The Portable Museum: An Electronic Journal of Literature in Translation

The Portable Museum is Ox and Pigeon’s digital journal of literature in translation. With each issue, we seek to provide our readers with a sample of the best short stories from around the world. Our initial offering brings together four stories originally published in Spanish by authors from Spain and Latin America.

Fabio Morábito’s “The Mothers” is a surreal account of summer in the city, while Álvaro Bisama’s “Nazi Girl” takes a darkly humorous look into the conflicted mind of a very un-Aryan Chilean Nazi enthusiast as her life unravels. Antonio Ortuño shows why he was chosen by Granta as one of the best young writers working in Spanish today with “The Japanese Garden,” his wry account of a young man’s search for the girl his father paid to be his childhood sweetheart. Last but not least, the great Enrique Vila-Matas contributes “Loves That Last a Lifetime,” recounting an evening of chain smoking and familial tension as a young woman tries to convey the absurdly tragic (or tragically absurd) events of last weekend to her grandmother.