Zhang Ailing
translated by Qiaomei Tang

It is true.

There was a village. There was a girl from a well-to-do family. She was a beauty. Matchmakers came, but none succeeded. She was no more than fifteen or sixteen, when on a spring evening she stood at the back door, resting her arm on a peach tree. She remembers the moon-white dress she wore. The young man living opposite her house had seen her before, but had never greeted her. He approached, stood still before her, and said softly: “Oh, you are here, also?” She said nothing, and he said nothing more. They stood for a while, then each walked away.

Like that, it was over.

Time passed. The girl was abducted by a relative, and would be a concubine in a strange land. Again and again, she was resold. Having endured … Read More »

Adam Morris

Slakers shambled along the coasts, the brine in the breeze searing nostrils, lashing cheekbones and the edges of eyelids, whittling parts of faces to skin-wrapped bone. Aside from slits for vision their bodies went draped in canvas and denim, thick twill: fabrics too sturdy for perspiration to mix with the sting in the air. They pushed carts of rags and tarps and funnels and metal drums of dun-colored water, sloshing lukewarm but still able to quench and sometimes, also, to cleanse. Their ministry was as secular as the suffering it attended: pouring slim, dusky streams into withered gullets gone feathery and tight in the dusty, gagging air.

They were journeymen, they were shamans, they were witches: that’s what was said. New Bedouins of the Atlantic Coast. The Slakers were driven from dry places like a curse. … Read More »

Neda Miranda Blažević-Kreitzman
translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac

Many people wrestle with discomfort and fear when they travel by air. Dino Lučić and Veljko Linić were not that sort. The two young businessmen from Split, Croatia were now reclining, relaxed, en route from Frankfurt, Germany to Los Angeles, wrestling with the urge to sleep that was pulling down their drooping eyelids, hampering their adventuresome spirit to gaze out the little window at the vivid blue sky through which their speedy vessel was winging its way.

Dino Lučić was tall, slender, dark-haired, while Veljko Linić was medium-height, muscular, and blue-eyed. Both worked at Jedrogradnja, a company that built and sold speedboats and yachts. Their best customers were Americans. The salesmen for Jedrogradnja had been working with B&B Brothers, Inc. of Los Angeles for nearly four years.

Lučić and Linić had … Read More »

Dany Salvatierra
translated by Sarah Bruni

Blanca started unbuttoning her dress only when she was sure she wasn’t being spied on by the line of horrified women crowded in front of the entrance to the store’s dressing rooms. The curious women formed an endless line, a procession of polyester skirts and the low heels essential to withstanding the long wait. They all carried heaps of clothing they were eager to rip into with their ample bodies—unlike Blanca, who had never wanted to wear that black mourner’s dress. She had put it on with her eyes closed, imagining for a millisecond that she was completely alone. Partly because it terrified her to see herself in the mirror, but also because Blanca knew that it wouldn’t be long before she, on her left, started to protest. Outside, her mother waited patiently with … Read More »

Liliana Colanzi
translated by Chris Meade

Once, when I was a little girl, I saw a pig being killed. It was summer. Flies were launching themselves against the windows. I used to like to chew ice, and in the afternoon I would go up to the balcony with a glass brimming with little cubes to watch the neighbor, Mr. Casiano, breaking down old furniture with a handsaw on his patio. But not that day. I had just positioned myself against the bannister when a shriek struck me head-on. Mr. Casiano was crushing the creature with hammer blows. The pig howled—or grunted? or roared?—and ran for its life, half its face destroyed, but it was tethered by the neck to a starfruit tree and the rope only allowed it to run in frantic, ever-shortening circles around the tree. Mr. Casiano paused … Read More »

Ken Harvey

Gordon’s cold had gone deeper, his breathing raspy and heavy.  He had just made an appointment to see his doctor later that afternoon when Ellen Joyce, who worked in the rectory at St. Luke’s Church, phoned him.  She told him that at Sodality’s Brunch that morning, Father Jim had stood to thank the women for their service when he was stricken by a massive heart attack. He died before the ambulance arrived.

“It’s hard to know what to say,” Gordon said, wondering how he had managed to put the words together.  His body grew warm as if his cold had spiked a fever.  He removed his wire-framed glasses and pressed his fingertips against his eyelids. When he heard Ellen sniffling, he tried to think of something comforting to say, but all he could come … Read More »

Thibault de Montaigu
translated by Lara Vergnaud

Some people will no doubt feel this work lacks precision and that it’s impossible to write a decent book about a criminal investigation while remaining comfortably settled at home sipping a Diet Coke as you watch rain fall outside the window. It so happens that I’ve always worked like this, preferring to take a back seat for the benefit of my readers. I find the telephone more than sufficient and only venture out of my house to interview the main protagonists of my stories. Except, in this specific case, there aren’t any. Klein and Vasconcelos have been dead for a long time and I don’t have any other choice but to rely on the copious documentation about them that’s been provided me. Someone will object that I didn’t gather this documentation and that … Read More »

Bernardo Carvalho
translated by Max Seawright

1.

He haggles over fish at the wharf. He’s done it since before his tenth birthday. His mother makes him. It’s no accident he grows up not liking anything about business or commerce. Day after day he plays a part in the same scene. Mother and son walk down a dusty road next to the river, wearing jellabiyas and simple shoes. She’s dressed in black from head to toe and walks like she’s headed nowhere in particular on a sunny Sunday. He’s so small and so resistant that, despite his stained jellabiya dragging on the ground, he looks like he must be dressed for a special occasion. She rests her elbow on the railing at the top of the stairs that connect the road to the river. She waits, apathetic, for the fisherman to climb … Read More »

Iosi Havilio
translated by Andrea Rosenberg

And in the middle of the day came the night . . . Down the hill, all made of shadows, the Protagonist strides along the paving stones, midway between the cordon and the buildings, left, right, left. The past approaches and he gives in to it: all those moments of afternoon and freedom festering in the open air, consuming down the block, amid zombies and doormen. Nearer by, businesses, those tender galaxies of cheap hankerings, of good rates, of infinite love for the craft, record shops, discount stores, lottery ticket sellers, lingerie boutiques, all crammed together, embracing him to recall those aimless hours . . . unhurried, unhurried, ly: the syndicalist girlfriend with a satellite phone, the boy with the acid feet, the ardent interlocking of tall glasses wet with Criadores whisky, the … Read More »

J.P. Cuenca
translated by Elizabeth Lowe
 

 
Before Mr. Atsuo Okuda opened the box, everything was dark.
 In fact, there was nothing to be illuminated before Mr. Okuda opened the box. If Mr. Okuda had never opened the box, nothing would exist. The world began only at the instant that Mr. Okuda opened the box and said the word.