Table of Contents

1. Olympic Voices of China Issue
2. April Events
3. On the Bookshelf
4. Blogs, Blogs, Blogs
5. Book Club

Olympic Voices from China

Celebrate "Olympic Voices from China" with WWB, Ma Jian and Xialuo Guo at the 2008 PEN World Voices Festival. For more info...

Giving

Your gift to WWB helps us commission more translations of exciting international works, host live readings, and continuously improve WWB. We couldn't do it without you.

Favorites from Last Month

Don’t miss your fellow readers’ five top “hits” on WWB last month: 1) Selim Nassib’s Dinner Party in Beirut 2) Etel Adnan’s October 27, 2003 3) Salah Stetie’s The Garden of the One 4) Mazen Kerbaj’s A Short Description of Lebanon 5) Mai Ghoussoub’s Texterminators.

Advertising with WWB

For more information on advertising with Words Without Borders please (email) WWB and include "Advertising" in the subject line.

WWB: Anthology

Features the work of more than 28 writers from upwards of 20 countries. Here, some of the most accomplished writers in world literature - among them Nobel laureates Wole Soyinka, Gunter Grass, and Naguib Mahfouz - introduce us to dazzling literary talents virtually unknown to readers of English.
Read more...

Dear Friends:

Olympic Voices From China

As the world looks to Beijing and the 2008 Olympics, we present a national women's team of writers to guide us through the richly sedimented and often contradictory layers of the current Chinese psyche. Against the background of contemporary China--where modern business harks back to historical trade, economic growth introduces the painful reality of layoffs, the Cantonese dialect asserts itself against Mandarin in written form, and an argument for the one-child policy takes a peculiarly feminist twist--characters run from social and cultural pressure, fight to support extended families, and dive into unrequited love. Huang Yongmei's parking-lot attendant's obsession with a movie star leads her to the sky, while Liu Sola's married artists converge on beauty--and its roots--in L.A. Sheng Keyi's young woman finds a job for her father by assuming a new position herself, Wang Anyi's rural worker proudly brings up her daughters in the field, and Ye Mi's lonely bicycle repairman finds love on the street and heartbreak inside. Wang Ping cruises into myth, and Zhao Ying's pregnant mother runs for her unborn child's life. Our great thanks to guest editor Hu Ying for allowing us to glimpse below the new China's gleaming surfaces.

Max Blecher salutes spring, Nico Casariego takes a guided tour of hell, and Juan José Saer contemplates shadows and loss.

April Events

This April, we’re already looking forward to May and our events in coordination with the ever-fabulous PEN World Voices festival. On May 1st, 1:00 pm at the Cervantes Institute, WWB presents ”Burma: A Land at the Crossroads”. Very special guests Thant Myint-U and Ian Buruma discuss one of our world’s last truly isolated and closed regimes, where the boundaries between private and public take on entirely different dimensions.

And on Saturday May 3rd, 2:30 pm at the Asia Society, we celebrate our April issue with "Olympic Voices: New Literature from China," with Ma Jian and Xialuo Guo. Join us for a conversation about flipping off the Old Guard, the new Chinese writing, belonging, escape, heartbreak, and craft.

On the Bookshelf

Tsipi Keller parses S.Y. Agnon’s To This Day and Elham Gheytanchi searches for Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s Missing Solouch.

Blogs, Blogs, Blogs

Georgia de Chamberet continues spelling out the A to Zs of Literary Translation; Hosam Aboul-Ela talks Troubles and Sophie Powell plumbs Welsh Literature.