Palabras Errantes Latin American Literature in Translation
Mexican Speculative Fiction
Has anyone seen this woman?
By Karen Chacek. Translated by Slava Faybysh . en español Jana’s invited me over to eat again. We live next door to each other—she’s at number five and I’m at number six. She has avoided being alone with her four-year-old daughter Raquel for the past few days. She tells me the child says hello to […]
The Creature from 1985
By Karen Chacek. Translated by Slava Faybysh. en español Mama hated being woken up at night. And it wasn’t because she had to wake up early to go to work. It’s just that if you woke her up, she could never get back to sleep—that scared her as much as it scared me, or maybe […]
Words/Buzzing
By Karen Chacek. Translated by Slava Faybysh. en español You couldn’t hear a single television set on in the whole building, nor a passing car—not even the sound of an airplane or a police siren. Everyone in the neighborhood was sleeping, everyone except Emilio. That made him furious. He turned his pillow over and slid […]
Every Time
By Karen Chacek. Translated by Slava Faybysh. en español I dream about old and wrinkly people. It’s as if my mind can only accommodate recollections of the future. Hot water always stirs things up, and sometimes I toy with the idea that all my memories of the past have dripped away in the shower. When […]
Tunnel of Light
By Édgar Adrián Mora. Translated by Peter Davies. en español Flies fluttered around the neck wound. A mass of dirt, dry blood and pieces of skin mixed together in a dark scab. For Sacramento, the buzz of the flies became more and more unbearable. It was happening more often. When he obsessively focused on something, […]
Fire in Babel
By Yussel Dardon. Translated by Alex Thomas en español To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. Yes. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. Yes, all that. But what else. What else? Something, something… Ray Bradbury Short note rescued from the […]
Fences
By José Luis Zárate. Translated by Joey Whitfield. en español The rabbit was rabid. The magician, his hand inside the top hat, realised suddenly. There was no other explanation for its feverish heat, the spasming muscles under its pelt, and the unexpected force with which it bit his hand. Still smiling at the audience, he […]
The Impostor and the Shadow
By Carmen Rioja. Translated by Frances Riddle. en español In the living room there’s a shadow who insists I am the impostor. I have chased him out several times but he persists in staying to tint everything with mauve and burgundy. Sometimes it takes me an entire day to get him out of the house. […]
Incommunicado
By Carmen Rioja. Translated by Frances Riddle. en español “Why, if that’s what the dream is for, to reveal the beast in the end? But no, then the dream is to let the leopards continue their endless spiral…” Julio Cortázar, A Certain Lucas, trans. by Gregory Rabassa. After the earthquake the city looks deserted. It […]
Galatea in Brighton
By Ignacio Padilla. Translated by Roanne Kantor. en español It took me a few months to realize that Siobhan Kearney was the irredeemable name of at least two different women. And when at last I could appreciate the dimensions of this tragic homonym, it was already so late that it would have been better not […]
The Ascent
By Cecilia Eudave. Translated by Ellen Jones. en español I. The snow burns as it touches his skin. He feels faint but tries to hide it from his travelling companion. How much further to go? Two days ago he had thought the ascent was less arduous and now it seems infinite. If only he didn’t […]
The Fortes Affair
By Ruy Feben. Translated by Annie McDermott. en español Before anything else, I would like to apologise: I don’t know if this is the most appropriate way of conveying this kind of information to you. If it isn’t, I would be grateful if you could overlook my mistake and continue to read. After all, I’m […]
Literature of the Imagination in Mexico
By Alberto Chimal. Translated by Cherilyn Elston. en español 1. In the past the term “literatura fantástica” would have sufficed. This has a long history and illustrious origins: at the turn of the nineteenth century the artists who formed part of the incipient Romantic Movement used the term to refer to those works (narrative in […]