With two novels and one book of literary miscellany, WLT managing editor Michelle Johnson’s summer reading list is taking shape. Though she’ll no doubt spend many early morni…
In Every Issue
Ibrahim Maalouf Kalthoum Impulse! “Umm Kalthoum is the quintessential Arab,” Uncle Jihad said. “She’s probably the one person whom all Arabs can agree to love . . .”—Rabih A…
When Random House contacted me about translating a book by Pope Francis, I did a double take. I had worked for the publisher in the past on fiction but never on nonfiction. How on earth did my name c…
Whether spent at home, driving cross-country, or venturing abroad, summer demands its own reading list. These new books of 2016 will more than fill a backseat, suitcase, Kindle, or hammock. …
Photos: Logan Webb Birthplace and home of poet Dylan Thomas for more than half his life, the coastal city of Swansea in southern Wales echoes with his legacy—a residual haunting by i…
It is not unusual for those on a quest to understand Russia to plough through Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, and Tolstoy; the more adventurous add Bulgakov and Pasternak to their lists. Yet Russia of the twent…
The “Keep Austin Weird” adage has grown to mean something unique among many Austinites—it’s long been a celebration of creative resistance, a clash between economic growth and eccentricity. In recent…
Anna Maria Schenkel, Nina George, and Sascha Arango. Schenkel photo: Jürgen Bauer, George photo: Jakob B. Ârner, Arango photo: Frank May Although the impact of German culture on America is enormous i…
Trans. Clare SullivanPhoneme Media, 2015 In an essay published in the January 2012 issue of World Literature Today, Clare Sullivan notes that poets who write in Zap…
Vincent Segal & Ballaké Sissoko Musique de Nuit Six Degrees Now that a representative sample of the world’s recorded music is available at no greater cost than an hour’s worth of drill-do…
Schodt with manga legend Osamu Tezuka in 1981. I’ve translated manga off and on for nearly forty years, and it is hard to imagine any translation process that has changed more radically in that time.…
Photo: Rae Allen In 2008 global humanitarian organization UNESCO classified Melbourne, Australia, an official City of Literature. It’s one of only eleven cities to bear the title wor…
Photo courtesy of the Port Eliot Festival Deep in the Cornish countryside, in the tiny village of St Germans, sits the house and estate of Port Eliot. A plot of land Napoleon himself claimed to be th…
Roland Glasser, tr. Deep Vellum. 2015. Tram 83 (2015) is a lively, frenetic novel filled with a motley cast of characters lustful for pleasure, prosperity, and power. It’s based in…
Photo by Stephen Murphy New Zealand is, relatively speaking, a tiny country with a population half the size of New York City and in a location so remote, a commercial flight from Los Angeles takes ov…
Amjad Ali Khan and Rahim AlHaj The sarod is an instrument used in North Indian classical music whose origin is shrouded in mystery and no small amount of controversy. What is not in dispute is Amjad…
In Among the Bieresch, the young narrator, Hans, is sent to his father’s ancestral village in the easternmost province of the “Empire” (a surreal postwar Austria). His uncle…
Untrustworthy narrators twist and turn throughout literature. There are myriad reasons for their lack of reliability. Some are inherently withholding, while others carry on with thei…
Kolkata. Photo by Matthew Winterburn/Flickr Kolkata has much to offer any traveler, whether history buff, literary aficionado, culture seeker, or wandering flâneur. In several places around the city,…
Jim Hinks, Masashi Matsuie & Michael Emmerich, eds. Manchester. Comma Press. 2015. ISBN 9781905583577. This new collection of short stories by Japanese writers, all set in Tokyo,…
From the opening ascending arpeggio of “Taquito Militar,” the thoughtful interplay between guitarist Berta Rojas and Argentina’s most beloved chamber group, Camerata Bariloche, takes center stage on…
In the past decade, especially, much has been written about Iranian memoirs and particularly the nonfiction of Iranian females of the diaspora. Within that, many Iranian American fiction writers (such…
Photo by Tanya Traboulsi If ever an album has been created to invite the uninitiated to dip a toe into the deep water of contemporary Arab music, it is Alif’s debut release, Aynama-Rtama, re…
The Mountain and the Wall By Alisa GanievaDeep Vellum The Vienna Melody By Ernst LotharEuropa Editions Alisa Ganieva’s The Mountain and the Wall (201…
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…