In this week’s collection of literary news from around the world, our editors report on political dissident writers in Thailand, a literary festival in Poland, and prizes for writers in the Philippines. Read on to find out more!
Peera Songkünnatham, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Thailand
Activists critical of the Thai establishment have to contend with not only the threat of royal defamation laws but also charges of mental illness. No one knows this more intimately than writer, translator, and bookseller Small Bandhit Aniya: in 1965, he was thrown in a psychiatric hospital by police after he camped outside the Russian Embassy in Bangkok and wrote “It is better to die in Moscow than to stay in Thailand” on the embassy walls in chalk. In 1975, he was charged with lèse-majesté for a booklet lambasting Haile Selassie I, the emperor of Ethiopia, but escaped imprisonment due to being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. This professional-opinion-turned-legal-fact would become the saving strategy for his lawyers in subsequent decades, most recently in 2014—to the dismay of the man himself, who insists he’s perfectly sane.
Starting this week, a literary translation initiative is putting a spotlight on Bandhit’s work along with the voices of other allegedly insane subjects in the kingdom. Under the theme “Madman, Madwoman, Madhuman,” the website Sanam Ratsadon released an excerpt from Bandhit’s autobiographical novel, in which he plays with the idea that he may indeed be insane. Rather than rejecting the diagnosis outright, as he has in his public statements, Bandhit takes the strange route of fictionalizing madness. “There is no doubt that I am mentally ill,” he writes. “Many things I have done in the past and will do in the future clearly signal that I am a psycho, the kind with paranoid schizophrenia.” Is this satire? In any case, this is a literary experiment that has yet to be fully appreciated and properly interpreted in Thailand. May the world be introduced to him, then.
Meanwhile, the short story “Sound of Laughter” by Mutita Ubekka, published as part of the same initiative, questions the self-help, positive-thinking mindset of the Thai public health sector and its allies through the perspective of a woman who is pushed to the brink of suicide by the country’s sociopolitical conditions, like many others in the “Sufferers Association of Thailand.” The story was originally written for a 2020 creative writing contest under the sunny theme of “Day of Suffering That Passed” as part of the project “Read to Heal the Heart.” Seeing through it all, the madwoman discovers her own way of overcoming suffering—through the Jokeresque laughter in a therapist’s office.
Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting on Poland
On 15 June the NIKE Prize, Poland’s most prestigious literary award, revealed its 2022 longlist. The twenty contenders (from poetry to fiction, from reportage and essays to biography) include Przewóz (The Ferry), the first novel in ten years by Andrzej Stasiuk, and Kierunek zwiedzania (The Exhibition Continues), the latest book by past Asymptote contributor Marcin Wicha, inspired by the works of Kazimir Malevich. Agnieszka Gajewska has made the longlist with the second biography of the renowned science fiction writer Stanisław Lem to appear in his centenary year, Wypędzony z Wysokiego Zamku (Banished from the High Castle), which focuses on a lesser-known aspect of the author’s life, his Jewish identity. Artur Domosławski has been nominated for Wygnaniec. 21 scen z życia Zygmunta Baumana (The Exile. 21 Scenes from the Life of Zygmunt Bauman), his monumental account of the life and work of the famous sociologist. The winner will be announced in October.
From 13 to 21 July, several locations around Olga Tokarczuk’s hometown of Nowa Ruda in the mountainous region of Lower Silesia played host to Mountains of Literature, a festival first launched by the Nobel laureate eight years ago. It included some 100 events held at venues ranging from castles to meadows and featured Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, Frank Westerman and Richard Flanagan (his presentation is the only one among the many videos on the festival’s Facebook page available in English). Ukrainian literature was given pride of place with readings of Ukrainian poetry, and discussions with novelists Oksana Zabuzhko, Natalka Sniadanko, Victoria Amelina and Tania Malarczuk. The Polish contingent included film director Agnieszka Holland, fantasy author Jacek Dukaj, and past Asymptote contributor Agnieszka Taborska, as well as Tokarczuk herself, who talked to author Jerzy Sosnowski about her first book since winning the Nobel, Empuzjon (Empusion), a “natural healing horror” set in 1913 in a mountain sanatorium for TB sufferers (any similarities to Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain very much not accidental).
And finally, great news for fans of both Tokarczuk and Complicité, the innovative theatre company that has brought us unforgettable stage versions of such works as Bruno Schulz’s The Street of Crocodiles, Daniil Kharms’s Out of the House Walked a Man and Haruki Murakami’s An Elephant Vanishes: a brand-new adaptation of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead based on Antonia Lloyd-Jones’s translation of Tokarczuk’s novel, is underway and will start touring in December 2022.
Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Philippines
Screenwriter Ricky Lee and poet Gémino H. Abad joined the Orden ng mga Pambansang Alagad ng Sining (Order of National Artists), the highest state honor given to Filipino artists, in a June 16 ceremony at the Malacañan Palace’s Rizal Hall. Lee was named a National Artist for Film; Abad, a National Artist for Literature. (Watch the Facebook Live of the Tribute Ceremony at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.)
From Bicolandia, Lee spearheads Ricky Lee Scriptwriting Workshop, training generations of film and television writers. His films were screened in Cannes, Toronto, and Berlin, especially Himala (LVN, 1982) (Miracle), which he wrote after his release as a Martial Law political prisoner. (Topbilled by another newly-conferred National Artist for Film, Nora Aunor, Himala is streamable on YouTube, Amazon Prime, and Apple TV+.) He’s authored the first book of Filipino screenplays, Salome (UWM-Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 1993) with Rofel Brion’s English translation, and the novel Para Kay B (The Writers Studio, 2008) [For B].
Cebu-born Abad, on the other hand, directed the University of the Philippines-Likhaan Institute of Creative Writing and has written volumes of poetry, prose, and criticism, including In Ordinary Time: Poems, Parables, Poetics (University of the Philippines Press, 2004), earning him Italy’s Premio Feronia, republished as Dove le parole non si spezzano (tr. Gëzim Hajdari, Edizioni Ensemble, 2015). He edited anthologies historicizing Philippine Anglophone poetry and fiction and Bloodlust: Philippine Protest Poetry from Marcos to Duterte (Reyes Publishing, 2017).
Interestingly, it was the late kleptocrat Ferdinand E. Marcos, Sr. who established ONA in 1972, six months before he imposed Martial Law, a dark chapter in Philippine history where constitutional freedoms of dissent were met with violence. Quoting Filipino poet Conchitina Cruz, “[ONA valorized] writers who profess both detachment from politics and commitment to the autonomy of art … a position of privilege that renders economic and social injustice invisible … unexamined … undisturbed.” Sans Marcosian origins, ONA is “governed by … artistic elites whose reputations as gatekeepers … are located in patron-client relationships and fictive kinship legacies that extend past the corporeal existence of the artist,” asserts ethnomusicologist Neal Matherne.
Conferred alongside Lee and Abad were Agnes Locsin (Dance), Salvacion Lim-Higgins (Fashion), Aunor and Marilou Diaz-Abaya (Film), Fides Cuyugan-Asensio (Music), and Antonio ‘Tony’ Mabesa (Theater).
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