The results of our first-ever essay contest are in! Esteemed judge J. M. Coetzee picked one winner and two runners-up to receive USD500 and USD250 in prizes respectively. All winners are showcased in our Winter 2020 edition, and Coetzee’s citations are below.

As always, this contest is made possible by your support for Asymptote. (Despite a London Book Fair award under our belt, we do not receive institutional support on any ongoing basis.) Sustaining members are the backbone of our mission to advocate for emerging translators, as well as for a more inclusive world literature. Help us toward the next edition of our translation contest by signing up as a sustaining member from as little as $5 a month. Pledge a year’s support and you’ll even bag a special 2020 edition AsympTOTE, while stocks last. So, don’t wait, join the Asymptote family today.

Contest Winner:

• Jonathan Cohen on Pedro Mir

Runners-up:  

• Lara Norgaard on Putu Oka Sukanta

• Manuel Antonio Castro Córdoba on Alberto Laiseca

J. M. Coetzee’s citations

Note 1. I have taken it as my job to judge these essays first of all as pieces of persuasive writing, meant in each case to introduce and plead the case of a neglected author. To supplement the essays, I have read as much of the work of each author as I can easily lay my hands on—not only the selections quoted in the essays but also what is accessible via the internet. I have done so in order to check that the writer is indeed neglected, and that the essay-writer’s estimate is not an obviously inflated one.

Note 2. Because Asymptote is published in English, I have taken the term “neglected” to mean neglected in the Anglophone sphere. A number of the writers discussed are available in French or German translation but not in English.

Pedro Mir (1913-2000), declared a non-person under the Trujillo dictatorship but widely accepted nowadays as the Dominican Republic’s greatest poet, is barely known in the Anglophone world. Jonathan Cohen makes a persuasive case that he is in the same league as his contemporary Pablo Neruda, arguing the claim with undisguised enthusiasm, and supporting it with insightful commentary and exemplary quotation from Mir’s work.

Putu Oka Sukanta (born 1939) has had the misfortune to live and work in the shadow of the great Pramoedya Ananta Toer. A fraction of Putu Oka’s poetry and fiction has appeared in English translation, but only from small presses. Lara Norgaard makes a compelling case that his work should not be judged by Western aesthetic standards, which prize the fully achieved single art-work, but rather should be read in toto as the record of an evolving meditation on Indonesia in our times.

Alberto Laiseca (1941-2016) is a writer of fiction which can be loosely characterized as futuristic but in fact crosses all generic boundaries. He has a cult following in his native Argentina but his major prose work, the 1300-page Los Sorios, is barely to be found in bookstores. Some of his work is available in French translation, none in English. Manuel Antonio Castro Córdoba argues persuasively for his status as a visionary writer of our times, but wryly notes that—as with most Latin American writers—until he is championed in New York he will not be respected at home.