Photo: Shevaun WilliamsIn 1978 Dubravka Ugrešić published her first short-story collection, A Pose for Prose. Life Is a Fairy Tale followed in 1983. The protagonists of thes…
Essays
Photo: Shevaun WilliamsMy training as a scholar of Russian literature and culture colors my readings of Dubravka Ugrešić’s work. No matter how hard I try to stop myself from reaching for parallels in…
Ellen Elias-Bursać, Dubravka Ugresšić, and Chad Post at the 2016 Neustadt Festival banquet. Photo: Jen Rickard BlairIf I had been pressed on what I knew about the Neustadt Prize before going to Oklaho…
In 1997 I was offered a job to teach English to adults in Croatia. Of course I had been following the events that had torn Yugoslavia apart between 1991 and 1995; and just as I was learning what I cou…
“One Foot Wrong” by Parée Erica. Parée Erica/FlickrAgainst the background of the Polish parliament’s consideration of a law that would effectively ban abortion and the ensuing protests, J…
Photo: Flickr.com/people/nex230Do we need a special issue devoted solely to women writers? Indeed we do. Author and translator Alison Anderson explains why.Do we still need magazines…
Guðrún Kristjánsdóttir, Snow Symbol I, 2015, 100 x 100 cm, oil on linen. Photo by Pétur Thomsen.In these philosophical meditations for a Reykjavík art exhibit, Icelandic author Oddný Eir looks int…
Alain Mabanckou. Photo by Shevaun WilliamsOn March 19, 2006, the French daily newspaper Le Monde published an article I wrote entitled “La francophonie, oui; le ghetto, non.”1 My intention wa…
Alain Mabanckou photo by Shevaun Williams. James Baldwin photo by Allan Warren.What happens when a francophone author imagines an epistolary exchange with an African American icon? In Letter…
Alain Mabanckou. Photo by Shevaun Williams.Whether dealing with fashion, music, language, colonialism, contemporary immigration policies, gender relations, masculinity, or globalization,…
Arturo Montoto (Cuba), En algún lugar de la ciudad, 2015, oil on canvas, 60x60 cmThe idea for this Gulf feature of World Literature Today goes back almost fifteen years to end-of-the…
Made of iron, this scold’s bridle from Belgium dates from the 16th or 17th century. The strut of metal that went into the wearer’s mouth to hold down her tongue has broken off.If there’s…
The author’s father, Surinder Singh, onboardThe Southampton bound for England, 1958In the wake of her father’s death, a Malaysian author discovers the writer within and ends up writing he…
Photo by Kevin LauThe following essay argues for the importance of shifting world literature courses away from “survey” and toward the interrogation of categories of knowledge that typica…
Tesla owns the expertise on electric cars, Picasso on cubism, and the Neustadt Prize on casting a large net to evaluate international literature in unbiased fashion. And in so doing, the…
An artist adds color to a building in a Delhi alleyway. Photo by Vikram Singh.The twenty-first century has seen Delhi go from being just another nondescript capital city to a throbbing me…
From Buddha Jumps, issue 1 of Folder Attacks (nos:books, 2014)nos:booksTaipei, Taiwanwww.nosbooks.comI first encountered nos:books at the 2014 edition of the New York Art Book Fair,…
From Le fils du roi, by Eric Lambé (Frémok, 2012)Even in the diverse world of Franco-Belgian independent comics, there is no publisher quite like Frémok. The name itself is a neologism—a comb…
“Lillienwald” (Forest of lilies), from www.supertraene.de (Mamiverlag, 2009) Pathos und Peinlichkeit. Pathos and awkwardness. Aus dem Land, wo die Sprechblasen Sc…
Shapereader, by Ilan Manouach (shapereader.org)To say that Ilan Manouach is the most recognized avant-garde comics artist in Greece may be faint praise. The country’s independent comics scene…
From L’Ascension du Haut Mal, by David B. (L’Association, 1996–2003)I’m so pleased to guest-edit this comics-themed issue for World Literature Today for many reasons. Perso…
Ghassan Zaqtan (left) and Mahmoud Darwish in a 2007 photo taken by Palestinian poet Bashir Shalash.After presenting a sweeping landscape of Arabic poetry since pre-Islamic days—w…
One of several sculptures in Azerbaijan honoringnineteenth-century poet Khurshidbanu Natavan,Nizami Museum of Literature. Photo: Alison MandavilleIn the center of one square in the capital of Baku, Az…
The traditional Ghanian kente cloth that Meshack Asare wore to the 2015 Neustadt Festival ceremony.When Asare accepted the NSK Prize last October, he wore a traditional Ghanaian kente cloth for th…
Meshack Asare speaking at the 2015 Neustadt Festival banquet.Speaking before a packed audience at the University of Oklahoma last October, Asare reflected on culture as our “mandate to li…
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