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

First Read

fishermen sitting on a pier with boats behind them

Dmitry Makeev, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sky of the Lost Moon

A young Laotian man released from prison in Phnom Penh finds refuge with a Cambodian fisherman’s family and falls in love with their daughter.

Translated from Khmer by Rinith Taing

two rows of people playing pachinko

Tischbeinahe, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Pachinko Parlor

By Elisa Shua Dusapin

In this excerpt of Elisa Shua Dusapin’s new novel, a young woman tries to plan a trip to Korea with her grandparents, neither of whom has returned to their native country since fleeing the Korean War.

Translated from French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins

Map of German East Africa

Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

German Medicine

By Abdulrazak Gurnah

Her mother was dead, she knew that, but she did not know why her aunt and her uncle were the ones who took her in.

A cobblestone street in Rwanda at sunset with a few pedestrians and motorcycle riders

Photo by Michael Muli on Unsplash

No Familiar Faces

By Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse

I had the look of a Westerner fresh off the boat, with my wrinkled trousers, tourist backpack, and it didn’t tally with my fluency in Kinyarwanda.

Translated from French by Alison Anderson

Late evening view on a bridge leading to Dutch countryside houses

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash

Welcome to the Real Holland

By Rodaan Al Galidi

When they chucked me out in the middle of the goddamn winter, you gave me your coat and seven euros.

Translated from Dutch by Jonathan Reeder

Palm trees along the shoreline in Huahine, Tahiti

Matthew Dillon from Hollywood, CA, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Two Birthdays

For weeks, Ma didn’t feel a shred of warmth for the baby.

Translated from French by Jeffrey Zuckerman

Tarot cards from the Rider Waite Tarot deck

Photo by Viva Luna Studios on Unsplash

The Presentiment

By Emiliano Monge

I like to imagine that, in this defining moment, as my grandfather struggled with the dead man’s sinews, he was able to calm his rage for a moment and laugh.

Translated from Spanish by Frank Wynne

Tropical forest in Guadeloupe

Photo by Tim Oun on Unsplash.

Where Dogs Bark with Their Tails

By Estelle-Sarah Bulle

As they drew nearer, knives in hand, Hilaire recognized the feverish eyes behind their scarves.

Translated from French by Julia Grawemeyer

A sprig of berries in shadow

Photo by Dmitry Bukhantsov

A Little Hole

By Alhierd Bacharevič

They stuffed these intoxicating little spheres into their mouths and kissed the juice off of the palms of their hands.

Translated from Belarusian by Jim Dingley & Petra Reid

A Landscape of Claws

By Mónica Ojeda

That’s how it felt to sleep handcuffed to a table.

Translated from Spanish by Sarah Booker

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

A Seriously Shitty Quirk of Fate

I felt uncomfortable being who I was, raised on the idea of being from a Black family.

Translated from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn

Void

By Miguelángel Meza

Miguelángel Meza's poetry chapbook, Dream Pattering Soles, was published this month by Ugly Duckling Presse in Elisa Taber's translation. A leading Guaraní poet, Meza was…

Translated by Elisa Taber

Little Check Marks on Our Names

By Saša Stanišiç

Winner of the German Book Prize, Saša Stanišić's Where You Come From will be out from Tin House next week. Translated by Damion Searls, this autofictional work explores…

Translated by Damion Searls

An Evening of Sugar-Eating

By Lee Young-ju

Next week, Black Ocean will release Lee Young-ju's poetry collection Cold Candies, translated from Korean by Jae Kim. The collection includes “Roommate, Woman,” one of the winners…

Translated by Jae Kim

Portrait of a Libyan Scream

By Najwa Bin Shatwan

Later this month, UEA Publishing Project will release Mo(a)t: Stories from Arabic, an anthology of short fiction by Arabophone writers from the African diaspora, edited by Garen Torikian and…

Translated by Sawad Hussain

The Spectator Sentenced to Death

By Matéi Visniec

Edited and translated by Jozefina Komporaly, Plays from Romania: Dramaturgies of Subversion is out today from Methuen Drama, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing. This unique transnational anthology…

Translated by Jozefina Komporaly

What Does Victory Look Like If Not This?

By Petra Hůlová

Petra Hůlová's dystopian novel The Movement, translated from Czech by Alex Zucker, is available now from World Editions. The novel follows the narrator, a prison guard at…

Translated by Alex Zucker

A Long Way from Douala

Max Lobe's novel A Long Way from Douala, translated by Ros Schwartz, is out next month from Other Press. The novel follows the narrator, Jean, and his friend Simon, as they search for…

Translated by Ros Schwartz

Two Poems

By Fiston Mwanza Mujila

The River in the Belly, the second collection by award-winning poet Fiston Mwanza Mujila to appear in English, will be published by Deep Vellum next week in J. Bret Maney's translation.…

Translated by J. Bret Maney

A Treasure Chest of Goodbyes

By Nataliya Deleva

Nataliya Deleva's debut novel, Four Minutes, translated from Bulgarian by Izidora Angel, is out tomorrow from Open Letter. The book focuses on characters whose voices are often marginalized in…

Translated by Izidora Angel

The Interrogation

By Hwang Sok-Yong

In the 1990s, writer and Korean reunification activist Hwang Sok-yong spent five years in prison for visiting North Korea in violation of South Korea’s National Security Act. In his memoir The…

Translated by Anton Hur & Sora Kim-Russell

The Book That Launched Japan’s #MeToo Movement

Originally published in 2017, Black Box, journalist Shiori Ito's memoir about her experience of sexual assault and her struggle to bring her attacker to justice, prompted a reckoning over gender-based…

Translated by Allison Markin Powell

Where the Infinite Unfolds

By Dulce Maria Cardoso

Dulce Maria Cardoso's Violeta among the Stars, translated from Portuguese by Ángel Gurría-Quintana, is out this week from MacLehose Press. Cardoso's lyrical, stream-of-consciousness…

Translated by Ángel Gurría-Quintana

The Membranes

Ari Larissa Heinrich's translation of Chi Ta-wei's The Membranes, a classic of queer speculative fiction originally published in Taiwan in 1995, is out this week from Columbia University…

Translated by Ari Larissa Heinrich

Wolves

By Bhuwaneshwar

This week, Seagull Books publishes Wolves, a collection of short stories by Bhuwaneshwar (1910–57), who is often described as the father of the modern Hindi short story. Translated…

Translated by Saudamini Deo

Family Rules

By Anke Stelling

Anke Stelling's award-winning novel Higher Ground, translated from German by Lucy Jones, is out tomorrow from Scribe. An examination of class, friendship, and parenthood in contemporary…

Translated by Lucy Jones

My First and Only Love

By Sahar Khalifeh

The most recent novel by Palestinian writer Sahar Khalifeh, My First and Only Love, is out this week from Hoopoe. The book follows the protagonist, Nidal, as she returns to her family home in Nablus…

Translated by Aida Bamia

Connection Fever

By Polly Barton

Fifty Sounds, Polly Barton’s memoir of moving to Japan, immersing herself in the language, and becoming a literary translator, is out tomorrow from Fitzcarraldo Editions. In the excerpt…

Dog Rose in the Wind, the Rain, the Earth

By Farkhondeh Aghaei

Today, Two Lines Press releases Elemental: Earth Stories, the third title in its Calico series. The collection features writing by eight international authors whose work explores humanity's…

Translated by Michelle Quay

The Mercedes

By Bekim Sejranović

Bekim Sejranović's From Nowhere to Nowhere, a novel about a young man displaced by the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, is out tomorrow from Sandorf Passage in Will Firth's translation.…

Translated by Will Firth

The Guest

By György Dragomán

György Dragomán's The Bone Fire, a Gothic novel about an orphan who's adopted by her mysterious grandmother, is out this week with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In the excerpt…

Translated by Ottilie Mulzet

An Adventure Worthy of an Author

In her travel memoir Winter Pasture, out next week with Astra House, writer Li Juan chronicles the winter she spent with a family of Kazakh herders in a remote region of northern China.…

Translated by Jack Hargreaves & Yan Yan

Slash and Burn

By Claudia Hernández

Salvadoran author Claudia Hernández's first novel, Slash and Burn, is out this week with And Other Stories. Translated by Julia Sanches, the book follows several women through…

Translated by Julia Sanches

Peach Blossom Paradise

Peach Blossom Paradise, the first book in Ge Fei's Jiangnan Trilogy, will be published next week by NYRB Classics in Canaan Morse's translation. The novel tells the story of Xiumi, a…

Translated by Canaan Morse

An Archipelago in a Landlocked Country

Elisa Taber's An Archipelago in a Landlocked Country is out today with 11:11 Press. A lyric ethnography of two Paraguayan populations—a Mennonite colony and a Nivaklé settlement—the…

A Pre-Columbian Bestiary: Tepeyólotl

By Ilan Stavans

In A Pre-Columbian Bestiary: Fantastic Creatures of Indigenous Latin America, Ilan Stavans collaborates with illustrator Eko to tell the stories of religious and mythical creatures from…

New Ways of Saying “We”

Girls Against God, the latest novel from Norwegian writer and musician Jenny Hval, came out earlier this month with Verso Books. Translated by Marjam Idriss, the novel blends experimental horror,…

Translated by Marjam Idriss

What Happens When We Sleep?

By Haytham El Wardany

Egyptian writer Haytham El Wardany's The Book of Sleep, translated from Arabic by Robin Moger, is out today with Seagull Books. Throughout the book, and in the four fragments below, El Wardany…

Translated by Robin Moger

Bodies

By Selva Almada

After the successful English-language publication of her debut novel The Wind That Lays Waste, Argentinian author Selva Almada returns with Dead Girls, a journalistic novel centered…

Translated by Annie McDermott

Discovering Murakami

By David Karashima

In his Who We’re Reading When We’re Reading Murakami, David Karashima synthesizes research, correspondence, and interviews with dozens of individuals—including Murakami himself—to…

Birds in Formation

By Nguyen Ngoc Tu

Other Moons: Vietnamese Short Stories of the American War and Its Aftermath, translated and edited by Quan Manh Ha and Joseph Babcock, is out this week from Columbia University Press. In the story…

Translated by Quan Manh Ha & Joseph Babcock

“An Immigrant Like an Automobile”

By Malgorzata Szejnert

From preeminent Polish journalist Malgorzata Szejnert, Ellis Island: A People's History, translated by Sean Gasper Bye and out next week with Scribe Publications, pieces together a portrait of…

Translated by Sean Gasper Bye

First Read—From “No Presents Please”

By Jayant Kaikini

The first translated book to win the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, Jayant Kaikini's No Presents Please, translated from Kannada by Tejaswini Niranjana and out next week with Catapult,…

Translated by Tejaswini Niranjana

First Read: From “Breathing Through the Wound”

By Víctor del Árbol

In Víctor del Árbol's novel Breathing Through the Wound, translated by Lisa Dillman and out this week with Other Press, an artist accepts an unusual commission…

Translated by Lisa M. Dillman

First Read—from “Songs We Learn from Trees”

By Misrak Terefe

Songs We Learn from Trees, an anthology of Amharic poetry edited and translated by Chris Beckett and Alemu Tebeje, is forthcoming this week from Carcanet Press. Today's First Read spotlights…

Translated by Chris Beckett & Yemisrach Tassew

First Read—From “Cockfight” by María Fernanda Ampuero

By María Fernanda Ampuero

María Fernanda Ampuero's debut story collection, Cockfight, translated by Frances Riddle and out next week from the Feminist Press, exposes the violence and cruelty underlying domestic…

Translated by Frances Riddle

First Read—From “Roxy”

By Esther Gerritsen

In Esther Gerritsen's Roxy, translated by Michele Hutchison and out this week with World Editions, a young woman named Roxy struggles to move on after her husband is killed in a car crash along…

Translated by Michele Hutchison

First Read—From “Second Sister”

In Chan Ho-Kei's Second Sister, translated by Jeremy Tiang and out next week with Grove Atlantic, a young woman named Nga-Yee tries to uncover the motives behind her sister's suicide. In the excerpt…

Translated by Jeremy Tiang

First Read—From “The Sweet Indifference of the World”

In Peter Stamm’s The Sweet Indifference of the World, translated by Michael Hofmann and out next week with Other Press, a writer blurs the line between past and present, fiction and reality, in…

Translated by Michael Hofmann

First Read—From “Come to Me”

By Bogdan Rusev

Bogdan Rusev’s Come to Me, translated by Ekaterina Petrova and out next week with Dalkey Archive Press, is a story of coming-of-age in 1990s Bulgaria in the wake of the Soviet Bloc’s collapse…

Translated by Ekaterina Petrova

First Read—From “Return to the Enchanted Island”

By Johary Ravaloson

In Johary Ravaloson’s Return to the Enchanted Island, translated by Allison M. Charette and out tomorrow with Amazon Crossing, Ietsy Razak comes of age amidst the enchanted origin myths of Madagascar.…

Translated by Allison M. Charette

First Read—from “Celestial Bodies”

By Jokha Alharthi

Jokha Alharthi’s Man Booker International Prize–winning Celestial Bodies, translated from Arabic by Marilyn Booth and out this month with Catapult, follows the stories of three sisters—Mayya,…

Translated by Marilyn Booth

First Read—from “The Collector of Leftover Souls”

Eliane Brum’s The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil’s Everyday Insurrections, translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty and forthcoming with Graywolf Press, features…

Translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty

First Read—From “History. A Mess.”

By Sigrún Pálsdóttir

In Sigrún Pálsdóttir’s History. A Mess., translated by Lytton Smith and forthcoming from Open Letter Books, a PhD student uncovers information about the first documented professional…

Translated by Lytton Smith

First Read—From “Among the Lost”

By Emiliano Monge

The following is excerpted from Emiliano Monge’s Among the Lost (translated by Frank Wynne), winner of the 2016 English PEN Award and out tomorrow from Scribe US. Set in an unnamed land that could…

Translated by Frank Wynne

First Read—“Knowingly Willingly,” from “A New Divan”

By Gonca Özmen

Gonca Özmen’s poem “Knowingly Willingly” is excerpted from A New Divan: A Lyrical Dialogue between East & West. Jo Shapcott’s English version is…

Translated by Jo Shapcott

First Read—From “Curl”

T.O. Bobe’s Curl, translated by Sean Cotter and forthcoming with Wakefield Press, features Mr. Gică, the world’s greatest barber, and the colorful cast of characters who frequent his…

Translated by Sean Cotter

First Read—From “Camouflage”

In Camouflage, excerpted below, Galician poet Lupe Gómez explores her mother and her mother tongue, and her land and its changes. The collection is out today with Circumference Books, with English…

Translated by Erín Moure

First Read—From “The White Book”

The following excerpt is from Han Kang’s The White Book, translated by Deborah Smith and out this week from Hogarth. Shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, The White Book…

Translated by Deborah Smith

[class^="wpforms-"]

[class^="wpforms-"]