Twisted and bitter my soul may be, but this kind of thing brings a tear to my eye.

After watching Abel Ferrara's The Addiction (incredible film) I am now proofreading my translation to Cypress Hill's Black Sunday and wondering why I don't always do this. Some of the best production ever.

Coming spring 2026, in my translation. Thank you, Foreshore Books, for this lovely conversation with the formidable and inimitable Állex Leilla: foreshorepublishing.com/novelist-all... #Brasil #readingintranslation #womenintranslation #brazilianliterature #booksky

Rahul:: (puts on clothes that have just been washed) The clothes: (Are immediately stained with no apparent cause)

things u learn as a translator: "dick" meaning penis only came about in the 1880s and only as soldier slang, therefore not appropriate coming out of a civilian's mouth in the early 20th C. "Prick", however, has an illustrious past stretching back at least half a millennium...

Working through early Beckett. Murphy is a really tough hang. It makes More Pricks Than Kicks feel like a ripping yarn. This was my third read and I can almost guarantee that I will never read it again in this life.

getting royalties is so awesome. especially when it just gets paid straight into your account with no invoice. i know we have earnt that money and it doesn't even begin to make up for our low pay, it still feels like free money. I made sure to spend mine immediately on utter frivolities.

Look at this. Just look at it. A Labour politician demanding that people ignore an active, ongoing genocide that has killed more civilians in Gaza in 3 years than died in the whole of the UK during the Second World War. If refusing to ignore that is un-British, I'm un-British.

I have to say, I am a bit tired of not being nominated for, and winning, prizes. I'm in this for the fame and money, dammit!

It's that time again when I pick up my copy of Jesus's Son... As a prose stylist, Denis Johnson is surely unparalleled. A few of the paragraphs in that book must rank among the finest in English literature... e.g.

Beckett never misses. from now on I will refer to eating exclusively as 'smiting the sledded Polacks on the ice'

VOTE JEN!

We're thrilled to introduce Jacob Rogers, the brilliant translator behind our next book What Remains. Translating from Galician and Spanish, Rogers has championed Galician literature through curated features for publications such as Asymptote and @wwborders.bsky.social borders.bsky.social

It’s been quite a bad reading year for me - not hit 50 books yet, and have had to cook the books with some obvious cheats like classing the late Beckett trilogy (Company, Ill Seen, Ill said and Worstward Ho) as three separate novels even though they have a combined page count of less than 100

Just reposting these based Irish history memes I made a few years ago

14yo son just called Penarth (seaside down on the other side of Cardiff Bay) a ‘treasure trove of civil architecture’

There has to be a catch…

Somehow missed that Allan Ahlberg had died. His books with Janet are masterpieces that shaped my world growing up and which I have loved to read to my kids. Also a clear marker of cultural decay - to think we had Each peach pear plum and kids today have the squid and the whale. Smdh.

Harold Bloom was much given to hyperbole but the critical comparison here, in Saramago's favour, may be an OTT moment even by his standards.

Pretty disappointed by seeing so many people I respect being proud to be English smdh. Is your self-loathing so fickle that all it takes to dispel it is a football team winning a game? For shame…

Important to add that even if you get a good contract for a translation, you should still send it to @societyofauthors.bsky.social. Especially if it has a good rate: if the SoA don’t ‘observe’ rates higher than £100/ 1000 words then they can’t change the rate and publishers will continue to cite it.

Everybody read FAIR please, thank you. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

my translation of Michel Nieva's incredible Dengue Boy now has 250 reviews on Goodreads and they are the gift that keeps on giving: "In my opinion it would’ve been a really good book if it wasn’t so freaking gross"; "I do love anti-capitalist cosmic horror" "bonkers wild off the walls"

'Insures'? The New Yorker has gone too far this time. What next? 'Incompass'? 'Inable'? 'Inact'?

looking at the word 'yes' over and over on a spreadsheet - it looks really weird. Are all words like this when u look at them a lot or is 'yes' uniquely weird?

Just when I couldn't love Bob Dylan anymore he announces three dates in Swansea and 0 London dates. I wonder if he'll be visiting Cwmdonkin Drive...

'As eye-poppingly bizarre as they come' #DengueBoy by Michel Nieva, translated from the Spanish by Rahul Bery, is a Financial Times' best science fiction book of the summer! Get your copy of this psychedelic dystopia now 🦟 www.ft.com/content/107d... @rrrahul.bsky.social

god I love a good hatchet job. Just so many quotable passages in this one. Bravo Tom Crewe!

went to see Panda Bear last night. felt properly like the geriatric milennial I am. But he is amazing, how can someone be that consistently good for almost 20 years? unfortunately it was in bristol!

is it possible to type 'soldier' without first typing 'solider'? likewise 'encounter' and 'enocunter'?

In the glory days of twitter (2019?) i could always think of something to say. these days neither profound nor random things come to mind. even random transation stuff like 'i got spanish and portuguese confused again'. should i just say what i did yesterday? will give both a go.

been gone a while, did I miss anything?

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle... Nodded along with this until I got to the part where he buys ALL his CDs on Amazon, at which point I spat out my (figurative) coffee. Aside from how easy it is to buy physical music online from independent vendors, it also shows he still kind of wants music on tap

Epigraph. There’s no text without flirtation — or so I misread. I think Barthes would have approved (What Is Mine, @zebortoluci.bsky.social, trl. @rrrahul.bsky.social, @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social)

whatever 'varsity' is, students at cardiff seem to be celebrating it en masse. as far as i can tell it both involces sports and drinking cider and pre-mixed cocktails before 10am on a wednesday 🤷‍♂️

would be interested to hear a UK version of this. Literally the only books I can think of are Will Harris's Mixed Race Superman (amazing) and Natalie Morris's Mixed Other (more comprehensive but maybe too broad...)

Hi @rrrahul.bsky.social 👋🏼

living my best translation life: making a dystopian parody of the argentinian national anthem scan perfectly in english

My son (14) has asked if we have any Jack Kerouac books! Kind of makes me happy - regardless of its literary merit (I haven’t reread since late teens) OTR was a life-changing book for me and many others and it does make me sad to think teenagers don’t read it much anymore…

‘Rahul Bery’s translation must also be praised here, as it’s no small feat to capture a narrative voice that ranges from anarchic to lyrical.’ Grateful for a shout-out in this ace review of Dengue Boy!!

to celebrate st patrick's day, here are my best villains in Irish literature: blazes boylan, the citizen, pozzo, molloy, moran (from amongst women not Molloy), those who have spoken evil of his beloved, the apocalypse of clay...

Sunday reading courtesy of @serpents-tail.bsky.social, Michel Nieva & @rrrahul.bsky.social, as well as @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social & Oluwaseun Olayiwola 📚☕️🫖

All I'm saying, ALL I'm SAYING, is that Independent Tropical Wales could also have ceremonial President in a Parliamentary republic, and I reckon Michael Sheen would be pretty good at it

Some reading for the train (8 hours to Inverness - almost as long as the 10 hours from Berlin). @rrrahul.bsky.social

You know what, ignore the post below. You’re probably not ready for how shocking, repulsive and disgusting Dengue Boy is. Yeah, I reckon you couldn’t handle it. Definitely DON’T buy a copy to find out.

Just got a remittance for £180 expenses from a university for work in November. Had totally forgotten about it. Usually I’d be annoyed at the delay but actually I’m delighted. At this stage it feels like free money…

Michel Nieva, the author of the latest read for the New Scientist Book Club, Dengue Boy, on his story of a drowned, pandemic-struck future Earth – and his unusual protagonist

In Non Ficbruary I read: Tim MacGabhann - The Black Pool Ian Maleney - Minor Monuments Patrick Joyce - Going to my father’s house Damion Searls - The philosophy of translation All heavy hitters!!

This week also saw our exclusive publication of an extract from Michel Nieva's 'Dengue Boy' (@serpents-tail.bsky.social), translated by @rrrahul.bsky.social: a sticky mix of summer camp, pubescent boys and a gender fluid mosquito. Read the full extract here: thelondonmagazine.org/fiction-deng...

So nice to have a translation reviewed in S. Wales's own The Buzz, and not only that but one which mentions me by name and the fact that I live in Cardiff! www.buzzmag.co.uk/dengue-boy-m...