After translations into dozens of languages, this has taken seven years to appear in English, but the wait is worth it. A twentysomething woman in the States, still hopelessly single when…
After translations into dozens of languages, this has taken seven years to appear in English, but the wait is worth it. A twentysomething woman in the States, still hopelessly single when…
Tokyo Ueno Station is the Japan the tourists never see, because it’s literally swept off the streets. We hear about it from the inside. This is Kazu’s story, told by Yu Miri and translated by Morgan Giles. A middle-aged man…
A fellow queer Christian, from an utterly different context. Indonesian literature has been in the literary news since the country guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2015. But now it gets personal: Sergius Seeks Bacchus. This slim…
Something is happening in French-language literature right now that makes me dearly regret stopping at GCSE. In the last few months I’ve devoured three short and piercingly acute new translations from French that have made me think hard about animal…
Wiola is growing up. We are still growing up in parallel. She is a student in Poland exactly when I am a student in Poland, the academic session of 1995/1996. Except I’m in Warsaw for a year of my degree,…
Words grow out of her like leaves from a tree. They just emerge that way, it’s an organic process. There are so many endless possibilities, starting from somewhere, one could end up anywhere at all. Words fight each other and…
A voice from Albania, somewhere I’ve never been, seems to know exactly what I’m thinking. This is all the more interesting as for a long time, the poet, Luljeta Lleshanaku, couldn’t go anywhere at all. Born in 1968, she grew…