This week our writers report on literary prizes and new releases in Poland, a collaboration between two renowned Swedish authors, the 41st International Book Fair in Mexico City, and commemorative events for María Elena Walsh in Argentina. Read on to find out more!
Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Poland
It’s never too late to #bemoreOlga—to quote Helen Vassallo (translatingwomen)—and report that Olga Tokarczuk is using some of her Nobel prize money to start a foundation to support writers and translators. To acknowledge the role translators played in her worldwide success, the Polish Association of Literary Translators has pulled together some stats: as of October 2019, 193 translations had appeared of Tokarczuk’s books into thirty-seven languages, with twelve more in the pipeline, by a total of ninety translators (names all listed here).
On January 20 the weekly Polityka awarded Olga Tokarczuk the Creator of Culture prize “for books that are ahead of their time, her style and for looking into the future of literature and our entire planet.” The prize was one of Polityka’s annual arts awards, with this year’s “Passport” for literature going to Dominika Słowik for her novel Zimowla (roughly, Huddling Together) a “thriller with horror elements, set in the small village of Cukrówka, a fascinating depiction of recent history.” In her acceptance speech, Słowik cheered the fact that, for the first time, all three shortlisted authors were women.
Back in October, Poland’s top literary prize, the NIKE, went to Mariusz Szczygieł for Nie ma (Not There), a collection of poignant texts on loss that explore the limits of literary reportage, of which the author is a key proponent. English fans of the genre have a couple of Polish treats in store: Witold Szabłowski’s How to Feed a Dictator (Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Enver Hoxha, Fidel Castro, and Pol Pot Through the Eyes of Their Cooks), translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, is due out in April, and Małgorzata Szejnert’s Ellis Island: A People’s History will appear in the summer, translated by Sean Gasper Bye, winner of Asymptote’s 2016 Close Encounters competition for nonfiction. Meanwhile, Bye’s translation of The King of Warsaw, a novel by Szczepan Twardoch portraying boxing, the underworld, and the rise of fascism in 1937 Poland, has been creating quite a buzz, with the New York Times including it in its worldwide preview of books coming out in 2020.
Finally, sad news from Poland’s southern neighbour: Pavel Vilikovský, one of Slovakia’s greatest writers, died on February 10. Tributes from writers and critics from all over the country have been pouring in and Le Monde honoured him with an obituary. It remains to be seen if English-language media will note his passing.
Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden
What happens if you take four iconic, nineteenth-century English gothic monsters and put them under psychoanalysis in contemporary Sweden? That’s what the renowned horror writer Mats Strandberg, along with psychologist and YA/children’s book writer Jenny Jägerfeldt set out to discover in their newly-released Monster i terapi (Monsters in Therapy).
In the novel, a therapist has gone missing and all that’s left are notes, correspondence, and transcribed therapy sessions with some of Victorian England’s most notable fiction characters covering timeless issues: narcissism (through Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray); identity and addiction (with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde); living with a psychopath (through Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Laura and vampire Carmilla); and complex relationship difficulties (between Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Elizabeth Lavenza, Victor Frankenstein, and the monster).
This is the first collaboration between the two writers. Strandberg, a horror aficionado since childhood, after discovering Stephen King, is best known for the Engelsfors Trilogy, written together with Sara Bergmark Elfgren. Jägerfeldt was awarded the Swedish August Prize in 2010 in the children’s book category. Their book is not so much horror as humor when Victorian values clash with contemporary perspectives. At the same time, apart from analyzing Victorian monsters, it also says something about the real us in our present-day society.
Another much talked-about book this season is journalist Patrik Svensson’s debut book Ålevangeliet (The Book of Eels), with rights sold to over thirty languages. This nonfiction about a father-son relationship is built around their tradition of eel fishing. The Europena eel, Anguille anguille, thought real, turns out to be at least as intriguing and mysterious as any Victorian monster, through their extensive travels across deep seas and their undetected reproduction.
Just like in Strandberg’s and Jägerfeldt’s book, unexpected parallels emerge between the mysterious creatures and the very ordinary you and me. In the end, we’re all just monsters, I mean people, trying to make it through life and make our relationships with others work—and in doing so, literature can offer some handy help for reflection.
Andrew Adair, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Mexico
February 20 kicks off the 41st International Book Fair here in Mexico City. Held in the beautiful and historic Palacio de Minería, the fair is always a fitting reflection of Mexico’s reverence for great literature both at home and abroad. While smaller than Guadalajara’s International Book Fair, it still boasts a considerable amount of talks and symposiums which run the gamut from the business side end to the more philosophical. One can assume, given the recent controversy in the U.S. over a certain bestselling depiction of Mexico, that the expected, necessary questions will be raised about representation. One particular group driving the discussion is LibrosB4Tipos, a feminist collective of booktubers (literary vloggers) comprised of women, some writers themselves, focused on raising awareness of female intellectual works via their various public book clubs. On Saturday, February 23, they will take part in a discussion at the fair entitled “Books on the Web” and on February 1, they began their year-long book club.
A common topic of discussion of late is the public announcement by journalist and author Elena Poniatowska (winner of the Spanish language’s highest literary honor, the Cervantes prize, in 2013) that her child, fathered by lauded literary giant Juan José Arreola in 1955, was in fact the product of a rape. It followed comments by author and concert pianist Tita Valencia on her anguished romance with Arreola, which resulted in her only fiction work, the masterful, Minotauromaquia (winner of Mexico’s highest literary honor, the Xavier Villaurrutia Award, 1976 and recently republished by UNAM). The book chronicles the pain of their tumultuous relationship and the resulting time Valencia spent in a psychiatric ward. In response to the women’s accusations, the Arreola family published letters written by both women, largely professing their love for Arreola, seemingly implying that a woman cannot at any point have loved her abuser, to which Poniatowska responded: “In my letter from 1955, I was an unsuspecting young woman trying to protect him.” She would later sum the event up with a simple declaration: “It was abuse by an adult man of a starry-eyed young girl.”
Sarah Moses, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Argentina
During the month of February, Argentinian writer, poet, playwright, composer, and musician, María Elena Walsh, is being remembered and celebrated at the Centro Cultural Kirchner (CCK) in Buenos Aires on the occasion of her ninetieth anniversary. Walsh, who passed away in 2011 at the age of eighty, is best known for her books and music for children, which have become classics in Argentina. She began publishing poetry as an adolescent and went on to write numerous books, plays, and albums over the course of her career. Walsh’s poetry and literature for adults reflect the firm stance she took on feminist issues, in particular the equality of rights, and she is recognized as a pioneer in the country and abroad.
Events at the CCK include Walsh’s plays put on by local theatre groups and concerts of her music for children and adults. On Sundays, contemporary poets gather in the cultural centre’s patio to read her work and their own pieces.
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