Night Shift
Fiction Kate Tsurkan Fiction Kate Tsurkan

Night Shift

An excerpt from the novel Vanilla Ice Cream by Đurđa Knežević
Translated from the Croatian by Ena Selimović

After nearly two consecutive shifts—afternoon into early morning—her body teetered between numbness and pain. Or rather, when at rest, it grew numb, and when she’d had to move, the pain would flare through her whole body, not just in its moved part.

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Confronting the silence: An Interview with Monica Cure
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Confronting the silence: An Interview with Monica Cure

Interviewed by Irina Costache

"For me, being able to read these stories fills in a lot of gaps. Many times, it's not because anyone in my family or the Romanians that I grew up with in Detroit are withholding that information, but something that particularly writers can do is make a whole world come alive, a whole time period come alive."

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Between Nostalgia and Uncertainty: A Review of Libuše Moníková’s Transfigured Night (2023, Karolinum Press)
Kate Tsurkan Kate Tsurkan

Between Nostalgia and Uncertainty: A Review of Libuše Moníková’s Transfigured Night (2023, Karolinum Press)

Reviewed by Anna West

Libuše Moníková’s Transfigured Night (2023, Karolinum Press) was published in German in 1996 under the title Verklärte Nacht and was only recently translated from German into English by Anne Posten. It is the last completed novel by a writer of Czech origin who nevertheless identified herself as a German author.

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Soňa and children
Kate Tsurkan Kate Tsurkan

Soňa and children

by Richard Pupala
Translated from Slovak by Julia and Peter Sherwood

The faces around Soňa, the curious ones as well as those who were shocked, gradually turned expressionless as if something had switched them off, all but one that remained unforgivingly distinct. She had to flee from Peter’s gaze into the only arms that remained for her.

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Three wartime poems
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Three wartime poems

by Natalka Marynchak
Translated from Ukrainian by Lada Kolomiyets

everyone will have their own story 
of broken paths and breathlessness 
everyone will have their own defended territory 
of roaring and laughing
I now have a heart 
of reinforced concrete
it knows neither pity  
nor comfort 

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Conatus
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Conatus

by Dan Sociu
Translated from Romanian by Monica Cure

I had been in anguish, in anguish, in the light,
from where I had been sent
back into the world, I went into the old dream
where everything was different now though somehow the same
though other
or I was someone else

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Untitled (from "Stitches")
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Untitled (from "Stitches")

by Doina Ioanid
Translated from Romanian by Monica Cure

To be exposed to the harsh air, saturated and heavy with those who came before you. To come into the world as fog takes big bites out of the bark of birch trees and foxes hop around drunk.

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K. 7:00
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K. 7:00

by Krista Szöcs
Translated from Romanian by Monica Cure

they say love will save me from the distances I can’t cross
the distance from here to many meters away measured in footsteps
love will also save me from tiresome fantasies
that inflate my ego and self-confidence
where is my ego and self-confidence?

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We, Internally Displaced Persons
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We, Internally Displaced Persons

by Yevhenii Monastyrskyi

When we made the decision to leave our homes in the midst of a war zone, each one of us consciously chose to remain within the boundaries of our own nation. This choice necessitated a shift from our local identities to our national ones;  perhaps more accurately, it involved allowing our national identities to encompass and overshadow our local ones.

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Phoenix Ashes
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Phoenix Ashes

By Ubah Cristina Ali Farah
Translated from the Italian by Clara Hillis

Scarlette would go to sea. She was a towering and statuesque person, with steadfast legs, wearing tall boots and a black raincoat. Even during the war, after we evacuated, when the estuary would just erupt fountains of sulfur. Steaming geysers would spray into the sky, and she would go to sea. Even when the city caught all ablaze and was devoured by a white heat. Ashes everywhere: an opaque veil against the sun covered the trees, the houses, and every single rowboat. 

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The Dam Keeper
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The Dam Keeper

by Bianca Bellová
Translated from Czech by the author

It’s an interesting thing, you know: since the border’s been open, the deer still won’t cross over into Germany. They couldn’t when it was divided by the Iron Curtain, there used to be a live wire fence which would always shoot flares whenever anyone touched it. The deer learn territoriality from their mothers, right, they memorize where they lead them and so the Czech deer still walk on Czech paths and the German deer on the German paths.

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August
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August

by Kateryna Zarembo
Translated from Ukrainian by Kate Tsurkan

Here, everything seemed unchanged—calm and quiet, as if worries, haste, and war were nonexistent. All you had to do was overlook the remnants of the burned down house across from theirs and the furniture marked by debris, not to mention the occasional air raid alerts on the phone. It was her citadel where nothing was scary.

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Slovo: More than a word
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Slovo: More than a word

by Ada Wordsworth

As we looked up at the plaque listing the names of the writers who had lived here, an air raid siren sounded around us. The sound intermingled with children’s voices in the playground in Slovo’s yard. Many of the writers whose names are on the plaque outside Slovo have been lost to time—their works are unknown even to the most learned of Ukrainian scholars.

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  Too Heavy a Weapon
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 Too Heavy a Weapon

by Marek Šindelka
Translated from Czech by Graeme Dibble

At this point, words were still too heavy a weapon for the boy. But one day, thought Petr, one day he will accomplish things with them. He’ll use them like a picklock to break into the world of various girls and women, make money using words, weave them together into a huge nest of prestige. He might go far: already you could see he had staying power.

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Sand Covered City
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Sand Covered City

by Munawwar Abdulla

Elect a baby as king, why don’t you? I am
played in, loved in, traded in, not
fenced in. Nor do walls protect me.
Perhaps the desert does.

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Breath
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Breath

by Khrystia Vengryniuk
Translated from Ukrainian by Kate Tsurkan

Lolita went to the windowsill and lit the last candle; the others had already been burning for some time. Peering outside, she noticed the evening settling in. She arched her back with a feline-like stretch, scratching it lightly with her slender, sharp nails. Then she ran her fingers through her straight hair—slightly greasy from rosemary oil—elegantly twisting it into a bun and securing it in place with a hairpin.

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