This week, our writers bring you the latest news from Japan, Iran, and the United Kingdom: in Japan, Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomanly Face of War has been adapted into a manga; in Iran, readers have been mourning the loss of renowned translator Najaf Daryabandari; and in the UK, Hay Festival has revealed its impressive digital programme. Read on to find out more!
Xiao Yue Shan, Blog Editor, reporting from Japan
There is a methodology in culture-specific product adoption that Japan has perfected in particular: a Starbucks in Kyoto’s Ninenzaka features traditional tatami flooring in an architecturally nostalgic teahouse; otherwise Italian pasta dishes are regularly indoctrinated with mentaiko (pollack roe); and well-regarded literature from other parts of the world are often adapted into the country’s most loved and widely emblematic artform—comics, or manga.
The latest text to receive this treatment is Svetlana Alexievich’s startling, emotive oral history of Soviet women who had experienced firsthand the barbarity and naked humanity of World War II. Written with the avidity of enthralled listening that has become inextricable from her literary style, in turns stoic and breaking, of both soft and difficult memory, it is a book that mends the distance between history and the body. It originally appeared in Japan as 戦争は女の顔をしていない in 2016 via the translation of 三浦 みどり Midori Miura (who had also translated works by Anatoly Pristavkin and Anna Politkovskaya), and can now also be found in the form of serialized comics, drawn and written by prolific manga artist 小梅 けいと Keito Koume, with editorial assistance from fellow comic and Soviet history specialist 速水螺旋人 Rasenjin Hayami.
Admittedly, I know very little about manga, but it is my impression that when it comes to depictions of women, this form in particular is perhaps more inclined to be . . . blatant. Gym-ball breasts runneth over upon teacup waists, eyes are gapingly polygonal and glisten with desire or girlish petulance (or both!), and independent action taken by a female character can be defined as a particularly stringent blushing of the cheeks. According to Koume, he predictably received considerable pushback in this endeavour, but persisted in the interest of contradicting Japan’s dominating narratives of unadulterated wartime tragedy by the way of Alexievich’s various and humanizing stories. The pages of Koume’s rendition of Alexievich’s uncompromisingly feminist opus tend to avoid the most superficial of these crimes against feminine depiction, but its lack of visual subtlety—perhaps a demand of the medium—is unsurprising.
Nevertheless, Koume deserves some credit to his account, for effort and ambition, if not the resulting product. To consider the medium and its demands and constraints is not necessarily to insist on formalist purities, but is the appreciation for representation as a metaphysical journey between the subject and its adapted appearance. The sensitivity that this travel necessitates is what elevates representation to art. In the curious case of The Unwomanly Face of War, is a case—not of “highbrow” literature and popular comics—but of the not yet recovered pathway between a culturally specific medium and a historically specific subject. It begs the question that, as the world’s various forms and contents delve further into dialogue with one another, how will our perceptions of subject and depiction, of text and image, of function and expression change?
Poupeh Missaghi, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Iran
Najaf Daryabandari, a prominent Iranian translator and writer, passed away in Tehran on May 2. Daryabandari was ninety-one. He translated works by writers such as Hemingway, Faulkner, Beckett, E. L. Doctorow, Kazuo Ishiguro, and many others. Daryabandari’s mastery over language, along with his approach toward voice and style, made his translations stand out among both critics and the public. For translations of American literary works, he won the Thornton Wilder prize from Columbia University.
He also co-authored—with his wife, the actress Fahimeh Rastkar—the sensational two-volume cookbook “From Garlic to Onion,” a well-researched, comprehensive, playful encyclopedia of food culture from all around Iran and other countries. It has attracted many users not just for its recipes, but also for its engaging style and the narratives the collaborators use in introducing their readers to various culinary cultures and food preparation knowledge. The book gained Daryabandari recognition as a “living human treasure in the field of food heritage” on Iran’s list of intangible cultural heritage.
He will be missed in the literary community not just for his translations but also for his personable character and humor. Due to the COVID-19 conditions, his funeral was held privately with a small group in attendance.
In other news, a national spring book sales event is underway from May 8 to May 19. More than six hundred bookstores from around Iran are participating in the festival, with both in-store and online sales, offering up to 20% of discounts up to a certain amount of purchases. The event was initially set to take place, like previous years, in early March before the Persian New Year celebrations, but was postponed and reprogrammed due to the COVID-19 conditions.
Sarah Moore, Assistant Blog Editor, reporting from UK
The annual Hay Festival, one of the biggest literary festivals in the UK, is going digital this year and begins next week. The festival will run from May 18-30 and will be completely free. This is welcome news for those worried that the festival would have to be cancelled altogether and is the result of a huge effort on the part of the Hay Festival team. Peter Florence, the festival’s organiser, said that:
It is a huge challenge. We basically re-tooled our events production company into being a digital broadcast house over the last month and it’s been an extraordinary learning curve, one that many people have had to embrace.
Whilst some events have had to be cancelled, the programme is still extremely varied with lots of big names: Gloria Steinem will discuss her latest book, The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off! with the founder of The Everyday Sexism Project, Laura Bates; Maggie O’Farrell will be talking about her latest novel, Hamnet, with Peter Florence; a panel of writers including Simon Armitage, Margaret Atwood, Stephen Fry, along with actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Vanessa Redgrave, will be reading poetry and journal entries from William and Dorothy Wordsworth. In addition, new discussions on global health, and in particular COVID-19, have been added to the programme. For example, Elif Shafak will give the first of the “Imagine the World in the Time of Coronavirus” talks, focusing her conversation on social justice and dignity. The digital festival is also running a huge programme for schools, aimed at inspiring creative reading.
Once described by Bill Clinton as “the Woodstock of the mind,” the event is expected to be widely attended, even in this online version. Peter Florence underscored the importance of continuing these events despite the circumstances:
Literature is a vast exercise in empathy, in humanity, the idea that you get to imagine the world from somebody else’s point of view, and there has never been a time when that is more important.
You can register for the digital festival events here.
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