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While I was working on An Inventory of Losses: a preamble by Judith Schalansky

While I was working on this book, the Cassini spacecraft burned up in Saturn’s atmosphere; the Schiaparelli Mars lander crashed in the rust-colored rocky landscape of the planet it …

Isolated: a short story by Adania Shibli

To get away from the dense city center, with its unhealthy and unsafe atmosphere, and in search for some calm and serenity, he moved to this distant, isolated house on the …

The Girl I Left Behind Me: a ghost story by Muriel Spark

IT WAS JUST GONE quarter past six when I left the office. “Teedle-um-tum-tum”—there was the tune again, going round my head. Mr. Letter had been whistling it all …

The Narrowing Gyre: A Turn in the Room by Forrest Gander

On your left, as you enter The Room, you immediately encounter the New Directions bookshelf designed by artist Brecht Wright Gander. There, on the second shelf from the bottom, …

Notes from Within a Never-Expanding Radius or, Things Seen on Walks by Sylvia Legris

Notes from Within a Never-Expanding Radius or, Things Seen on Walks It’s easy during non-plague times to go stir crazy in the winter in Saskatchewan, a season that can stretch from …

George Floyd: Protracted Elevation that Raises the Sun by Will Alexander

Throughout the current modern era the African solstice has remained condemned, modified, used for psychic flavoring, always at the behest of European forces, always at the behest …

So Much Trouble in the World by Marcia Douglas

A few weeks ago, people took to howling like wolves at 8pm each night. If I listened carefully, I could hear my neighbors from a few streets away. A couple of nights, I ventured …

Pandemic Seen from the Eyes of a Puma

When the news was about shortages of P.P.E., the figurines started to dress differently. They wore chocolate foil wrappers, string and tape. The wolf could see no evil, or was a …

The House of My Confinement by Anne Serre

The house I’m confined in is my father’s house in Auvergne, in France, in the Cantal, a mountainous region with small lakes that is often compared to Scotland for the beauty of its …

Around My Room and Back Again by Christine Wunnicke

Here about the house I wander, happy place Bavaria, Second building, second story, moderately bourgeois. Wall and window, floor and ceiling, comfy cosy, scared recluse, Noodle …

Oscar by Amparo Dávila

We are deeply saddened by the news that the great Mexican writer Amparo Dávila has passed away at the age of 92. Called “extraordinary” by Julio Cortazár and revered by …

A brief inner voyage with Millie (Dickinson), Fernando Pessoa, a touch of Lorca, and with Spring in the background

The first installment in our “Voyage Around My Room” series by Portuguese poet Ana Luísa Amaral and translated by Margaret Jull Costa. My daughter and I gave her the …

William Sharpe by Eliot Weinberger

Pascal said that all of man’s problems come from the inability to remain in one room. The life of William Sharpe, who lived on a farm called “The World” near the village of …

VOYAGE AROUND MY ROOM

“In 1790, Count Xavier de Maistre, a twenty-seven-year-old Savoyard officer stationed in Turin, fought a duel with a Piedmontese officer and was put under house arrest for …

Amparo Dávila, “The Cell”

When María Camino came down to breakfast, her mother and her sister, Clara, were already sitting in the dining room—but her mother, Señora Camino, never began eating until both her …

The Naive Reader by Inger Christensen

When I write poems, I sometimes pretend it’s not me but the language itself that’s writing. I pretend it’s possible to step back a bit from my human persona and …

Perhaps You Don’t Like Cow’s Tongue

To celebrate the paperback edition of Tanizaki’s masterful novel, The Maids, we’re publishing an excerpt here. CHAPTER TWELVE Suzu usually accompanied Raikichi when he …

The Internal Octopus by Yoko Tawada

While Yoshiro’s mornings were packed full of worry seeds, to Mumei each morning was fresh, full of fun. At the moment he was battling those mischievous sprites called …

Camilo José Cela, Audiophile

A record player is better than a phonograph, swankier and more up-to-date, a record player doesn’t have a trumpet, the voice comes out through little slits in the side. …

Forrest Gander wins Pulitzer Prize!

Be With by Forrest Gander wins the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry New Directions is overjoyed by the news that our poet, translator, and dear friend Forrest Gander—whom we first …

Boy With a Water Gun in His School Bag by Marcia Douglas

[Boy With a Water Gun in His School Bag] See me here standing at the bus stop and I don’t really want to go to school because I was too hungry last night to study my seven times, …

The Ferlinghetti Century

To celebrate our great poet and friend, we dipped into the New Directions editorial files and found correspondence about A Coney Island of the Mind (first published in 1958) …

Kenneth Rexroth on Herbert Read

There has been a great proliferation of fiction in our day. There has been an even greater decline in quality. Since Ulysses, if you accept Ulysses as a great novel, there have …

“Strange Music” by T. F. Powys

As the years move onward, sounds change. Sounds that used to be listened to in older times are not heard now. Climb up Madder Hill on any still, frosty morning, you will hear no …

The Emissary is an NBA Finalist! (Correction: NBA WINNER!)

The Emissary is a finalist* for the 2018 National Book Award for Translated Literature. Our heartfelt congratulations to Yoko Tawada and her translator Margaret Mitsutani. In the …

John Keene is a genius

Congratulations to John Keene, 2018 MacArthur Fellow! Our only front list writer whose manuscript was acquired from the slush pile, John Keene is something of a legend at New …

An interview with Ahmed Bouanani (1974)

AN INTERVIEW WITH AHMED BOUANANI June 1974  The reclusive poet, novelist, and filmmaker Ahmed Bouanani died on February 6, 2011. In an interview from 1974, he reflected upon a film …

Wandering-Standing by László Krasznahorkai

Congratulations to our friend László Krasznahorkai whose story collection The World Goes On—translated by John Batki, Ottilie Mulzet, and George Szirtes—has been shortlisted for …

Happy Birthday, Ferlinghetti!

TRUE CONFESSIONAL I was conceived in the summer of Nineteen Eighteen when some kind of war was going on but it didn’t stop two people from making love in Ossining that year I like …

Rivka Galchen on Mrs. Caliban

Because there might also be a world in which a man-sized amphibian appearing in your kitchen would feel like a good thing. Dorothy, the central character in Rachel Ingalls’s Mrs. …