This book came onto my radar when we invited London-based Belarusian poet and translator Hanna Komar to be a guest on Collected , the podcast I produce for the Royal Literary Fund. The conversation that resulted with fellow poet Julia Copus was extremely powerful. Komar spoke with such poise and clarity about her writing and her experience being imprisoned for nine days after the 2020 Belarusian p

This Women in Translation month, I’m featuring a collection of short stories by the Lebanese writer and critic Lana Abdelrahman . I had the pleasure of meeting and sharing a stage with Abdelrahman at the Dibrugarh University International Literature Festival in Assam, India, earlier this year. When we said goodbye, she generously pressed a copy of her short story collection A Spell of Longing , tr

As the heatwaves rippled across Europe, one summer novel held me gripped. It comes from Foundry Editions, an indie publisher set up in 2023 to champion literature from around the Mediterranean and notable, like fellow leading internationalist houses Fitzcarraldo and And Other Stories, for their distinctive covers (in this case designed to capture the visual heritage of the region they celebrate).

It’s been my pleasure to be involved with a number of podcasts focusing on reading and/or translation in recent months in various capacities – as a guest, interviewer and producer. As such, I thought I’d give a roundup of some of my favourites, not least because I suspect people who like this blog would enjoy them. The Books Up Close podcast is a reading nerd’s delight, focusing on all things clos

For anyone who’s interested, there’s a rare opportunity to join one of my Incomprehension Workshops online next week. Hosted by the Interfaith Center in Oxford, Ohio, US, this virtual, 90-minute workshop is open to anyone, anywhere in the world. Simply register here . Full details below. Hope to see you there! The Incomprehension Workshop with Ann Morgan Thursday, July 16th, 2026 11:30 AM PT | 2:3

If you’ve never heard of Jeyamohan, I wouldn’t be surprised. Until recently, his work wasn’t widely available in English outside India. That is starting to change: next month Hachette in the UK (and FSG Originals in the US) is bringing out his novel White Elephant , translated from the Tamil by Priyamvada Ramkumar. This was the first I read of his works and I was blown away by it – a harrowing ind

Last month I had the honour of introducing the Indie Press Network’s spring showcases, two virtual events presenting some of the key titles coming out from small presses in the UK and Ireland in the next few months. As indie presses have long been the heartland of translated literature, I was only too pleased to have the opportunity to hear publishers present some of the books they’re most excited

Eight months after the launch of the paperback of Relearning to Read: Adventures in Not-knowing , the ebook edition has hit the virtual shelves. It’s been lovely and humbling to see responses to the book so far. Prospect magazine called it ‘a genius move… In 12 short chapters it rips up the rules about reading and reminds us about fiction’s greatest strength: that it lets you step out of your life

‘I wonder if you’ve considered any books from Tibet so far,’ Chris Peacock wrote in a comment on this blog a few weeks back. ‘In recent years, there have been an increasing number of translations from so-called “minority” peoples and languages in China such as Uyghur, Mongolian, and Tibetan. Still a small number, relatively speaking, but there are some really significant books out there. My transl

This book came onto my radar during the brilliant event about writing female experience I attended at Hong Kong International Literary Festival earlier this month. The panel featured three local authors, who spoke arrestingly about how they capture the pressures facing young women in Hong Kong today. As soon as I heard the premise of the title story of Ysabelle Cheung’s debut collection, Patchwork