Chapter 1 Here we go: the Pig Pageant results have just come out on Facebook. I’m in third place: bronze medal. How perplexing. After winning gold for two years in a row, I thought I’d never lose the top spot. I was wrong. I check who’s won the grand title. She’s a new girl, in … Continue reading GLLI YA Prize Shortlist Excerpt: Piglettes by Clémentine Beauvais
Raphael’s masterpiece, Portrait of a Young Man, has been missing from a Kraków art gallery since the Second World War. Art historian Zofia Lorentz, art dealer Karol Boznański, special services Major Anatol Gmitruk and Swedish art thief Lisa Tolgfors have been teamed up and commissioned by the Polish government to steal the painting from a … Continue reading Excerpt: PRICELESS by Zygmunt Miłoszewski
Excerpt from Aperture by Jacek Dehnel, translated by Karen Kovacik, forthcoming from Zephyr Press in June 2018 (ISBN: 978-1938890949): Matzevot Jewish Cemetery, Kraków Here letter and stone find fulfillment: a snail inlays ornamental tracing with silver thread. And the apple tree’s soft shadow falls over shattered slabs. Here grass and epoch find fulfillment. The hands … Continue reading Excerpt: Aperture by Jacek Dehnel
These extracts are from Chapter 8, Georgia: Stalin’s Vestal Virgins. The Georgian women who work at the Stalin museum describe their undying love for the infamous dictator. “He comes to me at night. He gazes at me, puffs on his pipe, and twirls his mustache. He smiles, and then heads for the door. Then I … Continue reading Excerpt: Dancing Bears by Witold Szabłowski
The Church Decades of neglect and environmental degradation led to Miedzianka being declared uninhabitable, and the population was evacuated. At the center of the city, the church took the longest to disappear. The church took longest to disappear. In the only surviving color photograph, you can see it had a yellow façade, tall stained-glass … Continue reading Excerpt: History of a Disappearance by Filip Springer
Poem without mystery O to be a lock-keeper in Żuławy on a non-essential branch of the canal, amid a flat landscape. Every day to ride a bike to a concrete cabin smaller than a news kiosk. To watch through a little square window the risings and settings of the sun. To have no idea about … Continue reading Excerpt: POSTS by Tadeusz Dąbrowski
Part 1: 1985 1 “Mary, please open the door.” His voice echoed from behind the locked front door, plaintive, lost – the voice of a man adrift. “Please, my darling, just open the door, one more time. Let me in for five minutes. I just want to talk.” He sounded close to breaking. His careless … Continue reading Excerpt: Grace by Barbara Boswell
The U.S. debut of bestselling South African writer Chanette Paul. Rejected by her parents, her sister, her husband, everyone except her extraordinary and unusual daughter, Caz Colijn lives a secluded life in her own little patch of South Africa. But a single phone call from her estranged sister is all it takes to shatter this … Continue reading Excerpt: Sacrificed by Chanette Paul
HELPER I She was not one of us. She said her life was an early evening, or an early dawn, and she was going to leave before it was night or before it was morning. She gave you the feeling that you were inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, and that if you stood … Continue reading Excerpt: The Sound of Things to Come by Emmanuel Iduma
Chapter 1 Tsito Every time I watch the fampitaha, my heart aches, and I can see Sahasoa again, where I spent the first years of my life with the people under the sky. I can see Fara again, who was crowned queen of the competition. Back then, we still rolled the gatestones across the entrances … Continue reading Excerpt: Beyond the Rice Fields by Naivo
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 