This week, Asymptote‘s Editors-at-Large take us around the global literary scene, featuring book fairs and the highlights of Women in Translation Month! From the multimedia cultural event Bokmässan by Night in Sweden to the Taiwan/Ireland Poetry Translation Competition, read on to learn more!
Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden
A month from today, it will be time for Scandinavia’s largest literary event, the Göteborg Book Fair—an event spanning four days with around eight hundred exhibitors and the same amount of seminar speakers. Started in 1985, it now attracts eighty-five thousand writers, publishers, librarians, teachers, and book lovers every year. This year’s themes are Jewish Culture, The City, and Audio. The club concept Bokmässan by Night was introduced last year, which combines bar hopping with various cultural experiences. The fair has now announced that Bokmässan by Night will return on September 29 with four stages, five bars, multiple DJs, and stage performances. The evening includes Swedish writers and dramatists Jonas Hassen Khemiri—known to Asymptote readers through pieces like I Call My Brothers and Only in New York—and Agneta Pleijel, whose novel A Fortune Foretold was published in Marlaine Delargy’s English translation by Other Press in 2017. Bokmässan by Night will also offer live literary criticism with critics Mikaela Blomqvist, Jesper Högström and Valerie Kyeyune Backström, as well as live podcasts, including Flora Wiström’s Röda rummet—a literary podcast which borrows its name from the Swedish Modernist writer and playwright August Strindberg’s 1879 debut novel The Red Room. While Bokmässan by Night is an in-person experience, many other events during the fair are available online through Book Fair Play.
The discussion has also turned toward security threats during the book fair. Following several Quran burnings in Sweden this summer, the Swedish security service has recognized an increased national terror threat level, where Sweden is identified as a priority target. The head of the Göteborg Book Fair, Frida Edman, says that the organization is closely following the development of the situation in order to plan accordingly, but also emphasizes that the Fair has a robust and experienced security organization which includes manual bag checks and a high presence of security personnel and police, as well as collaboration with the authorities.
The full programme for the Göteborg Book Fair is available in English online.
Rubén López, Editor-at-Large, Reporting on Central America
Last July, the International Book Fair of Guatemala (FILGUA, in its Spanish acronym) took place, with El Salvador as its honored guest. However, the celebration of literature was marred by governmental censorship when the Salvadorean government, through its embassy, requested the organizers to cancel the presentation of Sustancia de hígado (Liver Substance) written by Michelle Recinos—a Salvadorean writer who won the Mario Monteforte Toledo Prize in 2023.
The book includes the award-winning story “Barberos en huelga” (Barbers on Strike), which portrays an imaginary city named San Carlos, where young individuals are apprehended for sporting hair reminiscent of a football star. While the embassy never provided a reason for the censorship, Recinos’ narrative serves as a critique of the state of exception declared by President Nayib Bukele in the country since early 2022. These authoritarian measures have led to the incarceration of around seventy thousand Salvadoran individuals without due process. Michelle Recinos stands as the first Salvadorean writer to experience such direct censorship orchestrated by the Salvadorean State apparatus. Despite the censorship, the book became one of the bestsellers during the fair.
MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large, Reporting from Ireland
If it is August, then it is Women in Translation Month in Ireland and elsewhere, and both women writers and translators are thriving here. A recent article in Irish Times celebrating women in translation presents recent books from an impressive number of places and literatures including Egypt, Morocco/France, Norway, Uruguay, Argentina, and Germany. Additionally, the monthly bestsellers in fiction announced by Books Ireland feature no less than nine women writers in the first ten positions. Sunday Times and Irish Times top ten bestselling Dubliner Andrea Mara takes the lead with No One Saw a Thing, alongside other Irish authors such as Colin Walsh and Liz Nugent, as well as Canadian Shari Lapena and Americans Colleen Hoover and Rebecca F. Kuang.
The literary scene is also in full swing even during summer at the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation in Dublin, led by outstanding translation scholar James Hadley who recently took over from world-class author and academic Michael Cronin. After hosting a Summer Translation Workshop and an Italo Calvino and World Culture conference in June, the centre is currently organizing a Taiwan/Ireland Poetry Translation Competition (closing date, September 1), an event exploring the range of languages and traditions found in Taiwan and how these can be linked to the poetry tradition of Ireland. This year’s poem is 天光 (Daylight) by 曾貴海 (Tseng Kuei-hai), written in the Hakka language and available to listen to in the poet’s reading on YouTube.
The summer issue of The Stinging Fly recently came out with a rich offer of fiction, poetry, and essays written or translated into English. Among the highlights, Anne Carson opens the fiction section, followed by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo translated by Frank Wynne. Michael Dooley is the issue’s featured poet, accompanied by poets John Kinsella, Derek Coyle, and Clíodhna Bhreathnach. This past march, the journal celebrated its 25th anniversary with the launch of this most recent issue. Throughout its run, The Stinging Fly has been responsible for launching world best-selling authors such as Sally Rooney, and has been praised in The New York Times as the “tiny” literary magazine that became a “springboard for great Irish writing.”
*****
Read more on the Asymptote blog: