Words Without Borders

We eat while we translate, my father and I. Coffee percolates, eggs boil, corn simmers. We sit at the kitchen table on a hot August morning, the day before my daughter turns eight, rifling through the pages of a printed script, Brâncuși v. SUA (Brancusi v. United States) by novelist, journalist, and playwright Tatiana Niculescu. My laptop is open next to our...

In 1945, on August 6 and August 9, the USA dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, changing the regions forever. Eighty-one years later, we speak to Erika Kobayashi, whose books most often center around the theme of radiation, about her new publishing venture, arbaro books. The venture hopes to bring Japanese books created around t...

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While the mist tips
the curves, the ledge,
and shoulder of a mountain in Samar
island and the frag leaves of the palay
are calm and even, a soldier

grovels in a chase with metal grains
from rifles that sprouted and grew in the field.

Here, his blood rills over the farm,
the crops grow and the ...

Second Song
For S

As when I was learning
how to play the guitar,
I study the breadth of the land’s frets
with my feet.
I travel far,
allow my blisters to burst
and my calluses to toughen,
so that one day I might stumble
onto humanity’s beat.
It’s true that playing the chords
h...

From Penguin Classics | Olenka by Budi Darma, translated from the Indonesian by Tiffany Tsao | Fiction | 320 pages | ISBN 9780143138532 | US$19.00...