Russia/United States | Russian | Short Fiction
November, 2014Margarita Meklina traverses multiple literary and social worlds as a bilingual, transnational writer and omnisexual traveler. Writing in NLO of her 2003 Andrei Bely prize-winning book The Battle at St. Petersburg, the critic Kirill Kobrin said of her: "Having departed Petersburg for San Francisco [in 1994], Meklina took with her not only a tendency toward Bely's rhythmic prose, Nabokov's fondness for punning playfulness, but also that characteristic of Petersburg 'being in two worlds,' and its ambiguous, imprecise relationship toward the so-called 'fiction' of 'literature,' its opposition of so-called 'reality,' 'life'...." An online biography asserts that, "Her stories, often built around themes of marginalized sexuality, in combining postmodernist sensibility with New Sincerity-like elements created a new Russian lexicon in that genre." For my own part, I find these, Rita's miniatures, particularly imbued with lyricism and resonant with pathos, something that presents me as a translator with the immensely pleasing challenge of getting her wistful tone precisely right.
- Alex Cigale
Cuba | Short Fiction | Spanish
November, 2014Antonio Álvarez Gil is a novelist and short story writer. Born in Melena del Sur, Cuba, he has resided in Sweden since 1994. I discovered Naufragios (Algaida, 2002; in English translation, Shipwrecked) some years ago at a bookstore in Spain, where he has published several novels and won numerous awards. For years, the enigmatic beauty of one of that novel's characters, a Russian-Cuban girl, lingered in my mind, and it took some time before I discovered that the vast universe occupied by his characters extended beyond Cuba and the Soviet Union, where Álvarez Gil himself had long ago studied chemical engineering. Knowing that literature was his vocation even when he was obliged to pursue a different career altogether, Álvarez Gil has written short stories and novels often brimming with the adventures of youth and universal literary and human quests--whether set in the present, as is the case with "Fascination"; the recent past of Cubans experiencing Soviet Perestroika up close, as in Callejones de Arbat (2012); or the more distant past of Las largas horas de la noche (2000, 2003), where, as Arístides Vega Chapú suggests in a recent review of the novel, the "most universal Cuban of all time," José Martí, undergoes immense humanization within his ten-year foray in Guatemala City in the late 19th century. That is to say, literature, love, travel, persecution, exile, masculinity, the ocean, and vocation harbor an important place in Álvarez Gil's writing. Mostly realist, it is also prone to twists and turns that take on an almost magical quality closely linked in his prose to the processes of writing, inspiration, and intertextuality. In "Fascination," readers board a cruise ship in Stockholm only to find themselves amidst Cuban characters working out their relationships to their homeland, their compatriots, the vigilance of the state, their desire--and, last but not least, to a writer who seeks to find the best way to introduce himself to all of them, and to tell a good story while doing so.
- Jacqueline Loss
Poland | Polish | Short Fiction
September, 2014"The Most Beautiful Girl" by Marek Hlasko contains all the hallmarks of this legendary writer's prose--the ugliness found beneath sparkling surfaces, the brutalities of life, the human capacity for lying and cruelty, sharp dialogue, and a hardboiled pace--that made him so famous in his day. The mood is immediately set by a beautiful girl sitting on a bench next to a handsome boy in a picturesque park. Then, just as quickly, that mood is shattered. If there's a theme that runs through all of Hlasko's work, it's that there is no place on this earth for lovers, and this story illustrates that idea quite brilliantly. Jealousy, pettiness, money, misperceptions--all these factors come in between what might have been a great romance. Indeed, with the perspectives of the passersby, we get the idea that everybody else takes the scene that's unfolding on a park bench to be something out of a fairy tale. The two main characters in "The Most Beautiful Girl" are beautiful people who stir up feelings of regret, discontent, and in one case, creativity in others, just by being so damn beautiful. It is only the reader who has the privilege of knowing just how wrong the other visitors to the park are. Of course, the setting is Warsaw under communist rule, but the system of government is hardly the point. One of the reasons Hlasko remains so relevant today (and indeed, with three books published in the last six months, he is quite relevant) is that his stories could, and indeed do, take place anywhere and everywhere. That men and women are ugly to each other no matter who is president or dictator or shah is a difficult truth to stare in the face, but that only makes it a more worthwhile thing to do.
- Ross Ufberg
Argentina | Short Fiction | Spanish
September, 2014Likened to Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, and Clarice Lispector, Hebe Uhart is an Argentine writer whose distinctive voice has made her beloved over the past 50 years by the Argentine public and fellow writers. Relatos Reunidos, her collected works, won the award for the Best Work of Literary Creation at the Buenos Aires Book Fair in 2011. Her newest story collection, Un día cualquiera, was released in 2013. An avid traveler with a piercing eye, Uhart has also published two travelogue collections, with a third forthcoming.
"The Fluffy Cake" is the title story from a collection originally published in 1976. Uhart says she wrote the story after a having experienced a moment of considerable disappointment during which she saw her world as flat and depressing, like this cake she had once made in childhood.
"Dear Mama" was included in the 1997 story collection Guiando la hiedra. Uhart wrote it as a tribute following the death of her mother. In 2009 it was adapted for the theater by Laura Yussem.
- Maureen Shaughnessy
Greece | Modern Greek | Short Fiction
September, 2014Originally published in ViMagazino, the magazine supplement to one of Greece's largest and most popular Sunday newspapers, "The Black Box" is a wry allegory about the economic crisis that has devastated Greek society. Like Asteriou's fiction in general, the story makes use of biting humor, a playful pastiche of genres, and provocative references from popular culture to creatively defy the hopelessness and cynicism of prevailing political discussions. His work has been described as "terrifyingly topical," as well as "multidimensional" and "masterfully crafted." These attributes are evident in the story, which is narrated in the voice of a weary, ineffectual police detective, who is frustrated at every turn by the missing suspect. Drawing from crime procedurals, folktales, and the lurking uncanniness of the Gothic ghost story, Asteriou weaves together a neo-magical realist fable with precision, economy, and an enviably light touch. As in most magical realist fiction, his characters are theatricalized types: the traveling American magician Balthazar, also known as Shirkgood or Lawrence, after Lawrence of Arabia, is but the most blatant embodiment of this idea of identity as multilayered performance. And it is precisely this playfully performative aspect of the story that remains with us at the end. What happened to Akis Konstantellos? To Balthazar? We are left without answers to these questions. Yet our frustration is perhaps outweighed by our wonderment: there is certainly something satisfying in the fact that the steadily increasing number of missing persons in the story are, to the end, able to defy the institutional mandates of discipline, reason, confession, and resolution.
- Patricia Felisa Barbeito
Austria | German | Short Fiction
September, 2014Author Elias Schneitter masters quite supremely the dramatic art of portraying the overlooked and the apparently petty and trivial. This is particularly true of Schneitter's anthology of short narratives entitled Karl: A Thousand Years of Austria. The story featured here is all about "Judge Georgie" who in a very revealing monologue points the accusatory finger at the world, complaining about everything in general and Austria (otherwise referred to in Austria as Karl), foreigners, the government, and the slugs in his garden. He is not a judge by profession but rather a notorious grumbler who never minces words and freely gives vent to his many blind prejudices. He always blames others for the unfortunate twists and turns his life has taken, never questioning his own decisions or views. The story of Judge Georgie is one of self-deception and self-justification. It is just one of several internal monologues that make up Schneitter's anthology, which also features "Ernst," who reflects on his former career on a cruise liner, and "Walter," a hippie in military uniform. Schneitter is very much interested in the "man on the street" and the contradictions that define him. He describes his characters with laconic wit, but always treats them with respect and empathy.
Elias Schneitter was born and grew up in Zirl in Tyrol, Austria. After completing his schooling in Stams, he had a variety of jobs including office clerk, canoeing teacher in Sturgeon Lake, Minnesota, project manager for Ho-Ruck, and employee for the Austrian social security system. Today, he works as a freelance author. He is co-founder of the international literature festival Sprachsalz in Hall, Tyrol and head of the small publishing house Edition-baes.
Schneitter's first publications started appearing in 1974, mainly in literary magazines (Fenster, Rampe, wespennest, protokolle, projektil) and as radio plays. His first book, Geflügelte worte, was published in 1979. In 2014, he will be presented with the Kathy Acker Award for his commitment to promoting international literature, above all between the USA and the German-speaking world.
- Isabelle Esser
Argentina | Short Fiction | Spanish
June, 2014Luisa Valenzuela, one of Argentina's most prominent and inventive fiction writers, was born in Buenos Aires in 1938. The home in which she grew up was a gathering place for writers, artists, and publishers. Borges (whom she described in her Paris Review interview as "a walking system of thought") came at least once a week, being a close friend of her mother, Luisa Mercedes Levinson (herself a well-known writer). The Luisa in question here wrote her first poem at six, and published her first story at twenty. The author of over twenty books--novels, short stories, and micro-fictions--Valenzuela has lived in France, Spain, Mexico, and New York, and taught at numerous universities, including Columbia and NYU. She has won a host of major prizes and awards (including a Fulbright, a Guggenheim, the Cervantes Prize, and at least one honorary doctorate). Her work has been widely translated. She left Argentina in the wake of the 1976 military coup, when one of her books was censored; in 1989 she returned to Buenos Aires and re-settled in her native neighborhood of Belgrano. Although fluent in French and English, she always held on to "the Argentine language [as] a home I don't want to lose" [The Paris Review interview, No. 170]. Her writing has rightly been called "hallucinatory" (although in matters of craft, it is absolutely lucid), arising as it has from her country's surreal and violent politics. Valenzuela's sentences have force and momentum, though her phrases may shift into unexpectedly delicate cadences and textures. Terror, exile, and alienation continue to be major themes, yet there is also a new, entirely unsentimental, tenderness between her characters.
"The Wanderer" (original title: "La errante") is from Tres por cinco, a collection published in Spain in 2008 and Argentina in 2010.
Valenzuela's most recent visits to New York took place in May 2014 for the launch of Review 88: Literature and Arts of the Americas, where she did a reading of "Conyecturas" (a witty philosophical story called "Conjectures on the Great Beyond" in English), and in 2013 for several events at McNally Jackson centering on her latest novel, La máscara sarda (The Sardinian Mask), which delves into the Sardinian roots of Juan Domingo Perón.
- Marguerite Feitlowitz
Brazil | Portuguese | Short Fiction
June, 2014Ferréz (b. 1975, São Paulo) is a figure of considerable cultural importance in his native Brazil, acting as the focal point of a literary movement, "literatura marginal," which promotes the culture of marginalized sectors of Brazilian society. He began writing at the age of 12, accumulating poetry, short stories, and chronicles. Ferréz also takes part in the hip-hop movement and is the founder of a clothing brand manufactured in his neighborhood, as well as a composer with a number of CDs on the market. In his books, Ferréz lends his voice to the residents of the suburbs of the Brazilian megalopolis, drawing from his own experiences of living in one of the biggest favelas of São Paulo.
Bosnia and Herzegovina | Bosnian | Short Fiction
June, 2014Emira Larson is a Bosnian-American who was born in Sarajevo, where she stayed during its four-year siege. An architect by training, she recently published her first book of short fiction, Šeherzada u Sarajevu (in English translation: Scheherazade in Sarajevo). She writes food and travel stories as a correspondent for Gracija magazine. Her short fiction and essays have been published in numerous literary magazines. In the last ten years, she has changed many addresses, from Kinshasa to Vienna to Podgorica.
Mexico | Short Fiction | Spanish
June, 2014Using her background in psychotherapy, Glafira Rocha blends genres and fractures forms to introduce us to texts devoid of spatial, temporal, and character delineations, thus fully delving into the psyche of each voice. Like Dan Chaon's Stay Awake and Robin Black's If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This, Rocha's Such Tales is a work of fiction intended to disturb and unsettle. Spanning nearly nineteen thousand words in length, the volume centers on human conflict, inviting its audience to examine the catalyst for evil that resides in the relationships among the people Rocha depicts.
The situations explored in Such Tales include, among others: a killer struggling to find his keys after murdering a mother and her two children; a psychopath pondering mass homicides; a dying woman experiencing her final thoughts, visions, and hallucinations; two highly driven women competing for power within the same career and the same mind; private letters describing a father's absence, a wife's loneliness, and the incestuous sexual abuse of their child; people wandering around a town vivid with remnants of the revolution for freedom; the loss of a child testing an elderly woman's faith; a paralytic discussing his shoe fetish; a woman living with depression and struggling to move through her day; the brutal death of a relative affecting everyone and no one equally.
- Gustavo Adolfo Aybar
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