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 protests that I knew I would have to read her work.

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…

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…

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 Tuesday, July 16th, 2026…

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 indictment of empire told through the eyes of an Irish farmer's son, who goes to work for the British military police during the nineteenth century and finds himself caught up in India's first labour uprising.

catflap is Outburst’s acclaimed annual publication of smart new queer writing with a disco heart. It’s a space for exciting queer thinking, beyond the academic to where pop culture meets queer ideas a...

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 about.

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 and, if you’re brave, out of your safe literary spaces.’ The…

Listen to Blogcast: final preparations by Ann Morgan #np on #SoundCloud

Join me as I recount my exciting journey at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, engaging with students and fellow writers.

Just a week after I returned from the Dibrugarh University International Literature Festival in Assam, India, I jetted off again, this time to take part in the 25th annual Hong Kong International Literary Festival. My engagements there began with an intense schedule of school visits. Jetlag notwithstanding, I was picked up at 7.15am on my first morning by one of the festival's brilliant team of volunteers, a committed network of writers and book lovers based in Hong Kong.

That summer we self-destructed more than we ever had before, and yet we had never been more full of life. Mum looked like a houseplant that had been taken out to the balcony. I looked like a lobotomised criminal. We were, finally, a family. Moldova was one of the trickiest European countries to source an English translation from when I set out to read a book from every country in 2012.

Last week I returned to Dibrugarh in Assam, India, for the third year running to take part in the Dibrugarh University International Literature Festival (DUILF). It's a long journey for me to get to this part of the world – this time complicated by a cancelled flight – but it's always worth it and it has been my great privilege to be a part of this extraordinary event designed to bring literature to young people in this traditionally marginalised region since its inception.

In the midst of some pretty gloomy headlines over the last month or so, online African literature magazine Brittle Paper brought heartening news. Its 100 Notable African Books of 2025 shows up some encouraging trends: around a third of the titles on the list are translated from a broad spread of languages, including Shona, Malagasy and Arabic. What's more, in addition to works by globally renowned names such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Abdulrazak Gurnah (my…

Join So and Ann to discuss So’s latest book Bad Language and the general politics of language - there will also be the opportunity to ask So questions at the end of the conversation. In Bad Langua...

Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Relearning to Read? Adventures in Not Knowing. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.

Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Relearning to Read? Adventures in Not Knowing. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.

‘What have you got in that you’re excited about?’ I asked Hunter at the Folkestone Bookshop when I popped in a while back. As often happens when I walk into that place, this was t…

'What have you got in that you're excited about?' I asked Hunter at the Folkestone Bookshop when I popped in a while back. As often happens when I walk into that place, this was the start of a long, fascinating conversation, in which I was ushered from shelf to shelf and table to table, and shown multiple tempting titles, many of them originally written in languages other than English.

Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Relearning to Read? Adventures in Not Knowing. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.

KOCHI: After decades in the shadows, the Malayalam translation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula — first published in 1975 — will return to print in January 2026. For pu

Good news! If you've been wanting to try my incomprehension workshop, your chance has come! I'll be offering a virtual taster session and chatting to super reader, blogger and all-round translation champion Marina Sofia at 7.30pm (UK time) on Tuesday 20 January 2026. Over the past few years I've run the workshop with readers of all ages from 10 upwards around the world, most recently for the fourth time at the Cheltenham Literature Festival (pictured above).

Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Relearning to Read? Adventures in Not Knowing. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.

This sporadic post covering all manner of things I’ve recently read, watched and done is where I hold forth on matters both serious and silly. You are invited along for the ride.

A new podcast episode with a writer who has travelled the entire world (in books)

As followers of this blog will know, my hero is Tété-Michel Kpomassie, the author of the landmark travel memoir An African in Greenland, translated by James Kirkup, which was my Togolese choice for my 2012 project to read a book from every country. After the book was rereleased as a Penguin Modern Classic in 2021, Kpomassie and I became friends.

Author Tété-Michel Kpomassie moved from Togo to the Arctic nation 60 years ago. Now he’s back, hosting a small-ship cruise up the west coast

Books come to me from many directions these days. Emails from publishers. Messages from readers of this blog. Suggestions from other writers. Reviews. Social media posts. Conversations with booklovers around the world. In many cases, I hear about books before they are available. And while I try not to focus on the latest thing on this blog (because good books have long tails and I think the relentless emphasis on the new is one of the book industry’s many problems), I frequently find myself tempted to pre-order things that will be published months down the line.