Translation editor
Naïma Bouallam
Naïma Bouallam is a literary translator working between Arabic, French, and English. She edits Threadcount's Translation section.
Beats
Published in Threadcount Review
A Day at Actes Sud, and the Long Argument About Place
The French publisher's headquarters in Arles operate on a rhythm that the Paris trade has not quite forgiven for forty-eight years.
Olga Tokarczuk's <em>The Empusium</em> in English: A Long Reading
Antonia Lloyd-Jones's translation of Tokarczuk's 2022 novel reaches English in 2026, and the question of what the book attempts in its conversation with Thomas Mann.
A Marseille Novel in Translation: The Port House
Yacine Halilou's <em>The Port House</em>, translated from the French by Jennifer Higgins for And Other Stories on 2026-06-04, is 286 pages of careful, accumulative work on a single Marseille apartment block between 1972 and 2019.
The Subscription Shop in Ennistymon
A small bookshop in a north Clare market town, operating on an annual subscription model under which members receive one curated book a month and access to a small lending library, considered as one experimental answer to the economics of rural bookselling.
Reading in Translation: Trust, and the Limits of It
An essay on what is required of the reader who reads books written in languages she does not know.
Long-Running Correspondences in the Digital Age
Three contemporary letter writers describe how they have kept a sustained correspondence going across email, paper, and the years between.
A Tokyo Novella in English: The Window Bookshop
Mio Tachibana's 134-page novella, translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton for Tilted Axis Press on 2026-05-13, is small in every way it needs to be. It is also one of the best short books of the year so far.
The Nine Shelves of Morisaki
A small bookshop in the Jimbocho district of Tokyo, run by a man who carries only nine shelves of stock at any time and rotates the inventory completely every three months, considered as a model of editorial bookselling at the smallest possible scale.
Translating Poetry: Three Case Studies from a Difficult Year
Three recent poetry translations, three different solutions to the same impossible problem. Notes on the working choices behind English versions of Akhmatova, Adonis, and a young Vietnamese poet.
Carcanet Press at Fifty: A Manchester Poetry List Considered
Carcanet Press, founded in Oxford in 1969 and based in Manchester since 1972, marks fifty-seven years of continuous publishing in 2026. Naïma Bouallam reviews the spring list and the long arc of the press's poetry catalogue.
Roberto Calasso's Last Books: A Survey of the Late Work
The eleven-volume <em>Opera in Corso</em> in the editions Adelphi and Farrar, Straus and Giroux have produced since Calasso's death in 2021, read for the shape they make together.
Reading Aloud as Adults
A piece on the half-forgotten practice of adults reading to each other, and on what the practice still has to offer two people in the same room.
Anna Mareu at Her Bench: A Translator's Working Day in Catalan
A morning with the Barcelona translator Anna Mareu, whose new English version of Mercè Rodoreda's late stories is out from a small Brooklyn press this autumn.