This week, our editors are providing coverage of headlining events featuring intercultural dialogues, book launches of groundbreaking texts, and political corruption. In Slovakia and Czechia, the two countries discuss the ramifications of Czechoslovakia’s breakup on the two nations’ respective literatures. In Kenya, a collection featuring the stories of women hawkers—a burgeoning national economy—is released to the public. And in Bulgaria, a beloved theatre director takes aim at the National Theatre’s “moral degradation.” Read on to find out more!
Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting on Slovakia
The thirtieth anniversary of the breakup of Czechoslovakia prompted reflections in both the Slovak and the Czech press on the legacy of the common state, and how the cultural links between the two nations have evolved since the countries went their separate ways. Summing up the literary developments in a recent episode of Knižná revue, an excellent podcast produced by the Slovak Literature Centre, the Czech literature scholar and translator of Slovak literature Lubomír Machala suggested that there are now more differences than parallels between the two literatures—although what has not changed is that the Czech reading public shows less interest in Slovak literature than vice versa. The Slovak literature scholar Magdalena Bystrzak also sees this relationship as asymmetrical, as does her colleague Radoslav Passia, who points out that the ties between the two literatures are, nevertheless, much stronger than those between either nation and any other literature, as reflected in numerous bilateral literary projects, such as a Czech/Slovak poetry competition, or the Month of Authors’ Readings.
The end of January marked the 105th birthday of Leopold Lahola (1918-1968): playwright, film director, screenwriter, poet, and essayist, whose short stories reflect his harrowing wartime experiences. Lahola’s promising postwar literary career was cut short when his plays were denounced as “existentialist” in 1948, upon which he emigrated to Israel, where he helped to launch the country’s burgeoning film industry, before moving to Austria and Germany. Although he spent nearly half of his life in exile, Lahola never stopped writing in Slovak. In the late 1960s, Lahola began to visit his native country again but, sadly, died of a heart attack in January 1968, shortly before his fiftieth birthday. It is a pity that so far, only one of his short stories is available in English.
The 2022 recipients of one of Slovakia’s major awards, the Tatra Banka Foundation’s Arts Prize, were announced at the end of January. The prize for a debut work of literature went to Nicol Hochholczerová for Táto izba sa nedá zjesť (This Room is Too Much to Swallow, as reported here) and the poet Mila Haugová added to her many previous accolades the main prize for literature, for her collection Z rastlinstva (From Flora). And although not strictly speaking a literary prize, it is worth mentioning the bank’s Special Prize, awarded to Gabriela Garlatyová for her monograph on the extraordinary visual Slovak artist Mária Bartuszová. Garlatyová was a consultant on a major exhibition of Bartuszová’s work at London’s Tate Modern, which has just been extended to June 25, and which I urge everyone to visit.
In the coming months, two Slovak writers will present their work in the UK: on April 22, Zuzana Husárová (see this interview) will appear at the European Poetry Festival in London, while Monika Kompaníková will be part of the line-up of the first European Writers’ Festival to be held at the British Library in London on May 20-21, alongside Raphaela Edelbauer, Charlotte Van Den Broeck, Caroline Lamarche, Georgi Gospodinov, Núria Bendicho Giró, Anthony Anaxagorou, Kateřina Tučková, Harald Voetmann, Kai Aareleid, Ammi Itäranta, Mithu Sanyal, Slias Maglinis, Zsófia Bán, Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, Jan Carson, Raibīs, Jurga Vilė, Lina Itagaki, Nachoem M. Wijnberg, Vigdis Hjorth, Witold Szabłowski, José Luís Peixoto, Ana Blandiana, Chitra Ramaswamy, Ana Schnabl, Elena Medel, Defne Suman, and Olena Stiazhkina. Kompaníková will appear on May 20 as part of the panel organized in partnership with English PEN. Entitled “Stories of Freedom,” the conversation will grapple with the question of whether freedom of expression (the freedom to speak, write, read, create, discuss, travel, cross borders, and perform in public) is under threat.
Andriana Hamas, Editor-at-Large, Reporting from Bulgaria
All the world’s a stage, and no one in Bulgaria knows this better than the country’s beloved theater director Aleksandar Morfov, whose unswerving fight in support of democratic principles has been making the local headlines for the past several months.
In October, Morfov took immediate action against what he, among many others, perceived as a sign of the National Theater’s “moral degradation.” After the institution hired PR expert Velislava Krasteva, a former member and lifelong supporter of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (a political party strongly associated with corruption), the artistic director impulsively scratched out her office nameplate, accusing her of “political propaganda.” The head of the National Theatre, Vasil Vasilev, initially refused to take the dispute further, despite protestations from the chief dramatist Zachary Karabashliev (Asymptote has previously published his play Lissabon) and the renowned stage director Javor Gardev.
The story took an unexpected turn at the beginning of March when it was announced that both Morfov and Krasteva would be dismissed, which sparked unprecedented protests in defense of the former. Later, Vasil Vasilev claimed that he had “fought for four long months to preserve the establishment and the team’s integrity,” adding that “no single person is of any particular significance to the National Theatre.” The matter still hasn’t been fully resolved, and Morfov’s fate remains undecided as many eagerly await to find out where his upcoming staging of The Cabal of Hypocrites will be taking place.
Wambua Muindi, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Kenya
Nairobi’s Goethe Institut, host of the AMKA literature forum, a space for women’s creativity, has just launched Resilience: Stories in the Lives of Nairobi Women Hawkers. A collection of over forty stories, the book explores the possibilities of life for women within the hawking industry—one of the fastest developing African economies. The writing consists of women’s life stories as well as their representation within the city space, and was published to the delight of academics such as Mary Kinyanjui, Lydia Gaitirira, Jennifer Muchiri, Austin Bukenya, and Tom Odhiambo. Bukenya contended that it was a success in translational communication, as the stories were told in Kiswahili and Sheng; as such, the contents display the richness in storytelling and communication. Additionally, where Bukenya noted the “missing man” as a recurrent motif , Muchiri also commented that the stories humanized women through their stories, and thus constituted a form of raw social commentary, observing that women are affirming their dignity and pointing to the relational character of human beings.
Meanwhile, Lamu Fort Museum hosted another book launch, celebrating the poetry of Mahmoud Ahmad Abdulkadir—commonly known as Ustadh Mahmoud Mau. With a fond foreword by Prof Rayya Timmamy, head of the Kiswahili department of the University of Nairobi, In This Fragile World: Swahili Poetry of Commitment by Ustadh Mahmoud Mau was edited by Annachiara Raia and Clarissa Vierke to be the poet’s first published anthology. It brings together contributions and reflections on Mau’s poetry by—among others—Annachiara Raia and Clarissa Vierke, both of whom work with oceanic literature in the East African coast. A poet famed for his use of the Kiamu dialect, as well as his deep seated sense of his community, he locates his poetry within the Swahili poetic tradition. Yvonne Adhiambo, author of Dragonfly Sea, and who also had a public reading in Lamu Fort, termed the launch an “emotional and overdue celebration”.
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