Some authors thumb their noses at the difficulties they are creating for the translator, and they are right to do so; their job is to write, the translator's is to translate.

“Each element establishes a layer that gives the story added weight and heft.”—Francine Prose

In Judith Sollosy, the “untranslatable” Esterházy meets his matchHe willy-nilly created a brand of intertextual irony.

The many painful and absurd situations we experienced happened in such a short lapse of time that, no, it is not at all surprising.

The details of Gogol's subsequent demise bring us into the realm of his most phantasmagoric stories.

As a reader of Robert Walser for almost 30 years, I’m pleased to host this discussion of the latest addition to the Walser corpus in English: The Assistant. Strange to think that this delightful,…

In no other novel does modern Switzerland show her changing face with such gentle charm. In The Assistant, Robert Walser looks back on his sojourn with the engineer Dubler in Wädenswil in 1903. As a testament…

Robert Walser was not quite thirty in 1907 when he sat down in his Berlin apartment—a fifth-story walkup in a rear building at 141 Wilmersdorfer Straße in the Charlottenburg district—and began to write…

As a writer, I have come to know that writers have the misfortune of being invited to speak on things about which they know absolutely nothing.

Zikiya's Rwanda was a mythical, pre-colonial state with customs his ancestors had brought into the mountains along with their herds, where they'd become hopelessly outdated over the years.

The two of them are quite different in the ways they paint, and their works have distinctly different styles.

“I want translations with copious footnotes, footnotes reaching up like skyscrapers to the top of this or that page so as to leave only the gleam of one textual line between commentary and eternity.”…

Yet she pulls me like the moon. The melancholy between her eyebrows makes my heart throb with pain.

Beijing's cab drivers are the best in the world.

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.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair, where thousands of publishers from around the world annually squeeze inside huge exhibition halls to buy and sell foreign rights, a typical booth contains several tiny tables…

Don't tell me you want to return to those days without democracy, the PRI's?

Thus in the IWP we try to connectówriters to other writers, readers, translators, students, and Americans from every walk of life.

José Eduardo Agualusa, 46, is a growing name in world literature. Born in Huambo, Angola, Agualusa has already been embraced across the Portuguese-speaking literary world—especially in Brazil and Portugal,…

Alexander Cuadros reports from Brazil's Festa Literária Internacional de Parati (FLIP).

Brian Eno once famously remarked that the problem with computers is that there isn't enough Africa in them.

Editors’ Note: This month we present the first in a series of dialogues: two translators produce versions of the same text, then discuss their choices and approaches. Here Daniel Hahn and Clifford…

2007 Words Without Borders/Reading the World BOOK CLUBS ARE HEREALL ARE INVITED TO READ, COMMENT, AND PARTICIPATERTW BOOK CLUBS 2007 LINEUP:JANUARY and FEBRUARY James Marcus and Cynthia Haven, Collected…

You will have had no difficulty recognizing the German crib tacked onto Daniil Kharms's neologism in the title of my remarks.

Our first car was a beige Zaporozhets made in the USSR, which had a Beetle-like design.

This forum is for you, our readers interested in translation, practitioners of translation, and others, to ask questions, exchange ideas, and share thoughts on the topic of translation. If you wish to…

A New Talent From China Posits Mind Over Matterby Alexis AlmeidaFor all of you literary thrill-seekers, clamoring to uncover yet another author in whose dizzying cerebral mindplay you will delight, I…

“Like many Arab novelists and poets, he has turned to the essay.”—Ahdaf Soueif

I was five years old and had just started school when one of my teachers discovered that I could not make out what was on the blackboard. The boy with whom I shared a desk whispered in my ear, “Your…

It was the chosen hour, that marvelous hour in the country of Africa, when the great fiery sun is going to finally disappear, leaving the earth to rest in the blue shadow of the night.

As we approach the end of the year, the editors at Words Without Borders would like to celebrate the wealth and variety of literary translations published in English in 2006. To this end, we approached…

Who is an Israeli writer? Israel's dominant language is Hebrew.

For the Israelis, these hours were needed so that each and every returnee would understand the truth they wanted understood: you are coming to place yourself under our heel.

A contemporary, retroactive review of the cultural identity of the Palestinian Arabs living inside Israel can form a basis for the critical study of the literary culture of this geographic area that is also known as the 1948 Region

Others have been obliged to live the lives of impossible citizenship, since the Arab who lives on the Land of Israel can never be the equal of an Israeli citizen.

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

But the rababa is a naked, homeless instrument, and that is why, like beggars who do not have a rababa, the man used a standard tool for panhandling, a plastic plate.

My friend,'' his voice explodes, Why don't you come have lunch with me?

In late August, Mexico City and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico signed an agreement to teach Náhuatl language and culture to Nahua (Aztec) students in Santa Ana Tlacotenco in the high southern…

During their lifetimes, Jorge Luis Borges and Roberto Bolaño struggled against vanity and all things pretentious, aspirational, ordinary, and obliging.

I'm convinced that some languages, languages we neither speak nor understand, are familiar to the ear.

When it comes to countries that have been locked away—or locked out of—the Western world, Westerners tend to believe that little happens there during the time that they are not paying attention. Like…

Life's routine persisted and more sleeves became wet, then dried, then became wet again, and so on.

Haj Salim is tilling his field, rippling with blades of wheat and barley. What's he doing?

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

I stepped into the circle and, without thinking, shot . . .

But what could he have done? my acquaintance asked.

The selection I came-up with is not arbitrary, however. It doesn't pretend to be the Best of the Best or anything like that.

A deafening noise erupts at the metal detector.

The following afternoon, I assist in the nerve-wracking removal of the bandages.

Why is it dangerous to say madre in Mexico? I later ask Odette, a young university student.

As the largest Arabic-speaking country (at 70+ million inhabitants and counting), Egypt, with its teeming capital of Cairo, plays a disproportionately large role in the intellectual and cultural life…

The entire city began to wash itself ceaselessly . . .

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

Longbills have no unfamiliar places, for they have no home.

Note: The work was written originally in Yucatecan Maya, the most widely spoken indigenous language in Mexico. Miguel Angel May May, the writer and cultural leader, has been responsible for the formation…

Author’s noteErnesto Sábato’s novel Abaddón el exterminador (1974) includes a dense epistolary chapter addressed to a virtual fellow writer, which begins “Dear, distant young man…”…

Should Americans read more world literature to rip away the blinders we so often wear when it comes to those who are “not like us”? “Yes” is the quick answer, the answer that salves…

No poem by Cavafy is as simple or as complicated as The City.

He was a wildly lonely person. I loved him.