Category Word Literature
On the “constellations of potential meanings”: “Best Literary Translations 2024,” with guest editor Jane Hirshfield and series editors Noh Anothai, Wendy Call, Öykü Tekten and Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún
The human fascination with visibility is fully on display in the new series published by Deep Vellum called “Best Literary Translations,” which places translators (thirty-eight of them) and editors (five) center stage—alongside the fifty-two journals who nominated a combined five hundred pieces for consideration. (Let me also point out another occasionally overlooked narrative voice of a book: the copyright page, where it will be clear to you, if it wasn’t already, once you get to the line “used by permission of Metallica,” that you’re in for a treat.)
Bulgarian Women Who Run With the Wolves: An Interview with Nataliya Deleva and Izidora Angel
Nataliya Deleva’s Four Minutes is a profound, heart-breaking meditation on the notions of home and homelessness, with their myriad manifestations and implications in our contemporary world. An orphanage in post-communist Bulgaria provides the physical and psychological coordinates of the narrator’s existence and of the book’s loose narrative frame. Called simply and anonymously “the Home,” this […]
Women in Translation Month: Writing Won’t Save Us, but It May Help Us Survive
By Barbara Halla Is it intertextuality? Or is it perhaps that, both consciously and subconsciously, the books I pick tend to broach similar themes? Russian poetess Maria Stepanova would say that I am trying to find patterns where there are none—because like all other human beings, I take comfort in meaning, even if I have […]
“There’s No Place Left on Earth That’s Peaceful”: Zülfü Livaneli’s “Disquiet,” translated from Turkish by Brendan Freely
Livaneli is a household name in Turkey and an outstanding figure in the cultural and political life of his native country. A writer, poet, composer, producer, film director, and political activist, Livaneli was named a Goodwill Ambassador by UNESCO in 1996 for his contributions to world peace through music and literature.
Elena Ferrante in a Global Context
This special issue was born out of the interweaving of our personal and professional stories, at the intersection of our different mother tongues and acquired languages, homelands, and disciplinary backgrounds. An Italian-Neapolitan scholar in Italy, a Bulgarian scholar in the United States, and a German scholar in the United Kingdom, we found a common ground through the study of Elena Ferrante and on the pages of a 2016 volume of the Italian scholarly journal Allegoria.