Bewilder
$17.00
Additional Info
- ISBN: 9781966192121
- Size: 6" x 7"
- Pages: 200
- Publication Date: March 16, 2027
A bestiary for our (insane) times, featuring stories from Korea, Poland, Spain, Argentina, Catalonia, India, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
Dark, surprising, and cheeky, the nine stories in Bewilder stray outside the bounds of domestic life to confront just what it means to be a living creature on this planet. A woman transforms into a camel whenever she gets the urge to end her life. A pig goddess decides to reincarnate as a human to spread her pig gospel. Rabbits come under the sway of a cultish leader, storks attack a city in a gruesome take on Hitchcock’s The Birds, and a prisoner bitterly observes the rats that come and go from his cell. Exploring themes of violence, language, power, and liberation, these stories are no mere fables. They are a piercing warning cry.
The Calico series, published biannually by Two Lines Press, captures vanguard works of translated literature in stylish, collectible editions. Each Calico is a vibrant snapshot that explores one aspect of our present moment, offering the voices of previously inaccessible, highly innovative writers from around the world today.
Table of Contents
Fiction
Where the Green Whale Lives
Sunwoo Lim
Lim Sunwoo is one of the most exciting young voices in contemporary Korean literature. She won the Munhak Sasang New Writer’s Award in 2019, and her short story “Where the Green Whale Lives” was awarded the prestigious Kim Youjeong Writer’s Award in 2023. This story is included in her short story collection 초록은 어디에나 [Green is everywhere]. She is also the author of With the Heart of a Ghost, which was recently published in English translation by Unnamed Press. Her work is celebrated for its whimsical yet piercing exploration of isolation and human connection
Books
Rima Mukherjee
Rima Mukherjee is an emerging literary translator and a current fellow at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea). An alumna of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, she transitioned from a career as a technical translator at Samsung to focusing on her true love: burying her nose in the stories people tell. She is a graduate of the 2025 BCLT Summer School Korean Editing Workshop and specializes in feminist and experimental fiction.
from Rise and Fall of the Rabbit Bam
Lisa Dillman
Lisa Dillman is a mediocre swimmer and award-winning translator who teaches Spanish and translation at Emory University. She has translated thirty-some novels by Latin American and Spanish authors, including six by Andrés Barba. She is currently working on his most recent novel, Rise and Fall of the Rabbit Bam.
A Cat Story
Dorothy Tse
Dorothy Tse is a writer from Hong Kong. Her debut novel, Owlish, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, and her short story collection, Snow and Shadow, was longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award. A cofounder of the literary journal Fleurs des Lettres, she has received the Hong Kong Book Prize, the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature, and Taiwan’s Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award. Her novel City Like Water came out with Graywolf Press in March 2026.
Books
Natascha Bruce
Natascha Bruce translates from Chinese. Her work includes Lonely Face by Yeng Pway Ngon (shortlisted for the TA First Translation Prize), Bloodline by Patigül, Lake Like a Mirror by Ho Sok Fong (shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation), A Classic Tragedy by Xu Xiaobin (co-translated with Nicky Harman), and Mystery Train by Can Xue. She was awarded a 2021 PEN/Heim grant for Owlish by Dorothy Tse. She and Tse were among the winners of the 2019 Words Without Borders Poems in Translation Contest.
The Conquered City of Storks
Anna Dodas Noguer
Anna Dodas Noguer (1962–1986) was an award-winning Catalan writer and musician whose life was cut short at twenty-three. Author of poetry collections and short stories (her second poetry collection and the short stories, posthumously), she has had her complete poems translated into Spanish, English, and French (forthcoming). Her short stories explore and reframe myth, fearlessly crossing the borders between the observed and the uncanny, between transformation and horror, with a language rich in musical echoes and cadence.
Books
Marialena Carr
Marialena Carr translates from Catalan and Spanish. Recent translations appear in The Common, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry Northwest, New England Review, and are forthcoming in The Georgia Review, The London Magazine, and the anthology Strange Flowers: Uruguayan Women Poets (Dialogos Books).
from The Revelation of the Pig Goddess
Kate Webster
Kate Webster is a translator of Polish to English specializing in literature, academic texts, and the arts. Her published translations include works of fiction, fantasy, and reportage, as well as children’s books and comics. Her work has been shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation (2024) and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize (2023), and longlisted for the International Booker Prize (2024). She is based in London.
Rawson's Question
from Goose
Rats in a Cement Cell
How Humans Acquire Language
Praise
Praise for the Calico series
“These Calico books are a total joy, both in form and in content. The books come in a curious trim size (or rather a couple curious trim sizes, although I think they’ve stabilized in their square format now after a few larger-sized volumes) that fits nicely in the hand and every single one of them promises a wealth of discovery for the internationally curious reader: Ukrainian poetry, Swahili fiction, queer Brazilian stories, Latin American horror, and so much more.”—Lit Hub, “A Small Press Book We Love”
“Unbelievably exciting… These are poems to read and reread, repeating the lines as though they were a secret between yourself and the page.”—The Paris Review on Home: New Arabic Poems
“This eclectic bilingual anthology from queer Brazilian writers, both living and dead, is as expansive and full of life as the country itself…enticing and poignant.”—Publishers Weekly on Cuíer: Queer Brazil
“Visible approaches translation as an act that occurs not only between languages but also between media and disciplines… Thoughtfully curated… Past and present come together in a refreshingly collaborative spirit.”—Brooklyn Rail on Visible
“An absorbing sampler of the literary feast available in Africa’s most widely spoken language, No Edges should leave readers eager to discover more Swahili writers.”—Shailja Patel, author of Migritude, on No Edges
“For the women highlighted in this collection, the act of writing is one of critical defiance that gives voice to voiceless women and, further, engages in the creation of a redefined Caribbean femininity that defies patriarchal or colonial coercion… Elektrik is translation operating as good translation should: as a megaphone for writers who might otherwise remain unheard in the Western canon.”—Barrelhouse on Elektrik