The snail is necessary the bindweed is necessary

“Etel Adnan’s language takes the reader on passages that thread in and out of their own feelings, their own consciousness.”—Diana Abu Jaber

A name engraved on stone isn't much, I have to admit, but it is the name of my relatives and the missing proof of their transatlantic dream.

Shouldn't the leader of the National Front be held responsible for the murder committed by one of his brainwashed teenaged supporters?

And I felt your pure and sad soul / As you'd feel the moon float in silence

He had bought two ice creams and with a sad look on his face was offering them to her so she could choose.

Much in the same way that for thirty years he's been incapable of breaking the rules, today he just doesn't see himself having the heart to comply with them.

The more she spoke, the darker it became.

I had to die to find out whether anybody loved me. When alive, I was never very popular, and it was a real problem for me that I fought very vigorously and quite without success. At home, if I didn’t…

Perhaps because I'd smelled this coming, I didn't try to fight back.

The tracheotomy left him hoarse for a long time but in the end he got his normal voice back.

Bare chests will be covered up, pretentious laughter gasps its last; late nights, idleness, sleeping late-gone!

I introduce myself to the world / mixed with my own shadows

This way over there, you stupid savage.

In the seed of lilies / I buried you serenely

House under construction with dried branches, like spiders, in your scaffolding

If you were told: you're going to die here this evening What would you do in the remaining time?

Today I had surgery on my ear and telephone.

I could feel myself slowly receding. I felt the blackout rising in me like a hiccup. Just the one.

We have no choice but to obey.

It was the first psalter he had held between his hands, possibly the only one that existed in Ireland. He hears the sea crash below with all its might. He loses himself in the text.

In the month of May Suibhne took up arms against this neighboring king. The reason mattered little.

The old lady taps me on the shoulder. Dear Lady, I'd give my life for you. I'm late. I'm afraid I'll be left behind.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: La remontee des cendres (The Rising of the Ashes) is the title of a small text, written in French by the Paris-based Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun. It was published by Editions…

He was not above melodrama. He would cry at westerns and gangster films.

People aren't born delinquent; they become so according to the accidents of their lives and their response to them.

We are rescued here the way dust is rescued / from the river.

She grows old, my friend, outside the heart / in others' eyes.

...over the slightest little argument or some minor act of injustice, they would say I Accuse,...

Statements of small importance / spreading like phosphorous fire on dry grass

I'd like to tell them their frustrating match is like life: the best goals are always yet to come, it's just that waiting for them is painful.

Thirteen years that had gone by so quickly, with their ups and downs. Lots of downs . . . Hard luck, wrong choices, missed opportunities.

Sorrow is a dirt for her, the moment she notices a speck of it smeared on her body, she scrubs it off her skin.

First, the woman writer systematically refrains from writing on sexuality until she is old.

“Ah! So you’re a real person?”He smiled in amusement. “So it would seem.”

Remake the world? Did we not learn anything from the French Revolution?

He did not smile, nor did he shake my hand. He shuffled away without a sound into the darkness of the passage.

In short, I've lost my youth-just like that, in a single day.

The dead were thought of as extremely touchy, envious, vengeful, quarrelsome, and cunning.

He gave me everything: the secret of letters, of numbers, the key to the world.

All creation carries with it some risk.

Camille, dumbfounded, stared hard at the Canadian still seated on the step with his helmet in his hand, and still just as calm.

45Min loathes games, he thinks they’re a waste of time, but this afternoon, after prolonged pleading, I have managed to make him change his mind. He agrees to play cards on condition that we stay…

“Literary fanaticism, in any of its forms, whether from the point of view of master or disciple, has always been incompatible with the intelligence and free spirit of Saer.”—José Saramago

Set first in the village of Saint-Martin in southeast France, then in the refugee camp of Nour Chams, Étoile Errante (Wandering Star) tells the story of two teenage girls on the threshold and in the aftermath…