Three normal students. Or so we seemed.At school, as with everything in life, Luigi was a tagalong; I got by, sticking somewhere in the middle; and Luciano was the classic brainiac, with no topic he hadn’t explored or book he hadn’t read.Three good boys, and not because we pretended to be; we had always been … Continue reading Crime Fiction Excerpt: Black Souls by Gioacchino Criaco (Italy)
Someone who looks like a banker walks into the BNL bank on Piazza Matteoti. Someone who looks like a crook—with a broken nose, low forehead, and big, protruding ears—comes out of the police station next door, while eight carabinieri stand smoking on the pavement and laughing and acting out on a friend how they’d arrest … Continue reading Excerpt: La Superba by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer
Winter Let this winter pass into another winter. No more stately brooding. No bluebird’s eggs. No driven mating or well-built nests. I want the frost to blast the ground forever with every seed or shoot that it conceals. Leave streets as gray as winter has them. The muddy slush of butchered days, two blue mittens … Continue reading The Hunger in Plain View by Ester Naomi Perquin
WEDNESDAY 1. No one walks through London with a machete. Unless you count the two men passing him just now. Niall had already wrapped up taking pictures of the spot where the Effra River had once emptied into the Thames, when one of the two men looked back at him. The man’s gaze lingered … Continue reading Fade to Black by Zoë Beck
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
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
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
Reprinted with permission from The Treasure of Barracuda By Llanos Campos, illustrated by Júlia Sardà Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel. English translation Copyright © 2016 by Little Pickle Press, Inc. English edition published by arrangement with Ediciones SM through Sylvia Hayse Literary Agency LLC. All rights reserved. ISBN 1939775140 Excerpt: "Blasted freshwater fishermen! And you … Continue reading The Treasure of Barracuda by Llanos Campos
Super Extra Grande by Yoss Translated from the Spanish (Cuba) by David Frye Restless Books, 2016 ISBN 1632060566 Excerpt: In 2054, Father Salvador González formulates the Tunnel Macroeffect Theorem, and Ecuador confounds the world in sending a satellite to Mars in minutes. Soon after, a politically and racially divided humankind, unready for such a leap, … Continue reading Super Extra Grande by Yoss
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 