September 20, 2023

The Ambiguities of Musa Sayrami

Chronicler of Violence in the Uyghur Homeland

Eric Schluessel

“The common people hoped and begged for the Emperor of China, and they wept, and in their weeping, they supplicated as never before.”[1] The first time I read that sentence, it baffled me. It was written in the Uyghur homeland,...

September 18, 2023

Ten Must-Read Books for Climate Week 2023

For more than a decade, Climate Week has brought together some of the foremost international leaders in a variety of different fields to discuss solutions to the climate crisis and celebrate progress. The books on this list do the same:...

September 15, 2023

Johan Elverskog on Translating The Precious Summary

The Precious Summary is the most important work of Mongolian history on the three-hundred-year period before the rise of the Manchu Qing dynasty. Written by Sagang Sechen in 1662, it chronicles the fall of the Yuan dynasty in China, the...

September 13, 2023

Translating the Kokinshū into a Standard Prosodic Form

Torquil Duthie

The Kokinshū was always meant to become a classic. The ambition of its compilers was to make waka (vernacular Japanese poetry) the preeminent literary practice of the Japanese imperial court. Yet surely even they would have been surprised by the...

September 8, 2023

Q&A: Adam Kuplowsky on The Narrow Cage and Other Modern Fairy Tales

Born in imperial Russia, the blind writer, translator, and teacher Vasily Eroshenko (1890–1952) achieved fame in Japan for both his social activism and his storytelling. The Narrow Cage and Other Modern Fairy Tales introduces English readers to a collection of...

September 5, 2023

Q&A: Susanne Fusso on To the Stars and Other Stories

Though you may not recognize his name, Fyodor Sologub was a renowned Russian Symbolist writer and poet credited with bringing morbid realism into eastern European literature. To the Stars and Other Stories showcases Sologub’s iconic writing through short stories, presenting...

August 30, 2023

Leibniz’s Peruke

On the Philosophical Importance of Fake Hair

Richard Halpern

Possessed of a monumentally impressive intellect, the philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was not blessed with a body to match. Bald, short, and unhandsome of feature, he accordingly availed himself of that universal male cosmetic—and prosthetic—of his era,...

August 23, 2023

Why Palestinians Are Known as the World’s “Best Educated Refugees”

Anne Irfan

In September 2018, a report from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics found that Palestinians have one of the highest literacy rates in the world. The finding chimed with the Palestinians’ long-running reputation as the world’s “best-educated refugees” – a...

August 16, 2023

Konrad Michel in Conversation with Anna Patchefsky on The Suicidal Person

Suicide is a difficult topic to discuss, both for suicidal individuals and for people who have been otherwise affected by suicide. Medical professionals often struggle to properly address the topic with patients. In The Suicidal Person, clinical psychiatrist and psychotherapist...

August 9, 2023

Q&A: Arturo Cifuentes and Ventura Charlin on The Worth of Art

The Worth of Art: Financial Tools for the Art Markets is based on a simple fact that people often overlook: artworks, notwithstanding their aesthetic merits, can be very valuable financial assets. Therefore, auction data—that is, actual prices paid for artworks,...

August 3, 2023

Ten Must-Read Books for Women in Translation Month 2023

Great books deserve a second life on the international stage; however, each year, books authored by women make up a disproportionately small percentage of the total number of works translated into English. This gender disparity is exactly why Meytal Radzinski...

August 1, 2023

The Inevitable Corruption of Modern American Life

Nicholas Hoover Wilson

The story of the United States Supreme Court has lately been corruption. “But Nick, which corruption story do you mean?” I’m glad you asked! I don’t mean the famous 2010 Citizen’s United v. FEC ruling, which, according to Zephyr Teachout’s...