German | Germany | Novel (excerpt)
September, 2007It is heating up in a small village in the flat hinterlands. The villagers spend their weekends bathing at the gravel pit and when a new villager, the beautiful Miranda, appears from the water, a group of friends find their relationships changing. Both Victor, recently jilted by his girlfriend, and his friend, the older, married artist Rudolf, woo her desperately. Their friend Asta is a life-coach who lectures to businessmen around the country and yet is falling apart inside as she loses all contact with her children who live with their father in Berlin. She cannot understand the men's fascination for this pretty normal looking woman. Nor can Rudolf's wife Emma, who after a whole life with Rudolf is starting to realize she has sacrificed her own life for his, all for nothing it seems. Miranda herself is married, but no one has met her husband. As passions and tensions flare, a spate of animal killings begins, and Mr Allyours, a hare, and Fledgling McFeather, a heron, decide to solve the mystery. McFeather has the laudable motives of making their community safe again, and he is not impressed with Mr Allyours' motives: he is besotted by a young doe, Lady Why, and wants to capture the killer to prove his love to her.
(Stefan Tobler)
Drama (Excerpts) | France | French
September, 2007A woman struggles to reclaim her identity after a violent event leaves her stripped from her sense of self. Written as a monologue, Jaz transcends its form by distancing the character from herself—being both the character and outside of the character—and by engaging dialogue with a musical instrument.
(Chantal Bilodeau)
Drama (Excerpts) | Serbia | Serbian
July, 2007A tough comic look at the lost generation of Serbia caught between Milošević and the new state of possibility. In a long night of drinking, tall tales, sad stories, confessions, and intimations of murder, a couple of young men dream of England and try to find their place in their country.
(Caridad Svich)
Drama (Excerpts) | Greece | Modern Greek
July, 2007A Mother and Father, a Man and a Woman, a Doctor and a Nurse, and an unfortunate victim all cross paths in a hospital and become intertwined in ways that push all boundaries of the appropriate and expected. Exploring the deeper comic underbellies of violence, sexuality, and caretaking, the playwright seeks to unburden the audience, to help them diminish their fear about moral issues, illness, and death.
(Alexi Kaye Campbell)
France | French | Novel (excerpts)
April, 2007”Yvan Goll is a man without a country; fate made him a Jew; chance caused him to be born in France; and a rubber stamp on a piece of paper decrees that he is German.“ This was how Goll described himself in 1920 for Pinthus’s famous anthology of Expressionism. He might as well have added that Yvan Goll was a man with no name—a man living anonymously, pseudonymously. And—inasmuch as Goll was equally at home in French, German, and English—a man with no mother tongue.
(Donald Nicholson-Smith)
Italian | Italy | Short Fiction
April, 2007Antonio Delfini was a writer and poet born in Disvetro di Cavezzo, Emilia-Romagna, in Northern Italy. In the 1930s, he started writing poems which blended fantasy, magic realism, and surrealism. He also wrote provincial stories, such as Ritorno in città (1931), Il ricordo della Basca (1938), and Il fanalino della Ballimonda (1940). Other works include Poesie della fine del mondo (1961) and Racconti (1963). His Diari, an autobiographical novel, was published in 1982.
The Brooklyn Rail welcomes you to our web-exclusive section InTranslation, where we feature unpublished translations of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic writing. Published since April 2007, InTranslation is a venue for outstanding work in translation and a resource for translators, authors, editors, and publishers seeking to collaborate.
We seek exceptional unpublished English translations from all languages.
Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry: Manuscripts of no longer than 20 pages (double-spaced).
Plays: Manuscripts of no longer than 30 pages (in left-justified format).