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Nonfiction

The Rahue River winding through lush greenery
Manuel cossu, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Reductions
By Jaime Huenún Villa
Jaime Huenún Villa remembers his Huilliche-Mapuche ancestors and their wise way of being in the territory.
Translated from Spanish by Cynthia Steele
Multilingual
A yak stands on a snowy hill
Alexandr Frolov, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Man Who Can Never Go Home
By Lhashamgyal
In this essay excerpted from the forthcoming The Penguin Book of Modern Tibetan Essays, Lhashamgyal grapples with questions of belonging, identity, and exile.
Translated from Tibetan by Tenzin Dickie & Pema Tsewang Shastri
From left to right, a collage of photos of Merve Emre, Agnes Ahlander Turner, and Enid Prasad
Three New Members Join WWB Board of Directors
By Words Without Borders
Words Without Borders is pleased to announce the election of three new members to its Board of Directors this spring: Agnes Ahlander Turner, Merve Emre, and Enid Prasad.
A tall foye tree trunk shot from below, surrounded by leaves
Patricio Novoa Quezada, CC BY-NC 2.0, via Flickr
Letters Drawn from Foye Bark
By Adriana Paredes Pinda
Adriana Paredes Pinda considers the power and implications of writing, what it means to exist between languages, and the lasting effects of colonialism on the Mapuche people.
Translated from Spanish by Arthur Malcolm Dixon
Multilingual
A photo of Daniel Hahn. He is seated on a bench inside an art gallery, and turns to the left to...
Copyright (c) John Lawrence.
Daniel Hahn to Receive 2023 Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature
By Words Without Borders
WWB’s annual award for the promotion of international literature will go to Daniel Hahn this year.
A loom with Mapuche textiles
Marco Antonio Correa Flores, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Following Luminous Traces
By Daniela Catrileo
Daniela Catrileo reaffirms the existence of Mapuche literature—historically considered static or even nonexistent—as a vital, diverse, and growing body of work.
Translated from Spanish by Edith Adams
Multilingual
Portrait of author Dubravka Ugrešic
Photo: Judith Jockel
Dubravka Ugrešic’s Postcard
By Chad W. Post
She was golden. As was her writing, which will live on forever.
Photo of rocks and brush in Fitatimen, Río Negro
Photo: Liliana Ancalao
I Write to Purge This Memory
By Liliana Ancalao
Liliana Ancalao honors her Mapuche identity and records the violence the state committed against her people in the Conquest of the Desert and Occupation of Araucanía, violence that continues to this day.
Translated from Spanish by Liliana Ancalao & Seth Michelson
Multilingual
Portraits of Elisa Taber and Liliana Ancalao
Elisa Taber (left) and Liliana Ancalao (right)
Living Words: An Introduction to Five Contemporary Mapuche Texts
By Elisa Taber & Liliana Ancalao
Liliana Ancalao and Elisa Taber discuss the genocide of the Mapuche people, and how Mapuche writing both stitches together that open wound and recognizes the historical and cultural continuity of this people.
Translated from Spanish by Elisa Taber
Multilingual
A boat on the coast of Gujarat at sunset
Photo by Pandav Tank on Unsplash
Translating Gujarat: On Raising Visibility and Sharing Literary Wealth
By Jenny Bhatt
For translators from under-represented languages like ours, the act of translation can also be a mode of recovery and reclamation.
A black silhouette with a soccer ball over the chest over red flames and a yellow background with...
Image by Omar Momani
Men without Women
By Moeen Farrokhi
There was not one single woman present in any of the stadiums I had attended during any of my teams’ matches.
Translated from Persian by Poupeh Missaghi
A crop of the Stop Executions Poster depicting two hanging outlines over the words No more executions...
Poster designed by Iman Nabavi
Mornings of Hell in Iran
By Anonymous
Every night I wake up several times. I have nightmares of executions.
Translated from Persian by Poupeh Missaghi
Four girls with their backs turned to the camera holding up their headscarves with their hair down
Photo via social media
I Am a Witness
By Anonymous
For a while now, I’ve stopped pulling up my scarf to cover my hair when I pass by the guards.
Translated from Persian by Poupeh Missaghi
a family collage behind a pair of eyes
Photo via Celina Naheed
Reasons I Feel like a Bad Iranian During a Revolution
By Celina Naheed
Because I fear for my family whose faces I only know from albums
A river winds through the hilly green countryside in northern Sweden
Photo by Fredrik Posse on Unsplash
The Same River Twice: Notes on Reading, Time, and Translation
By Saskia Vogel
I have been opening this book since 2018 and over the years, I have become many different readers.
Woman Life Freedom, #mashaamini, and #iranrevolution written in chalk on pavement
Farshid
By Somayeh Noroozi
You might not believe this, but in that little autumn prison courtyard, the dogs and humans are grieving together, wishing for freedom together.
Translated from Persian by Poupeh Missaghi
An old, sepia toned photograph of a young girl
Photo by Robin Myers
Hosts and Guests
By Robin Myers
Translation, an obsessive interpretive art in which the boundaries between guest and host are tenderly and strenuously unstable, is my constant companion while I learn what it means to build a life in a country and culture different from the one I was…
Multimedia
A game of hopscotch on asphalt
FranHogan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via WikiMedia Commons
Writing in Mother Tongue and an Other Tongue
By Pratishtha Pandya
Every time I write something in English, I’ve been left feeling guilty, as if I had betrayed someone.
A red car with an open hood in a car garage
Martin Vorel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Garage and Rahemat Khan
By Hasmukh Shah
A legend widely believed in Bajana was that there was no car Rahemat Khan could not repair.
Translated from Gujarati by Mira Desai
A family photo on sidewalk of Tehran near a parked motorcycle
Friday Evening Story
By Aida Ahadiany
The boy lay down in the middle of the street. All alone.
Translated from Persian by Poupeh Missaghi
A cluster of pigeons on a sidewalk
Photo by Sahar Sakhaei on Instagram
Conversations
By Sahar Sakhaei
I thought about the eyes of the girl standing tall with her cut hair. Suddenly, the sun rose.
Translated from Persian by Poupeh Missaghi
Black Persian text on a white background
Photo by Zia Nabavi on Instagram
In Conversation with the Prison
By Zia Nabavi
He needed a phone more than anyone in our prison ward.
Translated from Persian by Poupeh Missaghi
A woman in a pink sari walks in the street in front of an apartment building
Photo by Akshar Dave on Unsplash
Writing in Troubled Times
By Geetanjali Shree
Fiction came to us from the West. Creativity did not.
Two log cabins, one with a grass roof, in a field next to the water
I, Argus fin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Sharing Stories: A Brief Introduction to Sámi Literary History
By Mathilde Magga
For Sámi literature to continue playing its essential role in our culture and to expand its benefits, we need more writers, readers, and translators, which is impossible without support—both financially and through the education system.
Planet Word's grand, dimly illuminated library.
Planet Word. Photo © DuHon Photography
Planet Word: Exploring a New Language Museum in Washington, DC
By Tal Goldfajn
Languages are particularly challenging to exhibit physically in museums—how then to tell the story of our most precious forms of intangible cultural heritage in a tangible form?
Black and white photograph of Sámi people traveling with reindeer
Swedish National Heritage Board, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
The Deportation of the Northern Sámi
By Elin Anna Labba
The children ask where they are going. They, too, have begun to grasp that they are not heading home.
Translated from Swedish by Fiona Graham
September-2022-International-Translation-Day-Feature
From left to right: Nicholas Glastonbury, Sawad Hussain, Yilin Wang, Stefan Tobler
What Comes after #NameTheTranslator?
By Yilin Wang, Stefan Tobler, Sawad Hussain & Nicholas Glastonbury
When we celebrate the increasing visibility of translation, we should also ask about what languages and literatures—and, consequently, what human experiences—are afforded visibility.
A person pours tea into cups alongside pastries on a table
Photo copyright © Darren Byler
Translation as Transgression: Bringing the Uyghur Novel The Backstreets into English
By Darren Byler
In 2014, translating Uyghur knowledge into English felt like a subversive act in itself.
Black and white image of Berlin's Potzdamer Platz in the 1930s.
Sludge G, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Toward a Vision of Post-COVID Urban Space: Joseph Roth’s City of Miniatures
By Alexander Wells
Reading Roth’s Berlin miniatures, a sense of the dynamic between sociability and justice feels essential to the urban experience.
Several books lined up in a row
Photo by Syd Wachs on Unsplash
Roll Call of Abandoned Languages
By J. R. Ramakrishnan
Empire made English my mother tongue—and the only one I have any real dominion over.
Sketch of Infernal Landscape by Hieronymus Bosch
Rik Klein Gotink and Robert G. Erdmann, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Seeking Shelter in Language
By Saudamini Deo
In English, Hindi, and Bangla—the languages I use daily—we spoke only of death and distress.
Black and white image of Puerto Rico's first openly gay poet Manuel Ramos Otero
Four Puerto Rican Poets Sing of Dust
By Cristina Pérez Díaz
Cristina Pérez Díaz writes about four Puerto Rican poets whose work operates in the constructions of queer bodies and of the nation.
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
A silver Vespa parked on a cobblestone road
Photo by Enrico Carnemolla on Unsplash
Uncle Andrea
By Antonio Calgan
Hypocrite that I am, I never acknowledged my true self out of cowardice, out of fear of being misunderstood, and, more than anything else, because I thought if they knew what I was, they’d despise me.
Translated from Italian by Wendell Ricketts
The Milky Way is pictured above Earth's atmospheric glow blanketing Earth's horizon
Photo by NASA, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Czech Enough
By Jaroslav Kalfař
Home is an ever-changing aspiration, not a truth or guarantee.
Mirror over Water at Sunset
Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
We Only Live Twice
By Adel Tincelin
The transworld was so beautiful, so vast! There was so much to explore!
Translated from French by Evan McGorray
Multimedia
Score of Anold Schoenberg's Transfigured Night
Outside Music
By Hernán Bravo Varela
Hernán Bravo Varela pens a sonically rich eulogy to his father using the music that he cherished.
Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers
Multimedia
whitewashed exterior of santo crist crhuch in veracruz mexico
© Alejandro Borbolla. Used under Creative Commons license.
Life’s Not Worth a Thing
By Fernanda Melchor
He was as cool as ice, the blue-eyed motherfucker even offered us a drink.
Translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes
June-2022-Tokarczuk-Ognosia-Flammarion-Engraving Flammarion engraving, unknown artist
Ognosia
By Olga Tokarczuk
We will need new maps as well as the courage and humor of travelers who won’t hesitate to stick their heads outside the sphere of the world-up-to-this-point, beyond the horizon of existing dictionaries and encyclopedias.
Translated from Polish by Jennifer Croft
New Yorker critic Merve Emre and WWB Books Editor Adam Dalva
Launch Event: Celebrate the New WWB with Merve Emre
Join us Wednesday, June 8, at 6 PM ET as New Yorker critic Merve Emre talks with WWB Books Editor Adam Dalva about her journey as a critic and the2022 International Booker Prize. Registration is free.
Woman reading book with bookshelves and colorful book spines behind her
The New Words Without Borders: The Future of Reading the World
By the Editors
Nearing its twentieth anniversary, the premier publication for international literature reimagines what is to come.
L Blog Post Dominican Self Portrait Graffiti Featured Image
A Dominican “Self-Portrait” to Inspire Students’ Self-Reflections
By Nadia Kalman
Which experiences have a greater influence on us—our successes, or the times when we've been hurt?
Welcome to the New Words Without Borders
By Karen M. Phillips
We couldn't be more excited about our new, state-of-the-art home for international literature.
The Story of a Notebook
By Sergio Chejfec
One is drawn toward handwritten manuscripts because, unlike more mediated forms of writing (whether produced by typewriters, word processors, or automatic transcription tools), they alone retain the signs of hesitation.
Translated from Spanish by Jeffrey Lawrence
March-2022-Elena-Rigby-Beatlemania-Neapolitan-The-Shampoo-Album-Cover
Cover for The Shampoo's album In Naples.
Elena Rigby
By Peppe Fiore
The microphones of Radio Antenna Capri are rapt witnesses to a minor page of modern history—even if the chapter of history in question is the saga of the Neapolitan gasconade, not the annals of the pop beat.
Translated from Italian by Antony Shugaar
A baby doll sits by a window
Photo by Jay Mistry on Unsplash
The Lost Translator
By Michael F. Moore
It is all the more disturbing, then, that neither Gyllenhaal in her interviews nor the film’s end credits or press kit makes any mention of the translator whose work was the basis for the script: Ann Goldstein.
A glowing diamond with light radiating from it
Photo by kirklai on Unsplash
We Need More Speculative Fiction in Translation
By Rachel Cordasco
Despite this recent wave of SFT, there are still a number of barriers preventing more of it from going mainstream in the Anglophone world.
Various wooden letter blocks
Photo by Amador Loureiro on Unsplash
9 Writers to Read on International Mother Language Day
By the Editors of Words Without Borders
We highlight 9 writers working in their heritage languages, from Galician and Cebuano to Guaraní and Kaaps.
Multimedia
A watercolor of a middle-aged woman from the shoulders up
An image from Igort's "The Story of Serafima Andreyevna," translated by Jamie Richards.
Voices from Ukraine: A Reading List
By the Editors of Words Without Borders
While some of this writing engages directly with the country's history of armed conflict with Russia, the majority addresses more quotidian themes.
Words Without Borders Campus Launches Korean Literature Resource
WWB Campus presents a collection of Korean literature and accompanying resources for high school and college classrooms.
An International Menagerie: Animal Stories
By Susan Harris
Some of the animals here possess the power of speech, deploying it to often subversive ends.
Calvin Baker Joins WWB Board of Directors
By Words Without Borders
Words Without Borders is pleased to announce the election of acclaimed author Calvin Baker to its Board of Directors. “I am a great admirer of Calvin’s writing. A brilliant writer…
Nuestra Ciudad: Writing the City in Spanish
By Ulises Gonzales
Today, a young writer working in Spanish arrives in New York City to find no shortage of role models.
Introducing WWB’s Education Fellow, Allison Tim
By Words Without Borders
We're pleased to welcome Allison Tim as the first-ever WWB education fellow. Allison is a writer, photographer, and budding filmmaker. After graduating from Macalester College with…
Soleil Davíd
Introducing WWB’s Editorial Fellow, Soleil Davíd
By Words Without Borders
I see translation as a way for me to engage with one facet of my country’s literature, a hopefully productive excuse to read works in Tagalog and Bikol.
The Literary Life of K-pop Lyrics
By Sang Young Park
I’d accumulated what is surely the biggest collection of gem-like K-pop lyrics in the world.
Translated by Anton Hur
This Language Called Kaaps: An Introduction
By Olivia M. Coetzee
Language is more than just a method of communication. It is about the ability to lay down roots, to settle into an identity, to have a place in history, in the present, and in the future. Language is…
Introducing WWB’s New Books Editor, Adam Dalva
By Words Without Borders
We’re pleased to welcome Adam Dalva as the new books editor of Words Without Borders.Adam’s writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, and the Paris…
The Voices of Contact Languages in Asia: An Introduction
By Stefanie Shamila Pillai
For multilingual writers, choosing to write in their heritage languages can be seen as an expression of agency, an active choice to communicate in a nondominant language.
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.