Literature in Translation Archives - Public Books https://www.publicbooks.org/section/literature-in-translation/ a magazine of ideas, arts, and scholarship Sat, 17 Jan 2026 02:10:54 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://www.publicbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/cropped-favicon-2-300x300.png Literature in Translation Archives - Public Books https://www.publicbooks.org/section/literature-in-translation/ 32 32 Once upon a Time in Tenoxtitlan https://www.publicbooks.org/once-upon-a-time-in-tenoxtitlan/ Wed, 30 Jul 2025 15:00:00 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=60312 Two novels published in 2024 return to some of the best-known, canonical figures and episodes from Mexico’s past.

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]]> “The Door’s Still Locked”: Fiction after Fascism https://www.publicbooks.org/the-doors-still-locked-fiction-after-fascism/ Wed, 11 Jun 2025 15:00:30 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=59896 “Labor” forces us to ask: Who has power? “Horror” forces us to ask: Who is the monster? And the combination of the two, “Labor-as-Horror,” tells us to beware the uncomfortable fractures in our otherwise ordinary work.

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]]> The Translator’s Dilemma: Thinking Versus Doing? https://www.publicbooks.org/the-translators-dilemma-thinking-versus-doing/ Wed, 07 May 2025 15:00:02 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=59547 Would we get a different view of translation if we turned to translators themselves?

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]]> When Language Is Lost, What Can Be Gained? https://www.publicbooks.org/when-language-is-lost-what-can-be-gained/ Tue, 21 Jan 2025 16:00:15 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=58766 Aphasia brings up existential questions that get at the heart of human connection: Who are we without language?

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]]> “Only the Northern Lights”: The Russo-Ukrainian War and Its Poets https://www.publicbooks.org/only-the-northern-lights-the-russo-ukrainian-war-and-its-poets/ Tue, 03 Dec 2024 16:00:04 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=58173 These poets unsettle a collective sense of melancholy into a generative force, from which a transformed historical imagination can emerge.

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]]> Modes of Witness: On “The Singularity” and “The Simple Art of Killing a Woman” https://www.publicbooks.org/modes-of-witness-on-the-singularity-and-the-simple-art-of-killing-a-woman/ Wed, 19 Jun 2024 15:00:09 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=56491 Despite their opposing answers to the question—what to do with the grief of witnessing?—both novels lead us up and back down the long, winding road of grief and witness.

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]]> Lahiri’s Metamorphoses https://www.publicbooks.org/lahiris-metamorphoses/ Tue, 18 Jun 2024 15:00:48 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=56349 Over eight years have passed since Jhumpa Lahiri announced her intention to leave behind the terrain of English letters and write only in Italian.

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]]> A Translation the Size of the World https://www.publicbooks.org/a-translation-the-size-of-the-world/ Tue, 30 Apr 2024 15:00:00 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=55869 “Translators and writers must fight through the “labyrinth of [the] imagination,” find their way through their private language toward a text’s new picture of reality.”

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]]> Phantoms of Patriarchy: On Ditlevsen & Bachmann https://www.publicbooks.org/phantoms-of-patriarchy-on-ditlevsen-bachmann/ Tue, 26 Mar 2024 15:00:44 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=55536 Revival fetishism perpetuates the gendered dynamics of authorship and reception that Tove Ditlevsen and Ingeborg Bachmann spent their lives writing about and against.

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]]> A #MeToo Novel That Must Be Read #WithYou https://www.publicbooks.org/a-metoo-novel-that-must-be-read-withyou/ Tue, 13 Feb 2024 16:00:12 +0000 https://www.publicbooks.org/?p=55132 A South Korean novel critiques violent misogyny within a literature department. Remarkably, it does so by addressing the reader directly.

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