This week, our editors from around the world are reporting on trailblazing new releases, award winners, and literary festivals! From the return of the Dhaka Literature Festival after two years on hiatus to Czech comic artists at the International Comic Art Festival, read on to learn more!
Areeb Ahmad, Editor-at-Large, reporting from India
Initially announced in July, more information has emerged regarding the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation in a feature published by World Without Borders. The prize, sponsored by Armory Square Ventures with a jury of acclaimed translation specialists from around the world, aims to “recognize an outstanding translator of South Asian Literature into English.” The winning work will be published by Open Letter Books while excerpts from finalists will appear in WWB. The founders of the prize intend to highlight literatures that are “all but invisible outside South Asia” in the global English-speaking sphere, joining the JCB Prize for Literature in promoting translated Indian literatures both at home and abroad.
The acclaimed Naga writer, Temsula Ao, passed away on October 9 at the age of seventy-six. In her obituary, Chitra Ahanthem explores her legacy and bibliography, highlighting Ao’s focus on the Naga community and her resistance to the homogenizing impulse to club writing from all the Northeast Indian states into a singular literature, which would dismiss the differences across communities and tribes both within and beyond each state. Meanwhile, the 2022-23 cohort of the National Centre for Writing’s Emerging Translator Mentorships was recently announced. Among its recipients, Vaibhav Sharma was awarded the Saroj Lal Mentorship in Hindi and will be mentored by the International Booker Prize winner, Daisy Rockwell.
In news from the Indian subcontinent at large, the Dhaka Literary Festival is back after two years on hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic. The tenth edition will be held in the first week of January next year as per the latest announcement. Writers and translators such as Orhan Pamuk, Andrey Kurkov, Geetanjali Shree, and Daisy Rockwell are expected to attend as speakers. The Jaipur Literature Festival, purported to be India’s biggest literary festival, also announced the dates for its 2023 Edition, to be held from January 19 to 23. While the Jaipur Literature Festival focuses mostly on Anglophone writing and writers, this year its considerable list of speakers is expected to showcase writing and writers in translation, especially from the subcontinent.
Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Macedonia
To commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the birth of Macedonian writer and household name Goran Stefanovski (1952–2018), publishing house Polica released Identitetot e prikazna (Identity is a Story), an analysis of Stefanovski’s works by Ivan Antonovski, available in bookstores as of October 4, 2022. While Stefanovski worked mostly within the realms of film and theater, Identitetot e prikazna presents a detailed analysis of Stefanovki’s essayistic work, shedding some much needed light upon an area of his literary contribution that hadn’t yet received much attention.
Stefanovski is perhaps best known as the playwright of Divo Meso (Proud Flesh), a seminal play which depicts the microcosm of a family falling apart due to clashing values amidst an impending Second World War. His unflinching and nuanced exploration of sensitive subjects, such as the loss of culture and tradition, the dilemma between a rebellion doomed to fail and humiliating conformity, and the pressure exerted upon Eastern Europe by Western countries, garnered him the 1980 Sterijino Pozorje Theater Festival Award for Best Yugoslav Play of the Year, as well as the 11th October Prize, the most prestigious award given in Yugoslav Macedonia at the time.
Identitetot e prikazna was received with approval and excitement in the Macedonian literary scene; on October 15, a promotion of the book was held, complete with a reading of Stefanovski’s essays, group discussions of his work, and a performance of excerpts from the play “For Our Goran,” which was composed in celebration of Stefanovski’s contributions to Macedonian culture. Venko Andonovski, a prominent Macedonian author and literary critic, characterizes Identitetot e prikazna as “not only a trailblazing, but also a professional and methodical study of Stefanovski’s essayistic writing.” One of the central conclusions drawn in the work is, according to Andonovski’s review, that “Goran Stefanovski’s essays can be considered a metagenre of his dramaturgical work.”
On Stefanovski’s metagenre, Andonovski elaborates, “All his plays are, in fact, essays about identity (recoded genealogically in dramatic form), which means—stories that invest in the identity foundations of Macedonian culture. Equally, his essays are dramatized reflections on identity and the dramatic act in general.” Antonovski’s Identitetot e prikazna brings new light to Goran Stefanovski’s legacy, and has been celebrated within the Macedonian literary scene for laying these important aspects of Stefanovski’s literary contribution bare for the public.
Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting on the Czech Republic
Lyon-based Czech writer Magdaléna Platzová participated in the eighteenth Open Air Festival Literature in the Park, organised by Literaturhaus Prague over several evenings between September 12 and 22, alongside past Asymptote contributor Jakuba Katalpa, who read from her latest novel, Zuzana’s Breath. Martin Vopěnka, whose novel The Back of Beyond appeared in English translation by Anna Bryson-Gustova in 2021, presented his latest book, the travelogue Přežít civilizaci – Mých 30 cest za obzor (Surviving Civilisation. My 30 Journeys Beyond the Horizon). On September 20, Platzová presented her latest novel, Život po Kafkovi (Life After Kafka) at Café Fra. Her novel, inspired by the life of Franz Kafka’s fiancée Felice Bauerová, was introduced by poet Petr Borkovec, who considers this Platzová’s most personal book—“primarily a novel about writing. About a writer’s permanent disconnect from life. About grappling with this. About a woman writer in 2022.”
One of the best known contemporary Czech writers, Jáchym Topol, was at the heart of the first group residency for translators organised by the Czech Literature Centre, held from September 19 to 30 in Komařice in southern Bohemia. Among the five resident translators, who tackled an excerpt from the author’s forthcoming novel, Hořící kůlna (Burning Shed), was Eva Profousová, who later went on to participate in a discussion on the importance of translation, held on International Translation Day at the Václav Havel Library in Prague with writer and past Asymptote contributor Radka Denemarková, On October 10, both writer and translator went to Berlin to receive the prestigious Brücke Berlin Literature and Translation Award. This is yet another accolade Denemarková has won in Germany, and it remains to be seen how many more it will take before an Anglophone publisher takes notice of this major Czech writer.
Also on October 10, Alex Zucker, another participant of the group residency and Topol’s “court translator” into English, presented his translation of Bianca Bellová’s novel The Lake together with the book’s author at the Anglo-American University in Prague.
At this year’s International Comic Art Festival, held at Lake Windermere in the United Kingdom from October 14 to 16, Czech comic art was represented by two authors, Václav Šlajch and Vojtěch Mašek. The latter is becoming quite a fixture—this is his third appearance at the festival, and this time he could show off the English translation of his surreal horror story The Sisters Dietl, just out from Centrala Publishers.
*****
Read more from the Asymptote blog: