This week, our writer’s bring you the latest news from Central America, Palestine, and Malaysia. Central America’s biggest book fair, FILGUA, has begun, whilst José Luis Perdomo Orellana received Guatemala’s most prestigious literary award; Palestine Writes Literature Festival has begun online, featuring over seventy writers and activists, including Angela Davis and Fady Joudah; and in Malaysia, readers have mourned the passing of prominent writer Salleh Ben Joned, whilst Georgetown Literary Festival has featured writers including Ho Sok Fong. Read on to find out more!
José García Escobar, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Central America
After many delays and obvious setbacks, Central America’s biggest book fair, FILGUA, started yesterday. As a virtual book fair, FILGUA will feature over 140 online activities, book presentations, and conversations among prominent authors, journalists, and activists, such as Daniel Krauze (Mexico), Olga Wornat (Argentina), Rigoberta Menchú (Guatemala), and Javier Castillo (Spain). They have also announced that next year’s FILGUA, as planned for this year’s, will be celebrated alongside Central America’s biggest literary festival, Centro América Cuenta.
In November, writer and journalist José Luis Perdomo Orellana received the Miguel Ángel Asturias National Prize in Literature—Guatemala’s most prestigious literary prize. José Luis is best known for La última y nos vamos, a collection of interviews with Gunther Grass, Nadine Gordimer, José Saramago, and others. Also in November, indie giants Catafixia Editorial announced they will reissue Eugenia Gallardo’s most famous novel No te apresures a llegar a la Torre de Londres, porque la Torre de Londres no es el Big Ben.
Finally, the famed Guatemalan author Eduardo Halfon recently revealed the cover of his upcoming new book Canción, shortly after The New York Review shared an excerpt. Canción is out in January with Libros del Asteriode.
Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine
If you are still searching for a silver lining of the dark COVID-19 cloud, here’s one to consider: five days of virtual readings, talks, and performances celebrating Palestinian literature.
Palestine Writes Literature Festival, originally scheduled to take place in New York City in March 2020 (with the postponement announced due to the pandemic), will now take place virtually 2–6 December 2020.
Palestine Writes is a celebration that highlights the richness of Palestinian art and literature, past and present, for a global audience. This December, it will be hosted on a cutting-edge virtual platform with 3-D virtual spaces, live chats, networking rooms, and more. In the organizers’ words:
Palestine Writes will be a groundbreaking celebration of the power of Palestinian artistic visionaries and their supporters, bringing us together in the spirit of Mahmoud Darwish’s sentiment that “we have the right to smell autumn’s fragrances and ask the night for a dream.”
The virtual festival will bring together writers, artists, publishers, booksellers, and scholars to hold conversations about art, literature, and the intersections between culture, struggle, and politics. Featuring more than seventy leading Palestinian writers and artists, as well as leading African-American and Indigenous writers and activists, the festival will include programming for children, relevant panel discussions, book presentations, cooking demonstrations, live music, and a poetry slam with some of the greatest contemporary voices in Palestinian literature.
Featured speakers include a variety of academics, poets, translators, novelists, performers, and activists, including: Angela Davis, Fady Joudah (read him and his translations in Asymptote), Huzama Habayeb, Ibrahim Nasrallah, Ibtisam Azem (mentioned in Asymptote’s blog), Ibtisam Barakat, Marc Lamont Hill, Rafael Ziadah, Randa Jarrar, Taghreed Najjar, Susan Abulhawa, Shailja Patel, and many others.
“The common threads uniting all participants,” the website says, “are the love of books and support of justice for Palestine.” The website also notes that the festival will also maintain its bazaar: “Books, Palestinian olive oil, tatreez, tote bags, jewellery, clothing, and other items will be available for purchase.” Tickets to the digital event begin at $10, and the full program has now been announced.
Kwan Ann Tan, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Malaysia
The beginning of November was marked by the sad news of the passing of a prominent Malaysian writer, Salleh Ben Joned. He wrote primarily in a mix of both Malay and English, and was considered one of the more transgressive and experimental poets in Malaysia due to his inclusion of explicit sexuality within his work. Salleh’s published works include Sajak-Sajak Salleh: Poems Sacred and Profane (1987), Adam’s Dream (2007), and more recently in 2011, The Amok of Mat Solo: A Play.
On a more positive note, the annual Georgetown Literary Festival is well underway and the talks have been released as podcasts on Spotify for those interested in listening to them! Some standout events include “Windows of the Word” hosted by Sharmilla Ganesan and Jérôme Bouchaud, the editor of Lettres de Malaisie, an initiative that translates Malaysian work into French. They discussed the tradition of works being transmitted between France and Malaysia, and the French appropriation of the “pantun” (now more widely known in the West as the “pantoum” due to a typo made by Victor Hugo!) The act of translation and capturing cultural contexts respectfully were brought up—Bouchard notes that it’s important to give readers a new outlook on the world around them, as well as there being a certain blindness to stories not written in English, something which is more widespread in smaller countries in Europe like France.
Additionally, “The Wall,” a story by Ho Sok Fong, whose book Lake Like a Mirror is shortlisted for the Warwick Women in Translation Prize, was read in translation by Foo May Lyn. The story is a particularly chilling one, but the voice of the writer and her characters are amplified by them being read by a Malaysian woman herself, and adds a distinctly new colour to the text.
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Read more on the Asymptote blog: