The Tin Drum. Translated by Breon Mitchell

The Tin Drum” has been regarded as a modern classic almost since the moment it was published. In English its success was helped along by an excellent translation by the late Ralph Manheim, to whom the young Grass was rightly grateful, despite a few reservations. In recent years, however, Grass has grown increasingly involved in […]

Kismet: A Kayankaya Novel, Translated by Anthea Bell

It all began with a favor. Kayankaya and Slibulsky were only trying to protect their friend Romario from his protectors, men who were demanding hard cash for the service. It ended with two bodies on the floor of Romario’s restaurant, their faces covered in ghostly white makeup. Kayankaya is determined to track down their identities, […]

Door Languages. Translated by Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright

Door Languages, Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright’s brilliant translation [within a bilingual edition], sends us news of the stranger within us who keeps putting on and taking off a cloak of invisibility. This is bracing work. Line by insinuating line, Zafer Şenocak peels back our most rigid assumptions. These poems, marked by the highest ambition, read like […]

Facing the Bridge, Translated by Maragret Mitsutani

“In Front of Trang Tien Bridge” (translated from Japanese to English by Margaret Mitsutani) is Yoko Tawada’s second story in her three story collection Facing the Bridge, a work that focuses on the alienation people face when living in places other than their “homeland.” Kazuko Minamiyama, a Japanese woman in her mid-30s, is living in […]

The Naked Eye. Translated by Susan Bernofsky

In Yoko Tawada’s The Naked Eye a Vietnamese student travels to East Berlin to give a lecture on “Vietnam As a Victim of American Imperialism,” only to be smuggled against her will to the other side of the Iron Curtain. She then tries to catch a train to Moscow but instead finds herself in Paris, […]

Özdamar, Emine. The Bridge of the Golden Horn.