This week, our editors from Argentina, Sweden, and Palestine have plenty to report. In Argentina, readers have paid homage to writer Rodolfo Fogwill on the tenth anniversary of his death, and a new imprint has been translating classics of Argentine noir into Greek; in Sweden, the annual Göteborg Book Fair is taking place online; and in Palestine, Adania Shibli’s Minor Detail has been nominated for a US National Book Award, whilst a new exhibition at the Palestinian museum has hosted a series of authors, including Mahmoud Shukair. Read on to find out more!
Allison Braden, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Argentina
Ten years ago, Argentina’s literary world was stunned at the news of Rodolfo Fogwill’s death. The writer, whom The Guardian called “loud-mouthed, provocative, and downright rude,” loomed large in Argentine letters, by dint of both his literary accomplishments and outsize personality. (His anti-war novel Malvinas Requiem was written in one cocaine- and whiskey-fueled week, and remains the only novel of his translated into English.) Last month, the country commemorated the decade since Fogwill’s death with a slew of virtual tributes: The National Library of Argentina’s YouTube channel featured a playlist of interviews and other audiovisual artifacts of his career; his publisher, Alfaguara, hosted Fogwill Week on their social media channels; and readers and writers paid homage to a writer whose works have remade the literary landscape. The enfant terrible lives on.
In Greece, classics of Argentine noir are finding new life with Carnívora, a new imprint dedicated to translating and publishing Latin American crime fiction in Greek. “In Argentina, literary talent abounds, and we could say that the reading public in Greece has had a kind of literary love for Argentina since the Latin American boom,” Carnívora editor and translator Aspasía Kampyli told La Nación this week. “That’s why it’s no coincidence that the first two writers we published, Guillermo Orsi and Raúl Argemí, have been Argentine, and the reception from critics and Greek readers has been especially warm.” In less than a year since its launch, the imprint has also won design awards for its logo and book covers. You can’t judge a book by its cover, but Carnívora’s positive coverage bodes well for Latin American noir in Greece.
More recent works are also getting buzz in foreign markets. Asymptote’s own Sarah Moses translated Agustina Bazterrica’s novel about a cannibalistic future for the human race, Tender Is the Flesh, for Pushkin Press (UK) and the Scribner (US). The book, recently reviewed in The New York Times, is available now in the US. Though it’s not traditional noir, Bazterrica’s book seems to fit Carnívora’s description of the genre: “crimes wrought by history or tragedy.” Perhaps we’ll soon see the novel in Greek.
Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine
The current exhibition, “Printed in Jerusalem: Mustamloun,” at the Palestinian Museum has been hosting a series of discussions with distinguished Jerusalemite authors from different generations. The series aims at delving into literature’s relation to Jerusalem’s past and present, highlighting authors’ works as they reflect the city’s various components in all their complexities. Previous guests include the novelists Liana Badr and Maya Abu Al-Hayyat (whose “Six Poems” appeared in Asymptote’s Winter 2020 issue). The latest (which can be viewed here in Arabic), presents the award-winning writer Mahmoud Shukair (b. 1941), discussing the literary scene in the city as well as the subgenre of city biographies. Shukair also reflected on Jerusalem’s image in western literature.
Shukair, who was editor-in-chief of the cultural magazines al-Talia’a (The Vanguard) and Dafaaer Thaqaafiyya (Cultural File), writes short stories and novels for adults and teenagers. He has authored over forty-five books, six television series, and four plays. His stories have been translated into several languages, including English, French, German, Chinese, Mongolian, and Czech. He was jailed twice by the Israeli authorities for his political views, and was deported to Lebanon in 1975, not returning to Jerusalem until 1993.
In 2011, Shukair was awarded the first Mahmoud Darwish Award for Creativity, which in 2020 was awarded to American scholar Noam Chomsky, Moroccan poet and translator Abdellatif Laâbi, and Palestinian poet and scholar Zakaria Mohammed. Shukair is also the winner of the 2015 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize. His Praise for the Women of the Family (2018, translated by Paul Starkey) was shortlisted for the 2016 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and Jerusalem Stands Alone (2018, translated by Nicole Fares) was shortlisted for the Palestine Book Awards in 2018. Readers can glean a sense of his work from the principal story in his collection Mordechai’s Moustache and His Wife’s Cats and Other Stories (2007, translated by Issa Boullata), published in Words Without Borders with a translation by Michael K. Scott.
Lastly, Asymptote Book Club’s selection for May 2020, Minor Detail by Palestinian author Adania Shibli, has made it onto the longlist of the US National Book Award for Translated Literature! Minor Detail is Shibli’s third book-length work, following Touch (2010, translated by Paula Haydar) and We Are All Equally Far from Love (2012, translated by Paul Starkey).
Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden
The last week of September typically sees Gothenburg’s annual Swedish book fair, Göteborg Book Fair, taking place. It’s an event as much for publishers, librarians, and teachers as it is for book enthusiasts from the general public. The fair usually offers four days filled with thousands of interviews, panels, talks, and more from its numerous stages, as well as endless strolls and opportunities to meet authors among the exhibit booths in the Svenska Mässan exhibition halls, and in bars and hotels across the city.
As the biggest cultural event in all of the Nordic countries, this year’s Göteborg Book Fair will be its thirty-sixth edition. The event started out in 1985 with five thousand visitors, and now attracts up to eighty thousand. This year, however, the Book Fair will not be what it usually is; visitors will not be coming to Svenska Mässan in Gothenburg; instead, the entire program will be offered online. Hundreds of talks and interviews are being offered through the Fair’s website, giving viewers the option to either browse and watch the program live, or to create an account, search all the program offerings, and be able to return later to watch parts of the program. The whole Fair is free to watch and there will even be several talks held in English, including ones from the Fair’s New York studio.
Göteborg Book Fair’s mermaid logo is no coincidence: it’s an illustration from the first printed book in Swedish, Skapelsens sedelärande samtal, published in 1483. The image was used during the quincentenary celebration of the Swedish book in 1983, which served as the inspiration for the founders of the Göteborg Book Fair, Bertil Falck, and Conny Jacobsson. While the image has essentially remained the same ever since, the version we see today was adjusted in the late eighties by designer Bo Berndal, who also made the initial logo for the quincentenary book celebrations.
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