Awards, new translations, and a poet working to help the homeless—all this and more awaits in today’s dispatches! From Hong Kong, Hungary, and Indonesia, our editors-at-large have the latest updates.
Jacqueline Leung, Editor-at-Large for Hong Kong, reporting from Hong Kong
In the last few months of 2018, Hong Kong saw the deaths of several literary greats, but with January comes commemoration and activity. Martial arts novelist Louis Cha Leung-yung, or “Jin Yong,” passed away on October 30, 2018, just half a year after the publication of Legends of the Condor Heroes: A Hero Born, the English translation of one of his emblematic wuxia series set during the Song Dynasty. A Bond Undone, the second volume of the quartet, will be published at the end of this month in Gigi Chang’s translation. Its release is likely to gain even more traction in the aftermath of the writer’s passing.
Dissident poet Meng Lang, who co-founded the Independent Chinese PEN Center and campaigned for the late Nobel laureate and poet Liu Xiaobo, died of lung cancer in December. It is said that Ma Jian, another dissident writer, visited him at the hospital before departing for London after his events in Hong Kong. A reading was organized in Meng’s memory at Green Wave Art in Mong Kok titled “Encounter in the Black Night,” a reference to one of his poems exploring the experience of exile.
Meng’s death generated a widespread response from the literary community in Hong Kong. Cha, Hong Kong’s first online English literary journal, is including a feature on Meng in its eleventh anniversary issue, which is to be published in late January. One highlight is a piece by Denis Mair, Meng’s translator, which sheds lights on their decades-long friendship, from Meng’s departure from mainland China in 1995 for Boston and Hong Kong to his work editing the recent A Poetry Anthology in Commemoration of Liu Xiaobo. The anthology was released in Taiwan and Hong Kong just before the Taipei International Book Exhibition in February of 2018, before Meng became terminally ill.
The upcoming Cha issue will also feature an English translation of one of Liu Waitong’s poems by Asymptote contributor Lucas Klein, whose recent translation of Duo Duo’s “Promise” can be found in our Summer 2018 issue.
Diána Vonnák, Editor-at-Large for Hungary, reporting from Hungary
In recent news, the Petőfi Literary Museum announced the list of translations that it subventioned in the second half of 2018. The budget is drawn up by the state, and it has consistently shrunk: from 14.4 million HUF in 2013 to 10 million HUF in 2015 to 7.5 million this year. Although this indicates ever more difficult conditions for translators of Hungarian literature, the list itself is impressive, including the publication of Krasznahorkai’s Sátántangó in Estonian, Antal Szerb’s Journey by Moonlight in Macedonian, and Magda Szabó’s The Door in Danish. English readers can look forward to Anna Bentley’s translation of Arnica the Duck Princess by beloved children’s book author Ervin Lázár, which will be published by Pushkin Children’s next month.
A few days ago I left a cold, snowy Budapest for London, just after social services sounded the red alarm for two regions of the country, calling for extra care and attention towards those most threatened by the cold. Although, strictly speaking, this isn’t fresh news, these conditions call attention to the unusual story of a new poetry collection. In the autumn, actor and poet Géza Röhrig—who grew up in foster care and has experienced homelessness himself—published a collection of portraits under the title Angyalvakond (Mole-Angel), with an afterword by Péter Nádas. These “anarcho-mysticist” poems, as a recent review described them, offer intimate close-ups with a language impossible to anticipate. Röhrig avoids romanticism as much as petty realism; his voice is credible without a salvationist agenda. The book is sold exclusively by homeless people, who make an average of six euros per copy—a straightforward gesture of protest against the recent criminalization of rough sleeping in the country.
Many Hungarian literary portals asked authors and critics to evaluate 2018. Litera, the largest hub for literary news, asked eight people to share their best moments spent reading or attending literary events. Books often mentioned were Asymptote contributor Réka Mán-Várhegyi’s debut novel Mágneshegy (Magnetic Mountain) and Dénes Krusovszky’s Akik már nem leszünk sosem (Those Who We Shall Never Be), both published by Magvető, and Imre Bartók’s sweeping experiment with the memorial genre, Jerikó épül (Jericho under Construction). Contributors agreed that the most significant translations this year were David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and the collected short stories of Clarice Lispector, both long overdue in Hungarian. It is equally exciting to imagine these texts in dialogue with Hungarian works that have yet to be written.
Norman Erikson Pasaribu, Editor-at-Large for Indonesia, reporting from Indonesia
In December, the Jakarta Arts Council’s biannual novel competition announced its new winner, Orang-Orang Oetimu (Oetimu’s People) by Felix K. Nesi, a respected writer from Nusa Tenggara Timur who is also known for his short story collection Usaha Membunuh Sepi (Attempts to Murder Mr. Lonely). The judges praised Nesi’s use of the native language of the Tetun people in his prose, as well as the novel’s characterization and its subtle humor. The novel will be published by Marjin Kiri, the Indonesian publisher of writers like Benedict Anderson. The second place prize went to a manuscript by Adham T. Fusama and Ahmad Mustafa, while Mochamad Nasrullah was the third place winner.
Moving to international award news, English PEN just announced its latest round of PEN Translates winners, including Intan Paramaditha’s novel Gentayangan (The Wandering), translated by Stephen J. Epstein. Gentayangan was also among the books that were awarded the recently announced PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants. Intan, known for her feminist gothic twist on well-known fairy tales, has produced with Gentayangan one of the most ambitious Indonesian novels in recent years, addressing themes like global human migration and what it means to be in between places. Using a red stiletto given to her by the Devil, the protagonist, an English teacher who never went abroad, gets to travel to the United States, Germany, Vietnam, and many other countries, interrogating issues of migration, privilege, and even science-fiction convention along the way.
In other translation news, Nuril Basri’s book ENAK (Buku Fixi, 2016) will be published as Love, Lies and Indomee in Singapore and the UK by Epigram Books. Translated by writer Zedeck Siew, Indomee tells the story of Ratu, a plus-sized woman living in Jakarta, and her search for love on the internet. Nuril’s other novel, Not a Virgin, is also forthcoming in the UK from Monsoon Books.
*****
Read more weekly dispatches from the Asymptote blog;
- Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature (January 11, 2019)
- Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature (January 4, 2019)
- Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature (December 14, 2018)