She promises to call him later and takes off down the street on her rusting bicycle. Askander watches her until she fizzles into the mirage. Fifty kilometers north, the ground is green and irrigated well. On the western side of the river, the grasses are lively and soft compared to the gray . . .
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This is the first installment in a series of interviews with our contributors. “10 Questions” was created to give MR’s readers a closer look into the professional lives of those who populate our pages. When I write, I am singing my Armenian womanhood to whoever might listen. I am dancing a dance about . . .
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A Review of Yoss’s Super Extra Grande, Translated by David Frye (Restless Books, 2016). If humanity ever makes contact with extraterrestrials, what language will we use to communicate? Musical tones, as in Close Encounters of the Third Kind? English, Hindi, Spanish, or Chinese? If you’ve read the novel Super Extra Grande by Cuban science fiction writer . . .
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The conclusion of a conversation with translator Susan Bernofsky. Read Part One here, and Part Two here. Ryan Mihaly: The Metamorphosis and Robert Walser’s Microscripts both deal with these cramped spaces – Microscripts being these texts written on the back of business cards, newspapers, pamphlets, and so on. And both Walser and Kafka write in this old, highly formal style, . . .
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Part Two of a conversation with translator Susan Bernofsky. Read Part One here. Ryan Mihaly: When did you begin working on Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, and to what extent did you consult the various other English translations? Susan Bernofsky: I started working on it, I think, in the spring of 2013, about a year before . . .
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Ryan Mihaly: You recently translated The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck, the fourth work of hers that you’ve translated. It seems that the more books she publishes in German, the quicker you translate them into English. How important is it for you to translate her books quickly? Susan Bernofsky: It’s funny, it doesn’t . . .
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A Review of King of the Gypsies, a short story collection by Lenore Myka (BkMk Press, 2015). In praise of linked story collections, Michael Chabon has said: “A group of linked narratives can create an effect you can’t get from a novel or from one story alone. It’s like a series of snapshots taken over . . .
Read MoreA review of the movie Son of Saul (dir. László Nemes, 2015). The movie Son of Saul, which has received very positive reviews, immerses us in a few days of the life of a member of the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were responsible for helping shepherd the Jews into the gas chambers, and for disposing . . .
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A Review of Save Twilight: Selected Poems. New and expanded edition, by Julio Cortázar, Translated by Stephen Kessler. (City Lights, 2016). In “Axolotl,” an early short story by Julio Cortázar, the protagonist watches the titular amphibians very closely, day after day, imagining his way into their consciousness (or lack of consciousness), taking up . . .
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A Review of The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible, by Aviya Kushner (Spiegel and Grau, 2015). Pirkei Avot (“The Chapters of Our Fathers”), a compendium of rabbinic ethical aphorisms, includes Ben Bag Bag’s prescription for studying Torah: “Turn the Torah over—turn it over for everything is in . . .
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