Translated by Anne Milano Appel
“Either it isn鈥檛 a secret but I don鈥檛 know what it is; or I know but it鈥檚 a secret; or it鈥檚 a secret and on top of that I don鈥檛 know what it is.”
Fiction
Translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman
I鈥檇 never experienced the comfort of hearing a familiar language鈥檚 soft rumble within a crowd, the warmth of feeling at home amid strangers.
Translated by Daria Chernysheva
She places Th茅odore conspicuously in the center of her stand…Th茅odore received special treatment. He has a label, and on that label is his name in big letters, 罢贬脡翱顿翱搁贰…
Translated by Peter Sherwood
Mikl贸s was no longer a real being, just a sender of letters with news not from real life but rather as evidence of some sophisticated fiction, as if he were writing to and for himself, to prove that the body that existed in her imagination was not just a doppelg盲nger of her desires.
Translated by Zenia Tompkins
You鈥檙e…moved by the welcoming calm and serenity of provincial Ukraine…suddenly you realize that from under a kiosk…the barrel of a machine gun is aimed at your chest.
Translated by Monica Cure
Our house has become a shelter for kids whose parents beat them. Everyone knows we鈥檙e home alone, because we鈥檙e almost never visited by an old person, I mean an adult.
Translated by Jessica Moore
Next come the irreversible rails, laying out the countryside, unfolding, unfolding, unfolding Russia, pressing on between latitudes 50掳 N and 60掳 N, and the guys who grow sticky in the wagons, scalps pale beneath the tonsure, temples glistening with sweat, and among them Aliocha, twenty years old.
Translated by Brendan Freely
鈥淐orpses,鈥 said the man, 鈥渢he corpses of soldiers who don鈥檛 want to be buried in Europe, who want to have their eternal rest in Asia, on Muslim soil…”
Translated by听Hope Campbell Gustafson
When I ask my mother what happened to my father, she says that there鈥檚 been war in our country for fifteen years and as far as she knows he could be dead. She says it with a coldness that upsets me, so I immediately stop asking questions.
By Samina Hussain
It suddenly occurred to her that the tawa had been wrapped in a red and white cloth when it made its first journey to England with her all those years ago.
Translated by Jon Cho-Polizzi
The women of Totope treated Ada as though she had emerged from Mami Ashitey鈥檚 own loins. In their eyes, her daily floggings were glowing proof of familiarity and love.
Translated by Nhlanhla Maake
When you are standing on the bank of a river, you see yourself reflected twice, my friend.
Translated by Yardenne Greenspan
Shauli came home that weekend. I was astonished when he appeared in the doorway with his uniform and rifle. I hadn鈥檛 seen him in two weeks…
Translated by Katie Whittemore
There is a small plastic horse in the corner of the modest fenced-in yard. It looks like it鈥檚 been there for eternity, yet it鈥檚 not actually old. That particular corner is the only part of the yard that has been conserved as a garden, that wasn鈥檛 sealed with cement and tile and made into a patio.
Translated by Rosmarie Waldrop
They were men who did nothing but walk walk walk. They were big, they were bearded, they wore leather caps and long raincoats…
Translated by Imogen Taylor
Let me start this story with a confession: I can鈥檛 pronounce my own name. For as far back as I can remember, I have felt uncomfortable introducing myself to people.
Translated by Nermin Menemencio臒lu
My mother was on a rampage again today. My father鈥檚 been fired, she carried on endlessly about it. 鈥淗e crosses swords with the bosses, talks back to them, as if there鈥檚 some mansion…
Translated by Alex Zucker
I had a suitcase, that鈥檚 it. My mother鈥檚 old suitcase with wheels, the one she used to take with her jetting around the Old World for work, till the doctor made her stop flying.
Translated by Valerie Miles
The sudden commotion, the sound of the motor, they displace you, leaving me alone; I concentrate on the movement of my hands now, gripping the wheel…
Translated by Yardenne Greenspan
I returned to Sobibor to dig. Really dig, with a hoe, and with my hands, on my knees, mining for bits of bone, collecting pins and buttons left behind by the dead.
Translated by Victor Meadowcroft and Anne McLean
Mothers stay with their children during the first years, and then, when the children can 鈥 apparently 鈥 defend themselves, they release them, they cast them into the naked tumult, and forget them. I鈥檝e seen mothers who despair at having to provide for their children, letting out huge yawns while contemplating them.
Translated by Megan McDowell
She started to feel bad when her brother left. Her brother said he loved her, but it wasn鈥檛 true, because he left unapol-ogetically, claiming that he had to go. Had to?
Translated by Izidora Angel
Naya and I have been living together since we were born. First in the Home, then in the attic room we shared in the Reduta neighborhood. She was given up for adoption as a three-day-old baby.
Translated by Sverre Lyngstad
This was how Bj酶rn Hansen鈥檚 existence had shaped up. This was his life. At Kongsberg. With Turid Lammers, this woman he had to live with because he feared he would otherwise regret
Translated by Emma Ramadan
Concrete’s no job for sissies.听Maybe that鈥檚 why our father decided, soon as we were old enough, my little sis and I, to educate us in cement, concrete, and casing.
Translated by Will Firth
Now, a year and a half after Alija鈥s funeral, I stood in the courtyard in front of the house where I grew up. I tried to sing Morrissey鈥s 鈥Late Night, Maudlin Street鈥 in my head…
By Judith Schalansky
In the evening they are hungry and restless. No meat for days. No hunting since they themselves were captured. Instincts worn down by captivity until they lie bare like gnawed bones.
Translated by Jane B. Greene
His path led him first through sparse woods where the tall grass, interspersed with clumps and clusters of gentians, came up above his knees, then over upland pastures.
Translated by Olivia Baes
[The fog] had taken shape little by little, rising from the bottom of the gorge like water does in a basin. Strangled between boulders, the great rumble of water filled the air…
Translated by Katie Whittemore
In any case, the woods are forbidden. Supposedly, they鈥檙e dangerous. Not because of animals or the rough terrain, but the possibility of vagabonds, thieves, terrorists: people who want to blow up what this world is becoming.
Translated by Saskia Vogel
My body clung to me like something foreign鈥攁 sticky, itchy rubber suit; but no matter how much I scratched and scraped at it, it was where it was.
Translated by Daniella Zamir
The sidewalk was cleansed of the blood. Rivers of rain, water hoses, and street sweepers joined forces to scrub the surface after the last remnant was removed.
Translated by Heather Cleary
The characteristic scent of Buenos Aires, a mix of aquatic plants and the local soil, which鈥攁s many have told me and I鈥檝e also read鈥攕till filters through the streets on the breeze, was an incipient aroma slowly rising off the river to form waves of disparate and paradoxically incomplete smells that morning, probably due to the hour.
Translated by Emma Ramadan and Tom Roberge
Four years, or nearly. The next four years of the boy鈥檚 life, which will be the most beautiful, the most marvelous. The trees were nothing. The elms and the planes and the chestnuts…
Translated by Janet Louth
It seems to me that the people sitting at tables on the terraces notice me in spite of my shabby clothes. Once a woman sitting behind a tiny tea-pot eyed me from head to foot.
Translated by听Katy Derbyshire
Once tall and slim, Bassel鈥檚 body is no longer immune to time鈥檚 passing 鈥 his hair has gone grey but at least it hasn鈥檛 fallen out like most of his contemporaries鈥, his belly has grown soft and visibly convex, and his back is no longer strong and straight. A slipped disc a year ago came as a rude reminder of advancing age.
By Rachel Ingalls
They were already weighed down by an emotion that made for even greater lassitude 鈥 a kind of inertia, intermittently broken by irritable indecisiveness.
Translated by Anna Halager
Oh, my head. I let out a deep sigh and smell alcohol. My stomach roils and I heave my body out of bed, go to the bathroom. Shit, my head is about to explode. I still feel drunk. My eyes won鈥檛 focus and my legs aren鈥檛 working right. I kick the clothes I dumped on the floor because they block my way and I walk five long metres to the bathroom, my hand over my mouth.
Translated by Jennifer Russell
Daniel found her in the ground. He dug her free and brushed off the dirt. He joined the pieces, logged the pigment traces: how they were distributed across her clothes and her skin.
Translated by Peter Bachev
If she just looks long and hard enough through the grimy pane of the southern window, she is sure to see one of them returning to its nest. That鈥檚 what she鈥檚 been told…
Translated by Mirza Puri膰
They鈥檝e brought us to the front line. Mud and fog everywhere. I can barely see the man in front of me. We almost hold onto each other鈥檚 belts lest we get lost. We pass between burning houses. The file trudges on along rickety fences. The mud sticks to our boots, stretches like dough.
Translated by听Jeff Diteman
鈥淓xcellent work,鈥 says the raspy-voiced, pock-faced man, as he holds out a copy of Spain: One Year of Dictatorship, 鈥渞eally excellent.”
Translated by Isabel Fargo Cole
It was hot, a damp hot hell, sweat emerged from all my pores. I began excreting smells, how strange, as though something within me were starting to mold, an extraordinary fromage, as though I smelled of my eyeballs, which bulged and welled with what seemed a sort of slime, a turbidity likely rising up from my loins, a twinge from the groin that brushed my heart, stinging; it dug slowly into my brain, but I hadn鈥檛 felt its onset.
And to think he鈥檇 expected them to rally round at the first puff of smoke from his cigar! That, whatever the circumstance, whatever the temptations, it was to him they would turn, him they would support with their powerful young love.
叠测听Olga Sezneva
I check myself in the mirror one last time. Black sweater, high neck, navy blue pants that you won鈥檛 see under my long apron. Dark-frame glasses. City smart, I鈥檇 say, no different from that mevrouw I saw selling gloves in E*.
Translated by Christiana Hills
This isn鈥檛 exactly how Tristan tells his story to Dumestre. He doesn鈥檛 tell him everything. He doesn鈥檛 use words like 鈥渟tammer鈥 or 鈥渁rrogance.鈥
Translated by Andrea Rosenberg
Javier eyed his father鈥檚 invulnerable back as the old man, sitting up in the bow, received the morning full on his face.听His father was skinnier and shorter than Javier, and he was wearing a polo shirt that had started out red but had long since faded.
Translated by Audrey Young
in that place there was a woman who did not want to have children听from her womb. She asked the men to bring her their wives鈥 children
so she could educate them in a large house…
Translated by Will Vanderhyden
My mother鈥攌nown as 鈥淔air Sarah鈥濃攄ied during the great influenza epidemic, when I was less than a year old. I got sick too. And against all prognoses, condemned by the doctors, I survived, and no one dared call it miracle
Translated by听Julia Johanne Tolo
This is the globe. It鈥檚 blue, with green, orange, and yellow sections. Sometimes pink or red. It turns in the dark, and has two white spots. The North Pole and the South Pole. If you want to leave the globe you have to send an application to somewhere like NASA, and you鈥檒l need to be good at physics, math, and chemistry.
Translated by听Niina Pollari
She believes she鈥檚 very happy. She tells herself that a loving husband, three beautiful children, a red granny cottage in an idyllic countryside setting, and a newish Opel station wagon in the yard is exactly what she鈥檚 always wanted.
Translated by Kerri Pierce
Truth to tell, I鈥檝e always thought that, when it comes to the animal kingdom, starlings are the creatures that most resemble humans. Could be that鈥檚 just wishful thinking.
Translated by Owen Witesman
Imagine you are partially blind. Minus eleven diopters. Imagine a dark exam room at an optometrist鈥檚 office. You鈥檙e sitting in a comfortable leather chair, afraid you鈥檒l lose your sight entirely. You鈥檝e carefully placed your old glasses on the table. The plastic rims, electric-blue ten years ago, are scuffed now.
Translated by David M. Smith
I kept my mouth shut and realized that Stovner was a very small place, and Tante Ulrikkes vei even smaller. I realized that in Stovner, people lived in houses on one side and housing on the other, and that the two were nothing alike, something that held true for Oslo just as much as the rest of the world.
Translated by听Larissa Kyzer
My hands get no cleaner than an old bathtub. My fingernails are all clipped as short as possible, but the chemicals have managed to claw their way through the dead skin, into the bone. As if there鈥檚 no enamel.
叠测听Chika Unigwe
But suffering is not without its lessons. Here, she has learned thrift. Not the thriftiness of her mother back home in Nigeria who bargains for palm oil until she gets a good price, and boasts.
Translated by Allison M. Charette
You cannot walk fast in Antananarivo. There鈥檚 a weight in the air, a heat that makes everything slow and viscous. There鈥檚 a constant small of noxious gas, an acid odor that gets into your lungs, infests your muscles. There鈥檚 the red dust, blackened by exhaust fumes, and the perpetual suffocation of the city, so precariously perched, so dry.
Translated by听Hope Campbell Gustafson
Mama built our house with flamboyant tree branches and braids of palms, mixing a paste of resin, dung and red sand to protect us from water and from the monsoons.
Translated by听Donald Nicholson-Smith
Alain leaves everything behind walking, walking toward the station… walking toward Claire, toward a happiness cold as the sun in this country.
Translated by Isabel Fargo Cole
Later, to restore the sense of uniqueness, of something transcending the symphony, vocal force and splendid voices were sought after.
Translated by听Ellen Elias-Bursa膰听补苍诲听David Williams
Marlene was Polish (in age she could have been my daughter) and she occasionally cleaned my apartment for ten Euros an hour. Who knows how she鈥檇 found her way to Amsterdam and from where, but in the flood of words she showered on me in her poor, strongly Polish accented English, I remembered mention of a collective somewhere in Belgium with its leader whom she referred to, reverently, as 鈥淏aba.鈥
Translated by Angela Rodel
I can see her clearly now, wandering through the New York dusk on Christmas Eve. She grabs a cab, and in less than an hour she is standing in front of an entryway in Brooklyn.
Translated by听Izidora Angel
The chains they took off, the ropes they left on, and they forced him, bound, into the car
By Elena Alexieva
I still can鈥檛 get used to living on ground level. The fact that from my kitchen window I see the people walking between the apartment blocks almost in their actual size keeps astonishing me. Living on the ground floor means we have no terrace. But we do have bars on the windows which we didn鈥檛 put there.
Translated by听Donald Nicholson-Smith
She lives alone in a smoke-filled apartment. Now and again a glass of wine may be seen–hers, or that of a casual visitor. A bird lives there too, looking out of the window for hours, indifferent, distant. One day she decides to bring some plant life into her home to freshen things up…
Translated by Alex Zucker
Don鈥檛 stink and watch your weight. Those are the most important resolutions I know of. Every morning I plop myself down in front of the mirror and stare into my face, just in case it might finally tell me something I don鈥檛 know. It stares right back, as if expecting the same from me.
Surely Mama must realize that the little ones are scared and that we older ones know she鈥檚 lying. We can鈥檛 tell her so because the little ones would be even more scared.
Translated by听Isabel Fargo Cole
One reason for my forays to the far side of town was the worry over what was to become of me.
Translated by听Miranda Richmond Mouillot
I鈥檓 not going to hide at all, my friend. The ones who hide are always the ones they find. I鈥檝e had smallpox twice; the Nazis just make it a third time.
Translated by听Deborah Smith
It began in Mao鈥檚 room. Hazy, formless, faint things, things that were neither light nor shade, yet at the same time the illegitimate children of both,听a moment of glittering black and dark…
Translated by听Celia Hawkesworth
On Saturday, November 19, 2002, sixty people incarcerated in a camp for illegal immigrants sew their lips together. Sixty people with their lips sewn reel around the camp, gazing at the sky. Small muddy stray dogs scamper after them, yapping shrilly. The authorities keep assiduously postponing consideration of their applications for leave to remain.
Translated by听Susan Bernofsky
One Thursday in late August, ten men gather in front of Berlin鈥檚 Town Hall. According to news reports, they鈥檝e decided to stop eating. Three days later they decide to stop drinking too. Their skin is black. They speak English, French, Italian, as well as other languages that no one here understands. What do these men want? They are asking for work. They want to support themselves by working.
Translated by听Gaye Kynoch
The days and weeks in Lisbon, the clear, higher, harder light out here by the coast, the slightly forsaken haziness of the city, a forgotten region of outermost Europe, the sound of the street-cleaning trucks advancing slowly through the streets behind Pra莽a do Rossio in the last hour before daybreak, like big beetles snorting hoarsely in the dust of the strangely quiet city…
Translated by听Rachel Hildebrandt and听Alexandra Roesch
White swathes of steam float across the deck. It wreaks. Someone has puked into the swimming pool, and fibrous chunks float on the surface. Leg of duck in a truffle reduction鈥攖he Chef鈥檚 daily special. As though in slow motion, the girl straightens up, staggers away, reeling between stacks of deck chairs and disappears into the haze.
叠测听Alison Moore
He is not in the bedroom. She can hear the shower running in the bathroom, can hear him singing in there. She would prefer not to have to talk to this man who keeps calling her Ester as if he knows her. She is still annoyed with him for being so late and not even apologizing. She is obliged to feed the man 鈥 she wants to feed him, she always wants to feed men 鈥 but she would be pleased to get away without having to engage with him.
Translated by听Emily Gogolak
The elusive gazes of the men, the slightly aghast looks from the women, upon the arrival of this rider, all to suggest that he was a dreadful and dreaded being.
Translated by听Jethro Soutar and Annie McDermott
You would鈥檝e come home and told me all about it, filled with enthusiasm and doubtless in fits of laughter. If the conversation had ever taken place.
By Charmaine Craig
Khin had seen him before, the young officer. She had noticed his hands, strong and clenched by his sides, and the restless way he charged from one end of the seaport to the other.
Translated by听Jan Pytalski
The city was rebuilt to restore its previous look, sometimes down to exact details, following a naive belief that that would turn it back into what it used to be before the war. It was an exercise in fidelity without purpose, an empty gesture of men in love with history.
Translated by Michael Hofmann
On my lap the animal knows neither fear nor persecution. It feels happiest when pressed against me; it is loyal to the family that has nurtured it.
Translated by听Frederika Randall
He didn鈥檛 want to drop dead in that room. In the dark. Alone, without a helping hand: it was pure misery. The sound of his breathing did not seem to be him, but a machine.
Translated by听Janet Livingstone
The river draws closer and closer to the stream of gawking people. They jump onto the sandbags so they can see themselves in it. And at night they dream dreams on the shore. Dreams in which clouds of dust whirl behind herds of galloping animals.
Translated by听C.J. Collins
I took the big bag that I had inherited from my grandfather down from the attic. It was brightly colored like a storm of rainbows. I hoisted it onto my back and went out into the street. I closed my eyes and began to choose samples at random from everything that was inside: humans and stones and dust and flowers and wind and the past and the present and the future.
Translated by Sherilyn Hellberg
The face, the voice, the hands press against the wall. Celestine up in the south-facing attic, in front of the stained mirror鈥攁nd there is also a dried wreath there. In the darkness inside the wall, a glimpse of Celestine鈥檚 eyes. In one eye a nettle grows. The forest around the castle sparkled like silver, carrying Celestine鈥檚 name within it. She is furious; she hunts down the guests at the hotel when they sleep. She slides down the corridors. She licks their faces. She licks the sleep out of their eyes. She cries no no when the wall closes in on her.
Translated by听Angela Rodel
I鈥檒l try to introduce to you the six hunters individually and I鈥檒l start with him, since he was the reason they set off in that miserable weather to track wolves.
Translated by Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping
Nights on the riverbank were terrifying: it was as if the violent wind would blow the boxes into the river at any moment. Mixed with this strong wind were many howling wolves.
Translated by George Henson
I was in Vienna this year, after a twelve-year absence. My arrival coincided with a mass rally of three hundred thousand people who protested against the return of Nazism to the country, precisely in Heroes鈥 Square, the same one where one million Austrians frenziedly cheered Hitler.
Translated听by Saskia Vogel
Her fatigue was bright and jagged. It rained down on her, dispersing her thoughts until they were but white noise. She had no idea how long she鈥檇 slept last night.
Translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman
Mudugan was a typical village of thieves, built in the middle of the forest in a gap that barely deserved to be called a clearing, so tightly did the trees encircle the log houses. There weren鈥檛 any paths that had been marked to get there and it was inaccessible to anyone who didn鈥檛 know exactly where the ravines and undergrowth were. That was where Umrug Batyushin learned to live his life as a self-sufficient child, there where he learned to shoot rifles, to carve up elk, and endure cold and hardship, as well as bear the howling of the wolves…
Translated by听Mirza Puri膰
My husband is burly, and when he walks, it’s as if his steps are yawning. He stumbles over me as if over a pet. I sometimes hide behind a tree and wait for him to turn around. Or leave. If we’re going to a birthday party, I’m the one who wraps and carries the present. If he’s had a lot of wine, the room takes on a smell听which makes me put on my shoes and walk up and down the street.
Translated by Chenxin Jiang
Europe is disintegrating, the old lady is falling apart. She recently appeared at the Museum Festival with a terrible heap of jewelry around her neck; she’d just dyed her hair blond; above her fake gold necklace hung her wretched, worn face, and then she laughed, walked up to the bar, embraced a tall young man and kiss him artfully.
By David Constantine
During the funeral, and after it when the mourners came back to her house, Katrin continued in the almost rapturous state she had been lifted into by the last hours of Eric鈥檚 life. It was over, accomplished, her strength had sufficed. And now meticulously she would attend in every detail to every thing that needed to be done. She allowed advice, but followed it her way; help, but she directed it. She accepted condolences, and herself extended them to whoever had been saddened by Eric鈥檚 death.
Translated by Susan Bernofsky
As soon as he entered the sleepers鈥 realm, the air around him grew sharply colder, with glittering silvery particles of light falling all around him. He watched the miniature flakes floating, they danced, liberated from gravity, yet still went on falling: falling ever farther until at last they alighted on the frozen earth and disappeared.
Translated by Martin Aitken
We come no closer, only the opposite鈥攚e are moving away.听Moving backwards,听losing the pores of the woman鈥檚 skin, we lose the pores, the fair down of听her upper lip that you discovered, the lines of her skin reminding you of听some other age鈥攜outh, funnily enough, that couldn鈥檛 quite be placed.
