Words without Borders

Dear Friends:

We confess to smuggling out the arresting details, strong convictions, and guilty pleasures of this month's writings from prison. Fatos Lubonja recalls his chilling "Second Sentence." Fadhil al-Azzawi negotiates prison politics in "Cell Block Five." Khadija Marouazi's phobic captive rats out his innocent cellmate in "Biography of Ash," while Tirdad Zolghadr cuts a deal with his new "Friends." Jorge Garcia and Fidel Martinez's defiant women prisoners sing "The Ballad of Ventas Prison." Leena Lander's political activist in "The Order" writes her last letter to the foster father she served, then betrayed. Mario Benedetti reveals the captive unconscious in "He Dreamed That He Was in Prison." And in escapes from other forms of confinement, Guillermo Saavedra's "Runaway Country" captures a nation fleeing political and economic chaos, while Cuban exile and mental patient Guillermo Rosales "checks out" of his euphemistic "Boarding Home." We trust you'll be a captive audience.

Elsewhere in this issue, Mario Rigoni Stern welcomes the spring thaw and a flood of memories, Marjana Savka links trysts and tangos, and Franziska Gerstenberg discovers that hell is other people—on a train.

Thanks to all of you who joined our April events in Cambridge, Houston, and New York to celebrate our new anthology, Words Without Borders: The World Through the Eyes of Writers. For more on the book that Kirkus calls "one of the best introductions to non-Western writers there is," see the site.

New Yorkers, we hope you'll join our A*** Salierno Mason at 6:30 on Wednesday, May 9, at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre at Symphony Space, Broadway at 95^th, for "Reading the World: An Evening of Fiction in Translation." Other participants include translator Ann Goldstein, New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman, Hope Davis, Maria Tucci, and Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis. Call Symphony Space 212.864.5400 for details.

On the Bookshelf: Reviews of Daniel Alarcón's Lost City Radio and Antonio Lobo Antunes's Inquisitors' Manual.

Blogs, blogs, blogs: WWB sees what's in the mail, and Arnon Grunberg meets Elie Wiesel and ponders classic guilt.

Our first anthology, Literature from the "Axis of Evil," continues to garner praise. Click here for interviews with the advisory editors, where to buy the book, and more.

You may now donate to WWB online. Your donation helps us commission more translations of exciting new international works, build our community features, host live readings and events, and continuously improve WWB. We couldn't do it without you and are immensely grateful for your support. Your contribution is tax deductible to the extent allowable by law.

Join us in June, when we'll feature literature from Scandinavia. In the meantime, if you have questions or comments, please contact us at wwbinfo@wordswithoutborders.org. We look forward to hearing from you. Hope you enjoy the site.

The Editors

Susan Harris
Dedi Felman
A*** Salierno Mason

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Words WIthout Borders May Newsletter