Today’s #WITMonth post is a preview for an Open Letter title coming out next summer, which isn’t even available for sale anywhere yet. It’s听

糖心传媒淪is, I want to tell you about the river. About me in the river. It makes me shiver, tremble. It makes me laugh. It糖心传媒檚 been so long since I糖心传媒檝e felt this alive . . .糖心传媒�

Rute is no stranger to displacement and loss. As a child she and her older sister, Dina, were subject to their mother糖心传媒檚 romantic whims, moving from house to house, boyfriend to boyfriend. Then, when the sisters were in their late twenties, Dina disappeared. In the decade that has since passed, Rute has become a husk of her former self, going through the motions in work, life, and love, composing daily letters to Dina in the hopes they糖心传媒檒l one day see each other again.听

When the sisters糖心传媒� biological father, J奴le, dies, Rute unexpectedly inherits his country property. Curious about this man she糖心传媒檚 never really known, she takes the opportunity to flee the city, the people, herself. But once in the countryside she meets Matilde, the young, single mother from next door who (along with her brother Kristof) was practically raised by J奴le. Rute learns about J奴le, a generous soul whose door and heart were always open to those less fortunate.听

Haunting, sparse, and echoing Scandinavian greats like Kjersti Skomsvold, Laura Vinogradova糖心传媒檚听搁颈惫别谤听is a tightly crafted work that defies resolutions and endings, instead hailing the importance and beauty of the personal journey to one糖心传媒檚 internal truths and external freedoms.

听The book isn’t quite available for preorder yet, but stay tuned, and we’ll let you know when it is!

Before

Dina likes Rute糖心传媒檚 place. There糖心传媒檚 a warmth to it. The kind of warmth that is oblivious to the weather outside. As soon as she steps into her sister糖心传媒檚 apartment, Dina takes off her boots and socks and stands for some time, barefoot, soaking up the warmth. Rute has heated floors; Rute has everything.

糖心传媒擶hat are you doing? Rute laughs.

糖心传媒擧ave you been outside?

糖心传媒擭o, I糖心传媒檝e been working. What is it?

糖心传媒擳he wind, little sister, the wind.

糖心传媒擳here糖心传媒檚 wind in here, too, Rute laughs again and blows into Dina糖心传媒檚 face.

Laura Vinogradova

Then they drink coffee. Rute orders a pizza. Dina糖心传媒檚 eyes wander around the kitchen; they hungrily take in every beautiful detail, because Rute糖心传媒檚 place is beautiful. Warm and beautiful. Sometimes Dina wants to call her out on it. Tell her she糖心传媒檚 spoiled. Tell her Stefans has spoiled her. Because Dina can糖心传媒檛 escape. She can糖心传媒檛 escape the cold, the loneliness. And sometimes she feels like she can糖心传媒檛 even try. Can糖心传媒檛 be free, doesn糖心传媒檛 deserve to be free. And then she gets angry at Rute. Because Rute shouldn糖心传媒檛 be living in an apartment like this. Shouldn糖心传媒檛 have heated floors or love, shouldn糖心传媒檛 be stringing fairy lights from all the shelves.

Rute has a jar of kombucha fermenting on the windowsill. When Dina sees it, she chokes on her coffee and laughs while wheezing.

糖心传媒擶hat糖心传媒檚 that? she points to the jar.

糖心传媒擪ombucha, Rute says.

糖心传媒擶hy is there lace over the top of it? Dina laughs again.

Rute pouts and says nothing.

糖心传媒擨t reminds me of something. Dina grows thoughtful and stops laughing.

糖心传媒擪ombucha? Rute糖心传媒檚 voice drips with sarcasm.

But Dina shakes her head. The pizza is delivered. The sisters eat, their fingers greasy, and forget about the kombucha.

糖心传媒擶alk me out? Dina asks, but Rute shakes her head.

糖心传媒擨 want to get a bit more translating done.

They hug each other tightly; Rute blows Dina a kiss, and the door closes behind her.

After that, everything happens too fast to make sense of it. Too fast to scream, too forceful to fight back. Dina gets off the No. 6 tram at the M膩rkalne stop and heads for home. The street she糖心传媒檚 walking down is quiet and empty, with a few cold cars and a red minivan parked along the side of the street. It糖心传媒檚 a snowless, windy January, and Dina retreats deeper into her scarf. It happens in a second: three men jump out of the van, grab her, and pull a bag over her head. They lift her like a rag doll and toss her into the back of the van. No screams. No movement. Dina freezes and gives in having, at some point in her life, stopped fighting back.

She lies silent in the back of the van and tries to think. Is she hurt? Will she survive this? Will it happen quickly? But she can糖心传媒檛 think clearly. Her goddamn mind is trapped in this bag. Everything is trapped, even her fear. She doesn糖心传媒檛 feel afraid. What she feels are her pants, wet, cold, plastered to her skin. She糖心传媒檚 pissed herself. They seem to have left Riga because the van is driving straight, smooth, and fast. Dina is curled up into a ball, lying in her own urine, with a bag over her head. Suddenly, she realizes what Rute糖心传媒檚 kombucha reminded her of.

*

At the time, Dina would have been around ten years old. One day their mother, without a word, had taken her and Rute to live with Aigars. No, we糖心传媒檙e not going back home, their mother had told the girls, and they never brought it up again. Their mother loved Aigars just as much as she糖心传媒檇 loved Vladimir before him, and Igor before him, and J膩nis somewhere in between. Aigars wasn糖心传媒檛 bad, he left the girls alone. He never spoke to them, and the girls quickly learned to remain silent. If they talked or laughed, it meant a black eye for their mother. Their mother loved Aigars even with her black eye, so the girls weren糖心传媒檛 worried.

Kaija Straumanis

The sisters didn糖心传媒檛 have their own room at first, instead sharing one with their mother and Aigars. They were set up on the floor behind the wardrobe, with a quilt to sleep on and a small night light. But it was still dark. Each night, Dina had to listen to their mother糖心传媒檚 panting and snoring, and Aigars糖心传媒檚 moaning. Dina and Rute wet their 糖心传媒渂ed糖心传媒� on the very first night. Dina had been embarrassed to tell their mother, but she worked up the courage and finally did. The girls were given a clean sheet, but the same thing happened the next night and the night after that. Dina woke up on a quilt that was wet and a sheet with a large yellow stain on it. She pulled on her jeans and went to school, but she could feel that damp cold on her legs the entire day. She didn糖心传媒檛 say anything to their mother again糖心传媒攖hey didn糖心传媒檛 have that many clean sheets, and their mother was busy. Aigars wanted to spend every second with her. He didn糖心传媒檛 like it when she wanted to play with Dina and Rute.

The girls spent several months sleeping behind the wardrobe. They wet the bed every night. Sometimes they couldn糖心传媒檛 tell if it had been only Dina, or only Rute, or both of them. They糖心传媒檇 study the stains on the sheets, trying to make sense of it, but what did it matter? Either way, the bed was wet. Either way, it stank. Either way, they had to sleep there again. Every morning Dina would pull back the sheet and hope it would be the last time, that everything would dry out and she wouldn糖心传媒檛 wet the bed anymore. But she did. And so did Rute.

Then they got their own room, and in the process of moving them their mother saw their sleeping space for the first time. She saw the piss-stained sheets. The cotton quilt they used as a mattress had started to mold. Their mother said nothing; neither did the girls. Urine isn糖心传媒檛 something you talk about.

Having their own room was better. They had their own beds and were given special mattress covers to go under the sheets. Dina糖心传媒檚 bed stayed dry the first few days, and she was happy because she thought she糖心传媒檇 conquered bed-wetting. There was one morning when Rute糖心传媒檚 bed was wet, but she was still little. She couldn糖心传媒檛 hold it in.

One night, Dina woke up needing to pee. But the toilet was outside, and to get to it, she糖心传媒檇 have to go by Aigars糖心传媒檚 room. What if she woke him and he got angry? What if he took it out on their mother? Because he did that when he got angry. The times he got angry like that it seemed that their mother didn糖心传媒檛 love him after all, but that wasn糖心传媒檛 true. She did love him. She糖心传媒檇 cry, rub ointment on her bruises, and go on loving him.

Dina got an idea. On the table was a jar of water used for rinsing paint brushes. She糖心传媒檇 pee in there. She squatted, positioned the jar under herself, and tried to aim in the dark. She filled it completely, a bit of warm urine dripping onto her hands. But Dina was pleased with her solution. Her bed would stay dry, and she wouldn糖心传媒檛 reek at school. She found a few more jars in the courtyard and secretly stashed them in their room. She filled those, too. When she ran out of jars, she peed into a vase that was in the girls糖心传媒� room because Aigars didn糖心传媒檛 like vases. And when she ran out of vases, she peed in the bowl that sat under the flowerpot.

On rare occasions she would take the jars out to empty them. Very rarely. And so, the urine-filled jars would turn dark, cloudy. They looked like jars of kombucha. Now she remembers.

*

The van stops. Dina is dragged outside and through the bag she can feel the damp sea air. She recognizes it because Vladimir, whom her mother had loved, had lived by the sea. The sea air makes up a bit of her childhood air. We all start at childhood. She takes a deep breath of the damp air and savors it. And there糖心传媒檚 a sharp pain on the back of her head. Then darkness.

River by Laura Vinogradova, translated from the Latvian by Kaija Straumanis, will be available from Open Letter Books in the summer of 2024.

This week’s music is “” by Ben Hopkins, one of the greatest songs of 2020.

If you’d prefer to watch the conversation, you can find it on along with . You can where you’ll also have the opportunity to ask questions, make comments, or correct inaccurate statements. Here’s where you can find the complete reading schedule.

Follow and for random thoughts and information about upcoming guests.

Be sure to order Brian’s book, , which is now officially available at better bookstores everywhere thanks to BOA Editions

You can also support this podcast and听all听of Open Letter’s activities by making a tax-deductible donation through the .

The associated with this post is copyrighted by

Music featured on this episode (all from albums released in 2007) includes “,” “,” “,” and “.”

This series will continue biweekly through the end of the year, covering all twenty-five winning BTBA books (poetry and fiction) culminating in a Best of the BTBA award chosen by YOU, the listeners and fans, at the end of 2021. Stay tuned to Three Percent for additional posts, interviews, analysis of translation trends, and more.

If you don糖心传媒檛 already subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast you can find us on and other places. Or you can always subscribe by adding our feed directly into your favorite podcast app: http://threepercent.libsyn.com/rss

This week’s music is “Twin Cinema” by The New Pornographers. (It should not have taken eight episodes to realize how fitting this song is for this season.)

If you’d prefer to watch the conversation, you can find it on along with . You can where you’ll also have the opportunity to ask questions, make comments, or correct inaccurate statements.

Follow and for random thoughts and information about upcoming guests.

Be sure to order Brian’s book, , which is now officially available at better bookstores everywhere thanks to BOA Editions.

You can also support this podcast and听all听of Open Letter’s activities by making a tax-deductible donation through the .

Despite 2020 being a downright awful year, it has given us several excellent works of Spanish-language SFT by women, so at least there糖心传媒檚 that. With novels and stories exploring such themes as mass surveillance, cannibalism, and nanobot rebellion, readers who hadn糖心传媒檛 yet heard about these texts are in for a treat.

*

The beginning of the year brought us three short SFT texts糖心传媒攖wo from Mexico and one from Cuba. Bibiana Camacho糖心传媒檚 糖心传媒�,糖心传媒� translated by Cecilia Weddell and published in World Literature Today, tells the chilling story of a woman who realizes that her reflection is not her own. This awareness comes first as she gazes into her bathroom mirror, and then while she糖心传媒檚 riding the metro: 糖心传媒淚 touched my chin and cheeckbones, and though I felt my fingers糖心传媒� contact, I felt that I was stroking a stranger糖心传媒檚 face, one that belonged to some other woman.糖心传媒� Eventually, the chaos that starts to unfold outside of her stalled train mirrors the woman糖心传媒檚 fear and panic at this unexpected change in her appearance.

This story is about shifting identities on multiple levels. As translator Cecilia Weddell points out in her accompanying essay 糖心传媒淭ranslation as Masquerade,糖心传媒� the author糖心传媒檚 name itself is a pen name, taken up because it is the author糖心传媒檚 beloved grandmother糖心传媒檚 name. Furthermore, 糖心传媒淭he Other Woman糖心传媒� can only be rendered into English via translation, which, in this case, is done by a woman who is not the author. As Weddell notes, Camacho糖心传媒檚 story is both the same and different in English translation糖心传媒攔ecognizable yet different from the original, a reality that lies at the heart of translation itself. And yet, according to Weddell, 糖心传媒淚 cannot say if my translations are as good as what they re-create, but I know the work can be done well.糖心传媒�

*

Malena Salazar Maci谩糖心传媒檚 糖心传媒�,糖心传媒� translated by Toshiya Kamei for The Future Fire, is a dreamlike fantasy about a woman who grows up in a forest, sheltered from everyone and everything by her grandfather. Upon his death, she escapes and wanders into a city, where she is forced into marriage by a cold, unfaithful man who ultimately abandons her. Eventually, she makes her way to the sea and couples with a mermaid, who helps her give birth to herself as the mermaid she always felt herself to be.

Salazar Maci谩糖心传媒檚 second story in English this year, 糖心传媒�,糖心传媒� also translated by Toshiya Kamei but published this time in Clarkesworld Magazine, is the tale of a nanobot rebellion.

Nanobots of various types, originally designed to 糖心传媒渋nstill in us the traditions handed down from our ancestors many millennia ago,糖心传媒� wind up turning against their human hosts. One woman takes it upon herself to bring them back into line and save herself in the process. The author糖心传媒檚 two other stories in English were published in 2019 on听 SFinTranslation.com and in Mithila Review.

*

May and August of this year brought us two books by women authors from Argentina: by Samanta Schweblin (translated by Megan McDowell) and by Agustina Bazterrica (translated by Sarah Moses). Like Schweblin糖心传媒檚 earlier works in English糖心传媒�Fever Dream and Mouthful of Birds糖心传媒擫ittle Eyes is a disturbing and surreal text that invites us to rethink our everyday reality. Set in a world that could be our own in just a few years time, it imagines that people can go out and purchase the equivalent of a small stuffed animal (called a 糖心传媒渒entuki糖心传媒�) that also has cameras for eyes, wheels for legs, and a motor. Inside of that creature is technology that allows a person on the other side of town or the other side of the world to direct it and give it commands. The owner of the creature knows this, and the person 糖心传媒渋nhabiting糖心传媒� the creature knows that they know this. And because this is Samanta Schweblin, we know that nothing good will come of this arrangement. Eventually, kentukis proliferate and their owners begin to see them as more than just mobile cameras, but as living creatures with rights and desires. The human connection to technology that it doesn糖心传媒檛 fully understand, however, leads to unanticipated horrors.

Speaking of horror, Bazterrica糖心传媒檚 Tender is the Flesh offers us a world in which a virus has made animal meat inedible. Forced to look for other sources of protein, humans quickly turned to cannibalism, legitimizing it by using genetically-modified humans that are raised and slaughtered like the animals before them. One day, the protagonist, who works in one of the processing plants, falls in love with one of the humans he糖心传媒檚 supposed to 糖心传媒渉arvest糖心传媒� and the moral questions that have been forcibly stifled in this new world burst back out into the open.

Alternately surreal, dreamlike, and horrifying, these works of SFT by Spanish-speaking women authors show Anglophone readers just how diverse and intriguing this literature is. And there糖心传媒檚 certainly more to look forward to in the coming years.

Garden by the Sea by Merc猫 Rodoreda
Translated from the Catalan by Maruxa Rela帽o and Martha Tennent
230 pgs. | pb | 9781948830089听 听| $15.95

Review by Kira Baran

Originally published in 1967 in the Catalan, Garden by the Sea is just one of several works that has earned twentieth-century author Merc猫 Rodoreda international recognition over the years.

Merc猫 Rodoreda糖心传媒檚 eventful life糖心传媒攐ne of difficult lessons and equally difficult experiences as someone exiled in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War糖心传媒攕uperbly enlightens Garden by the Sea. The book acts as a testament to her clear grasp of the universal patterns in which people interact, no matter their social class or cultural context. In this way, Rodoreda糖心传媒檚 works are perfect candidates for translation; national borders and social barriers prove no obstacle to Rodoreda糖心传媒檚 realistic characterization as informed by her authentic understanding of human nature. For this reason, Garden by the Sea joins Camellia Street, Death in Spring, War, So Much War, and The Selected Stories of Merc猫 Rodoreda in the list of books penned by this author and published by Open Letter.

In true Great Gatsby fashion (or perhaps more aligned in modern times with Downton Abbey), the story is narrated by an omniscient yet unlikely side character: the gardener. Appropriately set by the seaside, the story finds itself submerged in social circles as it dives deep into murky waters, bypassing high society糖心传媒檚 superficial appearances and deriving its narrative from the accounts of domestic servants rather than the elite they serve. Small talk quickly turns into big consequences for these seemingly minor characters, as secrets surface and the past comes to light.

True, this gossip-fueled account of life in 1920s Spain is sure to leave the reader chuckling at points. But it also leaves the reader contemplating to what extent ill-gotten knowledge, social obligation, friendship, and responsibility for the welfare of others are糖心传媒攐r should be糖心传媒攊nterconnected. Guilt and innocence, knowledge and action, come into question as readers are left pondering all the potential ways the story could have ended but didn糖心传媒檛. What makes this novel special is that it is just as much about what is excluded from the storyline as what is included糖心传媒攕omething the gardener knows all too well.