When I was in the second grade, the visits to the library were often the best part of any day. To this day, bookstores are still a sacred space to me. A voracious reader with a fixation on spelling, it was a competition every week with my best friend to see who could learn all … Continue reading The Particular Sadness of the Three Percent Problem: Part 1 – by Lydia Estes
The relationship between an educator teaching world literature and translated works is an obvious one, but the connection between that teacher and a community of translators and publishers is not at all a given. In fact, many of us who teach World Literature in colleges and universities are graduates of English literature programs, where, unlike … Continue reading The World Lit Professor’s Conundrum: A Personal Reflection – By Kim Rostan
The #TA60 list of classics in translation celebrates the 60th anniversary of The Society of Authors Translators Association by acknowledging the translators who rewrote these great books so anglophone readers could enjoy them. Please share, and remember: always #namethetranslator! FORBIDDEN COLOURS by Yukio Mishima was translated from the Japanese by Alfred H. Marks and published in English in 1968, two … Continue reading Translators Association – 60 Years of Classic Translations: Forbidden Colours (1968)
Time to wrap-up Bulgarian Literature Month 2018! I would like to thank Global Literature in Libraries Initiative, and especially Rachel Hildebrandt and Karen Van Drie for trusting me with this task - it was a lot of work, but I am rather satisfied with the result. My thanks goes also to the contributors: Ellis Shuman, … Continue reading Bulgarian Literature Month: Wrap-up and a few recommendations
Time is a man Time is the golden penny of an aristocrat with a cane – the old bloke, who writes nights in his office. he keeps a clock inside himself, measures hundreds and more - autopsies under the magnifying glass of the dead. Time’s cut up with a sword, little man, a nailed coffin … Continue reading Michaela Angelova: Time is a man
SMALL STORIES She likes to write notes— “I love you” to her husband, “I’m thinking of you” to her child, “Thank you” to her mother. It’s a little ludicrous actually, but her loved ones don’t speak of these things, even pretend they’ve never discovered anything in their pockets. Still, she’s been doing this a while— … Continue reading Olya Stoyanova: Small Stories
Fairness Fairness? The slogan reads: “The music we all love”. From the burglars of military warehouses, stalls overflowing with camouflage equipment and boots, to salesmen lined up on the road to the sea. “The music we all like” is a shelf of pop discs in a petrol station. The field burns. The vase with sunflowers … Continue reading Alexander Nikolov: Fairness
Road Trip! Has every literary road trip you’ve taken involved highways in your own country? Bulgarian novelist Angel Igov has written a short adventure of 145 pages that will make a reader feel they are on summer vacation even if its the dead of winter. Interestingly, this road trip takes place across the Balkan roads … Continue reading Angel Igov: A Short Tale of Shame – A Review by Karen Van Drie
In celebration of Pride, June’s “Publisher Spotlight” will showcase publishers of LGBTQ+ literature in English-language translation. This week, we will delve into the history of Penguin imprint Pantheon, a publisher of original and translated fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and comics. Many German-to-English translators may already know that Pantheon was built on literary translation. (It was … Continue reading Publisher Spotlight: Pantheon
Visit I visit my homeland the way a snail tries to fit back into his old shell. Day after day I writhe inside, counterclockwise. The shell is rough and narrow, opens sores on coddled parts But I persist, eat tarator, cry over graves, until I conform to my old contours. Finally, I am here. Snail … Continue reading Katerina Stoykova: Visit
