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Years and years ago, when Karl Pohrt and I were launching the Reading the World program to enable independent bookstores to promote more literature in translation, we found out that May was officially World in Translation Month. This was a pretty happy coincidence, since we had already planned all of our activities to take place in May, and since people don’t celebrate this near enough.
In fact, after Reading the World morphed into the Best Translated Book Awards and whatnot, the concept of World in Translation month sort of faded to the background . . . Which is really too bad. May is the month for the PEN World Voices Festival, and the time when everyone gets out of school and has time to read something from another culture.
So, what I’d like to propose is that for World in Translation Month—and because our book sales for this fiscal year have been rather lagging—is that everyone reading this buy just one Open Letter title this month. But it from your local independent bookstore, from B&N, or Amazon—wherever you want. As a special incentive, we’re offering free shipping on all orders this month that are placed through our website.
And to be completely honest, there are two main reasons I’m personally asking all of you to do this. As you probably know, we don’t spend a lot of time on Three Percent pimping our own books. Instead, I’d rather talk about great works of international literature that are coming out from all over the place—I think that makes for a more interesting and valuable website. At the same time, I do have to try and sell as many Open Letter titles as possible, and for whatever reason—Borders closing, sluggish economy, etc.—this year hasn’t been our best. We do still have time to turn it around though, and literally, if all of the fans of Three Percent, the listeners to our podcast, the people who access our Translation Database, or the readers who follow the Best Translated Book Awards each purchase one single title of ours, we could end the year on a very high note.
Also, reading international lit during World in Translation Month should be mandatory for everyone.
Thanks in advance, and I apologize in advance for posting regular reminders about this. And please, if you support Open Letter and World in Translation Month, pass this post along to all of your FB/Twitter/RealLife friends.
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
This slender, uncanny volume—the second, best-selling collection of stories by Russian author Ludmilla Petrushevskaya to appear in the U.S.—has already received considerable, well-deserved praise from many critics and high profile publications. Its seventeen short tales, averaging ten pages each, are. . .
Reviewed by Rachael Daum
The Urdu word basti refers to any space, intimate to worldly, and is often translated as “common place” or “a gathering place.” This book by Intizar Husain, who is widely regarded as one of the most important living Pakistani writers,. . .
Reviewed by Vincent Francone
The Whispering Muse, one of three books by Icelandic writer Sjón just published in North America, is nothing if not inventive. Stories within stories, shifting narration, leaps in time, and characters who transform from men to birds and back again—you’ve. . .
Reviewed by Camila Santos
Luis Negrón’s debut collection Mundo Cruel is a journey through Puerto Rico’s gay world. Published in 2010, the book is already in its fifth Spanish edition. Here in the U.S., the collection has been published by Seven Stories Press and. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
“South”
To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars
from the bank of shadow to have watched
the scattered lights
my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations
to have heard the ring of. . .
Reviewed by Larissa Kyzer
When Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason first published LoveStar, his darkly comic parable of corporate power and media influence run amok, the world was in a very different place. (This was back before both Facebook and Twitter, if you can. . .
Reviewed by Tiffany Nichols
When starting Hi, This Is Conchita and Other Stories, Santiago Roncagliolo’s second work to be translated into English, I was expecting Roncagliolo to explore the line between evil and religion that was front and center in Red April. Admittedly, I. . .
Reviewed by Josh Billings
Christa Wolf’s newly-translated City of Angels is a novel of atonement, and in this way the work of art that it resembles most to me is not another book, but the 2003 Sophia Coppola film Lost in Translation. Like that. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
French author—philosopher, poet, novelist—de Roblès writes something approaching the Great (Latin) American Novel, about Brazilian characters, one of whom is steeped in the life of the seventeenth century polymath (but almost always erroneous) Jesuit Athanasius Kircher. Eleazard von Wogau, a. . .
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
A rich, beautifully written, consistently surprising satire, Yan Lianke’s Lenin’s Kisses boasts an elaborate, engrossing plot with disarming twists and compelling characters both challenged and challenging. It leads the reader on a strange pilgrimage—often melancholy but certainly rewarding—through a China. . .
Three Percent is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.
