Words without Borders (WWB), a nonprofit and online magazine, announces the release of the e-anthology Words without Borders: The Best of the First Ten Years, which celebrates the magazine’s first decade of publishing the finest world literature translated into English. The collection features fiction, poetry, and essays from Abdellah Taïa, Akinwumi Isola, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Carmen Boullosa, Andres Felipe Solano, Goli Taraghi, Yu Hua, and Tomaž Šalamun, among others. Editorial Director Susan Harris said of the collection, “This rich anthology demonstrates the global scope and literary accomplishment of our first ten years.” The anthology is available from e-book retailers.
The Best of the First Ten Years draws from Words without Borders’ rich archive of contemporary international writing with pieces 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 volume is Words without Borders’ seventh anthology of international writing and first e-book. Its other titles, released in collaboration with trade publishers, include: Words without Borders: The World through the Eyes of Writers (Anchor Books), Literature from the “Axis of Evil”: Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Other Enemy Nations (The New Press), The Wall in My Head: Words and Images from the Fall of the Iron Curtain (Open Letter), The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Ecco), and Tablet and Pen: Literary Landscapes of the Middle East (W.W. Norton). Earlier in 2013 it released Spain’s Great Untranslated in collaboration with Spain Culture USA.
Words without Borders http://wordswthoutborders.org
Founded in 2003, Words without Borders is a 501c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of global understanding through the translation, publication, and promotion of international literature. To date WWB has translated over 1,700 pieces of literature and poetry representing 100 languages by writers from 124 countries. WWB has been featured in the New York Times, the New York Times Book Review, the Boston Globe, the Guardian (UK), Vanity Fair, and theChronicle of Higher Education, as well as in various foreign-language papers and numerous literary blogs. Our most recent print anthology is Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East (W.W. Norton & Co., 2010).
