litro.co.uk

All photographs are credited to Ruben Reehorst.

Message from Eric Akoto, the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Litro

The outgoing decade was one that was influenced by groundbreaking advancements in technology. The first YouTube video was shown, ensuring everyone could have a lead role in their own bedroom. Myspace allowed the same for musicians, making the festival scene blossom throughout the noughties. The growth of social networking sites closed the decade with the crowning of Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire co- founder of Facebook, as Time Magazine’s 2010 Person of the Year (and their youngest recipient) “for connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them, for creating a system of exchanging information: and for changing how we all live our lives”.

Books in the noughties reached new creative and business heights, yet also crashed into artistic and financial oblivion.

JK Rowling did for literature what the King of Pop, Beatles, Elvis rolled into one did for record sales. But JK Rowling aside, the increasing rise of digital technology has blown some fresh air into publishing, opening up back catalogues, allowing literature and especially the short story to reach a wider audience at the click of a button. The Sony reader was launched under the title “the new way to read books” but as became of the Sony Walkman, Apple, the eternal innovators, blew all expectations out of the window with the launch of the Apple iPad- true innovation at its best – suddenly bringing a whole new possibility for lovers of literature.

And so we welcome in a new decade where all are lives may well be an augmented reality. Until then, Litro steps into the breach, as ever with a raft of great writing from the Netherlands.

We bring you you classics; including a poem by Cees Nooteboom, perhaps the greatest living Dutch writer and the opening of Louis Couperus’s great novel Eline Vere. We also bring you the new, the diverse, the strange: Otto de Kat’s troubled soldier: Tessa de Loo’s brilliant depiction of feminine solidarity taken to an extreme: Abdelkader Benali’s oblique exploration of Holland’s uneasy cultural diversity; and Frisian writer Tsead Bruinja’s unique prose poetry.

Wishing you all a glorious welcome into the new decade, and hope you will continue to enjoy reading and supporting Litro Magazine.

Eric Akoto

Editor-in-Chief, Publisher

Contents

1. Eline Vere by Louis Couperus, translated by Ina Rilke

2.  ‘The Attraction’ by D. Hooijer, translated by Liz Waters

3.  ‘The Sweet Factory Girls’ by Tessa de Loo, translated by Josh Pachter

4.  ‘April auf dem lande’, a poem by Cees Nooteboom, translated by David Colmer

5. Man on the Move by Otto de Kat, translated by Sam Garrett

6. ‘Meg’ by Sanneke van Hassel, translated by Imogen Cohen

7.  ‘I drank until I was simple enough to be loved’, a poem by Tsead Bruinja, translated by Willem Groenewegen

8. ‘May the Sun Shine Tomorrow’ by Abdelkader Benali, translated by Susan Massotty

9. January Event Listings by Alexander James.

Litro 101: the Faith Issue

As we enter December, Litro explores the complexities of faith in the following works of short fiction: memory, faithlessness, death, forgiveness and resolve are amongst the many themes woven into the stories that make up our December 2010 issue, 101.

Contents

The Memory Girl by John Asling

Sorry by C.T. Kingston

Yeshiva Student by Larry Lefkowitz

The Godless Boys by Naomi Wood

A Religious Experience by Charlie Hill

Silence by Shusake Endo, with an introduction by Martin Scorsese

Litro no. 100: Contents

Assassins by Ralph Williams

Maxie Baby by Rob Ganley

Cat and Man by Miriam Burke

A Horse Named Peto by Sam Mead

How A Lion Smells by Neil Baker

The Baron’s Tumescence by Peter Browning

Survivor by Caroline England

The End of the Line by Malcolm Gluck

Events Listings by Alex James

List of Contributors

Adam Butler, Fishing for Crab in Arctic Russia
Adam Butler lives in Berlin. As a musician he has released five albums of experimental crunk showtunes under the pseudonym Vert, and has performed throughout Europe, the US and Asia – including, yes, Murmansk. This, his first published story, is an extract from a novel in progress,  provisionally entitled *.

 Peter Hajinian, Forty Rubles
Peter Hajinian lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his wife, their bulldog and chickens. He spends his days writing advertising copy, and his nights either recording radio dramas or visiting friends in the neighbourhood. A lifelong writer, this is his second publication.

William Falo, Russian Strays
William Falo’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Delivered, Deliquent,  Mississippi Crow, Bottom of the World, Cantaraville, 34th Parallel, Skyline Review, First Edition, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Oak Bend Review, The Linnet’s Wings, The View From Here, Open Wide Magazine and many others. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Louisa Phillips, Ipatiev House
Louise Phillips lives in Toronto, Canada. Her work has appeared in Dream Catcher, 3AM Magazine, The Copperfield Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Delinquent and The Dirty Napkin.

Richard House, Max405
Richard House’s novels, Bruiser and Uninvited are published by Serpent’s Tail. His collaborative projects with Chicago-based group Haha are documented online – Uninvited at hahahaha.org. His fiction and co-authored short films have received support from the Arts Council and the UK Film Council. He lectures in creative writing at the University of Birmingham.

Polina Klyukina, Free (translated by Annie Fisher)
Polina Klyukina was born in 1986 in the city of Perm in the Urals. She is currently studying at the Moscow Literary Institute and the Publishing University’s Department of Journalism. Her stories have appeared in leading literary magazines. She was a finalist in the Debut Prize in 2008.