Journals At Jaw-Dropping Prices
Here’s the deal. Through the end of July issues 1–20 are $2 each and issues 21–26 are $5 each!
Two Lines 26 is still hot off the press!!! Which means that you can get the latest from the world of translated literature for only $5. One reason to get this issue is Naja Marie Aidt‘s “Mean to the Bone,” translated from Danish by Denise Newman. If you liked Aidt’s prize-winning short story collection, Baboon, you’ve got to check out this story, previously unavailable in English. “Mean to the Bone” is narrated by a young girl who longs for the attention of her sister and goes to great and somewhat perverse lengths to get it. See what else is in Two Lines 26!
Then there’s Two Lines 24. Inside you’ll find “Lidless Coffins with No Bodies” by Iranian avant-garde poet Behzad Zarrinpour and beautifully translated from Persian by Sholeh Wolpé. Honestly, this journal is worth buying for this poem alone and at $5 it’s a steal! Violence and daily life mingle relentlessly in the lines of this poem as it sways between images of schoolyard games to bodies swept away by the Caroun river.
The poet writes:
Boys a bit older than us
pick up guns and birdbrained ideas
and march to the borders of rain and lunacy
to reclaim our lost sleep and vanished colors;
and after a few bullets are buried
amidst a few broken verses.
And we who didn’t have the opportunity
to lose our rhyme, instead compose
shroud-white elegies.
The poem is a powerful testament to exile and violence, but also to humanity. And in light of the ongoing debate over the executive order barring the entrance of people from majority muslim countries—including Iran—to the U.S., this poem takes on a new layer of meaning and sense of urgency. See what else is in Two Lines 24!
Yoko Tawada, who writes extensively in both Japanese and German, has become a huge sensation in the years since she first appeared in Two Lines with Susan Bernofsky’s translation of “Storytellers Without Souls” in issue 8. Fifteen years later, Susan Bernofsky’s recent translation of Tawada’s Memoirs of a Polar Bear was met with glowing praise, and New Directions continues to publish a wide range of the author’s work. But only in Two Lines 23 can you find her story “The Piper,” which we loved so much that we decided to allocate the final forty pages of the journal to it, in Margaret Mitsutani’s stunning translation. “The Piper” is Tawada’s experimental retelling of the Brothers Grimm story of the Pied Piper. But instead of a linear retelling, Tawada provides us with forty-four vignettes that twist the tale into something much more perverse and much more ambiguous. The lines blur between good and evil and we come to doubt almost everything we’ve been told about the Pied Piper. See what else is in Two Lines 23!
Another issue worth checking out is Two Lines 19! For only $2, you can get the Two Lines journal in which both João Gilberto Noll and Elvira Navarro appeared for the first time. Before the publication of Quiet Creature on the Corner and Atlantic Hotel, there was a single story: “An English Gent,” translated by Stafan Tobler. In that same issue you’ll find the story “Atonement” by Elvira Navarro, the Spanish author whom Enrique Vila-Matas called “the subtle, almost hidden, true avant-gardist of her generation.” This fall we’re excited to be publishing her stunning novel A Working Woman in Christina MacSweeney’s translation. To prepare for the release, check out Navarro’s story in issue 19, which eventually became the beginning chapter in her debut novel, La ciudad en invierno. Translated by Michael McDevitt, “Atonement” is the story of Clara (described by one Spanish critic as “the anti-Lolita”), who in the opening scene floats in a swimming pool under the nervous gaze of her aunt. As McDevitt explains in the introduction to his translation, “In and of themselves, the events recounted are mundane, but the pervading atmosphere is at all times an oppressive, claustrophobic one, capturing the grotesque nature of the adult world from a child’s eye.” See what else is in Two Lines 19!
And that’s just skimming the surface. Check out more issues of Two Lines and the other great deals available through July 31. Happy summer and happy reading!
Sarah Coolidge received her BA in comparative literature from Bard College. She enjoys reading books in Spanish and English, and she writes essays on photography and international literature.
