This week, our writer’s bring you the latest news from Japan, Slovakia, Sri Lanka, and Central America. In Japan, renowned writer and symbol of the #MeToo movement Shiori Ito is poised to reach a wider international audience with the forthcoming translation of her memoir, Black Box , and was named one of the “100 Most Influential People of 2020” by Time Magazine. In Slovakia, three prominent Slovak writers feature in a new interactive map made by University College London and Eva Luka was named as winner of the national poetry award. In Sri Lanka, October’s National Reading Month has begun, with winners of the recently announced literary awards selling fast. And in Central America, Guatemalan poet Giovany Emanuel Coxolcá Tohom won the Premio de Poesía Editorial Praxis, whilst José Luis Perdomo Orellana took home Guatemala’s most prestigious literary prize, the Miguel Ángel Asturias National Prize in Literature. Read on to find out more!
David Boyd, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Japan
In September, Time Magazine named Shiori Ito one of the “100 Most Influential People of 2020.” Ito is a journalist, activist, and renowned symbol of Japan’s #MeToo movement, who—in the words of sociologist Chizuko Ueno—“has forever changed life for Japanese women with her brave accusation of sexual violence against her harasser.” Ito’s account of her experiences, Black Box, which was first published in Japanese in 2017 by Bungei Shunju, is due to be published next year in an English translation by Allison Markin Powell, whose previous translations include The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami and The Boy in the Earth by Fuminori Nakamura. Powell’s translation of Ito’s work will be published by Tilted Axis Press in the United Kingdom and Feminist Press in the United States.
Since the book’s publication in 2017, Powell says, “Ito’s message seems only to have grown more important, more urgent. Black Box is not a rape memoir. It’s a manifesto to tear down the system. Ito methodically maps out the ways in which institutions failed her, and how almost everyone attempted to gaslight her at each stage. Her perseverance is an inspiration.”
On her own experience working to bring Black Box into English, Powell says, “I’ve had to develop strategies so as not to take on too much of the trauma myself.”
In August, Ito sued LDP member Mio Sugita, “claiming that [Sugita’s] repeated ‘likes’ of tweets abusing her character constituted defamation,” as reported in The Mainichi. Sugita, who is known for having called the LGBT community “unproductive” in the past, has this month courted controversy once again, by admitting that she said “women lie” about sexual assault, after initially denying having made such a remark. As noted in The Japan Times, Sugita’s party was “slow and lukewarm” in their response. The lawmaker has not faced any penalties.
Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Slovakia
Samples of work by three Slovak writers—Gejza Vámoš, Pavel Vilikovský and Zuska Kepplová—feature in a new interactive map of London sites that charts works by European writers or artists. It has been dreamt up by University College London to welcome incoming students who will be mostly taught online this year. Meanwhile Central and Eastern Europe, having sailed through the first wave of the pandemic this spring almost unscathed, has been hit by the second wave with full force. Before infection rates skyrocketed, Slovakia enjoyed a summer filled with literary events, although international participation was mostly limited to the neighbouring countries. The BraK festival in Bratislava, held from September 11 to 13 proved that star power is not measured in kilometres: it featured Polish reportage star Mariusz Szczygieł, the Hungarian literary power couple Anna T. Szabó and György Dragomán, German satirist Timur Vermes, and Czech novelist Jáchym Topol, as well as Slovak writer and past Asymptote contributor Andrej Bán.
With travel restrictions in mind, organizers of the international literary festival Novotvar, which took place in the Slovak capital Bratislava and the neighbouring town of Modra from October 7 to 10, also invited writers who did not have to cross too many borders, but shortly before the start of the festival they had to deal with the challenge of fresh restrictions that limit numbers at all public events in the country to fifty (this figure includes artists, audience, organizers, and support staff.) Nevertheless, apart from a couple of writers who participated by Zoom, the guests from, or based in, Austria, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Poland, as well as a large contingent of home-grown talent were in attendance (see festival photos here and full list of participating writers and artists here).
The Novotvar festival was also an opportunity to announce the winner of the national poetry award Zlatá vlna (Golden Wave): Eva Luka, a poet and translator from the Japanese. A selection of Luka‘s poems, translated into English by James Sutherland-Smith, appears in a special feature on contemporary Slovak poetry published in the Tupelo Quarterly of July 2020. As the Spanish-Slovak translator Lucia Douro, who co-edited the feature “Fragments of the Vanishing Speech,” explains in an interview with Jesse Lee Kercheval, this is the first of two instalments, with several more Slovak poets to come in the second, scheduled for later this year. Those featured in this issue include Mila Haugová, this year’s winner of the prestigious Vilenica Prize and one of the few Slovak poets with two collections available in English. The more recent, Eternal Traffic, was published in February this year by Arc Publications. This too was translated by James Sutherland-Smith, who has also rendered into English several poems by past Asymptote contributor Mária Ferenčuhová for the Tupelo Quarterly (you can also listen to my podcast interviews with the poet and her translator here and here). Ferenčuhová is one of the four poets who will participate in European Poets Night, a reading and discussion organized by EUNIC and London’s Poetry Society Café to be chaired by George Szirtes on November 9 and held online, like all the other events in this year’s European Writers‘ Tour of which it forms a part.
Chamini Kulathunga, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sri Lanka
As a country with one of the highest literacy rates in South Asia, Sri Lanka has always tried to maintain the literacy rate of its population. In 2004, the National Library and Documentation Services Board and the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and National Heritage declared October as the National Reading Month as a follow up to September’s National Literary Month. With events ranging from launching new books and announcing major literary award winners, to the most coveted book event of the year—the Colombo International Bookfair—the month of September is generally regarded as the Literary Spring of the island. As such, October is encouraged to be utilized as a period to intellectually engage with the literary wealth produced and purchased in the previous month.
Some of the current best-selling books in Sri Lanka are the winners of the recently announced literary awards such as Svarna Pustaka, State Literary Awards, Vidyodaya Literary Awards, and Godage National Literary Awards. Eric Illayapparachchi’s novel Petha (Hungry Ghosts) is one such book that was awarded the best novel published in 2019 at the Svarna Pustaka and Vidyodaya Literary award ceremonies, while his Wishramika Pemwathiya (The Retired Lover) won the Vidyodaya and Godage National Literary awards for the best collection of short stories published in 2019. Two of the notable awards for translation were the State Literary Award for the best translation of poetry from Sinhalese into English, which was presented to Vini Vitharana’s Girā Sandēśa: The Message of the Parrot, and the Godage National Literary Award for the best translation from Tamil to Sinhalese, which was presented to Upali Leelaratne’s Minis Yanthraya (Human Machine).
In celebration of the National Reading Month in 2020 and the International Children’s Day, an initiative was taken on October 1 by the Sri Lankan government to provide mobile libraries to a selection of schools from all around the island. The libraries were set up with the sponsorship of transport and telecommunications services in the country by repairing buses that have been out of commission. Every year, numerous initiatives such as providing free library memberships, rebuilding libraries, and setting up reading corners at public places are established in commemoration of the National Reading Month.
José García Escobar, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Central America
It’s award season in Central America!
In late September, Mexico’s Editorial Praxis announced the winner of the prestigious Premio de Poesía Editorial Praxis, the Guatemalan poet Giovany Emanuel Coxolcá Tohom, for his book of poems Don Quijote y las memorias de Ixmukané. Giovany is the author of two other books: Las trampas de la metáfora and Nuestra identidad en los pasillos de la palabra. Previous Praxis winners include Mexico’s Adrián Roman, Colombia’s Danny Yesid León, and Cuba’s Alfredo Nicolás Lorenzo.
In early October, writer and journalist José Luis Perdomo Orellana was announced as the winner of the Miguel Ángel Asturias National Prize in Literature—Guatemala’s most prestigious literary prize. José Luis is most known for this books Pájaros feos que cantan and El insurrecto solitario. But perhaps his most famous book is La última y nos vamos, a collection of interviews with Gunther Grass, Nadine Gordimer, José Saramago, and others. Previous winners of this prize include Eduardo Halfon, Carmen Matute, Ana María Rodas, and Rodrigo Rey Rosa.
Also this month, Nicaraguan writer Gioconda Belli received the Jaime Gil de Biedman Poetry Prize for her book El pez rojo que nada en el pecho. Gioconda is best known for her novels From Eve’s Rib and Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand.
*****
Read more on the Asymptote blog: