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Colombia

The covers of the five books featured in the Watchlist: Dandelion Daughter, The Stone Breakers,...
The Watchlist: September 2023
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends new books in translation you won’t want to miss from Canada, Colombia, France, the Republic of the Congo, and Russia.
A rocky stream in a tropical forest
Photo by Livestart Stiven on Unsplash
Catalina Loango
By Bernardino Pérez Miranda
A woman is captured by a malevolent water spirit in Bernardino Pérez Miranda’s retelling of a folktale from San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia, named a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity site in 2008.
Translated from Palenquero by Armin Schwegler
MultimediaMultilingual
Dark coral reefs under aquamarine ocean water
Coral reefs in McBean Lagoon, off the coast of Providencia. Photo by Felviper, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Kriol Soldier
By Emiliana Bernard-Stephenson
These days Kriol is a song many people do not want to sing
Translated from San Andrés–Providencia Creole by the author
MultimediaMultilingual
Portrait of writer Cristina Bendek in front of green plants
Photo: Karen Bendek
The City and the Writer: In San Andrés with Cristina Bendek
By Nathalie Handal
Violence—slow, fast, indirect, direct—is exercised against the islands and our way of living here.
The covers of the books featured in the list
World Kid Lit: The Best of 2022
By Jackie Friedman Mighdoll, Johanna McCalmont & Claire Storey
Join the editors of the World Kid Lit blog on a tour of their favorite international children’s books of 2022, from picture books to YA fiction and graphic novels.
The covers of the books featured in the Watchlist
The Watchlist: October 2022
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends noteworthy new books in translation from Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Colombia, South Korea, and Norway.
Portrait of writer Felipe Restrepo Pombo
Photo copyright © R. Trejo
The Paradox of Unrestrained Power
By Ezra E. Fitz
It’s always struck me how many rich people in our countries end up hiring their own private armies: a very Colombian phenomenon.
Photo of a newspaper being printed
Photo by Bank Phrom on Unsplash
Juan Gabriel Vásquez: Fiction as the News
By Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Like most Colombians, I had several close encounters with “chaos” during those years.
Cereté, Córdoba
By Raúl Gómez Jattin
I love you all even more in exile
Translated from Spanish by Katherine M. Hedeen & Olivia Lott
A Thundering Silence
By Felipe Restrepo Pombo
She stared at me in horror before hurrying off as fast as she could.
Translated from Spanish by Ezra E. Fitz
from “Latitudes”
By Piedad Bonnett
We searched for the words. We sipped our tea / looking down the bitter well of the past . . .
Translated from Spanish by Ezra E. Fitz
MultimediaMultilingual
“Bird Spirit” and “Handful of Earth”
By Fredy Chicangana
These songs to Mother Earth in a major key / are whispers that come from distant forests
Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel
“Wayuu (II)” and “Roots”
By Vito Apushana
We are life, this way
Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel
The Origins of the FARC: An Interview with Sergeant Pascuas
By Alfredo Molano
Renowned journalist Alfredo Molano interviews one of the founders of the FARC.
Translated from Spanish by Ezra E. Fitz
I Never Wanted to Sock You in the Face, Javier
By Juan Álvarez
Why didn’t you let the old man go, dude?
Translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell
Bobotá
By Yolanda Reyes
I hated this image that you invented: me, running, happy, slow motion, as if it were easy to call you Mama, Mommy, Mom so suddenly.
Translated from Spanish by Susannah Greenblatt
The Double
By Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Isn’t it strange (the letter said to me), in Spanish there’s no word for what I am.
Translated from Spanish by Anne McLean
Bubblegum and Baldy
By Gilmer Mesa
It all began by chance, when Arcadio heard the song “Melancholy” by the Orquestra Zodiac.
Translated from Spanish by Frances Riddle
A Different Solitude: Colombian Literature Today
By Eric M. B. Becker
The writers here capture the past and present of a country remaking itself and its history.
Living to Tell New Tales
By Silvana Paternostro
The old story is changing.
An Orphan World
By Giuseppe Caputo
Wouldn't you pay to speak to your house?
Translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes
Lost Causes
By Oscar Collazos
Respect, I now understood, was nothing more than the fear of his reaction.
Translated from Spanish by Ezra E. Fitz
Madres Terra
By Carlos Saavedra
A photo essay of mothers of the disappeared.
Multimedia
House of Beauty
By Melba Escobar
When I left Colombia, mothers still made sure their daughters’ knees weren’t showing; now nothing is left to the imagination.
Translated from Spanish by Elizabeth Bryer
Gabo: A Magical Life
By Oscar Pantoja, Tatiana Córdoba & Felipe Camargo
Gabo saw a shattered landscape, aged, forgotten by its people.
Translated by Lawrence Schimel
The Queer Issue V: Impressions from a Passing Train
By Rohan Kamicheril
The appeal of the Queer Issue is in seeing that great ambition writ small, in discovering the swarm of details and experience that cohere into the big picture of world writing.
Death
By Alonso Sanchez Baute
If a queen cries an entire sea, she has to cry the Mediterranean or, at least, the Aegean
Translated from Spanish by George Henson
Multilingual
Six Months on Minimum Wage
By Andrés Felipe Solano
One afternoon I counted 1,253 items of clothing.
Translated from Spanish by Samantha Schnee
“Survivors,” from “The Ears of the Wolf”
By Antonio Ungar
I wake up. The bus stops, and a village full of horses appears.
Translated from Spanish by Katherine Silver
Wings, Two for One
By Triunfo Arciniegas
In these wicked times people aren't interested in wings. Even at two for the price of one.
Translated from Spanish by Steve Dolph
From “The Lost Cause: A Memoir of My Life with Gabriel García Marquez”
By Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza
My friend,'' his voice explodes, Why don't you come have lunch with me?
Translated from Spanish by Timothy Pratt
I Am Spartan
By Sonia Bravo
...and she didn't get that what socialism talks about is opportunity, not inborn talent;
Translated from Spanish by Nancy Festinger