Words Without Borders

1 week ago | wordswithoutborders.org | Nathalie Handal |Carmen Boullosa |Rafael Pérez Gay |Nina Perrotta

If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have learned the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains. —Italo Calvino, Invisible CitiesCan you describe the mood of El Paso as you feel/see it? First, what is visible: the lavish expanse of light. Light on the stone benches. Light on the slopes of the mountains surrounding the city.

1 week ago | wordswithoutborders.org | Alex Tan |Tobias Carroll |Mandana Chaffa |Rebecca Hussey

A chronicler of the chimeric, the Egyptian writer Mansoura Ez Eldin has been celebrated in the Arab world for her feverish, fanciful plots. To read her feels like opening one’s eyes into a fugue state, a landscape in which the parameters of reality seem just slightly off-kilter. The air, in her universe, is always abuzz with ethereal presences and diaphanous bodies, anticipating the propitious moment for revelation.

3 weeks ago | wordswithoutborders.org | Tobias Carroll |Mandana Chaffa |Rebecca Hussey |Alina Stefanescu

From Schaffner Press | The Lives and Deaths of Véronique Bangoura by Tierno Monénembo, translated from the French by Ryan Chamberlain | Fiction | 240 pages | ISBN 9781639640591 | US$17.95 What the publisher says: “In this gripping novel set in both French Guinea and Paris, award-winning author (The King of Kahel) Tierno Monénembo explores themes of international exile, sexual abuse, generational trauma, and repressed memory of a people and country under the regime of dictator Sekou Toure from...

1 month ago | wordswithoutborders.org | Tobias Carroll |Mandana Chaffa |Rebecca Hussey |Alina Stefanescu

Now in its third year, the National Book Critics Circle’s Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize celebrates a thrilling span of books, across genres, languages, countries of origin, and publishers. During the course of 2024, our panel—a combination of member critics and several board members—deliberated over hundreds of books, resulting in the following shortlist. It’s an honor to present our judges’ appreciations for our six finalists.

1 month ago | wordswithoutborders.org | Elete Nelson-Fearon |Lia Galvan Lisker |Alexander Aguayo |Tobias Carroll

Each year, WWB is proud to publish over a dozen writers whose work has never before appeared in English. This IWD, meet eight women writers who we introduced to anglophone readers this past year. 1. Emma BraslavskyEmma Braslavsky writes, moderates, curates, and directs. In her short story “The VANISHÄVEN Furniture System: A Demonstration,” Braslavsky introduces a furniture system that aims to solve one of the world’s crises—but creates a few problems of its own.