Spaceships, an Erotic Amusement Park, and a Time Machine: New Short Fiction in Translation
We’re intrigued by these short, often speculative fictions arriving early this year.
No Edges: Swahili Stories
Trans. Various
Two Lines Press
In April, Two Lines Press will add another collection to its Calico series, breaking important new ground with the first collection of Swahili fiction in English. The book brings together eight East African voices telling stories of sorcerers and spaceships that blast prisoners into eternity. Seven translators render these Afrofuturistic tales into English.
Asja Bakić
Sweetlust
Trans. Jennifer Zoble
Feminist Press
Jennifer Zoble translated these dystopian stories from Bosnian poet and writer Asja Bakić. Like the writers in No Edges, Bakić uses the speculative, with women being “rehabilitated” at an erotic amusement park and a programmer building a time machine. You can also read Bakić’s short story “The Talus of Madame Liken,” translated by Zobel, in WLT’s Winter 2019 issue.
Sergei Lebedev
A Present Past: Titan and Other Chronicles
Trans. Antonina W. Bouis
New Vessel Press
In these eleven stories translated by Antonina W. Bouis, Moscow-born Sergei Lebedev probes a collective guilty conscience. The voices of things, places, animals, and people seek justice in these stories from the Soviet and post-Soviet world, available in April.
Yuri Herrera
Ten Planets
Trans. Lisa Dillman
Graywolf Press
Monsters and aliens populate these stories by Mexican author Yuri Herrera, translated by Lisa Dillman, who has translated previous work by Herrera, including “The Objects,” a story from WLT’s March 2017 issue. An intestinal bacterium gains consciousness and objects can be sentient in this latest collection, available in March.
