5 Works in Relatively Recent Translation

by a contributor

from Diego Báez, author of Teeth:

  1. War & War by László Krasznahorkai, trans. George Szirtes (2006)
    The second novel from so-called “Hungarian master of the apocalypse,” its running sentences propel a madcap protagonist into one of the most perplexing endings I’ve ever encountered.
  2. Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, trans. Joanne Turnbull (2009)
    This collection of stories by a lesser-known 20th century Soviet writer culminates in an eponymous novella notable for its inventive alternative to Wells’s time machine.
  3. Micrograms by Jorge Carrera Andrade, trans. Alejandro de Acosta and Joshua Beckman (2011)
    Fantastic exercises in poetic brevity. Here’s “Oyster” in its entirety: “Two-top clam: / your calcium coffer / keeps the manuscript / of some shipwreck.”
  4. The Future is Not Ours, ed. Diego Trelles Paz, trans. Janet Hendrickson (2012)
    Stories of a new generation from down Central and South America way. Check especially the zany short-orders of Ignacio Alcuri’s “Chicken Soup” and the exquisite lakehouse of Santiago Roncagliolo’s “A Desert Full of Water.”
  5. Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature by Jorge Luis Borges, trans. Katherine Silver (2013)
    Finally, the chance to read what one of the greatest writers in the Spanish-speaking world had to say about some of the greatest works in English, in English.