Vagabond Voices

14/11/2025

The Glasgow-based publisher Vagabond Voices is launching the translation of Giovanni V***a's classic novel, I Malavoglia, on Tuesday the 18th of this month at the Alchemy Experiment , 157 Byres Road, 7 pm. The translator Allan Cameron and Prof. Joe Farrell will be in conversation about perhaps the most renowned literary work since unification, what it says about Italy of the 1880s and consequently the Italy of the 21st century. The Edinburgh launch took place yesterday at the Italian Institute of Culture, but the Glasgow community is probably even larger. We hope that you can come to celebrate the author's literary bravura or find out about this tragic story of a Sicilian fishing family when modernity was destroying the already fragile lives of peasants and fishermen. It is however the originality of the narrative technique that makes this work so important. Neorealism referred back to V***a, and Luchino Visconti made a film of I Malavoglia entitled La terra trema. Books will be on sale at the event or can be bought on the publisher's website, https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/changelings/the-malavoglias

30/08/2025

Many starry nights ago we published Vicki Husband's THIS FAR BACK EVERYTHING SHIMMERS - a book of poems that infuse the mundane with stellar significance, shortlisted for the Saltire Poetry Book of the Year 2016. 🌟⭐️✨⠀

Order it from our website now: https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/poetry/this-far-back-everything-shimmers

(Excerpt from Extremely Large Telescope, p. 3).

28/08/2025

🔔📖 Giovanni V***a's THE MALAVOGLIAS is one of two translations we are publishing this autumn: a masterful portrayal of Sicilian fishermen in the late nineteenth century, and the story of an ancient society in which the strong and the weak coexist – partly because everyone is poor. But as money and commerce come to the island, can this coexistence last?

"The Malavoglias" is now available for pre-sale at a discounted price of £12.00! More on our website: https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/changelings/the-malavoglias

26/08/2025

Magnus Florin's SIBLINGS is the short story of a claustrophobic family, narrated by the eldest brother to nine children. He is keen, capable and obedient to his parents, and it is his duty to care for his lesser siblings. When their parents are dead, he will be in charge, and he will give to them the controlling love he has been taught to give. Of course they will resist him. But how can they, with the bonds that tie them together? This is a society ruled by law.

But Sweden is changing around them: softening. Will this older brother soften too, or will his fists remain iron, his mind bound to loveless laws?

More on our website: https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/changelings/siblings

23/08/2025

Set against a pivotal moment in Latvian history, Pauls Bankovskis' 18 is translated by Ieva Lešinska: an exploration of humanity and history, and how the two intertwine as the roots of a tree. In 1918, amidst the chaos of the Russian Revolution, a Latvian soldier flees his post, and records his experiences of his flight in a small journal. A century later, a family visiting their holiday home in the Latvian countryside discovers a strange digital camera in the pocket of their grandfather, and finds images that he could never have taken when he was alive. How did the soldier bear witness to Latvia's present; how do the family bear witness to its past?

More here: https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/changelings/18

21/08/2025

For , a cover detail of our next translation - out in a month, a week and a day...

19/08/2025

🇱🇹 WHITE SHROUD by Antanas Škėma (translated from Lithuanian by Karla Gruodis) is one of our most popular books, and for good reason. Considered by many as the most important Lithuanian work of modernist fiction, the novel draws heavily on the author’s own refugee and immigrant experience to tell the story of an émigré poet working as an elevator operator in a large New York hotel during the mid-1950s: sweeping through sharp flashes of the narrator’s life in Lithuania before and during World War II, returning always to New York and the recent immigrant’s struggle to adapt to a completely different, and indifferent, modern world.

Will he survive, or will we see his sanity fray, his self decay into madness? Find out more on our website: https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/changelings/white-shroud

16/08/2025

Almost two years ago we published A WOMAN'S WAR AGAINST PROGRESS - a novel on what it means to save one's culture in a rapidly changing world, and how in trying to save one corner of the world, it is all too easy to lose oneself.

More here: https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/vagabonds/womans-war-against-progress

14/08/2025

💫It's ! To celebrate women in translation and women who translate, here's our Translated by Her book bundle with three books at 30% off.🏷️

More here: https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/book-bundles/translated-by-her

12/08/2025

CINICO is the (fictional) memoir of an Italian journalist. In 2014, he came to Scotland seeking a "big story" on the independence referendum: he met a Ukrainian nationalist, a Russian guru, an eccentric Estonian, a dying man, and even love. But what story did he find, and what story does he have to tell? This is a tale of how the people of Europe see each other, and of where clarity might be found in a world of confusion, even if it does not bring happiness.

More on our website: https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/vagabonds/cinico
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26/07/2025

Have you read any of our translations? We've published works originally written in Italian, Swedish, Estonian, Chinese - and the list goes on...

If you're interested in learning about new places and cultures, the perfect way to do it is through a good book. Take a look at the CHANGELINGS section of our website for all of our translated works - more here: https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/changelings

24/07/2025

🇱🇻 Read all about it: this we have a rags-to-riches classic, Andrejs Upīts’s novel Gold! In a Latvia still under Tsarist rule and on the brink of the First World War, the Sveilis family, poor yet hardworking, suddenly inherit great wealth. And it is this wealth that leads them on a journey that peels far away from all expectations and cliché, into a world ruled by desire and disappointment. Upīts is forensic in his dissection of a society contending with extremes of both wealth and poverty, and how this is undermining what is left of a moral society – perhaps as topical now as it was then.

Gold is the youngest of our Changelings and translated by . More here: https://www.vagabondvoices.co.uk/changelings/gold

GOLD by Andrejs Upīts translated from Latvian by Uldis Balodis Pages: 460 ISBN: 978-1-913212-37-7 Dimensions: 210 × 140 × 33 mm Publication: 16 September 2024