Sweet Bean Paste

If all you ever see is reality, you just want to die. The only way to get over barriers, she said, is to live in the spirit of already being over them.’

All experience adds up to a life lived as only you could

But what about a child whose life is over before he or she even turns two years old? People may wonder, in their sorrow, what point there is in a child like that even being born.

I have learned the answer to this. I am sure it is for that child to perceive wind, sky, and voices in his or her own unique way. The world that child senses exists because of it, and therefore that child’s life, too, has purpose and meaning.

We have the ability to open up our ears and minds to anything and everything.

All the time he had ever squandered in his life seemed to be clinging to his footsteps, dragging him down. He felt as if he were a scrap of rubbish, drifting through one backstreet alley after another.

Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi (Arabic)
Translated by Jonathan Wright

The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao by Martha Batalha (Brazilian Portuguese)

Cohen

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (Spanish)
Translated by Megan McDowell

Umami by Laia Jufresa

nslated by Liedewy Hawke

Three Envelopes by Nir Hezroni (Hebrew)

ung Kim

The Hilltop by Assaf Gavron (Hebrew)
Translated by Steven Cohen