World Literature Today

World Literature Today is an American magazine that focuses on global literature and culture, produced by the University of Oklahoma in Norman. This publication features a variety of content, including essays, poetry, fiction, interviews, and book reviews from around the globe, making it easy for a wide audience to enjoy. Its goal is to provide an engaging and informative overview of contemporary international literature. Originally established as Books Abroad in 1927 by Roy Temple House, who was the chair of the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Oklahoma, the magazine adopted its current name, World Literature Today, in January 1977.

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9 Questions for Katie Goh, by Michelle Johnson

3 weeks ago | worldliteraturetoday.org | Michelle Johnson

This page is available to subscribers. Click here to signin or get access. In May, Katie Goh’s Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange was published by Tin House. A hybrid work of memoir, science, and history, Foreign Fruit follows the complicated history of the orange, an investigation that parallels Goh’s search into her own heritage. In Foreign Fruit, the history of the orange as a narrative frame for your own heritage seems to shift as we move through the book.
Riksha, by Vandana Singh

3 weeks ago | worldliteraturetoday.org | Vandana Singh

The road to Delhi is hot with a heat that is no respecter of persons. Shekhar was woken by a loud sound, like a cannon. He started awake, heart thumping, and saw the dead bird—a large one with a bare, scrawny head that had apparently landed on the hood of the car. He felt as though he was drowning in a river of fire, it was that hot. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his Dolce & Gabbana shirt and tried to sit up. The car was ominously silent.
10 International Dystopian Novels about Authoritarian Regimes, by Lala Mammadova

1 month ago | worldliteraturetoday.org | Emiley White |Michelle Johnson |James Fawcett |Madeline Meyers

This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. When things are bad, I like to read books where things are even worse.
Language as Refuge, by Veronica Esposito

2 months ago | worldliteraturetoday.org | Veronica Esposito

What is lost when a language dies? Our columnist considers the loss of languages across time and wonders what it would look like to re-Babel the world. How many languages have ever existed? It’s the kind of question that smacks of Borges’s unforgettable short story “The Library of Babel,” which imagines a library so vast in its exhaustion of language, form, content, and cognition as to be a universe in itself.
20 Environmental Literature Recommendations: Books That Celebrate Human Life, Plants, and Nature, by Emiley White

2 months ago | worldliteraturetoday.org | Michelle Johnson |Emiley White |James Fawcett |Madeline Meyers

For those fascinated by bees, birdsong, and remembering biodiversity. For the window-watchers. For the trees. Here is a collection of environmental fiction and nonfiction titles that delve into our living world. Indra SinhaAnimal’s PeopleSimon & Schuster, 2009Alice Elliott DarkFellowship PointMarysue Rucci Books, 2023Imbolo MbueHow Beautiful We WereRandom House, 2021Fernanda TríasPink SlimeTrans. Heather ClearyScribner, 2024Rachel Heng The Great ReclamationRiverhead, 2024Richard PowersThe OverstoryW.
Out of the Shadows, by Lilach Galil

2 months ago | worldliteraturetoday.org | Maria Moran |Tomas Moniz |Jason M. Thornberry |Anna Voltaggio

Lilach Galil’s 2009 novel, Betsilo (In its shadow), is a polyphonic novel told by the six main characters. Rona is a poet and a literary editor whose father, Michael, died when she was a child. Reading a memoir by a Holocaust survivor, Mr. Zimmerman, she feels that something is amiss and makes an appointment to meet with him. The excerpt is a description of their meeting. Unbeknownst to her, her boyfriend Idan is Eliezer’s grandson. This excerpt is at the core of the book.
9 Questions for Robert Seethaler, by Michelle Johnson

2 months ago | worldliteraturetoday.org | Michelle Johnson

This page is available to subscribers. Click here to signin or get access. In February, Europa Editions published Katy Derbyshire’s English translation of Robert Seethaler’s eighth novel, The Café with No Name. The novel was a number-one seller in Germany and enjoyed forty weeks on the Spiegel best-seller list. In the novel, a young man raised in a home for war orphans opens a café in the market square of a poor neighborhood in Vienna.
Ananda Devi’s Light in Translation: A Celebration of Literature from the “Margins,” by Will Evans

Jan 27, 2025 | worldliteraturetoday.org | Will Evans

Ananda Devi’s principal English-language champion makes a case that “publishing Devi is an act of resistance, of amplifying a voice, an entire nation and population that has been too long overlooked.”The beauty of books is how they move, cross boundaries, and transform the reader who touches them.
“Not Knowing How to Get There Is What Makes You Great”: A Conversation with Chilean Poet Mario Meléndez, by Ming Di

Jan 23, 2025 | worldliteraturetoday.org | Rita Chang-Eppig |Ming Di |Susan Blumberg-Kason |Jonas Elbousty

This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. Regarded as one of the most original voices of the new Latin American poetry, Mario Meléndez (b. 1971) is a Chilean poet born in Linares. Among his books are Vuelo subterráneo, El circo de papel, La muerte tiene los días contados, Esperando a Perec, Jardín de escombros, and El mago de la soledad. Selections of poetry have been translated into more than fifteen languages.
Writing against Classical Evil AI: A Conversation with Erika Swyler, by Rita Chang-Eppig

Jan 14, 2025 | worldliteraturetoday.org | Susan Blumberg-Kason |Rita Chang-Eppig |Jonas Elbousty |Michelle Johnson

This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. Erika Swyler is the best-selling author of the critically acclaimed novels Light from Other Stars and The Book of Speculation. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in Catapult, Literary Hub, VIDA, the New York Times, and elsewhere. A graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, she seeks to make work that is in dialogue with the arts, sciences, and history.