Suzan Almahmoud interviews Jonas Elbousty about his scholarship on Arabic literature and his translations of the Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri
December 02, 2025
November 25, 2025
Julie-Françoise Tolliver reviews Not Even the Sound of a River, Hélène Dorion’s 2024 translated novel
October 21, 2025
September 04, 2025
August 13, 2025
“We are not in the era of artificial intelligence, cybernetics, robots (or reboots), WhatsApps, Zooms, Facebooks, or anything of the kind. We are in the age of utter sloth.”
Do we want to live in a society in which humans are increasingly pushed aside, de-skilled, and demoralized? The author looks at literary translation as a test case of to find out.
“If we reassign our role as language creators to AI, we will lose what makes us human.”
“In all directions—our sky is blocked. / Muttering “screw it,” shrugging “who gives a damn?” / The nation’s once again / Spineless and stuck,” from “Laws Are Mutating . . .” by Vanechka (trans. Yana Kane, edited by Bruce Esrig)
“At forty we have two kids running, / shouting, crying / that the sand is too hot, / that we argued / that nothing here brings joy,” from “Future Plans,” by Rosa Berbel (trans. Jane Stringham)
“And Mama told me: / ‘I’ll have a broken daughter / and I’ll comb her hair with all my teeth,’” from [And Mama told me], by Mónica Ojeda (trans. Kymm Coveney)
Remembering Technology
This short fiction is from the collection The Woman Dies (Europa, 2025), Aoko Matsuda’s feminist tales from Japan that blend humor, surrealism, and sharp social critique.
Just Now
A South African writer born after the Group Areas Act returns to Simon’s Town with her mother, who used to visit the old fishing town before it was declared white.
Besieged
When martial law is declared in Korea in winter 2024 by a president seeking to stage an autocoup, the writer is pushed to revisit her teenage years spent under military rule and confront the damage and despair encountered by her family as she approached the cusp of a precarious adulthood.
A frequent WLT contributor faces a quandary likely faced by book reviewers, and avid readers, everywhere: which books to take with them when moving house?
Bringing together her practices as a translator and interpreter, a linguist is challenged to hold space for voices not her own and to reckon with what it means to speak for someone without speaking over them.
The owner of a small, independent press considers the role of book reviews in getting books into readers’ hands.
“Our Minds Are Porous and Forgetfulness Seeps In”: A Conversation on Translation and AI with Ilan Stavans
Ilan Stavans has tackled some of the most complex literary problems imaginable, ranging from piecing together the fragmentary work of poetry composed first in Nahuatl to teasing out the cultural bias in Spanish translations of that same work. With his skill in pattern recognition, recognizing bias, and evaluating multiple potential interpretations, Stavans is a perfect writer and scholar to chat with about the game-changing advent of AI.
“To Be Free You Need a Lot of Rules”: 5 Questions for Chiara Valerio
5 Questions for Chiara Valerio, author of The Little I Knew, which was a best-seller in Italy and published in English in 2025.
“Where the Reader Can Be Warned”: 7 Questions for George Gömöri
An interview with George Gömöri, a reviewer who has contributed to WLT for more than sixty years.
REVIEW WLT
Tell us what you think about the current issue or about the website by filling out our form.
Subscribe
