John Donatich— The recent passing of Theodore Margellos sent me to my bookshelf to look at the Margellos World Republic of Letters volumes lined up side by side. Together, they form a considerable library, with Yale and Margellos imprints on their spines. These books are among my most prized possessions.
Luigi Pirandello, the great twentieth-century Italian playwright, was also a maestro of the short story. In Virginia Jewiss’ introduction to her new translation of Pirandello’s short stories, she writes, “The Pirandello we meet here is a master storyteller, with an ear for dialogue, an eye for revealing details, and a keen sense of the crushing burdens of class,
In honor of World Poetry Day, we are revisiting some of our most beloved poetry volumes in the Yale Margellos series. From ancient traditions of kabbalah to contemporary voices from Ukraine, Greece, and Syria, poetry’s capacity to reimagine the limits of language is as old as humankind itself. From violent
Everyday Jews was first published in Poland in 1935 by Yehoshue Perle in an attempt to document the daily experiences of Polish Jews. It is a story of love and sex and spirit, a beautiful testimony to a strong and enduring people. Although originally chastised as crude, the novel quickly became
Follow @WRLBooks Follow @SinanAntoon Sinan Antoon deftly tells of the gruesome conflicts and unfulfilled dreams of many Iraqis over the last few decades in his novel The Corpse Washer, which is now available to English readers for the first time. The story is told by narrator Jawad whose own personal
The Girl with the Golden Parasol, written by Uday Prakash and translated from Hindi to English by Jason Grunebaum, tells the story of Rahul, a university student. Rahul has returned to university with the goal of obtaining a master’s degree in anthropology. After meeting and falling in love with fellow
Continuing the English-language publishing success of Greek poet Kiki Dimoula’s new volume of poetry, The Brazen Plagiarist, Yale University Press Director John Donatich comments on the mission of the literature in translation series, the Margellos World Republic of Letters. The video below aired at the Athens Concert Hall on Tuesday,
Marcel Proust said: “The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes, in seeing the universe with the eyes of another, of hundreds of others, in seeing the hundreds of universes that each of them sees.” The Margellos World Republic of Letters