Words Without Borders

Starred review from December 31, 2007
In his introduction, Andre Dubus III points out that in a time when globalization is a fact of life, and only 6% of books in translation are translated into English, there exists “fertile territory for misunderstanding, unresolved conflict, and yes, war.†Luckily, this timely literary collection from the editors of wordswithoutborders.org brings the world, freshly translated, to curious English speakers everywhere, picking up where their Literature from the “Axis of Evilâ€
left off. In this new anthology, 27 well-known authors (Günter Grass, Jonathan Safran Foer, Naguib Mahfouz, etc.) were asked to recommend work by a favorite non-English writer. Choices span the globe, including Haiti (Evelyne Trouillot), Norway (Johan Harstad), Bosnia (Senadin Musabegovic) and Palestine (Adania Shibli). Ma Jian sets his breathtaking chase of a short story in modern-day China, Jo Kyung-ran deals with family and identity in Korea, and Seno Gumira Ajidarma's gripping, forceful story gives voice to children making their homes in Indonesian gutters. Top-notch writers, editors and translators have created a stimulating, acutely relevant collection that readers will want to take their time enjoying.

Starred review from March 12, 2007
In his introduction, Andre Dubus III points out that, in a time when globalization is a fact of life, and only 6% of books in translation are translated into English, there exists "fertile territory for misunderstanding, unresolved conflict, and yes, war." Luckily, this timely literary collection from the editors of wordswithoutborders.org brings the world, freshly translated, to curious English speakers everywhere, picking up where their Literature from the Axis of Evil left off. In this new anthology, 27 well-known authors (Günter Grass, Jonathan Safran Foer, Naguib Mahfouz, etc.) were asked to recommend work by a favorite non-English writer. Choices span the globe, including Haiti (Evelyne Trouillot), Norway (Johan Harstad), Bosnia (Senadin Musabegovi) and Palestine (Adania Shibli). Ma Jian sets his breathtaking chase of a short story in modern-day China, Jo Kyung Ran deals with family and identity in Korea, and Seno Gumira Ajidarma's gripping, forceful story gives voice to children making their homes in Indonesian gutters. Top-notch writers, editors, and translators have created a stimulating, acutely relevant collection that readers will want to take their time enjoying.

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2007
These days people like to say that the world is getting smaller, but in literary terms it remains vast and mostly unexplored. The U.S. is a literary isolationist, as Andre Dubus III notes in his introduction to this valuable new anthology, unaware of a body of contemporary international writing because so little of it is translated into English. As a small corrective, the editors have culled short fiction and poetry by mostly unfamiliar writers from across the globe, with a special emphasis on work that brings news of how political, economic, and cultural change is affecting the lives of ordinary people. We find health-care issues precipitating a family crisis in China (Ma Jian's "Where Are You Running To?"), memories of civil old Tehran clashing with the dictatorial reality of the new capital (Goli Taraghi's "The Unfinished Game"), and globalism itself as a factor in the dynamics in a Nigerian village (Akinwumi Isola's comic gem "The Uses of English").(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)