Author Archives: smilkova
Idara Crespi Introduces Espresso Publishing House and Francesco Mastriani’s “The Blind Woman of Sorrento”
Translator and publisher Idara Crespi introduces Espresso Publishing House, a new Canadian press specializing in translated literature. Crespi also introduces the inaugural publication of Espresso Publishing, Francesco Mastriani’s Gothic thriller “The Blind Woman of Sorrento” which she translated herself.
In the Translator’s Workshop: Judit Pieldner Interviews Jozefina Komporaly about Translating Andrea Tompa’s “Home” (Haza)
Winner of the PEN Translates Award and included in the longlist for the Dublin Literary Award, the English version of Andrea Tompa’s “Haza” (2020), translated from Hungarian by Jozefina Komporaly as “Home” (Istros Books, 2024), raises intriguing questions about the new life of the book.
To Begin Again: Antonio Moresco’s “The Beginnings,” Translated from Italian by Max Lawton
Born in 1948 in Mantova, Antonio Moresco has been a Catholic seminarian, a militant in Italy’s extra-parliamentary left during the Years of Lead and, finally, a writer. Now considered by many Italian readers (but, it must be said, only by a handful of Italian critics, which significantly hindered his recognition at home and abroad) to be one of the most important living Italian writers, he had a troubled publishing history: “The Beginnings” took more than ten years to find a publisher, before coming out for the first time in 1998.
Translation as Teamwork: Anne Milano Appel Interviews Max Lawton and Francesco Pacifico about Antonio Moresco’s “The Beginnings”
Intrigued by the collaboration between Max Lawton and Francesco Pacifico, most recently on the translation of Antonio Moresco’s “Gli Esordi” (The Beginnings, Deep Vellum, 2026), a surreal, experimental novel which is the first book in the author’s “Games of Eternity” trilogy, I decided to ask them about it.
Mariana Enriquez’s Graveyard Adventures in “Somebody is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys,” Translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell
Ever since the publication of her first short story collection, “Things We Lost in the Fire” (2017 in English translation by Megan McDowell), Mariana Enriquez has established herself as one of the most powerful voices in contemporary world literature. Born in Buenos Aires in 1973, Enriquez joins a long line of Argentine writers who pushed the boundaries of fiction, her voice is her own and completely in tune with the complicated and violent history of that country.
What the Translator Puts in Our Mouths: “Eating Ashes” and Performing Hate
Translation is both necessary and dangerous. Necessary because it carries a text—a culture—into another language, another readership, another field of attention. Dangerous because carrying is never neutral. It is handling, and handling leaves fingerprints. Those fingerprints are most legible where the stakes are highest: in a translation’s handling of racial epithets and slurs, where a choice that looks like mere intensity or “grit” can, in fact, dislocate the novel’s geography of contempt.
A SPRINGTIME OF HER OWN MAKING: ÁLLEX LEILLA’S “SPRINGTIME IN THE BONES,” TRANSLATED FROM PORTUGUESE BY AMANDA SARASIEN
Women in Brazil have long faced verbal and physical abuse by males, both strangers and the men in their lives. Artists in film, TV, music, and literature have also called attention – on social media and the press – to this urgent crisis. The publication this month of Amanda Sarasien’s translation of “Springtime in the Bones” by Állex Leilla is uncannily timely. This disquieting novel, published in Brazil in 2011, adds a powerful voice to the millions of Brazilians who are saying no to misogyny and crimes against women.
Silence Speaks in Egana Djabbarova’s “My Dreadful Body,” Translated from Russian by Lisa C. Hayden
Born to an Azerbaijani family in Russia in the early 1990s, Egana Djabbarova grew up in a conservative diaspora that scrutinized every bit of her body. In her memoir, “My Dreadful Body,” translated by Lisa C. Hayden, she explores different parts of herself with the ruthlessness of a physician and the care of a poet.
When Life Gives You Lemons: Mieko Kawakami’s “Sisters in Yellow,” translated from Japanese by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio
Mieko Kawakami’s latest novel, “Sisters in Yellow,” is loosely framed by the COVID-19 pandemic, though the main story unfolds in the 1990s, after the economic “bubble” bursts and recession sets in, emphasizing the intersection between gender and precarity. Kawakami’s novel is as personal as it is political and, I would suggest, could be read as a call for a feminist ethics of care: an approach to care as interdependent, relational, contextual and intersectional.
Looking Through Historical Residue: Maïssa Bey’s “Blue White Green,” Translated by Erin Twohig
The history of French colonialism in Algeria can be traced back to 1830 when the country was invaded by the Kingdom of France. After 132 years of colonial presence in the region, the country gained independence in July 1962. Set in Algiers following this declaration, Bey’s characters grapple with a changing country, one bent on pushing out and eradicating the impacts of over a century spent under French rule and embracing Arab unity in the formation of a codified nation state. I
Unbudgeable Feelings: Toon Tellegen’s “The Cricket’s Healing,” Translated from Dutch by David Colmer
Toon Tellegen’s “The Cricket’s Healing,” translated by David Colmer, explores themes of loneliness and depression through animal fables. Behind his surreal metaphors and silly yet strange encounters between animals, we can find very real social commentary and a deep analysis of the landscape of the human mind.
The Making of the Unoriginal: Writing and Writers in Mario Vargas Llosa’s “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter,” Translated from Spanish by Helen Lane
Using Lima as its backdrop, the novel presents two mostly disjointed pieces of writing. One, a largely autobiographical narrative of a certain Marito’s job as a radio news writer and his clandestine relationship with and later marriage to his aunt (by law, not blood), and the other, a collection of over-the-top radio soap operas written by the Bolivian escribidor Pedro Camacho.
Sewing Toward the Sea: Marosia Castaldi’s “The Hunger of Women” as Écriture Féminine
Rosa takes up the challenge of reinventing (recentering) her writing around women—an act of creation which Cixous might refer to as écriture féminine. And while culinary themes dominate her narrative, with lists of foods and recipes often spanning several pages at a time, Rosa accomplishes this recentering using two other themes: the metaphor of the sea, and a reimagined matrilineal genealogy.
Verbal Mycology: Olya Stoyanova’s “Happiness Street,” Translated from Bulgarian by Katerina Stoykova
In Bulgarian poet Olya Stoyanova’s award winning 2013 poetry collection “Happiness Street,” translated by Katerina Stoykova and published in 2025, empathy is not merely a byproduct of the reading experience; rather, it is something that permeates and motivates each of her poems.
LISTENING IN TRANSLATION: THE PODCAST “AN ANCIENT LANGUAGE FOR A MODERN SOUL. POEMI CONVIVIALI BY GIOVANNI PASCOLI”
Throughout “Poemi Conviviali,” music surfaces again and again, sometimes eerie and disquieting, often located in the limbo between life and death, or dream and reality; sometimes as the Dionysian, ecstatic sound of drums and double flutes, but most often as melodies performed on a stringed instrument, the lyre, which is the ancestor of the modern harp.