Bio

Nicholas Glastonbury is a writer and translator from the Florida backwaters. His translations of Turkish and Kurdish fiction and poetry have appeared with or are forthcoming from Tilted Axis Press, Comma Press, Soho Press, Sandorf Passage, Nightboat Books, and elsewhere. He holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from the City University of New York Graduate Center. Currently a postdoctoral associate at the Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, he is also a co-editor of the e-zine Jadaliyya. He lives in New York.

Project Description

To support the translation of the novel The Barbarian's Laughter by Sema Kaygusuz from Turkish. Set at a picturesque seaside resort, Kaygusuz's third novel The Barbarian's Laughter is a comedic whodunit. The story begins with someone who keeps urinating all over the hotel every night. The drama plays out as accusations fly and tensions mount, unraveling the deep secrets and troubling contradictions that mark its characters' lives. The cast of eclectic characters includes a gay couple perpetually on the verge of breaking up, gossiping wives, brawling husbands, a group of relatives together for a family reunion, a perpetually frazzled hotel manager, and a boy with a propensity for killing animals. Kaygusuz (b. 1972) credits the wide range of folk tales, legends, and stories she excavated from various dialects and languages during her travels as her greatest sources of inspiration.