While the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been going on for fourteen years, much of American literature from these conflicts is only now emerging. I appreciate the veterans who’ve woven the s…
Recommendations
NetanyaDror Burstein, tr. Todd Hasak-Lowy(Dalkey Archive Press, 2013) Lies, First PersonGail Hareven, tr. Dalya Bilu (Open Letter, 2015) MoodsYoel Hoffma…
Photo by Christian Holzinger/UnsplashThe editors of WLT have each selected three books they’re looking forward to reading this summer. Peruse our selections to get ideas for your own summer r…
Summer is here, and that means one thing: vacation! Whether you’re on a grand exploration or simply relaxing with a staycation, WLT is here to provide a getaway that you can hold in your…
If a written, spoken language is one of the characteristics that distinguishes humans from other animals, what would happen if the ability to speak—to even comprehend the spoken word—suddenly vanished…
Bridging Enigma: Cubans on CubaEdited by Ambrosio FornetThis special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly (vol. 96, no. 1, Winter 1997) presents Cuban reality as seen by sixtee…
Happy Are the HappyYasmina Reza John Cullen, tr. A short advance excerpt from Yasmina Reza’s new novel fairly crackles with electric wit and precise comedic timing. Her award-winning talent…
Graywolf Press, 2014How much of a poet’s biography can be read into (or behind) a book of poems? In the case of Fanny Howe’s latest collection, Second Childhood, the temptation to project a l…
Iceland enjoys a powerful literary tradition, underpinned by the old Icelandic sagas and Eddaic poems and also by the Icelanders’ struggle for emotional and spiritual survival during centuries of pove…
As part of World Literature Today magazine’s November 2014 cover feature focusing on central European literature since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the editors invited 25 writers to nominate…
Still writing “on this earthquake fault” in San Francisco, feminist Beat poet Diane di Prima continues to create her revolutionary verse. At eighty, aged out of the thirty-under-thirty and forty-under…
A Ukrainian writer looks outside the country for three books that help illuminate what threatens modern Ukraine. Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North KoreaBarbara Demick …
It’s the holiday season once again, and whether you’re shopping for Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Christmas, WLT has a new book for every reader on your list. For the BeatnikDia…
With a dose of wit and self-deprecation, Aaliya is a narrator who doesn’t fail to entertain. Rabih Alameddine invites the reader into Aaliya’s late-life crisis where—after a few glasses of red wine—sh…
It is hard for me to believe that this column has appeared in almost every issue of WLT for a decade, and I am gratified that it has been so well received. For that I thank WLT’…
The following books offer insights into the hot, gritty quotidian of a desert nation and the machinations of an authoritarian power structure as integral to Egypt’s character as the Nile.The…
World Literatuture Today published an earlier version of this booklist of international environmental literature in its January 2009 issue offering selections from seventeen countries or regions t…
In exploring the ever-fluid realities of the contemporary environment, few mediums are as well suited as cinema. Through the recording and manipulation of images, sound, and temporal duration, the cin…
Digital media editor Jen Rickard Blair’s summer reading picks range from multiethnic mystery to dystopian sci-fi. We suspect she’ll read these in a lawn chair or on the c…
Cat people: we aren’t known for much other than spinsterhood, paranoia, emotional and social disconnection. Our one spokesperson who’s more than quaint at best is Catwoman. But lately there’s been…
The WatchtowerElizabeth HarrowerThe Watchtower, first published in 1966, is a psychological novel of class and power set in Sydney in the 1940s. Laura, the elder sister, had ambitions to be a…
Wilfred Price has established himself as a respectable, reliable member of his small and tightly woven rural community of Narberth, Wales. He performs his duties impeccably as the town’s undertaker, c…
It should go without saying that children bear the brunt of war as a nation’s most vulnerable citizens. Yet Graça Machel’s 1996 UNICEF report on the impact of war on children was new in both scope and…
While working on the “Classics Rekindled” section that appears in this issue (page 35), I was struck by the following words from Anne Carson: “Every time a poet writes a poem he is asking the…
A review of The Gardens of Flora Baum, by Julia Budenz, 5 vols. (Chelmsford, Massachusetts: Carpathia Press, 2011)It is, perhaps, asking too much to expect a reader, who has not live…
