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

Gala Literary Hosts

October 2022

Top row: Literary hosts Kirmen Uribe, Megha Majumdar, Yuri Herrera, and Rivka Galchen / Bottom...

Read essays, translations, and recommendations from the Words Without Borders archive by some of the literary hosts who will join us for the 2022 Words Without Borders gala on October 25.

Doors, Windows, and the Office of Foreign Assets Control

By Esther Allen

Lex and I came to the strange realization that we, and Alejo Carpentier, had effectively been censored by the United States government.

A Berlin Diary, in Memory of September 11

By Susan Bernofsky

I spent the academic year 2001–2 in Berlin. This was a year bracketed by tragedies that took place in my absence—one huge and life-changing for millions of people, one small and life-changing…

A Holiday Gift Guide for Children’s Literature in Translation

By Rivka Galchen

In the past, I often felt lost buying books for the kids of friends and families. Goodnight, Moon may be inexhaustibly good, but everyone already has it; same with The Phantom Tollbooth; same with…

House Taken Over

By Yuri Herrera

The house knew how to determine what was important.

Translated from Spanish by Lisa M. Dillman

Multilingual

Troublesome Love

By Elena Ferrante

Once he was certain that a man in the crowd had touched her. In front of everyone he hit her.

Translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein

Deceptive Simplicity: International Children’s Literature

I often feel that adults forget what children’s stories are capable of.

International YA, Dec. 10 at NYPL: A Reading List from the Panelists

By Megha Majumdar

Most of us came to books as young readers. Working on our current issue of international Young Adult literature, we were reminded of the joy of those early literary encounters. In many ways this December…

From “Um País”

By Flávia Rocha

How to explain / the heat a language exhales

Translated from Portuguese by Idra Novey

MultimediaMultilingual

The Tofu-Maker

Around the time we were in second grade, Buckethead and I beat a snake to death.

Translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang

Berriozabaleta Fountain, Elorrio, Spain

Joxe Aranzabal, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Household Matters

By Kirmen Uribe

Grandma Susana wore long skirts, and she even drank vinegar to make her face paler, as a mortification of her beauty.

Translated from Basque by Elizabeth Macklin