In summer we eat green beans, peaches, cherries and melons. In every sense nice and long the days form a sound. Trains travel through the country, flags flap merrily on rooftops. How nice it is in a boat surrounded by gradual heights. The high peaks still wear snow, flowers give fragrance. On the lake you […]
Translation
THE READER by Robert Walser (translated by Daniele Pantano)
With one of those train station dime store books, he settled into his nest. He saw how the hotel governesses banished him with their disapproving stares. The nest I’ve just mentioned bribed him with its privacy, it was a fine spot shaded by delicate twigs, above him and his book, his dreaming, the putti dip […]
THE MEANING OF THE SEA by Alexander Vvedensky (translated by Alex Cigale)
to understand it once and for all one must live life as in reverse and to take walks in the forest while tearing out your hair whole and when you get to know the fire of the light bulb or of the oven say to it why are you shining you the fire are candle’s […]
JAM MADE OF LOVERBERRY from recipes of metamtextosis by Serge Segay (translated by Alex Cigale)
carefully comb over the loverberry sew as to seminally manhandle bare-breast. ectomize the pit-joints and the unripe bare-breasts prepare the scratch-pot and carefully immerse in it the loverberries lightly stir the com-pot and let it loverrise. remove the lidlove and squeezelove to loveliness per 1 loverton of loverberries 1 lovegram of sugarlaugh, ½ glasstick bitchbrew. […]
A TERRIFYING DEATH by Daniil Kharms (translated by Alex Cigale)
Once upon a time, a man, feeling hungry, sat at the table and ate cutlets. Beside him sat his wife, rambling on about the cutlets not containing enough pork. Nevertheless he ate, and ate, and ate, and ate, and ate, until he sensed somewhere in the pit of his stomach a morbid heaviness. In that […]
WINGED-ANTS by Manua Das (translated by Rabindra K. Swain)
For days together our wings keep on sprouting under the ground, in the dark; absolutely light and clear raindrops. One can see through the wings our bodies, dirty and clayish. For days together there is no rain. In scalding heat, in hunger we keep clinging to the earth. Suddenly our wings begin to sprout. Is […]
An excerpt from the novel SEASON OF ASH by Jorge Volpi (translated by Alfred MacAdam)
Enough rot, howled Anatoly Diatlov. The alarm went off at 1:29 a.m. Moving at 300,000 kilometers a second, the photons passed through the screen—rendered brick-colored by the dust—pierced the air saturated with smoke from Turkish cigarettes, and, following a straight line through the control room, smashed into his pupils just before the blare of a […]
Jorge Volpi interviewed by Okla Elliott: WAYS OF EXPLORING THE WORLD (english/spanish)
The following interview took place in Spanish via email between April and June 2010. English translation: Jorge Luis Volpi Escalante was born in the tumultuous year of 1968, in Mexico City. He studied law and literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and received a PhD in Spanish philology from The University of Salamanca […]
[WHO SENT THE SCISSORS,] by Maya Sarishvili (translated from the Georgian by Nena Giorgadze, Timothy Kercher and Ani Kopliani)
Who sent the scissors, the gigantic scissors to my feet? They open and close with a bone-chilling screech. I guess, in place of ankles I have balloons. Instead of being subdued, no doubt, I’m going to cut myself down, I’m going to overturn the streets and city squares. Perhaps this is a means of sleeping. […]
[WHAT A SHAME I COULDN’T BUY SOMEBODY’S DRESS] by Maya Sarishvili (translated from the Georgian by Nena Giorgadze, Timothy Kercher and Ani Kopliani)
What a shame I couldn’t buy somebody’s dress in the second-hand shop. It was red with white spots. I yanked it out of a bag, other dresses in its way, other dresses clutching onto it. I barely managed to rip the dress out as if it were the bag’s heart. (A new blade is always […]
