Startnarrativehere

How to Read a Cover as Criticism?

Reading a cover as criticism does not require design training. It requires asking a different set of questions. Instead of asking whether a cover is attractive, ask what argument it is making.

The Subsidy Problem: Who Pays for World Literature?

Translation subsidies are a double-edged sword. On one hand, they make it possible for small presses to publish books that would otherwise be financially impossible. On the other hand, they create a market distortion. A publisher that relies on subsidies is not necessarily choosing the best books. It is choosing the books that come with funding attached. This is not a secret.

The Next Question: Who Owns a Translation?

This article has focused on the market for translation rights.

What Was Lost: Structural Originality and Commercial Invisibility?

The question that follows is not whether Stoner would have been a bestseller under different circumstances. It would not have been. The question is what was lost during the decades when its structural originality was commercially invisible. The answer is not just the readers who might have found the book earlier.

Who Decides What “Good” Translation Looks Like?

Translation is not a neutral act of linguistic transfer. Every choice a translator makes—register, syntax, cultural reference—shapes the English reader’s experience of the text. But the standards by which translations are judged often remain opaque.