This winter, festivals and events across the globe introduce new literature in translation, while literary magazines and film festival screenings amplify underrepresented voices. In Slovakia, recent works explore sexual identity, the weight of twentieth-century history, and trauma. From Palestine, Arablit and Arablit Quarterly launched its first “In Focus” section, spotlighting Iraqi literature. In Kazakhstan, the film Akyn highlights the political power of writing, acquiring greater significance in the context of recent governmental restrictions on free speech. Read on to find out more!
Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting on Slovakia
In October 2021, Barbora Hrínová was declared the winner of Slovakia’s most prestigious literary prize, the Anasoft Litera. The jury praised her remarkable debut collection Jednorožce (Unicorns) for writing “about otherness without exoticizing or exploiting it, thus enabling us to accept different ways of life or the search for identity.” As the author herself put in a recent interview: “Otherness in Unicorns occurs on two levels; one is literal, where the characters from the LGBTI+ community belong by definition, and the other is universal, all-human; after all, every person is a minority in their own right. I didn’t want to emphasize the element of sexual identity or outward difference in the characters, because I think that such people are part of everyday life and no different from the majority in any essential way. Rather, I was interested in and irritated by the way they are perceived by society, which often reacts very dismissively and critically to even a minor deviation from the norm. I wanted to create a space in the stories where we could also look at the ‘different characters,’ or a variety of shortcomings in a somewhat more human way.” The fact that Hrínová’s collection also won the 2021 René Prize, chosen by secondary school students, testifies to the author’s empathetic handling of a sensitive subject.
November 2021 marked the centennial of the passing of Slovakia’s national poet, Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav. This brief video, recorded for the Slovak consulate in New York City by Columbia University professor Christopher W. Harwood, is a great primer for anyone not familiar with Hviezdoslav’s work. Literature scholar Charles Sabatos gave a captivating Zoom talk on Gejza Vámoš (1901–1956), another Slovak writer not yet widely known in the English-speaking world. Sabatos, who is translating Vámos’s seminal Atómy boha (God’s Atoms), published in 1928 and 1933, focused on issues of language and identity in this book, summed up by one critic as “a novel of heroism and syphilis.”
While this translation awaits publication, two recent works by contemporary Slovak writers appeared in October, inaugurating Seagull Books‘s Slovak list: Boat Number Five by Monika Kompaníková (translated by Janet Livingstone) and Necklace/Choker by Jana Bodnárová (translated by Jonathan Gresty). TranslatorsAloud features excerpts from both books: a bilingual reading by the author and translator in one case and a reading by the translator in the other, while an interview with Jana Bodnárová is available on Trafika Europa Radio.
Ohrozený druh (Threatened Species), a poetry collection by past Asymptote contributor Mária Ferenčuhová is one of the books featured on Europe Readr, a digital platform developed by the Network of the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) to “encourage reflection on the world we want to live in, presenting us with an opportunity to consider the European Union as a community in all its diversity and interconnectedness and as a community with a common future.” Ferenčuhová discusses her work in an audio interview, produced for the Europe Readr project as part of the Riveting Interview series by the European Literature Network’s Rosie Goldsmith.
As the second pandemic year drew to a close, the book trade in Slovakia counted its successes in mainly the increase of online sales and the growing popularity of e-books as well as its losses, including lost revenue for brick-and-mortar bookshops. Ending a busy literary summer, the 2021 festival season fired its last three salvos: the Žilina literary festival in northern Slovakia hosted Hungarian novelist Pál Závada, best-selling Czech writer Alena Mornštajnová, and Polish journalist Wojciech Jagielski. In October, the Novotvar festival in Bratislava brought over Etgar Keret from Israel and Olga Grjasnowa from Germany, as well as the celebrated Hungarian poet Krisztina Tóth and Galician poet Yolanda Castaño. Finally, in November, the Ars Poetica festival, under the banner “particles of time,” welcomed a range of poets from across Europe, including Lotte Dodion (Belgium), Asha Karami (the Netherlands), Judith Nika Pfeifer (Germany), Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl (Iceland), Dani Orviz (Spain), Tommi Parkko (Finland), and Chris McCabe (UK). The accompanying anthology features works by the participating authors and runs to 651 pages.
Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine
“Cairo writes, Beirut prints, and Bagdad reads”—this well-known saying, depicting the cultural landscape of the seventies’s Arab world, is not as true as before. While Cairo is arguably still leading in writing and Beirut seems to be, albeit with difficulties, a few steps ahead of the Gulf countries in printing, Bagdad is sadly not reading, at least not as much. The golden days of al-Mutanabbi Street are over, while its libraries and bookshops are struggling on all fronts. Reading, as a common practice in Iraq, was a double-sided coin, in that a strong reading society inevitably produced quality writing. One can easily modify the saying to “Cairo writes more, Bagdad writes better.” But those of us who knew the good old days can either hope of better times to come or work so that the better times do come.
Arablit & Arablit Quarterly, a magazine of Arabic literature in translation, is launching this January its first “In Focus” section, dedicated to Iraq and edited by Hend Saeed. In their introductory paragraph, the editors list the sections and explain “for ‘Canonical Works & New Voices,’ we asked a number of Iraqi writers, translators, and scholars to put together a list of their highlights from Iraqi literature. In ‘30 Reads: A Month of Iraqi Women Writers,’ we have thirty days of reading suggestions by women writers, originally composed in Arabic or Kurdish.” The website also invites readers to explore more special features placed at the bottom of the page, with more from their archives on the left.
The Iraqi writers, translators, and scholars who were asked to put together a list of their highlights from Iraqi literature are Dunia Ghali, Shakir Mustafa, Hassan Abdulrazzak, Mortada Gzar, and Maysaloon Hadi. Expectedly, their choices for an Iraqi “canon” include Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, Inaam Kachachi, Samuel Shimon, Sinan Antoon, and Ali Bader. Their explanations for their choices are worth exploring.
With Arablit & Arablit Quarterly’s expertise, one can be sure that In Focus: Iraq is a must-read, as it is truly a well-balanced anthology, crafted with taste and knowledge.
Erica Eisen, Blog Editor, reporting on Kazakhstan
The Kazakh film Akyn (The Poet) has been selected for screening at the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival, which will begin on February 10th. Directed by Darezhan Omirbaev, the film takes inspiration from the Hermann Hesse story “Author’s Evening.” Akyn is not the first of Omirbaev’s films to transplant Western literature to Kazakh soil: Shuga (2007) was adapted from Anna Karenina, while The Student (2012) was based on Crime and Punishment. Didar, the protagonist of Akyn, is a contemporary writer who becomes drawn to the story of Makhambet Otemisov, a poet who helped launch an uprising against Russian colonial rule in the 19th century. Against Didar’s falling star and fading popularity, Otemisov serves as an example of the emotive and political force of writing.
This is an element of the film that has taken on new meaning since demonstrations in Kazakhstan earlier this month were met with violent government crackdowns and tightened restrictions on free speech. Internet access was cut off for days with only intermittent cell service; reporters were arrested, assaulted, and even disappeared, their blue press vests making them easily identified targets. Joanna Lillis of The Economist and Eurasianet tweeted that she was blocked from entering Kazakhstan at the Kyrgyz border crossing nearest Almaty, which witnessed some of the most intense violence. Meanwhile, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has blamed the unrest on “terrorists”—affiliation unspecified, aims unknown—in order to justify his approval of deadly force against those in the streets. This “terrorist” label, it should be noted, has been deployed in the past against enemies of the state. In 2018, for example, the poet and activist Kenzhebek Abishev was sentenced to seven years in prison on flimsy charges of jihad. He died on January 17th, after a hunger strike left him in a perilous health condition.
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