This week’s dispatches feature an extended report from the Vietnamese Diaspora in homage to the late Nguyễn Huy Thiệp, who passed away in Vietnam aged seventy. In addition, we bring you news of the publication of Nishikawa Mitsuru’s diary in Taiwan and a plethora of current online events celebrating literature from the Czech Republic. Read on to find out more!
Thuy Dinh, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Vietnamese Diaspora
Nguyễn Huy Thiệp, who catapulted into international fame during Vietnam’s Đổi Mới (Renovation) period, died on 20 March in Thanh Xuân District, Hanoi, Vietnam. He was seventy.
Born on April 29, 1950, Thiệp graduated from Hanoi University of Education with a history degree in 1970 and was sent to Sơn La—Vietnam’s northwestern mountains—to teach communist cadres. While there, he absorbed local Hmong folklore, Vietnamese poetry, translated selections from modern and classical Chinese literature, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Gorky, Camus, Goethe, Tagore, Neruda, and the Bible.
From 1986 to 1991, Nguyễn Huy Thiệp’s short stories were widely read and debated both in Vietnam and abroad for their startling break from social realism. His most controversial—which can be read as nesting narratives—were “Vàng Lửa” (Fired Gold), “Kiếm Sắc” (“Sharp Sword”), and “Phẩm Tiết” (“Chastity”). These stories employ decentralized, conflicting points-of-view, vernacular language, and spare dialogues to render complex portraits of established historical figures such as the poet Nguyễn Du, and Emperors Quang Trung and Gia Long. The works embody Thiệp’s signature themes: the relationship between the artist and the state, the porous border between trust and betrayal, and the concept of chastity as it relates to sexual power, ideological orthodoxy, and political expediency.
The era of open expression was short-lived. Thiệp’s ambiguous, scatological tales were considered too destabilizing to the Communist view of Vietnamese history. Accused of heresy, overnight Thiệp became a de-facto dissident. The editor Nguyên Ngọc, his literary mentor, was also fired from Văn Nghệ (Literature and Art) Magazine—where his works first received a nurturing reception. To sustain his livelihood, Thiệp made ceramic art and managed a restaurant serving wild game.
He kept a low profile but continued to write and publish short stories. His oeuvres at this juncture—a hybrid form of literary homage and Dadaist musings—were considered too insular to merit attention. “As The Crane Ascends It Gives a Startled Cry” (“Hạc Vừa Bay Vừa Kêu Thảng Thốt”) is an allegory about mortality, missed opportunity, and “the pale glimmer” of poetic fame. The protagonist in “A Vietnamese Lesson” (“Bài Học Tiếng Việt”) posits that the compound word tâm hồn (soul) in Vietnamese, coming from an impoverished lexicon, is sadly deprived of affiliations to sexual organs (forthrightness) and yellow traffic signal (moderation/doubt).
Thiệp was awarded the Chevalier Insignia of France’s “Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” in 2007, and the Premio Nonino Prize by the Italian government in 2008. At his death, his legacy consists of some fifty short stories, a novel, seven plays, and a collection of essays called A Net to Catch The Birds (Giăng Lưới Bắt Chim).
Darren Huang, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Taiwan
On March 31, the National Museum of Taiwan Literature (NMTL) held a book launch for the new publication of the diary of the Japanese novelist and poet, Nishikawa Mitsuru, who lived in Taiwan during the Japanese occupation. Mitsuru, a prominent writer in colonial Taiwan, was known for incorporating local Taiwanese customs and myths, Japanese language, and Chinese poetry into his work. During his decades as an expatriate in Taiwan, he supported the assimilation of Japanese culture into Taiwanese culture, while recording Taiwanese customs he thought to be vanishing. He produced a romantic style of literature, in contrast to the realist work of his contemporaries, such as Yang Chi’en-Ho, who described the lives of everyday women, and Yang Kui, who focused on the struggles of the working class. The new publication, which is the only diary known to have been left behind by Mitsuru, provides insights into the inspirations for the author’s writings.
Earlier this year, two novels by the acclaimed Taiwanese novelist Wu Ming-yi, The Stolen Bicycle and The Man with the Compound Eyes, were translated into Swedish for the first time. Wu is known as one of Taiwan’s most important young novelists, as well as a professor of Taiwanese literature, a nature writer, environmental activist, and artist. The publication of the works is notable because the two novels represent two of the few pieces of Taiwanese literature to be translated into Swedish. A Swedish review described Wu as one of Taiwan’s most outstanding writers and stated that Taiwan has preserved a long tradition of Chinese literature. The reviewer praised The Stolen Bicycle, which was longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, as poetic and philosophical, with well-crafted interlocking stories. The review also cited The Man With the Compound Eyes for its impressive portrayal of Taiwanese nature, its consciousness of environmental issues, and its dystopian elements.
Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Czech Republic
“Those here on Earth can only celebrate: 101 years – 101 springs – 101 rivers / full of sparkling wine.” On 26 February, just four days after the passing of the legend that was Lawrence Ferlinghetti, this poetic send-off by the Czech poet Adam Borzič appeared in David Vichnar’s translation in BODY.Literature. The poetry editor of this Prague-based online journal, Jan Zikmund, wearing his other hat as a promoter of Czech literature in the English-speaking world at the Czech Literary Centre (who was also the driving force behind MPT’s Czech issue last year), has fronted a series of lively video interviews showcasing three other contemporary poets, Milan Děžinský, Kateřina Rudčenková, and Marie Riedlbauchová. The interviews aired as part of the StAnza Poetry Festival held from 6 to 14 March in St. Andrews, Scotland, and can now be viewed on the CzechLit Centre website. The site also features an extremely useful survey of Czech poetry in English translation from 1990 to 2020 by Tereza Novická. The huge amount of information in her article would seem to contradict the author’s own claim that “Czech poetry in English translation is a niche endeavor, operating within a niche market, catering to a niche audience.”
In the early months of the year the Czech Republic was particularly badly hit by the second wave of the pandemic, which put a dampener on live literary events. However, this has been somewhat compensated by the vast range of audiovisual material available on a variety of platforms. As part of the wonderful Translators Aloud project (dreamt up by translators Tina Kover O’Donnell and Charlie Coombe, which has clocked up over 1,000 YouTube subscribers since its launch less than a year ago), translator Isabel Stainsby reads from her English version of Jan Kotouč’s sci-fi Frontiers of the Imperium (Hranice impéria). Meanwhile in New York City the indefatigable Andrew Singer’s Trafika Europe Radio, now in its third season, features interviews with two contemporary prose writers: Kateřina Tučková introducing her novel Gerta (published in April by AmazonCrossing in Veronique Firkusny’s translation) and Pavla Horáková discussing her novel, A Theory of Strangeness (Teorie podivnosti), which has yet to find an English-language publisher.
On 29 April 2021, another New York-based institution, the venerable Czech and Slovak Society for Arts and Sciences (SVU) marked the centenary of the publication of Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk by organizing a Švejkathon—a marathon reading of Book 1 of this classic of Czech literature in Sir Cecil Parrott’s 1973 English translation by fifty participants from across the globe. Hašek fans who were not able to stick with the entire 9 hours 45 minutes, either through lack of stamina or by being in the wrong time zone, can catch up with the whole event on the SVU NY YouTube channel.
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