McSWEENEY’S ISSUE 42

$26.00 $13.00

With the help of guest editor Adam Thirlwell (author of Kapow!, Visual Editions), Issue 42 is a monumental experiment in translated literature—twelve stories taken through six translators apiece, weaving into English and then back out again, gaining new twists and textures each time, just as you’d expect a Kierkegaard story brought into English by Clancy Martin and then sent into Dutch by Cees Nooteboom before being made into English again by J.M. Coetzee to do. With original texts by Kafka and Kharms and Kenji Miyazawa, and translations by Lydia Davis and David Mitchell and Zadie Smith (along with others by John Banville and Tom McCarthy and Javier Marías, and even more by Shteyngart and Eugenides and A.S. Byatt), this will be an issue unlike anything you’ve seen before—altered, echoing narratives in the hands of the finest writers of our time, brought to you in a book that looks like nothing else we’ve ever done.

Table of Contents:

1. A Preface to Writing Samples: a story in Danish by Søren Kierkegaard…
translated into English by Clancy Martin…
translated into Dutch by Cees Nooteboom…
translated into English by J.M. Coetzee…
translated into French by Jean-Christophe Valtat…
translated into English by Sheila Heti…
translated into Sweedish by Jonas Hassen Khemiri.

2. The People from Below: a story in Spanish by Enrique Vila-Matas…
translated into English by Colm Tóibín…
translated into German by Daniel Kehlmann…
translated into Hungarian by Péter Esterházy…
translated into English by Julie Orringer…
translated into French by Laurent Binet…
translated into English by Tom McCarthy.

3. Luck: a story in Dutch by A.L. Snijders…
translated into English by Lydia Davis…
translated into French by Yannick Haenel…
translated into English by Heidi Julavits…
translated into German by Peter Stamm…
translated into English by Jeffrey Eugenides…
translated into Icelandic by Atvik.

4. The Earth God and the Fox: a story in Japanese by Kenji Miyazawa…
translated into English by David Mitchell…
translated into Spanish by Valeria Luiselli…
translated into English by Jonathan Lethem and Mara Faye Lethem…
translated into Urdu by Nadeem Aslam.

5. In Our Synagogue: a story in German by Franz Kafka…
translated into English by John Wray…
translated into Hebrew by Etgar Keret…
translated into English by Nathan Englander…
translated into Spanish by Alejandro Zambra…
translated into English by Dave Eggers.

6. The Four Seasons, Without a Summer: a story in Arabic by Youssef Habchi El-Achkar…
translated into English by Rawi Hage…
translated into French by Tristan Garcia…
translated into English by Joe Dunthorne…
translated into Italian by Francesco Pacifico…
translated into English by Vendela Vida.

7. Symphony No. 2: a story in Russian by Daniil Kharms…
translated into English by Gary Shteyngart…
translated into French by Frédéric Beigbeder…
translated into English by Chloe Hooper…
translated into Dutch by Arnon Grunberg…
translated into English by Ivan Vladislavić…
translated into Portuguese by José Luís Peixoto.

8. The Shoes: a story in Serbo-Croat by Danilo Kiš…
translated into English by Aleksandar Hemon…
translated into Spanish by Alan Pauls…
translated into English by Francisco Goldman…
translated into French by Camille de Toledo…
translated into English by John Banville.

9. Umberto Buti: a story in Italian by Giuseppe Pontiggia…
translated into English by Zadie Smith…
translated into Chinese by Ma Jian…
translated into English by Tash Aw…
translated into Spanish by Álvaro Enrigue.

10. The Frightful Hunt: a story in Hungarian by Lázló Krasznahorkai…
translated into German by Lázló Krasznahorkai…
translated into English by Lawrence Norfolk…
translated into French by Florian Zeller…
translated into English by Wyatt Mason…
translated into Spanish by Rodrigo Fresán…
translated into English by Sarah Manguso.

11. The Making of a Man: a story in English by Richard Middleton…
translated into Spanish by Javier Marías…
translated into English by Andrew Sean Greer…
translated into German by Julia Franck…
translated into English by A.S. Byatt…
translated into Hebrew by Orly Castel-Bloom…
translated into English by Adam Foulds.

12. The Fire on Chance Street: a story in Italian by Carlo Emilio Gadda…
translated into English by Adam Thirlwell and Francesco Pacifico.