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

Public Lives, Private Lives

May 2008

PEN World Voices Festival begins this week in New York City and here at Words Without Borders we’ve been plotting our own celebration, joining forces with PEN to provide a global take on matters public and private. Is the line between public and private growing ever thinner? When must private stories be recounted for public good? On Spanish battlefields and Dutch beaches, in Norwegian ships and Hungarian trucks, borders are crossed and boundaries blurred as writers negotiate personal and political entanglements. Coral Bracho, Fatou Diome, György Dragomán, Yael Hedaya, Chenjerai Hove, Lieve Joris, Amanda Michalopoulou, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Jo Nesbø, Kristín ^marsdóttir, Francesc Serès, Anja Sicking, Sa…a Stani…ic, Gonçalo M. Tavares, Abdourahman A. Waberi, and A. B. Yehoshua attest: these aren’t open and closed cases. If you are in New York City, join Words Without Borders for our two special PEN World Voices events: Thursday May 1 at 1 pm , Burma: A Land at the Crossroads with Ian Buruma and Thant Myint-U and Saturday, May 3 at 2:30 pm, Olympic Voices from China with Ma Jian and Xiaolu Guo. Our special thanks to Caro Llewellyn and Elizabeth Weinstein for their invaluable assistance with this issue. ]]>

The Soul Mate

By A. B. Yehoshua

My only son has a soul mate I’m not fond of.

Translated from Hebrew by Gila Brand

A Voice in the Crowd: A Sketch

By Antonio Muñoz Molina

A Spanish exile in New York hears his past calling out to him in this story by Spanish writer Antonio Muñoz Molina.

Translated from Spanish by Esther Allen

The Story of One Occasion

By Kristín Ómarsdottir

On one of many occasions Greta Garbo visited her fellow actress Marilyn Monroe in her home town, the City of Angels.

Translated from Icelandic by Janice Balfour

The Rooms Aren’t What They Appear to Be

By Coral Bracho

The rooms aren’t what they appear to be

Translated from Spanish by Forrest Gander

Among These Ruins

By Coral Bracho

This hotel is an old school, / you can feel it despite the time.

Translated from Spanish by Forrest Gander

Tyrant

By Chenjerai Hove

Why cry / for the wingless spirit bird?

Of Words and Borders

By Chenjerai Hove

As a writer, I have come to know that writers have the misfortune of being invited to speak on things about which they know absolutely nothing.

Field of Battle, Field of Fruit

By Francesc Serès

Spreading out like a dense forest, shaking and rippling like a field of corn combed by the north wind, a hypnotic wave, a river above craggy peaks, the flock is like a cloud-filled sky when a storm is…

Translated from Catalan by Peter Bush

From “In Ben’s Footsteps”

By Abdourahman A. Waberi

Ben, do you know why the dreams of children are always corrupted in the mouths of adults?

Translated from French by Nicole Ball & David Ball

Ernst and Mylia

By Gonçalo M. Tavares

Ernst Spengler was alone in his attic apartment, ready to throw himself out the already open window when, suddenly, the telephone rang

Translated from Portuguese by Anna Kushner

Dafna

So what is the moment? What does it look like?

Translated from Hebrew by Jessica Cohen

From “How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone”

By Saša Stanišić

I didn’t understand him, he didn’t understand me.

Translated from German by Anthea Bell

Light

By Gunnhild Øyehaug

Wishes are balloons, Alice said, and death waits with a needle.

Translated from Norwegian by Kerri Pierce

They Began to Call You

By Coral Bracho

They began to call you, the rocks, breathing,

Translated from Spanish by Forrest Gander

From “Friends for Four Years”

By Anja Sicking

Edo was standing next to her, half a head taller, his arm wrapped firmly around her so she wouldn’t blow away even though there was no wind.

Translated from Dutch by Sherry Marx

MS Hitra

Captain Jonasen followed the dotted line in the atlas with his finger.

Translated from Norwegian by Don Bartlett

Multilingual

Barbed wire fence at early morning

Photo by Jannik on Unsplash

Haul

By György Dragomán

“The bears are tame, I broke them in myself.”

Translated from Hungarian by Paul Olchváry

The East

Zikiya’s Rwanda was a mythical, pre-colonial state with customs his ancestors had brought into the mountains along with their herds, where they’d become hopelessly outdated over the years.

Translated from Dutch by Liz Waters