Extract

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 118: Abolitions - Writing Against Abandonment, Marral Shamshiri interviews Dr Mahvish Ahmad, Dr Koni Benson, and Dr Hana Morgenstern of the Revolutionary Papers, who discuss the importance of mobilising communities and connecting historical and contemporary radical archives to ongoing liberation struggles, all whilst looking at them through an anti-colonical lens.

Originally published in Wasafiri 118: Abolitions — Writing Against Abandonment, this piece of life writing, translated by Roba AlSalibi, powerfully deconstructs the themes of humanisation, freedom of Palestinian prisoners and people, and the abolition of prisons altogether.

Annie Paul’s ‘Letter from Kingston’, published in our latest spring issue, Wasafiri 117: The State of the Industry, compares the global recognition of Jamaican writers and visual artists, highlighting the disparity in their success and the debates surrounding Jamaican writers and artists who choose to remain in the Caribbean versus those who emigrate, focusing on the complexities and nuances of this decision.

In this wide-ranging and generous interview with Franklin Nelson – originally published in Wasafiri 117: The State of the Industry – Margo Jefferson discusses the critic at work and play. Read and download the interview in full on the Taylor & Francis website or order our Wasafiri 117 to read it in print.

Wasafiri is proud to publish this exclusive extract of Amma by Saraid de Silva (Weatherglass Books, 4 April 2024), a gripping novel exploring family trauma, post-colonial displacement, and queerness.

Jen Calleja's satirical and razor-sharp lead feature, 'Custard Pies', published in our latest spring issue, Wasafiri 117: The State of the Industry, and featuring five pastel-coloured pies ('one for each heckle I've received at a panel discussion about literary translation'), dwells on the fallacies of an 'ideal translator' — including notions of fidelity, mentorship, and who has the right to translate. This short essay, similarly and characteristically spiky and acerbic, questions preconceived notions around the translator's role and work from a personal perspective.

This reflection on 'Life in the UK' by SJ Kim explores the profound through seemingly mundane moments, such as a family meal or meeting with an editor.

In this expansive interview, Haiyan Xie talks to multiple-award winning author Yan Lianke. Together, they explore how stories resonate across different sociopolitical boundaries and the ways in which authors are reconceptualising realism.

This beautiful, moving meditation on Y-Dang Troeung’s work was written and delivered by Madeleine Thien on the occasion of a celebration of life held at the University of British Columbia on 7 March 2023.

State of Play brings together conversations between an international line-up of poets, taking place over the course of a year. Edited by Eddie Tay, a Singapore-born, Hong Kong-based poet, and literature professor, and Jennifer Wong, a Hong Kong-born, British-based poet, and Wasafiri's former writer in residence, the anthology explores themes ranging from the sense of home and racialised expectations, community, and language. In this extract from their essay in the collection, Alvin Pang and Laura Jane Lee dwell on the 'unhomed world' and 'home-loose-ness', belonging, and nomadic beings.

Navigating the bleakness of consumerism, capitalism, and the workplace with tart humour and a sharp eye, Laura Lynes' short story excavates the warm undersides of mundane tragedies, brimming with the possibilities of resilience, love, and poetry.

Originally a poet, South Korean writer Han Kang has 'interwoven her textual practices encompassing poetry, essay, and novels.' Her book Human Acts (translated by Deborah Smith), a provocative testimony of the Gwangju massacre and simultaneously a lyrical rumination on how to narrate the event, is the outcome of Han's project on state violence from Gwangju to Buenos Aires. This study by Heewon Chung seeks to read Human Acts as a literary product of the postmemory generation, arguing that the novel's aesthetic characteristics of intermediality, intertextuality, and polyphony should be considered in order to grasp the various types of trauma transmission in the text. Read the full article online or in the print issue of the magazine.

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 115, Silvia Rothlisberger speaks to the award-winning Argentinian author Claudia Piñeiro about the inspiration and inception of her 2021 novel, Elena Knows, which was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize. Their conversation explores Piñeiro's writing process and Latin American identity, and spans wider themes from her work, such as motherhood, living with illness, suicide, religion, and crime fiction.

In this exclusive extract from  Wasafiri 114: Windrush:

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 114: Windrush:

We’re pleased to share an exclusive extract from '"An Act of Politicised Attention": War and the Writer-Witness', our review essay from Wasafiri 113. The essay features writing on three texts in translation – What Have You Left Behind? by Bushra al-Maqtari, translated by Sawad Hussain; Lucky Breaks by Yevgenia Belorusets, translated by Eugene Ostashevsky; and Five Days Untold by Badr Ahmad, translated by Christiaan James – where the writers write about war — 'a war that is not a memory, a war that is not seen from abroad, but war as it is felt daily'.

We're pleased to share an exclusive extract from our interview with Cristina Rivera Garza and Sarah Booker, published in our latest issue, Wasafiri 113. In this conversation led and introduced by Sohini Basak, Rivera Garza talks about the power of poetry, the shared rootedness of reading…

In this exclusive extract from 'Season' by Rebecca Tamás, a slow, moving meditation on ritual and the nonhuman life which opens our spring issue, Wasafiri 113, we see the seasons change – from spring to summer – during the early days of the pandemic.

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 112: Reimagining Education, Angelique Golding talks with poet and playwright Inua Ellams on adapting Chekhov's Three Sisters for the National Theatre and in the context of the Biafran War, his Hausa heritage, the curriculum and his ‘cultural touchstones’, and more.

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 112: Reimagining Education, Kavita Bhanot writes about Sathnam Sanghera’s much-lauded book, Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain, and questions what kind of 'decolonising' work the book is really doing by offering what she terms as a 'balanced' history of of the violence and exploitation of empire.

Read this exclusive extract from Jade E Bradford's short story 'Trouble', first published in Wasafiri 112: Reimagining Education, which paints a startling and empathic portrait of the systemic racism and oppression embedded in educational systems, with blunt, evocative prose.

In this exclusive extract from Wasafiri 112: Reimagining Education, Sita Balani considers the dissonance of the university's role in authoritarian nationalism and simultaneous embrace of the language of ‘decolonisation'.

In this extract from 'Islam and Me', written and translated by Shirin Ramzanali Fazel with assistance from Simone Brioni, the author reckons with Italy's systemic racism, and her experiences with family, assimilation culture, and immigration.

In this extract from Amal Sewtohul’s Made in Mauritius, translated from French by Nadiyah Abdullatif, the narrator explores his complex heritage, and the lineage of his father, an worker from China, who would eventually make his way to Mauritius.