Behold the many shapes of Asymptote’s Fall 2018 issue! Featuring never-before-published work from 31 countries by authors such as Osama Alomar, Jon Fosse, Elvira Hernández, Abdellah Taïa, and Nguyễn Đức Tùng, this brand-new edition brims with dazzling alchemy. Acclaimed Iranian writer Yadollah Royaee joins trailblazing French poet Liliane Giraudon, both experimenters always ready to renew themselves. Reviewed by Dylan Suher, Xiao Hong’s Ma Bole is reborn in Howard Goldblatt’s translation and completion of her unfinished novel seventy-five years after her premature death at age thirty-one. In a generous interview, Phillip Lopate reflects on the metamorphic affective life of the essayist.

Our Catalan Fiction Feature, made possible by the Institut Ramon Llull, showcases even more novel forms, including that of twentieth-century writer J. V. Foix, who plunges into the diversity of the sea “pseudomorphized, [his] body…a dense fabric of stony snails, antediluvian clams, delicious bleached miniatures of animals.” Reemerging onto a sunny beach, we cross paths with “The Lady With the Little Dog, by Anton Chekhov,” yet how closely do Neus Canyelles’s reimagined figures resemble Anna Sergeyevna and Dmitri Gurov? Elsewhere, in a similar gesture, George Prevedourakis adapts Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” into his own vision of contemporary Greece, while Jean Frémon’s Now, Now, Louison channels the speech and personality of famed artist Louise Bourgeois. Like translation itself, each of these transformations filters text through a writerly imagination.

We all do the same in our most humble missives. In Ana Luísa Amaral’s “Odyssey,” the envelope is like a cocoon from which the words of the letter finally emerge, fulfilled. Poet Rosmon Tuazon seems to echo that destiny, writing, “In case I run out of words / I will enclose a whisper in an envelope.” From, the evocative title of Tuazon’s chapbook (from which some of his featured poems are taken), gives the epistolary a starring role, as does Irina Odoevtseva’s “Epilogue” with its singularly heartbreaking postscript.

History is woven into many of these intimate stories, for good and ill. For the Senegalese writer Elgas, the postcolonial condition should partly entail the abandonment of malignant traditions like excision or entrenched attitudes like homophobia; for others, like Hubert Matiúwàa, modernity brings only a reduction of cultural difference to more of the same: Pepsi Cola and the corruption of the dollar. Helon Habila describes a similar invasion of modernity, in the form of oil pipelines, into the territory of an ethnic group defended tooth and nail by the great Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa.

We’ve hardly scratched the surface of this issue’s protean forms, so deftly fixed in photography by New York-based guest artist Olaya Barr. In Korean playwright Sam-Shik Pai’s hilarious drama, the narrator morphs mid-sentence into a hairy beast while in Mexican author José Revueltas’s hypnotic fiction, apes turn into people and then back into apes. From opposite ends of the Earth, Hong Kong visual artist Chan Sai-lok and his Brazilian counterpart Guga Szabzon both transform writing into image into word until “the word also becomes flesh” (Breyten Breytenbach).

Join us in discovering every facet of our continent-hopping Fall 2018 edition, Asymptote’s thirty-first, after a month spent celebrating thirty cosmopolitan issues. To switch it up even more, why not join our Book Club, which just distributed its tenth title? By subscribing, each month you’ll receive one of world literature’s latest offerings for as little as 15 USD a book—all while supporting the vital efforts of independent publishers. And don’t forget, Asymptote receives no funding from any institution on an ongoing basis, so we rely on you for our survival: please consider making a one-time donation, or becoming a paying member (starting from just 5 USD a month), so that we can turn this labor of love into something more sustainable. It’s been very tough going these past thirty issues, but with your support, we can make it through the next year (and perhaps the next thirty issues, if enough of you step forward). Our fate is in your hands.

—Lee Yew Leong, Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Team for Issue October 2018

Editor-in-Chief: Lee Yew Leong (Taiwan/Singapore)

Senior Editor: Sam Carter (USA)

Assistant Managing Editors: Josefina Massot (Argentina), Rachael Pennington (Spain/UK), Lou Sarabadzic (UK/France), and Jacob Silkstone (Norway/UK)

Section Editors:
Lee Yew Leong (Taiwan/Singapore)
Aditi Machado (India/USA)
Ellen Jones (UK)
Joshua Craze (UK/USA)
Caridad Svich (USA/UK)
Sam Carter (USA)
Henry Ace Knight (USA)
Ah-reum Han (USA/South Korea)
Eva Heisler (USA)

Editor of Catalan Fiction Feature: Lee Yew Leong (Taiwan/Singapore)

Assistant Editor of Catalan Fiction Feature: Manel Mula Ferrer (Spain)

Assistant Editors: Victoria Livingstone (USA), Georgia Nasseh (UK), Erik Noonan (USA), Garrett Phelps (UK/USA), Andreea Scridon (UK/Romania), Lindsay Semel (Portugal/USA), P. T. Smith (USA), and Lin Chia-wei (Taiwan)

Contributing Editors:
Ellen Elias-Bursac (USA), Aamer Hussein (Pakistan/UK), Sim Yee Chiang (Singapore), Dylan Suher (USA) and Adrian West (USA)

Chinese Contributing Editor: Francis Li Zhuoxiong (Hong Kong/Taiwan)

Translation Tuesdays Editor: Lee Yew Leong (Taiwan/Singapore)

Podcast Editors: Dominick Boyle (Switzerland/USA) and Layla Benitez-James (Spain/USA)

Art Director: Lee Yew Leong (Taiwan/Singapore)

Assistant Director, Educational Arm: Jasmine Gui (Canada/Singapore)

Editor-at-Large, Albania: Barbara Halla
Editor-at-large, Argentina: Sarah Moses 
Editor-at-large, Australia: Tiffany Tsao
Editors-at-large, Brazil: Rita Mattar and Lara Norgaard 
Editor-at-large, Egypt: Omar El Adl
Editor-at-large, El Salvador: Nestor Gomez
Editor-at-large, Guatemala: José García
Editors-at-large, Hong Kong: Jacqueline Leung and Charlie Ng Chak-Kwan
Editor-at-large, Hungary: Diána Vonnák
Editor-at-large, Indonesia: Norman Erikson
Editor-at-large, Iran: Poupeh Missaghi
Editor-at-large, Mexico: Paul Worley 
Editor-at-large, Morocco: Hodna Nuernberg
Editor-at-large, Nigeria: Olufunke Ogundimu
Editor-at-large, Romania and Moldova: MARGENTO
Editor-at-large, Spain: Manel Mula Ferrer
Editor-at-large, Slovakia: Julia Sherwood
Editor-at-large, South Africa: Alice Inggs
Editor-at-large, Taiwan: Vivian Chih


Masthead for Issue October 2018

Fiction: Lee Yew Leong
Nonfiction: Joshua Craze
Poetry: Aditi Machado
Drama: Caridad Svich
Criticism: Ellen Jones
Writers on Writers: Ah-reum Han
Catalan Fiction Feature: Lee Yew Leong
Visual: Eva Heisler
Interviews: Henry Ace Knight
Illustrations and Cover: Olaya Barr

Chief Executive Assistant: Sasha Burik
Senior Executive Assistants: Alice Fischer and Daljinder Johal
Executive Assistants: Alessandro Mondelli and Tanya Singh
Book Club Manager: Sydney Sims

Assistant Blog Editors: Ilker Hepkaner and Chloe Lim

Assistant Interviews Editor: Claire Jacobson

Guest Artist Liaison: Berny Tan

Co-Chief Copy Editors: Bruno George and Catilin O’Neil

Copy Editors: Lorenzo Andolfatto, Anna Aresi, Clayton McKee, Steven Teref, Lara Zammit

Technical Manager: József Szabó

Responsive Layout Designer: Ben Saff

English Social Media: Ananya Sriram and Enyseh Teimory

Spanish Social Media: Sergio Serrano

French Social Media: Filip Noubel 

Chinese Social Media: Jiaoyang Li and Jessica Wang

Newsletter Editor: Maxx Hillery

Marketing Managers: Giorgos Kassiteridis, Lauren Chamberlain, and Marina Sofia

Marketing Analyst: Nicolas Llano Linares

Graphic Designers: Chloe Barreau and Lotus Lien

Ebook Designer: Eliza Chen 

Communications Managers: Alexander Dickow and Emma Page

Assistant Director, Educational Arm: Jasmine Gui 

Educational Arm Assistants: Kasia Bartoszyńska, Mary Hillis, Maria Snyder, and Cara Zampino

Asymptote would like to acknowledge the support especially of:


 


without whom the Catalan Fiction Feature could not have happened. We also wish to thank Marc Dueñas, Maria Jesus Alonso Vicario, Lawrence Venuti, Claire Dee, Jacqueline Sathar, Galina Dursthoff, and Tynan Kogane.

For their generous donations, our heartfelt thanks go too to Joachim Redner, Pavlos Stavropoulos, Ann Berk, Geoffrey Howe, Il Park, Julie Hillery, Martha Gifford, Matthew Mazowita, Ruth Diver, Jeffrey Boyle, Velina Manolova, Mark Cohen, Siobhan Mei, Monica Timms, Daniel Hahn, and Anna Aresi.