Even before beginning the novel, we are immediately confronted with the issue of color in the title: The Dutch term, “Gebroken Wit,” is also included in the book’s very first page, and Roemer describes it as having multiple translated meanings, such as “broken white” or “refracted white.” In a with Two Lines Press, Roemer states: “essentially, [gebroken wit] refers to refracted sunlight—a rainbow, for instance—showing a wide range of colors. . . [It] also means that sunlight always finds a way through time and always keeps gathering together.” This imagery of sunlight resonates strongly throug ..read more

Throughout my life I have chosen unarticulated feelings and scenes to write about. I think that the deeper you think and see, the deeper you feel and write.  Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces since October 7th this year—not including the alone accounting to more than 120,000 Palestinian lives. Leaders of the so-called Free World are either the very perpetrators or are complicitly silent. Much of the world, the equally powerless, can only do the bare minimum: bear witness and never stop speaking against this carnage as it happens right before our eyes. In the ..read more

Tuntufye Mwasakyeni raised his cup of milky tea to his mouth and sipped. The house was quiet, different than most Saturdays. Two days had passed since his wife, Atuganile, had left to go see her mother’s ailing brother over in Chunya District—around two hours away by automobile ..read more

In the beginning, I loved her well: the Fly. She had entered my home in a daze. Perhaps she had just escaped the wrath of a furious fly-swatting. Surely it was my upstairs neighbor who every morning, as I risked a glance out the window, greeted me with a cloud of dust, indicating that the hustle and bustle of household chores, even on Sundays, never ceased. Pursued by the Fury of the sixth floor, the Fly had thus come into my home, like a panicked young girl fleeing a demon. She flew towards the kitchen table and froze for a moment to ensure that her surroundings were free of any weapons — tho ..read more

These figures of wood symbolize—or perhaps have an active role in creating—the narrator‘s worldview. His obsession with fictional characters in literature, his only superficial and shallow relationships with others in his town—or rather real people—and the manner in which he justifies his violent spree all point to a significant character flaw: an inherent inability to acknowledge or truly comprehend the humanity of others. He understands others as he does flat characters in literature, most significantly sees them on the same level as his wooden oil-painted figurines—named and categorized int ..read more

Abu Golayyel has left an indelible mark on Arabic literature. His literary journey began with the publication of a short-story collection, ; in his last interview on (2000). His debut novel, (tr. Marilyn Booth), hit shelves in 2002, while his second, The Signs of a Lover (tr. Robin Moger, 2008), won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal. Notably, his 2018 novel, The Men Who Swallowed the Sun (tr. Humphrey Davies), earned him the prestigious 2022 Banipal Prize ..read more

The men in the protagonists’ lives belittle them and take them for granted, but the stories paint them in all their egoistic ways. In the eponymous “Hit Parade of Tears,” we spend the majority of the story listening to the thoughts of a man born over 150 years prior, who hit his prime in the 1960s and 70s. He talks down on his wife and her job archiving that era: “She’s jealous of me, he thought. She’s seething because she couldn’t take part in my youth like someone from the same generation could.” Come to find out, she’s been alive just as long as he has—they even dated briefly a hundred year ..read more

At the time, it was just a short excerpt of    for exclusive book club discussions and receive invitations to our members-only Zoom interviews with the author or the translator of each title. , which is the literary magazine of , which they published in their magazine, and I was thrilled to do it because it was immediately apparent that Yuri’s style is just so rich and nuanced and does so many different things at the same time. It struck me as incredibly poignant and beautiful, and very different from anything I had read. I have. And I’m actually working right now on the one tha ..read more

As a writer, I work honestly and impartially, without complacency, and I feel the danger to my life, to my chances and fortunes in general. . How difficult is it to stand on middle ground, to give both accounts through your writing? Writing in culturally thorny areas such as the Arab region is not easy, especially if the writer dismantles topics of social or political sensitivity—whether from the past or the present. It is easy for a book’s subject to incite conflict or escalate into a declaration of hostility. Our writing, which focuses on real matters, creates enemies, and such ant ..read more

The characters, meanwhile, are often driven by love, lust, hatred, or other forces of reproduction, but often also seem adrift, questioning their existence. This is evident from the very opening of the collection, which sees God observing and vacillating over the degree to which he should—and is able to—intervene in the lives of his creations. This version of God is not only omnipotent, he has a heightened, anxiety-inducing awareness of the potentially negative consequences of his actions, and prays to another higher being that gave him his “not-quite-absolute power.” In the collection’s arch ..read more