This week, our writers bring you the latest news from Belgium, Sweden, and Japan. In Belgium, the 2020 SACD and Scam prizes were awarded; in Sweden, Littfest is kicking off with a special emphasis on Sámi voices; and in Japan, two new thrillers and science fiction short stories are being translated into English. Read on to find out more!
MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Belgium
In the mix of despair and sarcastic humor surrounding the Covid vaccine tragicomedy—pocked by the persiflage at the abundance of excessively well-paid officials of a small nation with . . . six governments and nine health ministers—Belgian literary and artistic life seems to have found its own path. Breaking news: the 2020 SACD and Scam prizes were awarded yesterday within a pandemic-adapted in-person ceremony whose online video version is already attracting numerous social media viewers. The literary prize goes this year to young poet Charline Lambert, author of 4 collections of poetry and 2017 winner of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation prize for her debut book Chanvre et lierre. The 2021 special format involved rewarding writers and artists for their long-standing contributions rather than a specific work, and previous editions have highlighted established poet, novelist, philosopher, and literary critic Véronique Bergen and prolific writer and translator Emmanuèle Sandron.
The in-person-and-online combination seems to have gained ground on a larger scale across the nation as the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR) is inviting visitors to enjoy a 600-year-old previously hidden treasure-trove (the library of the Dukes of Burgundy) while substantially boosting its collection digitizing and digital culture related initiatives. Among the latter, most notably, the cutting-edge Digital Research Lab facilitates text and data mining research on KBR’s diverse, multilingual digitised and born-digital collections, and co-organizes together with Camille and two universities—Université libre de Bruxelles and Ghent University—a widely mediatized Digital Heritage Seminar series. The library’s collaboration with Belgian universities goes in the field of literary translation as well, as a newly launched research initiative run jointly with KU Leuven and UCLouvain (BELTRANS) undertakes to tell the untold history of “literary translation flows” in Belgium between French and Dutch in the period 1970-2020. However gigantically active, KBR is still not the only cultural hub digitally adjusting to the ‘new normal’. PILEn (the book and digital publishing inter-professional partnership) has recently launched an online tool for browsing Belgian Francophone presses by subject and genre, and continues its long-standing hybrid writing series featuring cross-artform projects and multi-support poetry.
Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden
Littfest is a Swedish grassroots literary festival and a countermovement against the commercialization of the book industry that is being held this weekend. Organized annually in the northern city of Umeå since 2007, last year’s event was cancelled with only one day’s notice as it coincided with the first pandemic restrictions enforced in Sweden. This year, the festival will be broadcast live via the new digital Littfest TV, which is hosted by writer and translator Yukiko Duke, and journalist and writer Po Tidholm. The festival also organizes poetry walks in Umeå with local poets and up to eight participants. Littfest is Sweden’s largest literary festival that (pre-pandemic) received around 20,000 seminary visitors each year. The four days typically included both local literary key figures and international guests. Participants in recent years include Kim Thúy (Canada), Meg Rosoff (USA), Yang Lian (China, previously featured in Asymptote), Abdella Taïa (Morocco, previously interviewed in Asymptote), Åsne Seierstad (Norway) and Gloria Gervitz (Mexico) as well as Swedish writers Sara Stridsberg (previously reviewed in Asymptote), Jonas Hassen Khemiri (previously featured in Asymptote), Johannes Anyuru (previously reviewed in Asymptote), Theodor Kallifatides (previously interviewed in Asymptote) and Lina Wolff (previously featured in Asymptote).
Instead of the usual eighty or so seminars, around thirty seminars will be offered online, and instead of international guests, this year’s festival emphasizes the strength of Norrland, the northern part of Sweden with a special focus on rural areas. This year will also include more Sámi voices, for example with one evening dedicated to Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, also known as Áillohaš, a key figure in Sámi culture who passed twenty years ago. Sámi writers Elin Anna Labba, Linnea Axelsson and Niillas Holmberg will participate in a panel about Valkeapää. Other Sámi writers who will participate in the festival are Rönn-Lisa Zakrisson and Moa Backe Åstot.
David Boyd, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Japan
Last week, Publishers Weekly ran a short interview with the translators of two forthcoming “thrillers”: Kaoru Takamura’s Lady Joker, Volume 1 (translated by Allison Markin Powell and Marie Iida; Soho Press, April) and Natsuko Imamura’s The Woman in the Purple Skirt (translated by Lucy North; Penguin Random House, June).
On Takamura’s “modern classic,” originally published in 1997, Allison Markin Powell said that the book “touches on certain aspects of society that don’t get put under the spotlight. And the fact that [Takamura] weaves them in as integral parts of the plot is, I think, really fascinating.” About the author, Marie Iida said, “[Takamura] has such a sharp eye on Japanese society, where it’s going, and what its position is in the world. I’m looking forward to her book connecting with international readers.”
Powell and Iida’s translation earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly earlier this year.
On Imamura, Lucy North said, “[her] writing is deceptively simple. She explores loneliness, precarity, exclusion and victimization in quite complicated ways.” In the same interview, North also spoke about the challenges of translating Imamura’s 2019 novella: “I had to make sure that readers gradually picked up the character of the narrator; I had to make this quality of unknownness known to the reader, but in as light a way as possible. At the same time, I had to make sure that the surprise at the end could be a surprise.”
Science fiction writer Izumi Suzuki (1949-1986) will also make her English-language debut this spring. Terminal Boredom (Verso Books) collects seven of Suzuki’s short stories originally published in the seventies and eighties. On April 20, the day of Terminal Boredom’s release, the Center for Fiction will hold a virtual event to discuss the book with five translators: Sam Bett, Morgan Giles, Daniel Joseph, Margaret Mitsutani and Helen O’Horan. See the Center for Fiction website for details.
The British Centre for Literary Translation is currently accepting applications for its week-long Summer School (July 19-24). The Japanese-English workshop will be led by translator Polly Barton with novelist Tomoka Shibasaki. See the BCLT website for details.
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