The Fall issue of Asymptote, “Transfigurations,” is now live. Our nets cast wide, we showcase never-before-published work by some of the most beloved figures working in world literature: Jon Fosse, Osama Alomar, Breyten Breytenbach, and Margaret Jull Costa. In our Catalan Fiction Special Feature, we present celebrated writers J. V. Foix, Cèlia Suñol, and Manuel Baixauli alongside emerging voices that represent the future of Catalan literature: Najat El Hachmi, Marta Rojals, and Neus Canyelles.
This edition’s many protean forms are 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 then back into apes again. Hong Kong visual artist Chan Sai-lok and his Brazilian counterpart Guga Szabzon both transform writing into image into word. In a generous interview, Phillip Lopate reflects on the metamorphic affective life of the essayist.
Nguyễn Đức Tùng’s moving account of memory loss in exile opens a powerful nonfiction section that bears witness to a swiftly changing world. In this issue’s poetry, George Prevedourakis adapts Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” into his own vision of contemporary Greece while Elvira Hernández weaves fragments of the story of Chile into her vision of the Chilean flag, swelling up “like an ulcerated belly.”
Flags become a disease, a people, a history. Everything becomes something else, but Asymptote marches ever onward, after a month celebrating 30 issues. Share our work in the physical world with our Fall 2018 flyer, or join us on Facebook and Twitter as we push our fabulous content out into the world. Each like, share, or retweet will help us reach new readers! If you’re inclined to tweet about the new issue, here’s a suggestion:
Hooray, @asymptotejrnl’s Fall 2018 issue is here! Featuring new work from 31 countries (including Togo, a first) and a Special Feature uncovering the best Catalan fiction beyond Mercè Rodoreda. Share the new edition far and wide: http://asymptotejournal.com/oct-2018
If you are from a high-profile media outlet, and would like to cover this new issue in an article, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us for an interview. Before we leave you, here’s a snippet of J. V. Foix’s Notes on El Port de la Selva, translated by Lawrence Venuti:
Stretched out on the endless beach, I saw how the raging waves hurled a body identical to mine, in a fossilized state. I sought, in vain, to stand up. Pseudomorphized, my body was a dense fabric of stony snails, antediluvian clams, delicious bleached miniatures of animals that have grown extinct. In the depths of rare interstices, a transparent membrane revealed marvelous underwater landscapes where the signs of the zodiac were floating luminous. Through the dark passageway crossing the rock Teiera, which facing east encloses the horizon, an extraordinary procession of monsters advanced: octopuses with camel feet, giants with horse heads, Herculean hands supported by the thinnest ostrich legs, eyes with phosphorescent corneas between enormous scaly eyelashes. If only the sea, transformed into a single black wave, might cover the entire earth! But the sea, in its transition at dusk, is a vast slab of onyx, whereon stars reflect their flaming red arteries and trace mysterious, inaccessible deltas.
Finally, a quick reminder that, although this issue’s Catalan Fiction Feature was made possible with the kind support of the Institut Ramon Llull, Asymptote receives no institutional funding on an ongoing basis. For as little as $5 a month, your support will make it possible for us to continue expanding our reach through events, educational guides, podcasts, blog posts, newsletter dispatches, Book Club, and more. For a limited time only, we are giving away a bonus gift of four Asymptote e-book anthologies (featuring bonus material not published anywhere else), to reward new sustaining members or masthead members who pledge at least a year’s support. Join the Asymptote family today!
—Lee Yew Leong, Editor-in-Chief