Deep Vellum is a not-for-profit literary arts organization that seeks to enhance the open exchange of ideas among cultures and to connect the world’s greatest untranslated contemporary writers of literature and creative nonfiction with English-language readers for the first time through original translations, while facilitating conversations and educational opportunities and promoting a more vibrant literary community in north Texas and beyond.

Featured Titles:

Banthology: Stories From Banned Nations
Edited by Sarah Cleave, featuring writings from Anoud, Wajdi al-Ahdal, Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, Najwa Binshatwan, Rania Mamoun, Fereshteh Molavi, & Zaher Omareen
Translated from the Arabic by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, Perween Richards, Basma Ghalayini, Sawad Hussain, and William M. Hutchins
$14.95
Paperback; ebook
Fiction; short story anthology; cultural heritage
ISBN: 9781941920732 (paperback); 9781941920749 (ebook)
Pub date: 03-13-18
4.5 x 7″

In January 2017, Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13769, banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen – from entering the United States for 90 days, halting refugee resettlement for 120 days, and suspending entry of Syrian refugees indefinitely. The ban effectively slammed the door on those seeking safety and tore entire families apart. In the year since, the order has been protested, challenged, blocked, and revised, but the horrifying, discriminatory message has remained the same, and the troubling effects of the ban have become increasingly apparent.

Banthology includes stories commissioned in response to Trump’s original order and remains especially urgent in the wake of recent events resulting in the reinstatement of the ban and as the world awaits the Supreme Court’s final ruling on its legality. Featuring a range of approaches from satire, to allegory, to literary realism, the authors bear witness to the devastating emotional and personal impact of existing and potential bans, speaking their struggles and make their voices heard in courageous dissent against injustice. This is a vital addition to the evolving conversation surrounding the ban and a powerful reminder of the importance of creative resistance in tumultuous times.

Featuring brand new stories by Anoud, Wajdi al-Ahdal, Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, Najwa Binshatwan, Rania Mamoun, Fereshteh Molavi, and Zaher Omareen.

 

 

Bride and Groom
Alisa Ganieva
Translated from the Russian by Carol Apollonio
$15.95
Paperback; ebook
Fiction; contemporary Russian fiction
ISBN: 9781941920596 (paperback); 9781941920602 (ebook)
Pub date: 04-03-18
5.25 x 8.25″

Patya, twenty-five and facing pressure from her family to marry, refuses the parade of eligible (and not-so-eligible) men they’ve deemed suitable, including the persistent Timur. Everything changes when she meets Marat, a charming young lawyer who knows the pressure of marriage-eager parents all too well. Despite their attraction, Patya and Marat face disapproval from their families, each convinced that the other is not a suitable match. Torn between love and tradition, Patya and Marat struggle against a fate determined to keep them apart as family expectations, increasing religious and cultural tensions, and corrupt politics threaten their bond, their families, and their future.

Runner-up for the Russian Booker Prize, Bride and Groom is a masterwork by one of Russia’s brightest young literary stars, a haunting, contemplative, and incisively emotional love story, infused with Sufi mysticism, exploring traditions in the face of modernity, and the blurred lines between superstition and reality.

Alisa Ganieva (b. 1985) grew up in Makhachkala, Dagestan and studied creative writing at the prestigious Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. Her literary debut, the novella Salam, Dalgat!, published under a male pseudonym, won the prestigious Debut Prize in 2009. Her debut novel, The Mountain and the Wall (Deep Vellum, 2015) was shortlisted for all of Russia’s major literary awards and has been translated into seven languages. Bride and Groom is her second novel.

Carol Apollonio is Professor of the Practice of Russian at Duke University. Her most recent literary translations include Alisa Ganieva’s debut novel, The Mountain and the Wall (Deep Vellum, 2015). She was awarded the Russian Ministry of Culture’s Chekhov Medal in 2010, and she currently serves as President of the North American Dostoevsky Society.

 

Backlist:

Moonbath
Translated from the French by Emily Gogolak
$14.95
Paperback; ebook
ISBN: 9781941920565 (paperback); 9781941920572 (ebook)
Pub date: 10-03-17
5.25 x 8.25″

Award-winning saga of a Haitian family, exploring the lives of four generations through stories of tradition, vodou, romance, and violence, as they struggle to hold the family together through political and economic turmoil.

Not One Day
Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan
$14.95
Paperback; ebook
ISBN: 9781941920541 (paperback); 9781941920558 (ebook)
Pub date: 04-11-17
5 x 8″

An intimate, sensuous exploration of memory and desire, delving into loves and lusts past, by award-winning Oulipo member Anne Garréta.

The Golden Cockerel & Other Writings
Translated from the Spanish by Douglas J. Weatherford
$16.95
Paperback
ISBN: 9781941920589
Pub date: 05-16-17
5.25 x 8.25″

The legendary lost novella collected with previously untranslated writings from one of Mexico’s most influential literary figures, providing crucial insight into Rulfo’s canon and a vivid exploration of poverty and injustice in the Mexican countryside.

Of Darkness
Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken
$15.95
Paperback; ebook
ISBN: 9781941920503 (paperback); 9781941920510 (ebook)
Pub date: 02-07-17
5.25 x 8.25″

Klougart, the brightest literary sensation of Denmark today, mixes prose, lyric essay, drama, poetry, and haunting images to meditate on death and loss through breathtakingly moving, apocalyptic writing.

Recitation
Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith
$14.95
Paperback; ebook
ISBN: 9781941920466 (paperback); 9781941920473 (ebook)
Pub date: 01-24-17
5.25 x 8.25″

A group of emigrants meet a mysterious, wandering actress in an empty train station, setting the stage for a lyrical meditation on language, travel, and memory, translated by Man Booker International Prize-winning Deborah Smith (The Vegetarian).

What are the Blind Men Dreaming?
Translated from the Brazilian Portuguese by Julia Sanches and from the Serbian by Ellen Elias-Bursać
$14.95
Paperback; ebook
ISBN: 9781941920367 (paperback); 9781941920374 (ebook)
Pub date: 10-25-16
5.25 x 8.25″

In this remarkable multi-generic book, the individual voices of three generations of women combine in an unparalleled use of literature as a means to bear witness to the Holocaust and Jewish-Brazilian identity.

 

Eve Out of Her Ruins
Translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman
$14.95
Paperback; ebook
ISBN: 9781941920404 (paperback); 9781941920411 (ebook)
Pub date: 09-13-16
5.25 x 8.25″

In this 2017 CLMP Firecracker Award-winning novel, Ananda Devi relates, with brutal honesty and poetic urgency, the tale of four young Mauritians trapped in their country’s endless cycle of fear and violence.

Voroshilovgrad
Translated from the Ukrainian by Isaac Wheeler and Reilly Costigan-Humes
$15.95
Paperback; ebook
ISBN: 9781941920305 (paperback); 9781941920312 (ebook)
Pub date: 05-24-16
5.25 x 8.25″

The industrial landscape of now-war-torn eastern Ukraine sets the stage for Voroshilovgrad, mixing magical realism and exhilarating road novel in the poetic, expressive prose that marks Ukrainian literary rockstar Serhiy Zhadan’s vivacious style.

Home
Translated from the Indonesian by John H. McGlynn
$16.95
Paperback; ebook
ISBN: 9781941920107 (paperback); 9781941920114 (ebook)
Pub date: 10-27-15
5.25 x 8.25″

Recipient of the Khatulistiwa Award, Indonesia’s most prestigious literary prize, Home is a breathtaking, epic historical novel exploring the lives of Indonesian exiles from the 1965 anti-Communist massacre to the overthrow of Suharto in 1998.

Calligraphy Lesson: The Collected Stories
Translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz, Leo Shtutin, Sylvia Maizell, and Mariya Bashkatova
$14.95
Paperback; ebook
ISBN: 9781941920039 (paperback); 9781941920022 (ebook)
Pub date: 05-12-15
5.25 x 8.25″

The first English-language collection of the breathtakingly beautiful stories by Mikhail Shishkin (author of novels Maidenhair and The Light and the Dark), first author to win all three of Russia’s most prestigious literary awards.