"Words Without Borders: The Best of the First Ten Years" [A Book to Buy]

The other week, we mentioned the Words Without Borders gala celebrating their first ten years of existence.

Well, to celebrate their first 10 years, WWB has released a special anthology that’s definitely worth buying—not only because it’s loaded with great writing, but also because sales of this volume go to support one of the best nonprofit publishing organizations in the country.

This volume celebrates WWB’s tenth anniversary with fiction, poetry, and essays from our first decade, translated from Dari, Rajasthani, Tigrinya, Urdu, and Yoruba, among others. The collection embraces many moods: antic tales of love triangles, deceptively sweet old ladies turned homicidal, somber accounts of bloody wars and political conflicts, and sly subversion of pompous clergy and other authorities.

There are tales of fantasy from Poland, Canada, and France, and grittier pieces from the many contributors—Iraq’s Najem Wali, Iran’s Kader Abdollah, El Salvador’s Horacio Castellanos Moya, Morocco’s Abdellah Taïa—who have had to flee their birthplaces and write from exile.

The selection of poetry varies from rhapsodic to whimsical: Slovenian lyricism; Polish and Catalan self-portraiture; Argentine and Japanese revelations. And we include two fine essays that provide a road map for full appreciation of both international writing and the translator’s role.

Contributors include Kader Abdolah, Adolfo Albertazzi, Justyna Bargielska, Lúcia Bettencourt, Carmen Boullosa, Horacio Castillo, Ismat Chughtai, Vijay Dan Detha, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Louis de Paor, Nicholas Dickner, Ernest Farrés, Gabriella Ghermandi, Marek Huberath, Akinwumi Isola, Etik Juwita, Ilya Kaminsky, Rivka Keren, Nomura Kiwao, Fatos Lubonja, Leila Marouane, Mohammad Hussain Mohammadi, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Ambar Past, Tomaž Šalamun, Teresa Solana, Andrés Felipe Solano, Abdellah Taïa, Goli Taraghi, Jyrki Vainonen, Lawrence Venuti, Najem Wali, Ghirmai Yohannes, Yu Hua, Motoya Yukiko, and Zheng Xiaolu.

It’s available in ebook form for $11.95 from Amazon, B&N, and Apple.