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Archipelago Books

a non-profit literary press dedicated to promoting cross-cultural exchange through international literature in translation. www.archipelagobooks.org

28/10/2025

Out today: Luigi Pirandello’s existential classic, One, None, and a Hundred Grand, in a new translation by Sean Wilsey that “stunningly captures its antic energy and its anguish” (Jhumpa Lahiri).

Shortly after the book was published in 1924, Pirandello famously tore up his fascist party membership card in front of an official. He writes about demagogues, political and social uncertainty, and the shifting nature of the self—always with levity and sincerity.

On November 3rd at 7pm, we’ll gather at for a celebration with Sean Wilsey and Jennifer Egan. We hope to see you!

21/10/2025

Out today is Wiesław Myśliwski’s daring new novel, Needle’s Eye, in a translation by Bill Johnston. When our narrator, a medieval historian in his latter years, tumbles down a narrow flight of stone stairs, memories from his life appear like faces in the water—textured and vivid. This is a personal epic written on the smallest scale, a chameleonic mediation on a half-century of Polish life as it does not appear in the historical record.

Bill Johnston will be in town on November 20th for a conversation with Will Chancellor at Center for Brooklyn History… visit our site for details.

16/10/2025

November 3rd, 7pm, at Archestratus Books! We’ll be serving up some delectable Sicilian wine to accompany this delectable conversation around Pirandello’s tragicomic classic. Mark those calendars!

14/10/2025

Two fall treasures out today.

Selma Asotić’s debut, Say Fire, “arrives as a rare and mesmeric force, a fever dream of language from which one refuses to wake” (Jenny Xie). Wounded bodies are at the heart of this collection—bodies crouched, years after the war, as fireworks shoot through the sky, bodies failing from cancer in peacetime, bodies collapsed into local headlines and reports. Born in war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina, Asotić writes in a feverish present tense, tracing her family history in close lyric and careful reportage. With lines that conjure the chimeric turns of Alejandra Pizarnik, Asotić illumes a life lived in the wake of war—the bodies that touch and leave us, like waves retracting their gestures.

The Leucothea Dialogues is considered Pavese’s most difficult work, and also one he instructed friends to read in order to understand him. In it Pavese stages 27 conversations: Achilles speaks with Patroclus, Sappho speaks with Britomartis, Circe with Leucothea, Odysseus with Calypso. These characters steeped for a long time in his subconscious (as a child, he spent many hours reading ancient Greek plays and poetry); they are full of tension, pain, odd angled humor, lust. His intimate conjuring of the unconscious, of the otherworldly in nature, of the fear and appeal of death, are remarkably rendered in English by Minna Zallman Proctor. Take it from Sontag: “There can be no excuse for not reading Pavese, one of the few essential novelists of the mid-twentieth century.”

Order these directly from our site.

30/09/2025

Happy pub day to Xiong Liang’s Take a Walk With the Wind, translated from Chinese by Chloe Garcia Roberts, from our children’s books imprint .editions

In this beautifully illustrated picture book, Xiong brings a puff of wind to life that knocks off the cap of a small treeling, taking him on a wild adventure through China’s ancient mountain forests. By drawing inspiration from classical Chinese poems, folk art, and stories, the universe Xiong creates within his work perfectly captures a childlike imagination (and penchant for mischief).

“Xiong takes inspiration from Guo Zhong Chan’s Memories of Xiang Zhou to spin this evocative, nature-centered story about a mythical miniature being . . . Active verbs describe the swirling chaos provoked by every encounter, while delicate paintings depict cranes getting twisted up, monkeys clinging to a tree, and more . . . Meditative depictions of the fanciful relationship cast an atmospheric spell.” -Publishers Weekly

You can now order Take a Walk With the Wind on the Elsewhere or Archipelago sites!

23/09/2025

Overjoyed to see Emmelie Prophète’s Cécé reviewed in the New York Times today. Susie Boyt writes perceptively about Cécé’s twenty-year-old narrator who invents herself against the violent contours of her native Port-au-Prince.

“Cécé is a cool, clear eyed narrator, who takes pains not to sensationalize. Sometimes her restraint makes the reader feel impertinent for drawing conclusions at all. There is always the sense,” Boyt writes, “that Cécé could put it better herself.”

We publish Cécé, in Aidan Rooney’s nimble translation, today.

18/09/2025

Emmelie Prophète is traveling all the way from Port-au-Prince to present her novel Cécé, which we’ll publish in a perceptive translation by Aidan Rooney later this month.

On September 23rd, 6:30pm, Prophète will join artist Jessica Rankin at Brooklyn’s Flatbush Library for a conversation and launch. We’ll have a glorious spread of Haitian fare from BunNan, and wine aplenty.

https://www.bklynlibrary.org/calendar/emmelie-prophète-flatbush-library-20250923-0630pm

And on September 21st, 5pm, Emmelie Prophète, Jeremy Tiang, and Canisia Lubrin will speak at Brooklyn Book Festival for a dialogue around literature, resistance, and survival.

https://brooklynbookfestival.org/event/literature-resistance-survival/

16/09/2025

Parents and caregivers, we are hosting an event today for kids at the ! This afternoon at 3pm, join artist and picture book author Xiong Liang for a storytime and collage session at the NYPL's Chatham Square branch in Chinatown.

Xiong's work has been shortlisted for the Hans Christian Andersen Award and he has been nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. His ink-wash illustrations are inspired by (among others) the 17th century painter Xiao Yuncong, the 9th century painter Guan Xiu, as well as William Blake's paintings and prints.

We look forward to seeing you and the kiddos over glue, markers, scissors and paper at the NYPL this afternoon.

P.S. Xiong Liang's TAKE A WALK WITH THE WIND will be out with Elsewhere Editions at the end of this month. Translated from Chinese by Chloe Garcia Roberts.

09/09/2025

We’ve got a vibrant September lined up at Archipelago!

⭐️September 15th, 6:30pm, at Sullaluna Books (41 Carmine St, NYC): Xiong Liang will present Take A Walk With the Wind, which Elsewhere Editions will publish in a translation by Chloe Garcia Roberts on September 30th. He’ll be joined by Jia Sung, with Roxanne Feldman interpreting between Chinese and English.

⭐️September 16th, 10am, at the Sunset Park Library (5108 4th Ave, Brooklyn): Xiong Liang will read from Take A Walk With the Wind and lead a collaging activity for kids.

⭐️September 16th, 3pm, at the Chatham Square Library (33 E Broadway, NYC): Another storytime and collaging activity with Xiong Liang!

⭐️September 17th, 9pm, at Cafe Gitane (70 Hudson Ave, Brooklyn): Have you secured your tickets to our annual fete afterparty? Join us for wine, South Indian fare, and some special raffle prizes.

⭐️September 21st, 10am - 6pm(Borough Hall, Brooklyn): Find us at Brooklyn Book Fest’s Literary Marketplace—we’ll be at both 432 selling books at a discount.

⭐️September 23rd, 6:30pm, at Flatbush Library (22 Linden Blvd, Brooklyn): Emmelie Prophète and Jessica Rankin discuss Prophète’s Cècè, which Archipelago will publish in a translation by Aidan Rooney on September 23rd. Food and refreshments will be provided by BunNan BK.

⭐️September 24th, 7pm, at Brookline Booksmith (279 Harvard St): Emmelie Prophète and Aidan Rooney discuss Cècè, with Enzo Silon Surin.

Visit our website for RSVP details.

02/09/2025

Secure your tickets through the link in our bio 🌙

20/08/2025

Volodine has been working under a myriad of heteronyms since the early 80s. In each cosmos he distills his project—to echo the hostility, paranoia (and glimmers of hope and connectivity) that constitute modern living. These echoes are gathered not from a particular culture, but a “transnational language of storytellers, outcasts, prisoners, madmen, and the dead.” Like Chris Marker’s La Jetée, The Monroe Girls speaks from an estranging place, with language that calls out from elsewhere.

We’ll publish The Monroe Girls on March 17th of next year. If you’re a reviewer, DM us and we’ll send you a copy.

19/08/2025

There is still time to purchase your ticket to our annual fall fête! In just under a month (September 17th) we’ll gather at Vinegar Hill House to honor our writers, translators, and community that have sustained the press for twenty two years.

If you can’t join us in person, you can send your supportive regrets by sponsoring one of our translators to attend.

Secure your ticket (to our fête or afterparty at ) through the link in our bio.

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