Gandhi was a very close reader of languages and literatures.

It must be an effect of the light, but Rome can be a maze . . .

The city is ghosted by otherness, living in the shadow of the many world cities that preceded its planning and influenced its conception and development.

As a writer I feel like I am a creator of marginal lives, or, more appropriately, a kind of witness of time passing.

We do not see translations of books that will unsettle the reading community, and provoke them to be different than who they want to be.

We shall see if the hype in the United States reaches the levels Cărtărescu garners in Colombia, where he needed a police cordon to get through his crowd of fans.

The thing that surprises me the most is that parchment paper was invented in Izmir.

Even under a most repressive censorship regime or even in a most watched jail cell, writers and artists will find channels to express themselves.

There is a restlessness in the city that I have grown to love—it’s like a swaying cat’s tail.

It’s about showing how poetry in translation is intertwined with innumerable parts of society, and can create resonances and collaborations that are precious, that last, that matter.

As a writer, the only fidelity you swear is to the text: the text is king and you have to be careful not to frighten it away with your preconceptions and expectations.

Once a book is published, the story no longer belongs to me.

No matter where you are in the city, the time of year or weather, the sky at dusk will stop you in your tracks.

We want to showcase the best translations from South Asia, and help make visible authors, translators, and literature that are still largely invisible outside of South Asia.

It’s always struck me how many rich people in our countries end up hiring their own private armies: a very Colombian phenomenon.

“There have been times when we have spent hours discussing a single phrase and how to give it the same life and soul in English.”

I thought he was in search for something meaningful and, thus, he was exposing himself to conditions he hoped would light the way for a coming revelation.

“To me writing is an act of listening. And if I am writing well then what I write will necessarily be new to me as well. Writing is a journey into the unknown.”

We’re living in a world where both languages and people are constantly in flux. In this novel, I wanted to focus on a small group of people making their way through that world.

I think my task was less linguistic than it was a matter of representing the environment in my mind and sensing its moods emotionally, entering that strange atmosphere so it could seep through into the translation.

I started working on [the book] in 2016 when my grandmother was showing the first serious signs of dementia. I wanted to create an archive of sorts, in which her life was told in stories.

I always say to myself that Jawbone came to me as a nightmare, a vision full of fear and desire, but I really can’t remember how it started.

I’m always a little amazed at the subtlety of Samanta’s language, how much she can convey in so few words—that hasn’t changed over all the books of hers I’ve translated.

“One thing that makes 'Kibogo' such a compelling work is the critical distance it maintains from all the power structures it describes.”

The way the sunset sometimes Tiepolos the clouds.

When I first read Identitti, I thought, “Is the author using this in earnest or is this meant to be funny?”

I thought I could create a space for sharing women’s global experiences through literary fiction. 

I’ve always felt that my commitment is to the text, not the author, but it is wonderful to be able to ask for and receive permission.

It’s sun-kissed, industrial, god-fearing, gas-guzzling, all of it built on a harrowing history of lynch mobs and expropriation.

New Yorker critic Merve Emre and WWB Books Editor Adam Dalva talk about the 2022 International Booker Prize, recognition for translators, and her journey as a critic.

Homophobia is everywhere. I didn't realize I would grapple with it upon leaving Nigeria.

If there is one constant about this place, it is this, that the people on the move (here) all rely on a different set of lies to proceed with their truth(s).

I think that people rediscovered reading in that period of calm when everything was standing still, and no one could go out or do anything.

Architectural gems crumble on street corners, shrouded in grit till they’re decreed too ugly to save.

There are many great Arabic children’s books that haven’t reached their young readers yet.

In all these years that I’ve spent writing in English, I’ve always felt that my leaning toward literariness was informed by Malayalam.

I allowed myself to be very playful and unafraid, and to try everything.

Answers aren’t always easy to come by in the real world when you’re a kid.

Not so many people think of the local languages as literary languages.

London, which seems all sprawl and braggadocio, is at the same time self-contained and fiercely defended.

A multivoiced narrative was essential for the telling of the storm.

Humor was essential for my Ramayana.

The earthquake opened new sociopolitical avenues to be addressed in literary fiction.

The experiences gained from a lifetime of reading and pursuing other professions are invaluable assets.

In 2021, Mike Fu and Jenna Tang worked together through the Emerging Translator Mentorship Program of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), with a focus on prose from Taiwan. Fu had published…

While many Latinx writers work in English, there is a longstanding tradition of writers born or raised in this country who work in Spanish.

“Excess-birth” or “illegal” children (usually girls) were those born to a family who already had a child during the years when China’s one-child policy, in force from the…

When you are not held back by any fear, you can write songs of liberation.

Manon Steffan Ros was nervous about presenting Llyfr Glas Nebo to the world. Before it won the 2018 National Eisteddfod Prose Medal and the 2019 Wales Book of the Year, before it became a best seller,…

In recent years, a proliferation of books in translation for children and young adults has brought imaginative stories from around the world to new readers. We’re speaking with some of the extraordinary…

In the weeks after riots shook the seemingly tranquil island of Mauritius in 1999, the novelist Carl de Souza began writing a short, dense text that would become a nearly real-time depiction of that unreal…

Born in 1956, Khalid al-Maaly is an Iraqi poet, publisher, and translator. After leaving Iraq in 1979, in the wake of the Ba'ath regime's crackdown on leftists and intellectuals, he spent time…

WWB’s Translator Relay features an interview with a different translator every few months. The current month’s translator will choose the next interviewee, adding a different, sixth…

Kim Bi is one of South Korea's most prominent queer writers. She has published eight books, though only two of her stories, “Tree of Kisses” and “Transgender Basketball Club,”…

Leïla Slimani is an international literary star, a poster-woman of French multiculturalism and a leading voice on human rights. Born in 1981 to a surgeon mother and economist father in Rabat, she…