World Literature Today Magazine - Winter 2021
World Literature Today Magazine - Winter 2021
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In this issue
Ismail Kadare, winner of the 2020 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, headlines the Winter 2021 issue + a special section on contemporary Hebrew literature gathers eleven writers from Israel and beyond. Fiction, poetry, essays, interviews, dozens of timely book reviews, and booklists make the latest issue of WLT, like every issue, your passport to great reading.
Our Revenge Will Be the Laughter of Our Children
What is it about the revolutionary that draws our fascinated attention? Whether one calls it the North of Ireland or Northern Ireland, the Troubles continue to haunt the land and those who lived through them.
10+ mins
Turtles
In a field near the Gaza Strip, a missile strike, visions, and onlookers searching for an explanation.
6 mins
Surviving and Subverting the Totalitarian State: A Tribute to Ismail Kadareby Kapka Kassabova
As part of the ceremony honoring Kadare as the 2020 laureate—with participants logging in from dozens of countries around the world— Kadare’s nominating juror, Kapka Kassabova, offered a video tribute from her home in Scotland.
6 mins
Dead Storms and Literature's New Horizon: The 2020 Neustadt Prize Lecture
During the Neustadt Prize ceremony on October 21, 2020, David Bellos read the English language version of Kadare’s prize lecture to a worldwide Zoom audience.
10+ mins
Ismail Kadare: Winner of the 2020 Neustadt International Prize for Literature
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, World Literature Today presented the 2020 Neustadt Festival 100 percent online. In the lead-up to the festival, U.S. Ambassador Yuri Kim officially presented the award to Kadare at a ceremony in Tirana in late August, attended by members of Kadare’s family; Elva Margariti, the Albanian minister of culture; and Besiana Kadare, Albania’s ambassador to the United Nations.
3 mins
How to Adopt a Cat
Hoping battles knowing in this three-act seduction (spoiler alert: there’s a cat in the story).
6 mins
Chicken Soup: The Story of a Jewish Family
Chickens, from Bessarabia to New York City, provide a generational through-line in these four vignettes.
10 mins
Awl
“Awl” is from a series titled “Words I Did Not Understand.” Through memory—“the first screen of nostalgia”—and language, a writer pieces together her story of home.
10+ mins
Apocalyptic Scenarios and Inner Worlds
A Conversation with Gloria Susana Esquivel
10+ mins
Marie's Proof of Love
People believe, Marie thinks, even when there’s no proof. You believe because you imagine. But is imagination enough to live by?
10+ mins
The Primary Substance
Stuck in traffic during a downpour, a driver faces a peculiar dilemma.
9 mins
Translating Toshiko Hirata's Ars Poetica
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
2 mins
When I Left “Karl Liebknecht” (an excerpt)
In the Karl Liebknecht House in Leipzig, Germany, thirty people of various nationalities are seated around an improvised table on the stage in the Events Hall, interpreters behind them, some with texts in front of them, some without, and while it looks as if they’re at an ordinary meeting, they are, in fact, at an exceptional one, one that could be called a performance.
10+ mins
Sofa
A sofa, the site of a family’s history, receives and gives a second life.
10+ mins
Pittsburgh's August Wilson African American Cultural Center
LOCATED IN THE HEART of downtown Pittsburgh, on Liberty Avenue close to Union Station and the David Lawrence Convention Center, the sleek and elegant but unpretentious August Wilson African American Cultural Center (awaacc) cannot fail to capture the eye and the imagination of anybody who is visiting Pittsburgh or, for that matter, of anybody who lives in the city.
2 mins
Liquid History
Scuba-diving in the Black Sea, a writer contemplates Lenin in the Crimean seabed, the watery landfall from which historical figures are never meant to rise again.
10+ mins
Diversifying Bookshelves From Trend to Norm
IN THE WAKE of the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, America woke up to find itself in the midst of a national reckoning over race. Calls for justice and dismantling white supremacy began to touch every aspect of American life—including the literary world.
2 mins
Catania, Sicily
LAST OCTOBER, I chose to use Catania as a base for exploring the towns of southeastern Sicily I had yet to discover.
3 mins
There Is Also This Civil War Inside of Me
A Conversation with Zisis Ainalis
9 mins
Why Iranians Continue to Seek Refuge in Australia
Shokoofeh Azar moved to Australia as a political refugee in 2010. Her novel The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree (see WLT, Spring 2020, 96), originally written in Farsi, was shortlisted for Australia’s 2018 Stella Prize for Fiction and the 2020 International Booker Prize. Here she recalls her refugee journey from Iran to Christmas Island and reveals why Iranians continue migrating to Australia, despite the absence of war.
10+ mins
Not Pregnant
In this work of creative nonfiction from Cuba, plague is something common shared with those who lived in Thebes.
5 mins
Quarantine Innovations
DURING A CRISIS, books provide solace and hope, offering comfort in the literary world.
2 mins
Mapping My Mother
In isolation, a writer connects her mother’s attempt to protect her from “never-being-able-to-leave-Cuba-itis” to her own desire to protect her children amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
5 mins
Keeping My Mother Alive
In Greece, a son who has returned to his mother’s home to care for her during the Covid-19 crisis contemplates what the global pandemic can reveal about our character.
10+ mins
Broken Novels, Ruptured Worlds
A Conversation with Michelle de Kretser
10+ mins
Hands
The mortar landed close, maybe two hundred meters away.
3 mins
Desegregating Language - The New Afrikaans Crime Novel
Encountering postapartheid Afrikaans fiction for the first time, particularly the fast-paced crime novels of Deon Meyer, the author finds that the most unexpected element is the new lack of segregation between Afrikaans and English.
7 mins
Assembly
The students noticed an opening at the bottom of the fence, a tear in the wires. On the other side of the fence was the outside, which they only saw from the bus window when they were on their way to or from school.
3 mins
The Old Man Who Lives Two Floors Below
Down the first twist of stairs and Josie hears she is not alone, like hearing a tree in the wind beyond her bedroom window. The old man: splay-legged before his door like a failing easel, he moves slow as death.
4 mins
Our Nations, Ourselves
A Conversation with Robin Hemley
9 mins
World Literature Today Magazine Description:
Publisher: World Literature Today
Category: Entertainment
Language: English
Frequency: Quarterly
Your passport to great reading. Each issue of World Literature Today delivers book reviews, fiction, poetry, interviews, and essays by the best new writers from across the globe. Now in its 90th year of continuous publication, World Literature Today has won dozens of awards including most recently the Apex Award for Excellence and Annual Gold Ink Award.
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