Archipelago Books

20/03/2025

Delighted to read Natasha Wimmer’s perceptive review of H**e Uhart’s A QUESTION OF BELONGING in the New York Review of Books!

“Uhart’s voice can be as pleasingly prosaic as a conversation on the phone with your mother, but she is also canny, wily, funny, and even biting… it’s easy to enjoy Uhart without theorizing, just relishing her off-kilter way of seeing the world and her companionable presence.” 

Art by Ruby Ash.

13/03/2025

“The best book on Haiti in a very long time . . . Cécé grabs us by the throat from the start, tightens the grip with each chapter, relaxes later on, then grips us again at the end, leaving us speechless” —Danny Laferrière

Cécé is a record of a woman clawing back control. Her smartphone is her window to the world—she posts images of her cité (Port-au-Prince), her toes, militant gang members, gullies crossing the sky. Prophète’s novel is fierce and devastating, a searing account of the commodification of violence in a digitized age. We’ll publish Aidan Rooney’s vivid translation this September, with a painting by Pascale Monnin on the cover.

11/03/2025

There are a few remaining tickets for Saturday’s salon! Mezzo-soprano Inbhal Hever and pianist Nathaniel LaNasa will bring the songs of Kurt Weill and Francis Poulenc to life (with wine and hors d’oeuvres aplenty). If you’re in the New York area, we hope you will reserve a ticket, which we’re offering on a sliding scale 🌷

11/03/2025

06/03/2025

Frankétienne (1936-2025) was an artist in the fullest sense of the word, one whose innovation, spiritual worldview, and resolute sense of justice could not be contained. Widely considered the “father of Haitian letters,” his novels, poems, plays, and paintings responded to the political turbulence and censorship of his country with breathtaking imagination and color. Frankétienne died on Thursday, February 20 in Port-au-Prince, where he lived his entire life. He was 88 years old and had completed over 60 novels and five thousand paintings. We are deeply saddened to say goodbye.

Join a virtual rasanblaj tomorrow at 1:30PM EST to celebrate Frankétienne’s incredibly spirited life: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/p0OIWaOOSNivZIDZegJS7g #/registration

05/03/2025

A very successful board meeting.

11/02/2025

Today we publish our first novel translated from Indonesian: Felix Nesi’s debut novel, PEOPLE FROM OETIMU, translated by Lara Norgaard. In tense, laconic sentences, Nesi brings us to Oetimu where currents of colonialism still seethe. Drawing from a robust oral tradition, Nesi’s refractive lens moves through generational threads that touch and clash in the present. It’s a gripping read, and you can now purchase a copy directly on our site!

04/02/2025

As we work on finalizing catalogs for our upcoming season, we’ve been contemplating catalogs from early Archipelago days — with cover photographs by our very own publisher, Jill Schoolman. Feel free to DM us if you’d like a preview of our newest catalog, featuring recent and forthcoming titles 📚

16/01/2025

There is still time to register for Center for Fiction’s “Reading Around the World” discussion group with Morley Musick! Participants will be guided through Elias Khoury’s GATE OF THE SUN, Louis Couperus‘ ELINE VERE, and Maylis de Kerangal’s CANOES in an intimate, online discussion.

Meeting dates are 1/28, 2/18, 3/11, and you can sign up here: https://centerforfiction.org/group-workshop/reading-around-the-world-with-archipelago-books-and-morley-musick/

13/01/2025

Kick off your new year by joining us at Community Bookstore this Friday for a celebration of C.F. Ramuz, whose GREAT FEAR ON THE MOUNTAIN we published this past summer. Bill Johnston will join fellow Archipelago translator Tess Lewis for a conversation around his translation of this haunting Swiss masterpiece. This event will begin at 7pm (wine and nibbles will be present).

06/01/2025

What a treat to see beautiful reviews of Rocío Araya’s HEAD IN THE CLOUDS and Claude Ponti’s MEESELPHE in the New York Times! Leonard Marcus praises Araya’s “preference for coloring outside the lines, for painting in bold, broad, thickly applied brushstrokes and for combining paint with a well-choreographed jumble of collaged, sketched and hand-lettered elements” which allow Araya to remain “fearlessly open to life’s accidents and surprises.” And in Ben Hatke’s spirited review of MEESELPHE, he urges us to take Ponti’s world to a quiet corner and devour (again and again) its “psychedelic realm of optical illusions.”

09/12/2024

In the spirit of the season, you can now enjoy 40% off our titles with the coupon HOLIDAY40 (thru 12/14). Our tiny team will work tirelessly to bundle your orders up before the end of the month! Happy reading and happy holidays, from all of us at the Archipelago office 💌

05/12/2024

It’s a tremendous honor to see Eliana Hernández-Pachón‘s narrative poem, THE BRUSH, named a top ten book of the year by ! The staff of The Atlantic praised Robin Myers “limpid translation” which “captures a community ruptured by violence, exemplified by two lovers caught in its churn.” Congratulations to , , and the other remarkable writers on this list.

02/12/2024

TOMORROW NIGHT: In conjunction with , Paul Eprile and Jody Gladding (two brilliant Giono translators) will discuss Eprile’s translation of Giono’s FRAGMENTS OF A PARADISE. This will be a virtual event (5 PM PST / 8 PM EST)—register using the link below.

https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/
WN_InmjVPoyScWMLkmIVhn8ug #/registration

02/12/2024

TOMORROW NIGHT: In conjunction with , Paul Eprile and Jody Gladding (two brilliant Giono translators) will discuss Eprile’s translation of FRAGMENTS OF A PARADISE. This will be a virtual event (5 PM PST / 8 PM EST) — register using the link below.

https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_InmjVPoyScWMLkmlVhn8ug #/registration

14/11/2024

We’re delighted to see Maylis de Kerangal’s new story collection, CANOES, in The New Yorker! Translated by Jessica Moore, CANOES shows a “deep sensitivity to language” as it pulls readers through the textures and tones of the human voice. Purchase your copy (+ de Kerangal’s EASTBOUND) on our site 💌

12/11/2024

Today we publish Elias Khoury’s STAR OF THE SEA, translated from Arabic by Humphrey Davies. “Absurd and original” says Zain Khalid, “STAR OF THE SEA is more proof that to read Elias Khoury is to conjure alongside a genius.” With surging prose, STAR OF THE SEA investigates the fixidness of identity as it traces Adam Dannoun’s life, from his war-torn beginnings in Israel’s Lydia ghetto to his exile in New York. Adam faces the silence (and silencing) of his people firsthand—as readers we bear witness to a life fractured by this divide.

08/11/2024

We’re delighted to see Maylis de Kerangal’s new story collection, CANOES, in The New Yorker this week! In Jessica Moore’s translation, CANOES shows a “deep sensitivity to language” as it pulls readers through the textures and tones of the human voice.