This week, our editors on the ground report on literary festivals, award winners, and exhibitions inspired by pivotal writings. From awardees of the Lu Xun Literature Prize to wide-ranging international programs, find out the latest news from the world of global letters below.
Katarina Gadze, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Croatia
The beginning of literary September in Croatia marked the tenth World Literature Festival, which ran from September 4 to 9 in Zagreb. The festival, a tradition for world literature aficionados throughout the region, has grown into an immersive experience for readers to see the best new works of world literature, meet novelists themselves, and listen to discussions regarding their works. This year, the festival brought forth a star-studded line-up of extraordinary international guests and talented authors—such as British writer Bernardine Evaristo, author of one of the most influential books of the decade, Girl, Woman, Other. 2020 Costa Book of the Year winner, Monique Roffey, also joined to share insight into their latest literary masterpiece, The Mermaid of Black Conch. On the local side of things, a talk on the heartbreaking novel/poem Djeca (Children) with its author, the Serbian writer Milena Marković, is also worth mentioning. Other foreign writers who took part in the festival’s fruitful discussions include Israeli writer Dror Mishani, Austrian novelist Karl-Markus Gauss, and German author Katharina Volckmer.
In Rijeka, the Croatian harbour city’s own literary festival, vRIsak, is also back for its fifteenth edition, in which both foreign and local literary voices flocked to the city’s new cultural center, the “Benčić” art district, to discuss contemporary writing and art. This year’s edition promised to be the most ambitious yet, with a lively program celebrating stories of emigrants, contemporary European poetry, and the city Mostar’s literary boom. On the topic of the latter, Mostar author Senka Marić, whose Kintsugi tijela (Body Kintsugi) will soon be published in English translation, spoke about the creative ambitions behind her latest novel Gravitacije (Gravitations). Another theme of this year’s festival was climate fiction, an ode to the healing potential of words in context to the rapid environmental changes of our time.
Last but not least, on September 22, Croatian Writers’ Association (Društvo hrvatskih književnika) organised a panel discussion on a hot topic in today’s literary scene, entitled “Literary Translation Today: Art or Transmission from Language to Language?” On the panel, numerous experts discussed what literary translators are up against in today’s competitive market, as well as the general lack of respect for such a demanding artistic process.
Charlie Ng, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong
On August 25, the winners of the eighth Lu Xun Literature Prize were announced in Beijing; amongst them was author Ge Liang, who received the novella award for his work Flying Hair—the first time for a Hong Kong writer to win the award. Currently a professor of Chinese language and literature at Hong Kong Baptist University, Ge Liang grew up in Nanjing and received his PhD from the University of Hong Kong. His fictional works include short story collections Year of Drama, Enigma, Going Our Separate Ways, and the novel Rosefinch. An English translation of his short story, “Dragon Boat,” is available on Paper Republic. Other winners in this awards season include Hong Kong poet Chow Hon-fai and writer So Long-yan, who received respectively the first prize for poetry and the Honourable Mention for fiction in the eleventh Taichung Literature Awards.
To celebrate the publication of Xi Xi’s new collection of animal poems, Carnival of Animals, Yrellag Gallery hosted an exhibition to showcase illustrations by more than twenty artists. The exhibition “Carnival of the Animals—Xi Xi’s Animal Poems” took place from September 10 to 27; on September 17, the gallery and Hong Kong literary magazine Zihua (Fleurs des Lettres) organised a session for reading Xi Xi’s poems.
This year marks the hundredth anniversary of Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Sonnets to Orpheus; to celebrate the occasion, Hong Kong Reader Bookstore organised an online book talk on September 29 to explore the work’s importance in the history of world literature. Hong Kong writers Cheng Ching-hang and Ian Pang engaged in a conversation on the themes, symbols, influences, and translation of Rilke’s work.
Suhasini Patni, Editor-at-Large, reporting from India
The JCB Literary Prize, one of the most exciting awards in India, recently announced its longlist. This year, six of its titles are translations, including the Booker Award-winning Tomb of Sand. The authors and translators from the longlist were in conversation with Scroll.in to discuss their nominated books, reading habits, and challenges in translation.
One of the longlisted translators is Arunava Sinha, previously interviewed by the blog, for his translation of Manoranjan Byapari’s Imaan. Neither Sinha nor Byapari are strangers to literary awards; a trailblazing writer, Byapari has been awarded the Suprabha Majumdar Prize in 2014, and received the Sharmila Ghosh Smriti Literary Prize in 2015. The translation of his autobiography Interrogating My Chandal Life won The 2019 Hindu Literary Prize in the nonfiction category. It captured his powerful journal of hunger, deprivation, and persistence in the aftermath of India’s partition. A writer concerned with championing the voice of the Dalit community and unafraid of speaking his truth, Byapari was also awarded the Shakti Bhatt Book Prize earlier this year. Mridula Koshy, winner of the 2009 Shakti Bhatt Prize and a trustee of the foundation, honored him with a cash prize of two lakhs and trophy with this citation:
. . . Byapari’s writing isn’t only about the harrowing loneliness of the human experience, but also of the particular quality of loneliness suffered by a class or caste expelled from society as punishment for merely existing.
The English PEN also announced the first shortlist for PEN Presents, a new award for sample translations. In this shortlist are twelve translators working out of seven Indian languages. The shortlist includes five works by Dalit writers, and a full list of works can be accessed here.
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