“Outside, it was a time of rain; inside, it was a time of darkness.” A government official’s past comes back to haunt him in distressingly familiar form. Read “Mayai, Minister of Disease” by Euphrase Kezilahabi (tr. Richard Prins): wordswithoutborders.org/read/article...

New on WWB: @jaybossrubin.bsky.social’s translation of “Rare Goods” by Esther Karin Mngodo. This excerpt depicts the lives of albino children who start a secret society to protect themselves from trafficking in body parts in Tanzania. Read Here: wordswithoutborders.org/read/article...

Newly translated #Swahili fiction from award-winning Tanzanian author Esther Karin Mngodo @koimolove.bsky.social, in the spotlight at @wwborders.bsky.social. From the story collection THE WITNESS OF NINA MVUNGI, coming 12/1 from @hangingloosepress.bsky.social wordswithoutborders.org/read/article...

Excellent article by @jeremiahhayden.bsky.social providing over a decade of context to truths + lies about Portland, Oregon. Co-published with the indefatigable @streetroots.bsky.social

BIG NEWS!! Johns Hopkins University is the premier sponsor of #AWP26 in Baltimore, and The Hopkins Review’s Volume 18 featured cover artist, the one-and-only John Waters, is the conference’s keynote speaker!! JHU’s Sesquicentennial Celebration is getting exciting. 🦩 🦩 🦩 See you in Baltimore!

"Five translators had to be hospitalized for confusion" is a pretty good one

One week from today at @citylightsbooks.bsky.social in San Francisco: "Celebrating Euphrase Kezilahabi," presented by @catranslation.org / @twolinespress.bsky.social. I'll be reading from ROSA MISTIKA and conversing w/ the endlessly thoughtful Annmarie Drury :) www.catranslation.org/event/jay-bo...

In the mail: pleased to see another translation from Swahili, by @jaybossrubin.bsky.social — Esther Karin Mngodo's 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑊𝑖𝑡𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑁𝑖𝑛𝑎 𝑀𝑣𝑢𝑛𝑔𝑖 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑂𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑆𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠, from @hangingloosepress.bsky.social www.hangingloosepress.com/book/witness...

Happy to finally hold my copy! "Without Sun" translated from Swahili to English by Jay Boss Rubin @jaybossrubin.bsky.social is now out! Get your copy! @hopkinsreview.bsky.social 🥳

Tonight in Albany, NY! I'll be reading and in conversation with Albany translator Shaina Brassard.

Excellent story by Taylor Griggs in @portlandmercury.com about Portland Tennis Courterly, which is neither a secret literary magazine nor on Bluesky as of yet . . . www.portlandmercury.com/books/2025/0...

One month from today @citylightsbooks.bsky.social in San Francisco (and via livestream): "Celebrating Euphrase Kezilahabi – with Jay Boss Rubin and Annmarie Drury." I'll be reading from Rosa Mistika, and in conversation with a fellow translator of Kezilahabi. Karibuni! citylights.com/events/celeb...

@newyorker.com considers Rosa Mistika by Euphrase Kezilahabi translated from the Swahili by Jay Boss Rubin one of the best books of the year so far!

Two weeks from today @ Dove & Hudson in Albany, NY: "Translator Reading: Literature from Tanzania & Bolivia." I'll be reading from ROSA MISTIKA, by Euphrase Kezilahabi, alongside Capital Region translator Shaina Brassard, who'll be reading from her translations of Rodrigo Urquiola Flores's stories.

Beautiful new creative nonfiction by my friend Rebecca Suzuki in The Los Angeles Review. "We ate quickly, knowing we didn’t have much time if we wanted to practice dying and make the 7 o’clock train back to Nagoya." losangelesreview.org/practicing-d...

Excited to share my latest translation, "Without Sun," by the inimitable Esther Karin Mngodo (@koimolove.bsky.social), out now in @hopkinsreview.bsky.social. Read it for free: muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl.... Purchase the print edition, w/ cover art by John Waters (!): hopkinsreview.com/shop/p/volum...

This is going to be great

"La Venezolana" by Rodrigo Urquiola Flores, translated from the Spanish by Shaina Brassard, is out today in the latest issue of Asymptote (as part of the journal's ongoing Special Feature on the figure of the outsider). Read it in Spanish + English here! www.asymptotejournal.com/special-feat...

@wwborders.bsky.social  calls Rosa Mistika by Euphrase Kezilahabi "a social novel that occasionally ventures into more stylized territory," and features it on it's watchlist.

Rosa Mistika is atop @wwborders.bsky.social's June Watchlist wordswithoutborders.org/read/article...

First is “Rosa Mistika” by Euphrase Kezilahabi (tr. @jaybossrubin.bsky.social , @yalepress.bsky.social ), “a novel about a young woman facing the hypocrisies and hazards of her society” translated from Swahili. bookshop.org/a/169/978030...

Many years later, as he faced the editorial board, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani was to remember that distant afternoon when his father told him to abolish ICE

World Swahili Language Day is coming up on July 7th. I'll be reading from my English translation of Rosa Mistika at this wonderful event put together by @soasuni.bsky.social. Karibuni wote! www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/...

This is a fantastic novel

Honored to see a mini-review of Rosa Mistika in this week's issue of The New Yorker. "Playing in the space between social realism and fabulist storytelling" is a wonderfully apt description! www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Happy pub day to "Rosa Mistika!" Stay tuned for a reading we'll host with Jay this September in SF 👀!

A Q&A with @jaybossrubin.bsky.social —translator of Rosa Mistika by Euphrase Kezilahabi—is now live! Read "Realism and Rosa Mistika: A Conversation with Jay Boss Rubin" below: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2025/06/17/realism-and-rosa-mistika-a-conversation-with-jay-boss-rubin/

My ex-ex-ex student Jay Boss Rubin @jaybossrubin.bsky.social has just published a translation of Rosa Mistika, a classic in Tanzania by Euphrase Kezilahabi. Get it @yalebooks or yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300.... Such a cover!

"Just like how in the novel’s opening there’s this household within a village, village within an island, and island within a lake, there are...different kinds of telescoping points of views." Ian Battaglia's interview with @jaybossrubin.bsky.social is out now. chireviewofbooks.com/2025/06/17/t...

Congratulations Jay 🎉🥳

And subscribe to The Hopkins Review for @jaybossrubin.bsky.social’s translation of @koimolove.bsky.social’s speculative fiction, forthcoming later this summer in THR 18.3! hopkinsreview.com/shop

Happy pub day to @jaybossrubin.bsky.social, whose translation of Euphrase Kezilahabi’s ROSE MISTIKA is out today from @yalepress.bsky.social! Read a chapter of this “controversial Swahili classic” in The Hopkins Review 16.2 on @projectmuse.bsky.social @hopkinspress.bsky.social, then get the book!

It's pub day for Rosa Mistika—and here is a lengthy interview about the novel (and much else!) with @chicagorevbooks.bsky.social chireviewofbooks.com/2025/06/17/t...

My English translation of the Swahili novel ROSA MISTIKA, by Euphrase Kezilahabi, comes out tomorrow. Here's a Q+A about the book, its banning, genre + more with the fine folks at @yalepress.bsky.social yalebooks.yale.edu/2025/06/16/r...

I wrote about translating the opening sentence of Rosa Mistika for the Asymptote Blog www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2025/06...

New review: Euphrase Kezilahabi's 1971 novel 𝑅𝑜𝑠𝑎 𝑀𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑘𝑎, now coming out in English translation (in The Margellos World Republic of Letters-series) www.complete-review.com/reviews/swah...

"Aiskrimu"—a short story by Esther Karin Mngodo, translated from the Swahili by me, published today in @kalaharireview.bsky.social

Great review of 'Pavements' that got me to stop waffling and secure a couple of movie tix

+ ARC of Euphrase Kezilahabi's 𝑅𝑜𝑠𝑎 𝑀𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑘𝑎 ( @yalepress.bsky.social 6/2025; tr. @jaybossrubin.bsky.social ) yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300... Translations from African languages still all too rare, but w/ this + @ugapress.bsky.social series ugapress.wordpress.com/2025/03/27/u... things looking up.

Enormous congratulations to @makafanentlamelle.bsky.social for this brilliant translation from Sesotho / dramatic English-language retelling, in which THE BLIND MAN says to THE LAME MAN, proposing that they work together, "you can be my eyes and I your feet." www.asymptotejournal.com/drama/azarie...

ALTA is excited to present Write the World: A Day of Translation! Get ready for this day of virtual panels on topics related to literary translation, held May 27! Tickets are just $15 ($12 for ALTA members), which will grant you access to all the events of the day. Register now!

in this month's Berliner mag, I waded in to the "brodernism" debate—and called time on the genre of anglophone literary criticism that was designed to go viral on Twitter >> www.the-berliner.com/books/broder...

Wenzetu wanaoongea Kiswahili humu Bluesky ndio wapi?

"Much more remarkable than conventional success, Gurnah suggests, are kindness, humility and the ability to endure." @jaybossrubin.bsky.social shares his thoughts on THEFT, the new novel from Nobel Prize Winner Abdulrazak Gurnah, in the latest edition of "What We're Reading".

It was an honor and a pleasure to review Abdulrazak Gurnah's brilliant new novel, THEFT, for @commonmag.bsky.social

It's pub day for #Theft, the brilliant new novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah. A fine review here: www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...

Our translation of the classic 1983 Ethiopian novel Oromay by Baalu Girma is out today in the US. The sly takedown of an inept brutal regime - with spies, war, and a sweeping romance - was banned and cost Girma his life. He gifted us a great book, very excited to share it. www.davidwrites.net/oromay

A fantastic film

On the @fictionable.bsky.social #podcast we explore connections and disconnections with Esther Karin Mngodo and the translator @jaybossrubin.bsky.social www.fictionable.world/podcasts/han... #ApplePodcasts #Spotify #Acast #books #reading #writing #ShortStories #fiction #comics #translation

"When someone hurts you, you’re obliged to write your grievances in the sand, so they’ll scatter as soon as the winds of forgiveness begin to blow." #SwahiliFiction by Fadhy Mtanga in the new issue of #LivinginLanguages. Karibuni hadithi scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/liljournal/v...