Outdated Browser

For the best experience using our website, we recommend upgrading your browser to a newer version or switching to a supported browser.

More Information

Award Winners

June 2022

Nobel Prize Winner Abdulrazak Gurnah

Prize-winning authors—many of them in their first English translation—from the Words Without Borders archive.

From “Desertion”

By Abdulrazak Gurnah

He forced himself to take shallow breaths, even though his instinct was to swallow huge heaving gulps to relieve the sense of suffocation he felt in the crowds and the alleyways.

Özdamar’s Tongue

By Mariana Oliver

Özdamar knew that arriving in a country with no return ticket meant voluntarily surrendering to an indeterminate foreignness.

Translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches

A close-up of meat bound into a round shape, wrapped in plastic.

Photo by Bastenbas from Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

The Vegetarian

In this excerpt from 2024 Nobel Laureate in Literature Han Kang’s Booker Prize-winning novel, a man reels as his wife suddenly decides to give up meat.

Translated from Korean by Deborah Smith

Learn

Tokyo Ueno Station

My reticence and my incompetence troubled me more than my appearance, but most intolerable was my unluckiness.

Translated from Japanese by Morgan Giles

The Wondrous Deer of the Eternal Hunt

By Svetlana Alexievich

He was a wildly lonely person. I loved him.

Translated from Russian by Marian Schwartz

Learn

A record plays on a turntable

Photo by Jace & Afsoon on Unsplash

Music Heard with You

By Adam Zagajewski

Grave Brahms and elegiac Schubert, / a few songs, Chopin’s third sonata

Translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh

On Packing

By Herta Müller

I carried everything I had. It wasn’t actually mine.

Translated from German by Donal McLaughlin

Prelude

By Tomas Tranströmer

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

Translated from Swedish by Rika Lesser