CATEGORIES

Our Revenge Will Be the Laughter of Our Children

What is it about the revolutionary that draws our fascinated attention? Whether one calls it the North of Ireland or Northern Ireland, the Troubles continue to haunt the land and those who lived through them.

Turtles

In a field near the Gaza Strip, a missile strike, visions, and onlookers searching for an explanation.

Surviving and Subverting the Totalitarian State: A Tribute to Ismail Kadareby Kapka Kassabova

As part of the ceremony honoring Kadare as the 2020 laureate—with participants logging in from dozens of countries around the world— Kadare’s nominating juror, Kapka Kassabova, offered a video tribute from her home in Scotland.

Dead Storms and Literature's New Horizon: The 2020 Neustadt Prize Lecture

During the Neustadt Prize ceremony on October 21, 2020, David Bellos read the English language version of Kadare’s prize lecture to a worldwide Zoom audience.

Ismail Kadare: Winner of the 2020 Neustadt International Prize for Literature

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, World Literature Today presented the 2020 Neustadt Festival 100 percent online. In the lead-up to the festival, U.S. Ambassador Yuri Kim officially presented the award to Kadare at a ceremony in Tirana in late August, attended by members of Kadare’s family; Elva Margariti, the Albanian minister of culture; and Besiana Kadare, Albania’s ambassador to the United Nations.

How to Adopt a Cat

Hoping battles knowing in this three-act seduction (spoiler alert: there’s a cat in the story).

Chicken Soup: The Story of a Jewish Family

Chickens, from Bessarabia to New York City, provide a generational through-line in these four vignettes.

Awl

“Awl” is from a series titled “Words I Did Not Understand.” Through memory—“the first screen of nostalgia”—and language, a writer pieces together her story of home.

Apocalyptic Scenarios and Inner Worlds

A Conversation with Gloria Susana Esquivel

Marie's Proof of Love

People believe, Marie thinks, even when there’s no proof. You believe because you imagine. But is imagination enough to live by?

The Primary Substance

Stuck in traffic during a downpour, a driver faces a peculiar dilemma.

Translating Toshiko Hirata's Ars Poetica

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

When I Left “Karl Liebknecht” (an excerpt)

In the Karl Liebknecht House in Leipzig, Germany, thirty people of various nationalities are seated around an improvised table on the stage in the Events Hall, interpreters behind them, some with texts in front of them, some without, and while it looks as if they’re at an ordinary meeting, they are, in fact, at an exceptional one, one that could be called a performance.

Sofa

A sofa, the site of a family’s history, receives and gives a second life.

Pittsburgh's August Wilson African American Cultural Center

LOCATED IN THE HEART of downtown Pittsburgh, on Liberty Avenue close to Union Station and the David Lawrence Convention Center, the sleek and elegant but unpretentious August Wilson African American Cultural Center (awaacc) cannot fail to capture the eye and the imagination of anybody who is visiting Pittsburgh or, for that matter, of anybody who lives in the city.

Liquid History

Scuba-diving in the Black Sea, a writer contemplates Lenin in the Crimean seabed, the watery landfall from which historical figures are never meant to rise again.

Diversifying Bookshelves From Trend to Norm

IN THE WAKE of the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, America woke up to find itself in the midst of a national reckoning over race. Calls for justice and dismantling white supremacy began to touch every aspect of American life—including the literary world.

Catania, Sicily

LAST OCTOBER, I chose to use Catania as a base for exploring the towns of southeastern Sicily I had yet to discover.

There Is Also This Civil War Inside of Me

A Conversation with Zisis Ainalis

Why Iranians Continue to Seek Refuge in Australia

Shokoofeh Azar moved to Australia as a political refugee in 2010. Her novel The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree (see WLT, Spring 2020, 96), originally written in Farsi, was shortlisted for Australia’s 2018 Stella Prize for Fiction and the 2020 International Booker Prize. Here she recalls her refugee journey from Iran to Christmas Island and reveals why Iranians continue migrating to Australia, despite the absence of war.

Not Pregnant

In this work of creative nonfiction from Cuba, plague is something common shared with those who lived in Thebes.

Quarantine Innovations

DURING A CRISIS, books provide solace and hope, offering comfort in the literary world.

Mapping My Mother

In isolation, a writer connects her mother’s attempt to protect her from “never-being-able-to-leave-Cuba-itis” to her own desire to protect her children amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Keeping My Mother Alive

In Greece, a son who has returned to his mother’s home to care for her during the Covid-19 crisis contemplates what the global pandemic can reveal about our character.

Broken Novels, Ruptured Worlds

A Conversation with Michelle de Kretser

Hands

The mortar landed close, maybe two hundred meters away.

Desegregating Language - The New Afrikaans Crime Novel

Encountering postapartheid Afrikaans fiction for the first time, particularly the fast-paced crime novels of Deon Meyer, the author finds that the most unexpected element is the new lack of segregation between Afrikaans and English.

Assembly

The students noticed an opening at the bottom of the fence, a tear in the wires. On the other side of the fence was the outside, which they only saw from the bus window when they were on their way to or from school.

The Old Man Who Lives Two Floors Below

Down the first twist of stairs and Josie hears she is not alone, like hearing a tree in the wind beyond her bedroom window. The old man: splay-legged before his door like a failing easel, he moves slow as death.

Our Nations, Ourselves

A Conversation with Robin Hemley