Mr. Squirrel and the Moon Sebastian Meschenmoser, David Henry Wilson (Trans.) NorthSouth Books, 2015 ISBN 978-0735841567 Winter 2015 Top Ten IndieNext Pick When Mr. Squirrel awakens to find that the moon has landed on his tree, he frantically tries to get rid of it before someone suspects him of stealing it and puts him in jail. … Continue reading Title Pick: Mr. Squirrel and the Moon
Darkness Spoken: The Collected Poems Ingeborg Bachmann, Peter Filkins (Trans.) Zephyr Press, 2006 ISBN 0939010844 LIBRARIES The shelves sag. The volumes are weighted down with the past. Their sweat is dust. Their impulse is rigidity. They no longer struggle. They have saved themselves upon the island of knowledge. Sometimes they've lost their conscience. Here and … Continue reading Darkness Spoken by Ingeborg Bachmann
by Marcia Lynx Qualey Originally published on Arabic Literature (in English) Arab-German literature in German doesn’t have the broad, 19th- and early-20th-century roots of Arab-American or Arab-French literatures. But it is a vibrant and growing space, surely to grow much more in the coming decades: Certainly, there were individual Arab texts written in German in the 19th century. … Continue reading 6 Arab-German Authors from a Growing Scene
A bestial Brave New World is on the horizon: Some 50,000 creatures around the globe—including whales, leopards, flamingoes, bats and snails—are being equipped with digital tracking devices. The data gathered and studied by major scientific institutes about their behavior will not only aid in conservation efforts and warn us about tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, … Continue reading Title Pick: Alexander Pschera, Animal Internet
WHEN I WAS SIX, my grandfather stopped recognizing me. He lived in the house down the hill from ours, and because I cut through his orchard on the way to school, occasionally he threw a piece of wood at me, saying I had no business on his land. Sometimes, though, he liked to see me … Continue reading The Old King in His Exile by Arno Geiger
Tonight It's Very Clear We took my car. I drove; Armin was sitting next to me and Blank was in the back seat. He sat right in the middle and he had both windows open, his hair fluttering in the wind. Just was written in large gold letters on the rear window behind him. The … Continue reading The Gentlemen’s Tailor by Marianna Leky
Eugene H. Hayworth The American film version of the novel Jakob the Liar opens with a scene that departs from the events described in the book, but depicts one of the key themes of the novel through a visual metaphor. The actor Robin Williams, as the protagonist Jakob, darts and dashes madly through the early … Continue reading Cinematic Translation on Film and Paper: A Case Study
by Kathryn Bodnar The Invisible Guardian by Dolores Redondo; translated from the Spanish by Isabelle Kaufeler; Atria Books 2016 Following in the strong tradition of the Spanish novela negra, The Invisible Guardian is the first of Dolores Redondo’s Baztán trilogy. This crime thriller blends traditional elements of the genre with mythologies and superstitions of … Continue reading Book Review: The Invisible Guardian
Loosely based on the little-known 1859 Mexican invasion of the United States, Carmen Boullosa’s newest novel Texas: The Great Theft is a richly imagined evocation of the volatile Tex-Mex borderland, wrested from Mexico in 1848. Described by Roberto Bolaño as “Mexico’s greatest woman writer,” Boullosa views the border history through distinctly Mexican eyes, and her sympathetic portrayal … Continue reading Title Pick: Carmen Boullosa, Texas: The Great Theft
Reprinted with permission from Returnings: Poems of Love and Distance By Rafael Alberti Translated from Spanish by Carolyn L. Tipton English translation copyright © 2016 by White Pine Press ISBN 1935210912 RETURNING ON A SPRING MORNING With the same uncountable number of waves —wave upon wave—you’ve continually raised from the time of your blue birth, … Continue reading Returnings: Poems of Love and Distance by Rafael Alberti
