In this week’s updates on world literature, our Editors-at-Large bring you updates on literary awards and interdisciplinary festivals! From applied computer science for literature to books for Dalit History Month, read on to find out more!
Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden
Earlier this month, Norwegian novelist Vigdis Hjorth was announced the recipient of the inaugural Sara Danius Foundation Prize. Vigdis Hjorth is one of Norway’s most prominent writers, with over twenty novels and several young adult books published over the last forty years. English-language readers know her from titles like Is Mother Dead (2022) and Will and Testament (2019), both available in translation by Charlotte Barslund. Is Mother Dead was longlisted for the International Booker Prize, and Will and Testament was longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award in the USA for best translated novel. The Danius Foundation emphasized Vigdis Hjorth’s “groundbreaking and magnificent narrative that disrupts the order with style and clarity” in explaining their motivation for awarding Hjorth the Sara Danius Foundation Prize. The award consists of SEK 50,000 and an artwork depicting Sara Danius, painted by Stina Wirsén. Sara Danius was a Swedish scholar of literature and aesthetics, a literary critic and an essayist, and the first female permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy. After her passing in 2019, her family created the Sara Danius Foundation, with the purpose of supporting female pioneers in literature, humanities research, criticism, essay writing, journalism, and artistic activities. This year’s award ceremony will take place at the Sven-Harry Art Museum in Stockholm on May 3.
Another literary award, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, was announced last month. This year’s recipient is American young adult writer Laurie Halse Anderson, whose books deal with challenging topics like sexual abuse and eating disorders. Considering that her books are banned from schools in several US states, Anderson’s initial thought when she learned about the award, was that a mistake had been made. Her literary breakthrough came with the 1999 publication of her book Speak, about the stigmatization and rejection of rape victims in the social context of school. The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award was created in 2002 by the Swedish government in memory of the Swedish children’s book author Astrid Lindgren, who passed away that same year. The global award is given annually to a person or organization for contributions to children’s and young adult literature. With a prize of five million SEK, it is the largest award of its kind.
MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Romania and Spain
The largest and likely best media-covered recent event in Romanian literature and culture was the interdisciplinary international festival Smart Diaspora 2023 that took place in Timisoara April 10–13. The event’s tagline specifically addressed the “academic, scientific, innovative, and entrepreneurial [Romanian] diaspora” and was a dynamic event that alternated between (and included hybrids of) workshops, speeches from high-ranking officials and press conferences, rock-concert-like galas, art gallery openings and opera recitals, and networking receptions. The programme included thirty-eight three-day concomitant workshops featuring hundreds of speakers and attracting sizeable audiences in manifold interactive setups.
The most literary workshop was “Innovating at the Crossroads of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Digital Humanities: Applications in Romanian Language and Literature,” hosted by West University of Timisoara, organized by CODHUS, coordinated by academics from three Romanian universities, and featuring speakers from Belgium, Canada, France, Norway, Romania & Moldova, Spain, the UK, the US, and beyond. The talks ranged from literary/linguistic corpora and relevant digital applications (by high-profile authors and/or research project leaders such as Roxana Patras, Madalina Chitez, Ioana Galleron, Liviu Dinu, Georgeta Cislaru, etc.) to cutting-edge applied computer science for literature and the humanities (Diana Inkpen, Mihai Surdeanu, C. Tanasescu) to highly technical and state-of-the-art NLP & AI (Cornelia Caragea, Victoria Bobicev, Mihai Dascalu, and Stefan Dumitrescu).
While the Romanian diaspora’s brightest lights were visiting their home country, major local literati, translators, and academics went abroad. As past Asymptote contributor Felix Nicolau reports, internationally celebrated fiction writer Gabriela Adamesteanu recently visited Madrid (while on a literary tour around Spain) for a public interview and book signing at Antonio Machado Library (an event co-organized by the Romanian Cultural Institute in the Spanish capital). Nicolau also presented at the Romanian Center at Universidad Complutense de Madrid a hot-off-the-press and already sought-for release by Cristina Saracut, Limba română pentru străini (Romanian Language for Foreigners).
Areeb Ahmad, Editor-at-Large, reporting from India
On April 3, the shortlist for the inaugural edition of the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation was announced. The prize aims to “remedy the stark disparities in literary translation worldwide and support compelling storytellers from the Indian Subcontinent by raising their visibility in the US.” The shortlist consists of seven finalists, chosen from over fifty submissions, and includes two translations each from Tamil, Urdu, and Hindi. The last language represented on the shortlist is Assamese. Nandini Krishnan is there twice for Raasa Leela, which she translated from Tamil, and Save Me From My Friends, jointly translated from Urdu with Jaweeda Habib. She has previously translated two books by 2023 International Booker Prize longlisted Tamil writer, Perumal Murugan. She is joined by Aruni Kashyap who has published multiple Assamese translations including his shortlisted work, The Smell of Bamboo Blossoms, and veteran translators Musharraf Ali Farooqi, who translated The Kettle Drum and Other Stories from Urdu and Thila Varghese, who translated Somewhere It’s Three O’Clock Right Now from Tamil. The list is rounded out by work from emerging translators Akshaj Awasthi, who translated Alpha-Beta-Gamma from Hindi, and Vaibhav Sharma, who translated This Village Doesn’t Exist from Hindi. Excerpts from shortlisted works will be featured on Words Without Borders. The winner, to be announced in May, gets a book deal with Open Letter Books.
Speaking of book prizes, the longlisting of Perumal Murugan for the 2023 International Booker Prize has been cause for celebration back home in India. With Tomb of Sand’s 2022 win—the first South Asian, as well as Indian and Hindi, work to claim the prize—still fresh in our minds, it is great to see another veteran writer get long overdue recognition on the international stage. As a result, many articles and essays have appeared in the media that explore Murugan’s life and works, particularly the longlisted novel, Pyre, in Aniruddhan Vasudevan’s translation. Caste is a pervading presence in his work, making him a crucial author to read in April, celebrated as Dalit History Month. Some other books in translation that explore the lives of Dalit individuals are Father May Be an Elephant and Mother a Small Basket, But . . . by Gogu Shyamala, translated from Telugu by various translators, The Nemesis by Manoranjan Byapari, translated from Bengali by V Ramaswamy, Fear and Other Stories by Dalpat Chauhan, translated from Gujarati by Hemang Ashwinkumar, and Oblivion and Other Stories by Gopinath Mohanty, translated from Odia by Sudeshna and Sudhansu Mohanty.
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