World LiteratureToday Your passport to great reading After Alcatraz REVIEWS OF BOOKS BY Amitav Ghosh Maaza Mengiste Dunya Mikhail Ludmila Ulitskaya Tommy Orange On Resisting Violence Through Writing Laila Lalami’s Other America Edward Hirsch On Miklós Radnóti Joy Harjo 50 YEARS OF LITERARY ACTIVISM, 1969–2019 Guest-edited by Allison Hedge Coke U.S. Poet Laureate 10 BEST 21ST CENTURY CRIME NOVELS | IGIABA SCEGO CONFRONTS ITALY’S COLONIAL PAST www.ucpress.edu NEW FROM UC PRESS World Literature in Translation Literary classics from around the globe Literary Activism guest-edited by Allison Hedge Coke featuring 22 writers, including: Simon Ortiz,Tommy Orange, Dean Chavers, Emily Rapp Black, Nancy Morejón, Duane Niatum, Craig Santos Perez, Vickie Vértiz, Wang Ping, Susan Straight, Mikeas Sánchez, Lindantonella Solano Mendoza, Reyna Grande, Luis J. Rodriguez, Mohja Kahf, Barbara Jane Reyes, Miguel M. Morales, Jan Beatty, Ashanti Anderson, Sandra Alcosser, Brenda Hillman, and Jake Skeets Not One Less Italian-born Somali writer Igiaba Scego confronts Italy’s colonial past. Joy Harjo Read Harjo’s poem “Bless This Land”plus a mini-interview with the US Poet Laureate. Essays 18 Miklós Radnóti’s “The Fifth Eclogue” by Edward Hirsch 30 A Date with Svetlana Alexievich in Berlin by Jorge Ferrer 40 Say “Thank You” by Emiliano Monge Fiction 22 The Unsevered Tongue by Dipika Mukherjee 36 The Moon through the Hard Water by Zsuzsa Selyem 44 Is the Horse Oppressed? by Mirza Athar Baig WorldLiteratureToday Your passport to great reading After Alcatraz REVIEWS OF BOOKS BY Amitav Ghosh Maaza Mengiste Dunya Mikhail Ludmila Ulitskaya Tommy Orange On Resisting Violence Through Writing Laila Lalami’s Other America Edward Hirsch On Miklós Radnóti Joy Harjo 50 YEARS OF LITERARY ACTIVISM, 1969–2019 Guest-edited by Allison Hedge Coke U.S. Poet Laureate 10 BEST 21ST CENTURY CRIME NOVELS | IGIABA SCEGO CONFRONTS ITALY’S COLONIAL PAST In Every Issue | 3 Editor’s Note | 5 Notebook | 17 Editor’s Pick | 95 Books in Review | 128 Outpost AUTUMN 2019 Crime & Mystery 10 Ten Reading Suggestions and a Farewell by J. Madison Davis Poetry 13 There Was No Plot by Coral Bracho 21 Finger in the Operating Room by Fatemeh Shams Q&A 14 Cultivating Empathy and Humility: Laila Lalami by Jocelyn Frelier 26 From the Heart of the Void: Annie Le Brun by Karl Pollin-Dubois cover feature 53 34 48 on the cover 2019–2020 US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. Photo by Melissa Lukenbaugh. Contents features PUTERBAUGH ESSAY POEM AND Q&A What’s on worldlit.org Visit our website for fresh content including audio, video, webexclusive stories, reading lists, and more. Connect with WLT online Find us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Goodreads, Flickr, and Pinterest to share ideas, view photos, watch video, discover book reviews, and more. Instagram Favorites Follow @worldlittoday on Instagram for literary inspiration. READERS RESOND COMING IN THE WINTER 2020 ISSUE LOOK BACK 50 Years Ago in These Pages Digital Extras Celebrating Excellence and Diversity in YA Fiction What YA novel has most challenged or inspired you to explore a world beyond the one you’ve comfortably inhabited? In 50 words or less, tweet us your response @worldlittoday with the hashtag #diversebooks (or email wlt@ou.edu with #diversebooks in the subject line), and we may feature your answer in the next issue! DEADLINE: NOVEMBER 15 Look for these icons throughout the issue for information about exclusive content found online. photo gallery video audio web exclusive Read the trilingual version of Mikeas Sánchez’s “We Are Millions,” and listen to the author’s recordings in Zoque and Spanish. (p. 76) Watch for additional pieces on literary activism by Joseph Cárdenas, Clint Carroll, Wallace Cleaves, Brenda Delfino, Sesshu Foster, Linda Hogan, Alex Jacobs, Wesley Leonard, Sandra Meek, Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, Lehua Taitano, Skuya Zephier, and Zheng Xiaoqiong on the WLT Weekly. Mikeas Sánchez. Photo by Wendy Call “In modern Turkey, which has witnessed cataclysmic changes since 1918, Nâzim Hikmet was the first—and most stirring—voice of iconoclasm. Hikmet lived and wrote like a romantic revolutionary during much of his stormy and tragic life, which ended in Moscow in 1963. Because of his ideology he served jail terms...