"keep turning forever, circling round": Shining Sheep by Ulrike Almut Sandig

.   i have the same number of words inside me as all of you have words, the exact same number but how many times can they be combined? you keep finding words that no one sang before you. .  your godhead made you after his own image .   stark naked, blind—wild things that you are. – from “The Silent Songs of the Walls: l” German poet Ulrike Almut Sandig’s latest poetry collection, recently…

View On WordPress

“Here, on this mountain, there’s the living and the dead.” The Wounded Age and Eastern Tales by Ferit Edgü

Years later, as I leaf through the notebooks, I see that these people and I, who didn’t speak each other’s languages, had understood one another. I don’t know what language we had I common, nor do I want to know. Our common language didn’t change them but it changed me. I’m sure of it. Every passing day returns to me the traces of our shared life in that mountain village; I see them. I live…

View On WordPress

In search of a shadow: Indian Nocturne by Antonio Tabucchi

When the murky waters that obscure any tangible connection between an author and his or her “unnamed protagonist” are intentionally stirred in the opening lines of a text, it is a not-so-subtle cue that that things may not be what they seem. Add an ostensibly exotic foreign location into the mix and there is plenty of space for the edges to become blurrier. Indian Nocturne, by Italian writer…

View On WordPress

After the night, day breaks: The Brush by Eliana Hernández-Pachón

Pablo and Ester live in the hills. Their children are grown. Their lives are simple, bound to the land, but lately there have been signs, omens. Pablo is concerned: For some time now he’s felt a heavy change pressing the air, and can’t explain it. Like when he walks through town at night, and when he hears the animals can’t sleep. Sensing danger, he gathers some papers and items in a box and goes…

View On WordPress

The vanished railway station: An old carriage with curtains by Ghassan Zaqtan

The vanished railway station: An old carriage with curtains by Ghassan Zaqtan, translated by Samuel Wilder

In the western foothills of the Hebron Mountains, about forty kilometres southwest of Jerusalem, lies what remains of Zakariyya, a village with a history stretching back millennia. It was the birthplace of the parents of Palestinian poet and writer Ghassan Zaqtan. When the community was occupied and depopulated by Israeli forces following the Nakba, they were forced flee to Beit Jala near…

View On WordPress

When no words can be found: [. . .] by Fady Joudah

How will I go on living with orchestras that conduct my thirst? It’s been done before. There are precedents, always will be, and there will be Gaza after the dark times. There will be gauze. And we will stand indicted for not standing against the word and our studies of the word that dissect what ceases to be water. – from “[. . .]” p. 16 When we talk about a literary work being timely, it often…

View On WordPress

But I was a child of the jungle: The Understory by Saneh Sangsuk

Toward the end of the Afterword to his novel The Understory, Thai author Saneh Sangsuk, having acknowledged the myriad of sources and resources that informed his tale, describes just how his work originated and quickly assumed a life of its own: One day in early 2002, I had set out to write a short story, which was meant to be a very short story. What I had had in mind was a ghost story precisely…

View On WordPress

Snakes and ladders: Traces of Boots on Tongue and Other Stories by Rajkamal Chaudhary

There is a deep darkness in all directions, and we are sitting on the naked floor, awaiting light. When will the light come? Dipu unwraps the sheet from her body and lays it on the ground. She feels along the wall and keeps the bottle and the glass in a corner. Then asks—Who else is here? Chandravati, are you here? Nothing is visible in the dark. Not even one’s limbs. And in this darkness, Dipu’s…

View On WordPress

I rarely look in the mirror: Spent Light by Lara Pawson

There are days when I want to embody the qualities of a thing. To be effective, but not affected. To be present but not involved. So, in case you haven’t heard, it begins with a toaster. The first thing that the narrator of Lara Pawson’s Spent Light wants to tell us is about the second-hand toaster her neighbour gives her one day, the first toaster she says she has ever owned. She takes it home…

View On WordPress

Am I really me? Barcode: Fifteen Stories by Krisztina Tóth

When one speaks of a short story collection as “loosely linked” there is often the implication that some kind of continuous theme, or even set of characters, connecting the individual pieces to a greater or lesser extent. Krisztina Tóth’s debut collection, Barcode, originally published in Hungary in 2006, is a little different in this respect. The narrators or protagonists are all Hungarian, and…

View On WordPress

Casting light on a fading world: For Now, It Is Night by Hari Krishna Kaul

Casting light on a fading world: For Now, It Is Night by Hari Krishna Kaul

It was so cold! I felt as if I were sleeping on ice. It was a large room and there were three of us in it. The windows were shut but they were without panes. Outside, it was raining heavily and the strong winds from the Pir Panjal came in gusts. The wind, this biting cold of Banihal, blew strongly through the room of the tourist hostel. Despite being indoors, it was as if we were sleeping…

View On WordPress

An extraordinary interrogation: Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe

An extraordinary interrogation: Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe

I want to tell how sorrow makes a shape that is familiar. And how that familiar thing can be difficult to both name and to narrate. (Note 83) For the past week or so I have been sitting in the presence of this singular text. I have been ill, so it has had a little extra time to spin through my fevered brain. And yet, it is not easy to articulate my response. Ordinary Notes is a text one must come…

View On WordPress

As boundaries blur: A few words and a link to my response to Decima by Eben Venter

A few months ago, I was invited to write a response to a new novel by South African author Eben Venter for knaap.brief, a weekly queer newsletter that publishes work in Afrikaans and English. I have been sticking to my own private corner of the literary universe for the past few years, so this invitation was both unexpected and welcome. There was a time when I read a lot of South African…

View On WordPress

Only in a poem can you bring back the dead: My Rivers by Faruk Šehić

On a windy August day, a poet walks a stretch of the French Atlantic shore. It’s Liberation Day and his thoughts turn to foreign troops landing on these beaches, in two World Wars, but he thinks especially of the frightened young American marines bound for Normandy: Such men I would like to lead into the ultimate battle, into the resurrection of green grass beneath clear skies without the salvos…

View On WordPress

Behind the lens and beyond the darkroom: The End by Attila Bartis

Behind the lens and beyond the darkroom: The End by Attila Bartis, translated by Judith Sollosy

When I take stock of my life, I see no reason to launch into some big family history. I haven’t got what it takes, nor do I have the means. I can’t very well ask Mother and I can’t ask Father, and as for my grandparents, I never knew them. Besides, the story of my family is nothing out of the ordinary. One might even say that along with all its uniqueness, it could just as easily serve as the…

View On WordPress

The wisdom of madness: The Blue Light by Hussein Barghouthi

The wisdom of madness: The Blue Light by Hussein Barghouthi, translated by Fady Joudah

Blue is a colour with multiple manifestations and meanings in various contexts and traditions—the light of the sinful self for the Sufis, the colour of creative energy in Tibetan Buddhism, the destructive enemy of the God of Wisdom for Zoroastrian Persians. Blue is also said to be an antidote to sexual excitation and it is said to calm the nerves. That may explain some of the hold that the colour…

View On WordPress

Even the birds have gone away: Nostalgia Doesn’t Flow Away Like Riverwater by Irma Pineda

A drop of salt on paper is silence killing us Where have your footsteps taken you? In what corner of the world do they hear your laughter? What shard of earth drinks your tears? – from “A drop of salt on paper” **** I traveled the path from the south my feet blistered with memories so tired from dragging all my people’s dreams – from “I travelled the path from the south” The migration…

View On WordPress