Why do we travel? To meet others and find ourselves, to touch the world and uncover “Cosmic Connections.” Illustrated by Singaporean guest artist Shay Xie, Asymptote’s Spring 2019 edition takes you to 27 countries across five continents, from ancient Greece to modern China. In the “homeland” of literature (Dubravka Ugrešić), “all roads lead anywhere” (Georgi Gospodinov). They also introduce you to fascinating characters, such as Sergio Chejfec’s “Pure Foreigner,” Samanta Schweblin’s birdeater, and Wang Shuo’s unwilling transsexual, who all help you “imagine being an other” (Jenni Råback) despite problems of representation that Viet Thanh Nguyen and Mohsen Namjoo illuminate. If you’re not one for Kim Man-Jung’s “head-spinning escapades,” let Frederika Randall invite you into “the empty space” on the other side of a text. Hers is just one of six essays in our wildcard Special Feature celebrating and defending the courageous art of translation.

Kateryna Kalytko also brings you into the headspace of a translator albeit via fiction in her moving tale of loss and redemption that unfolds through a series of flashbacks while its wheelchair-bound protagonist hurtles down a slope. For the Tanzanian narrator of Adam Shafi’s Far From Home, movement has been an obsession ever since “the spirit of travel came to possess [him]”—he stops at nothing to gain passage on a ship. Sometimes we’re called to cross an ocean, and other times to bridge a gulf, as Daniel Guebel does in exploring a complex father-son relationship and considering the baggage that comes with being the titular “Jewish Son.”

Hungarian author Zoltán Gábor probes a similar inheritance in his nonfiction, wondering what traumas we carry within us when his daughter starts having dreams of concentration camps. Elsewhere, dreams lead travelers to riches. In “The Dream of a Baghdad Night,” Abdelfattah Kilito delves deep into a story from One Thousand and One Nights to conclude that “a treasure is never where you think it is.” Nor is material treasure something we should set our sights on, according to a fresh translation of The Nine Cloud Dream reviewed by critic Katherine Beaman. Gertrud Kolmar’s poems from Animal Dreams take us to otherworldly oneiric spaces full of longing and an “ache unnamed,” echoing National Book Award finalist Diana Khoi Nguyen’s artwork in memory of a brother who cut himself out of family photographs, foreshadowing inexplicable suicide.

“A thousand souls, a thousand different plans,” mused Euripides more than two millennia ago; at Asymptote, though the souls among us may come and go, we’ve stuck to the same plan for close to a full decade already. But it hasn’t been easy. If you recognize the importance of our mission, or have personally benefited from our work in some significant way, please consider getting involved as a sustaining member or a masthead member from as little as USD5 a month. Subscribing to our Book Club is another way to keep us around. If you’re interested in joining our team, there’s good news! We are expanding—check out our second recruitment call of the year here (internships are also available for certain positions). As always, we invite submissions on a rolling basis; if you are a translator of Yiddish poetry, take note of our just-released call for the Summer 2019 Special Feature. Between our issues, don’t forget to check out our daily blog, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Keep it under wraps for now, but we will soon unveil a new contest—judged by a Nobel Prizewinner! Subscribe to our newsletter to be among the first to know. Help us continue to be your one-stop destination for cosmic connections.

—Lee Yew Leong, Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Team for Issue April 2019

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

Senior Editor: Sam Carter (USA)

Assistant Managing Editors: Janani Ganesan (India), Josefina Massot (Argentina), Rachael Pennington (Spain/UK), Garrett Phelps (UK/USA), Lou Sarabadzic (UK/France), and Jacob Silkstone (Norway/UK)

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

Editor of Special Feature on Creative Reflections on Translation: Sam Carter (USA)

Assistant Editors: Alyea Canada (USA), Erik Noonan (USA), Garrett Phelps (UK/USA), Chris Power (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)

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: Barbara Thimm (USA/Germany)

Editor-at-Large, Albania: Barbara Halla
Editors-at-large, Brazil: Lara Norgaard and Daniel Persia
Editor-at-large, Chile: Scott Weintraub
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, Iran: Poupeh Missaghi
Editor-at-large, Lebanon: Ruba Abughaida
Editor-at-large, Mexico: Paul Worley 
Editor-at-large, Morocco: Hodna Nuernberg
Editor-at-large, Romania and Moldova: MARGENTO
Editor-at-large, Spain: Manel Mula Ferrer
Editor-at-large, Slovakia: Julia Sherwood
Editor-at-large, Taiwan: Vivian Chih


Masthead for Issue April 2019

Fiction and Poetry: Lee Yew Leong
Nonfiction: Joshua Craze
Drama: Caridad Svich
Criticism: Ellen Jones
Writers on Writers: Ah-reum Han and Victoria Livingstone
Special Feature: Creative Reflections on Translation: Sam Carter
Visual: Eva Heisler
Interviews: Henry Ace Knight
Illustrations and Cover: Shay Xie

Chief Executive Assistants: Sasha Burik and Lucy Morgan
Director of Outreach: Alessandro Mondelli
Senior Executive Assistants: Alice Fischer
Executive Assistant: Tanya Singh
Book Club Manager: Sydney Sims

Assistant Blog Editors: Jonathan Egid, Nina Perrotta, and Xiao Yue Shan

Guest Artist Liaison: Berny Tan

Co-Chief Copy Editor: Catilin O’Neil

Copy Editors: Andrea Blatz, Angela Glindemann, Alice Horne, Clayton McKee, Steven Teref, and Lara Zammit

Technical Manager: József Szabó

Responsive Layout Designer: Ben Saff

English Social Media: Ananya Sriram and Carlotta Moro

Spanish Social Media: Sergio Serrano

French Social Media: Filip Noubel 

Chinese Social Media: Jiaoyang Li and Jessica Wang

Marketing Manager: Lauren Chamberlain

Marketing Analyst: Nicolas Llano Linares

Graphic Designers: Lotus Lien

Communications Managers: Alexander Dickow, Emma Page, and Victoria Miluch

Assistant Director, Educational Arm: Barbara Thimm

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

Asymptote would like to acknowledge the support of: Geneviève Lebrun-Taugourdeau, James Mwilaria, Jean-Michel Decimo, Johanna Hanink, Kelvin Ang, Madeleine Cohen, Margot Miriel, and Trisha Peck at Omnidawn Publishing, Inc. 

For their generous donations, our heartfelt thanks go too to Agnieszka Gabor, Anna Aresi, Audrey Hansen, Chris Power, Daniel Hahn, Danielle Farnbaugh, Elizabeth Raible, Fiona Le Brun, Hanna Golab, Jeffrey Boyle, Julian Anderson, Julie Hillery, Justin Briggs, Mallory Truckenmiller, Marilya Veteto, Mark Cohen, Martin Ingebrigtsen, Mary Olivanti, Matthew Mazowita, Monty Reid, Ruth Diver, Siobhan Mei, Velina Manolova, and Yeddanapudi Radhika.