This week, our editors report on controversial novels from the Macedonian, testaments from Palestine, and a pop-star-turned-writer from China. From a subversive eroticism to details on the lives of migrant workers, these writers are defying standarisations to illuminate the truth of their realities. Read on to find out more!
Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Macedonia
The last days of 2022 saw a controversial sensation return to the Macedonian literary scene; the publishing house Mi-An released an anniversary edition of Jovan Pavlovski’s provocative novel, Sok od Prostata (Prostate Juice).
As an author of almost fifty works, a member of the Macedonian Writers’ Association and PEN Center Macedonia, an editor of the prominent Macedonian newspaper Nova Makedonija, and the editor and publisher of the first Macedonian encyclopedia, Pavlovski (born in 1937 in Tetovo) has contributed a diverse body of work to Macedonian culture. Reaching beyond its confines, his work has been translated into more than twenty languages. Politically dissident and candidly sexual, Sok od Prostata, originally published in 1991, is one of Pavlovski’s best known oeuvres, and has received the title of Most Read Book in Serbia.
Telling the story of a young man desperate for love, Sok od Prostata is described by Mi-An as “not only an erotic novel, but also a deep lyrical story about loneliness and culture shock, passion and love…” Despite its lyricism, rebellion and irreverence remain at the core of the work: “(Sok od Prostata) strives to break through elitist, hardened attitudes about the decent/indecent, and to deconstruct the hypocrisy of ‘high literature’”.
Pavlovski’s work were incendiary, and its forays into the taboo resulted in comparisons with the creations of Charles Bukowski and Henry Miller. “1991, as the year in which the independence of Macedonia happened, also proved to be the year in which the Macedonian novel broke away from all reservations and conservatisms and rose to a new artistic freedom,” says Macedonian author Vesna Mojsova-Čepiševska in her promotional speech commemorating the anniversary edition of the novel. She details the novel’s mixed reputation, describing it as an “eye-sore” when it first appeared in bookstore displays, while noting that the cultural friction generated by its rebellious content was a source of “unprecedented interest from the reading public”. This fascination wasn’t limited to laymen: the anniversary edition includes eight works of literary criticism concerning Pavlovski’s writing, proving the continuing relevance of his work to Macedonian culture and literary scholarship.
Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine
I am thinking of keeping a diary, not with the intend to publish it, merely to record the facts for the information of God, in case God does not know my version of the facts.
—Leo Szilard
While one can’t be entirely sure of the impact that the physicist Leo Szilard had on Palestinians, it seems a growing number of them are becoming convinced of his view regarding self-documentation. This has become evident in the unprecedented number of books in 2022 that fall under the purview of diaries/memoirs/biographies. Much-admired authors (like Raja Shehadeh and Suad Amiry) continued to add to the list with We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I, and Mother of Strangers, respectively. Naturally, historians have also had much to say—the latest was a translation of Adel Manna’s Nakba and Survival (full text available for free here). Artists (for example Vera Tamari’s book Returning: Palestinian Family Memories in Clay Reliefs, Photos, & Text), and even physicians (latest was Dr Shawki Harb’s A Surgeon Under Israeli Occupation, reviewed here) also joined the chorus. The list goes on and on, be it in Arabic or in English, in authorship or in translation.
The wave does not seem to be withdrawing in 2023. We already know of two books coming out in the first quarter: Hussein Bargouthi’s The Blue Light by the acclaimed translator Fady Joudah will be published by Seagull Books in the coming weeks (read an Asymptote early review here), and the second is by Mahmoud Shuqair titled Ghassan Kanafani… The Eternal, translated by myself, and will be published by Tamer Institute.
For an overview of how Palestinian history and identity has been documented by Palestinian Institutions, a recent seminar, available in English, discussed the matter. In case God does not know, an entire nation’s history is being documented!
Jiaoyang Li, Editor-at-Large, reporting for China
Ren Ke, the lead singer and guitarist of indie band Wu Tiaoren, has just released his debut collection of flash fiction collection: Popular Fiction (《通俗小说》). As the editor of the work, Li Suo, wrote in her introduction, this collection represents the newfound genre of Chinese Urban Village Existential literature: all the stories—each only a page or two long—are based in counties and urban ghettoes in Guangzhou. The protagonists are migrant laborers who live around dirty motels, hair salons, sauna towns, and factories—the center of this relatively international big city. Written in a heavy dialect, these stories bring to their readers a sticky, damp, but dreamy breeze from the typical Chinese South. As Ren Ke put it, he is trying to “pursue the real in the unreal,” to capture the “cockroach-like vitality, butterfly-like poetry” of Haifeng County. Though he had never been to the US, he surmises that Haifeng is a city similar to New York City—one that belongs to the future. The work is available online or at Accent Sisters Speakeasy Bookstore, a new indie Chinese-language bookstore based in the greater New York area.
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