By Hye-Young Pyun
What he’d mistaken for a white dog was staring at him with red eyes.
Translated from Korean by Sora Kim-Russell
Multilingual

August 2012

Adonis Recommends Abdel-Moneim Ramadan
By Words Without Borders
Ramadan's dazzling poem evokes Adonis's famous “Funeral for New York.”
Funeral for Walt Whitman
By Abdel-Moneim Ramadan
So finally, atop the fender of a tank / lounges Walt Whitman.
Translated from Arabic by Michael Beard & Adnan Haydar

February 2013

On Uladzimir Niakliaeu
By Yevgeny Yevtushenko
A poet in Belarus is, as Pushkin said, more than a poet.
Translated from Russian by Maria Kozlovskaya
Memory of Cranes
By Uladzimir Niakliaeu
Now it shrieks as if somebody were sawing iron: / It's you! It's you!
Translated from Belarusian by Valzhyna Mort
A Game
By Uladzimir Niakliaeu
I leaned, picked up the fire, and tossed it / from one hand to the other.
Translated from Belarusian by Valzhyna Mort
Baudelaire
By Uladzimir Niakliaeu
Your torturer is sleeping because it's his holiday.
Translated from Belarusian by Valzhyna Mort

September 2013

A Letter to a Young Poet: On Tomasz Różycki
By Paweł Huelle
There is in these poems a beautiful trace of Rilke.
Translated from Polish by Mira Rosenthal
The Guy Who Bought the World
By Tomasz Różycki
Skyscrapers stab the air, huge fingers / prodding the haze.
Translated from Polish by Mira Rosenthal
In the Evening, Love
By Tomasz Różycki
Love leads him on a leash / from bar to bar.
Translated from Polish by Mira Rosenthal
This Is My Room
By Tomasz Różycki
There’s no earth whatsoever / after sunset.
Translated from Polish by Mira Rosenthal