Extract

Using the term 'amuk' as her starting point, Khairani Barokka roots out the violences in colonial mistranslation, weaving in disability justice and personal experience in this extract from Wasafiri 123.

In this exclusive extract, Yoko Tawada – translated by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda – considers the place of categorisation in literature. Her own writing is housed variously under ’Japanese Literature‘, ’Women's Literature‘, and ’Literature of Colour‘, among others. Here, Tawada breaks down these artificial boundaries to see the words beneath.  

In the sterile surroundings of a VFS visa application centre in Dubai, an unnamed narrator reflects on her failed marriage, familial and societal expectations, and what freedom means to her. Written by Bhoomika Ghaghada and extracted from Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue.

This exclusive extract from Ana Paula Maia's forthcoming novel, On Earth As It Is Beneath – translated by Padma Viswanathan – enters the world of an unusual penal colony in the wilderness with only male inmates.

Read an extract from Saima Begum's forthcoming debut, The First Jasmines. The novel centres two sisters, Lucky and Jamila, who – around the dawn of Bangladesh as a nation – are captured by Pakistani soldiers and forced to waste their days in a makeshift prison. 

Extracted from the lead feature in Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue, this personal essay by Nadeen Dakkak charts her familiy's movements across the Gulf and beyond, reflecting on the ambiguity, silences, longing, nostalgia, and practicalities of serially migrating.

In the first extract from Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue, Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil remembers watching the Berlin Wall fall on his television in Abu Dhabi's Madinat Zayed township — a place he spent several years of his childhood in, following his father's immigration from Kerala.

Read an extract from Heuijung Hur's forthcoming short story collection Failed Summer Vacation, translated from Korean by Paige Aniyah Morris. 'Imperfect Pitch' centres an enigmatic mystery at the heart of a band's fan club. 

Mo Ogrodnik's debut novel Gulf traces the lives of five women from very different origins colliding in the Arabian Gulf. This extract follows Zeinah, a Syrian woman in the first days of her marriage to a jihadist. Alone and constantly reevaluating, Zeinah must consider her position in this new world. 

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 121, writer and geologist Elizabeth Wong's ecofiction explores privilege and passing, climate degradation, and the tenuous status of not 'refugees' or 'migrants', but the 'landless' — all against the backdrop of an elite hotel in Monte Carlo.

In this surrealist short story set in Yemen's capital city, playfully satirising an oppressive society – written by Abdoo Taj and translated by Andrew Leber – men, quite literally, lose their heads. This story is part of The Book of Sana'a, the first major collection of Yemeni fiction in translation.

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 121, Professor Sunny Singh speaks about her experiences in navigating three adjacent spaces in the literary industry: creative writing, pedagogy, and publishing.

Read an extract from The Palace on the Higher Hill, the first English-language translation from award-winning Palestinian author Karim Kattan. Translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman, this novel introduces readers to a magical and somewhat sinister Palestine through a haunted family, whose narrative mirrors the history of their people and nation.

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 121, author Sohini Basak interviews Korean-American poet and translator Don Mee Choi. Speaking ahead of the UK/EU release of her book, Mirror Nation, Choi discusses the use of visuals in her poetry, the influence of her father's war photography, and overlaps between writing and translating.

Read an extract from Brazilian-Montenegrin writer Monika Radojevic's debut short story collection, A Beautiful Lack of Consequence. In this darkly comic, dystopian short story – titled 'Menace' – a world too close to our own deals with appearances and disappearances of epic proportions.

This collaborative ode to the tradition of the Armenian memory book, or houshamadyan – from Wasafiri 120: Armenia(n)s – Elevation – comprises a unique survey of the genre by historian Khatchig Mouradian, an essay and maps by urbanist Garine Boghossian, poetry by Christopher Kazar Janigian, and art by Masha Keryan.

We are thrilled to publish an exclusive extract from Deviants, Santanu Bhattacharya's second novel. This bold, electrifying story follows a family in which three generations of gay men in India fight for love and dignity against the currents of their times.

Read an exclusive extract from The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji, a darkly funny, life-affirming debut novel following five women from a once illustrious Iranian family as they grapple with revolutions both personal and political.

Read an excerpt from Wasafiri 120: Armenia(n)s – Elevation, translated from the Eastern Armenian by Hayk Hambartsum, and edited by Deanna Cachoian-Schanz. In this short story, Anna Davtyan explores the power dynamics between a female photographer and a young, male subject and, through this, studies the way we see ourselves – and others – in the world.

In this life writing excerpt from Wasafiri 120: Armenia(n)s – Elevation, Sylvia Alajaji explores the emotional, historical, and cultural nuances of Armenian diasporic existence, interweaving personal memories with collective ongoing struggles, and drawing on music as a medium of cultural preservation and identity.

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 119: Futurisms, our Associate Editor So Mayer interviews Kaliane Bradley and Anton Hur about their recently published debut novels. They discuss narration and translation, the climate crisis and the erotic, and much more.

In this excerpt from Wasafiri 119: Futurisms, Professor Madhu Krishnan details the current problems and precarities within our education systems, and how we might begin to de- and re-construct the idea of the University.

This extract from our autumn issue, Wasafiri 119: Futurisms, is an exploration of the synergy between writers and dreamers, and a deep dive into our dreams — both our ‘sleep-dreams’, and those that provide our vision for the future.

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 118: Abolitions - Writing Against Abandonment, Hilal Chouman – translated by Caline Nasrallah – explores themes of memory, grief, and the passage of time through two people's relationship to each other — weaving together personal moments with broader, unexplained phenomena, and creating a sense of mystery and unresolved tension.