I have complicated feelings about Carolina Brown’s “Anthropocene” (tr. Jessica Powell). The brevity it accords its narrator’s transness is alternately touching and maddening, the fatphobia is at once completely spot-on for such a self-loathing narrator and at the same time it is pretty dehumanizing‚ but, ultimately, all that falls away in the ravaged face of a one-armed zombie jogging across the post climate-change Antarctic wasteland. A wonderful sci-fi tale.
I’d love Syaman Rapongan’s Eyes of an Ocean (tr. Darryl Sterk) for the title alone, but fortunately, Rapongan seems like a strong contender for the title of the actual most-interesting-man-in-the-world. His play with words, his treatment of colonization and indigeneity, the kindness with which he talks about younger generations. I really needed to read something like this, after all the ugliness that’s been going on in my own country.
I love the gender-bender secret agent in Valentinas Klimašauskas’s Polygon (tr. Erika Lastovskytė) so freaking much. The concluding discussion of airplane spotters is a particular stand-out for its treatment of how individuals become conscious of their political power.
Refugees are human beings. Where Rodrigo Urquiola Flores’ “La Venezolana” (tr. Shaina Brassard) shines is in its steadfast refusal either to vilify or idealize them, to present them in all their messy humanity, and in its willingness to show how shameful the narrator’s behavior towards them.
—Julia Maria, Digital Editor
Emmanuelle Sapin’s story “A Child Is Stolen” (tr. Michelle Kiefer) starts off with a swift, telling punch to the gut and builds from there.
Ahmad Shamlou’s poems in Niloufar Talebi’s lilting translation hover in waves of emotion and radiance: “Give me mirrors and eager moths, / light and wine…”
With playfulness and insight, Katia Grubisic sharpens the discussion about AI and translation by focusing on error in her piece “The Authority of Error”: “My argument is that AI makes the wrong kind of mistakes. Mistakes breed resilience, and, most importantly, humility.”
Fawwaz Taboulsi, in Yasmine Zohdi’s translation, steers us directly into the sadness of Lebanon, 1982, and the time of the Siege of Beirut. His grief speaks with lucidity: “And, ever so slowly, the departing fighters peel away from the grasping, waving hands and from the embracing arms. Like skin peeling off its own flesh. They peel away from the farewells. From the prayers. From the promises.”
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how writers build characters. Jana Putrle Srdić’s poem “End of the world, beginning” in Katia Zakrajšek’s translation, does this in striking ways: ” Sitting on a warm rock, scratching in the wind, / you are a monkey, a branch with ants filing along it, debris in the air, / spots of flickering light”
—Ellen Elias-Bursać, Contributing Editor
I loved the acerbic voice in Carolina Brown’s bleak but compelling story “Anthropocene” (tr. Jessica Powell). Daydreams of violence, declining penguin populations, plastic-filled excrement, and social isolation in the name of science. It was a stark glimpse into humanity in crisis.
The haunting chorus of the sleeping mama drew me into Sao Xia’s poem “Old Island Telephone Call” (tr. Tsong Chang) immediately. The imagery Sao Xia evoked—crabs scuttling like ants, tides as menstruation, and a phone call that bridges past and present—resonated especially. I was moved by how the piece entwines personal family history with broader cultural memory in a quietly powerful way.
Maybe it’s a first-language bias, but as a Swede, I enjoyed the matter-of-fact style of Marie Lundquist’s poems from The Garden of the Dead (tr. Miriam Åkervall). I loved how Lundquist plays with the idea of nature vs. not quite “nurture” but human interference into nature.
Shimanto Reza’s “Let the Machines Win (Because They Can’t)” is both timely and relevant beyond the AI debate. I appreciated his resistance to framing human and machine writing as opposites and his assertion that good writing pries open judgmental minds, which I thought was a fresh take. Above all, the piece reminded me of the value of reading literary works, and to always do my best to be present with what I’m reading, one page at a time.
Daniel Saldaña París’s essay “Translation, AI, and the Political Weight of Words” (tr. Christina MacSweeney) stood out for its methodical and thoughtful engagement with how AI tools intersect with translation ethics—all the more for being grounded in an actual literary translation project.
—Linnea Gradin, Editor-at-Large for Sweden
Matthew Redman’s translations of a classic, modernist work of Austrian prose (Arthur Schnitzler’s Fräulein Else) really works to unpick the strands of consciousness whilst weaving them into a seamless tapestry.
Sayat-Nova’s poetry (tr. Peter Orte and Murad Jalilov) brings insight into the literary canon of the Caucasus, along with an awareness of the multilingualism of this culturally rich region.
Poet Taras Malkovych’s self-translations sit at the intersection of self and other as a work of self-reflection.
Visual artist Anna Tsouhlarakis‘ striking, monochrome visual imagery subverts expectations of indigenous art and explores themes of mixed identities.
Vedita Cowaloosur‘s exploration of a colonial soldier’s memoirs evaluates the British Empire by preserving valuable living testimony from the perspective of the colonised.
—Anna Rumsby, Copy Editor
I love the turn towards the future that seems to unite these five pieces. In “Anthropocene,” Jessica Powell translates Carolina Brown’s humour and horror with ease and efficiency. Yuriy Serebriansky‘s excavation of the politics of and logic of Kazakhstani language and identity illuminates cultural erasure and resilience not only in Kazakhstan, but worldwide. Christos Martinis’ poetry in Fuck the Future: Six Poems and a Selfie challeges form and capitalistic order in Manos Apostolidis’ orgiastic translation. Alex Tan’s luminous interview with visual artist Mohamed Abdelkarim probes the representations of resistant and marginal identities: renegade, nomad, speculator. And Taras Malkovych‘s process of “declumsiating” his own two poems is vibrant, tender, and soft with future time.
—Michelle Chan Schmidt, Senior Assistant Editor (Fiction)
Boris Dralyuk, in conversation with Sarah Gear, resolves an age-old question: does one need to be a poet to translate poetry? “Yes,” he says, but not as an intrinsic quality —i.e., you either are a poet or are not. “Great translators of poems are poets by virtue of having written great poems in their target languages based on poems in other languages.” Let Dralyuk’s words be an encouragement for translators hesitating about their craft and their impact. Dralyuk’s response to the ICE raids in Los Angeles, against the backdrop of Trump’s continued targeting of immigrant and minority communities, is equally affirming: “LA has seen worse‚ and nothing draws its disparate communities together like a disaster, be it natural or manmade. We rebuild, we recover, we move on. It’s what we do.”
Carolina Brown’s “Anthropocene” (tr. Jessica Powell) is a chilling combination of typical scholarly woes—e.g., how can you study penguins in Antarctica when “there are probably just over six-hundred individuals left in the wild”?—and on-the-job hazards of smelly coworkers and . . . zombies! The translation is visceral and uncomfortable and leaves one with more questions than answers—I couldn’t tear myself away.
Typhus, charity, war, torture, desertion, death—things so removed from the average reader’s experience that we expect them to be told in dramatic language and sensationalized. Not so in Bassam Yousuf’s “I looked into the face of my torturer . . . and found my old school-friend” (tr. Katherine Van de Vate). In this memoir about a pair of childhood friends who face a changing world as adults, Yousuf challenges our understanding of conflict and moral absolutes while showing compassion and detachment in equal parts.
—Chief Executive Assistant Dina Famin
I loved the range of voices in the bestiary that is Rafael Toriz’s Animalia (tr. Charlotte Whittle). The tone of this excerpt is so dynamic, moving through folkloric registers, satire, encyclopaedic notes, and personas of the beasts themselves, all while striking a balance between wry humour and lyricism. In blending the otherworldly and sublime with the wonders of our own environment, these entries stoke an awe of familiar and unfamiliar creatures alike.
I’m fascinated by Syaman Rapongan’s project of creating a transnational ocean-island literature, and the ways in which the excerpt from his Eyes of an Ocean (tr. Darryl Sterk) in enacts that ideal. Oceanic imagery is at the core of Rapongan’s language in Sterk’s English translation. I particularly appreciated the lines of connection drawn between different indigenous groups across the globe, and Rapongan’s reflections on language, formal education, and historiography as they are used to reinforce cultural hierarchies, as well as the varied forms of resistance to these very hierarchies.
Vedita Cowaloosur’s “Private Goordial Seeraz” provided an inlet for me to reflect on accounts of world history that have been marginalized by the dominance of Eurocentric narratives. Written like a soldier’s diary, the piece bears witness to the dualistic experience of colonial conscripts, and the conditional freedoms offered by the opportunity to serve in the armies of the imperial forces subjugating their very homelands. I was intrigued by the narrator’s growing disillusionment, and how his experiences in the army prompted greater reflection on pathways to resistance against the British empire. The lesson plan I contributed to this issue’s educator’s guide (out this Thursday!) makes use of Cowaloosur’s narrative to think more broadly about what actually comprises world history, and what we can learn from personal accounts of history from a global majority perspective.
—Devi Sastry, Educational Arm Assistant
Read more from the Blog:
- Blog Editors’ Highlights: Summer 2025
- Our Summer 2025 Edition Has Landed!
- Spring 2025: Highlights from the Team