This week, our editors bring news of commendations, intercultural exchanges, and champions of free speech that highlight the need for bold voices and acts of solidarity.
Zohra Salih, Editor-at-Large, reporting from India
Winter is here—not just in the air outside, but within our hearts. One finds it hard to write about literature and culture with genuine excitement in times like these, when Gaza, already deeply wounded, is bleeding again with little hope in sight. It feels anachronistic to mention the many literary festivals and prizes that are scheduled for this winter, as if one is inhabiting two distinct worlds: one with cause for celebration, another for mourning. At the very least, it seems right to acknowledge this disparity, and to consider the very real responsibility of all literary enthusiasts in bridging this divide, in keeping our eyes and ears open, and in being willing to allow for other truths and realities to be translated as part of our own.
On that note, the JCB Prize for Literature has announced its longlist for 2023, featuring four works in translation. Simsim by Geet Chaturvedi, translated by Anita Gopalan, and I Named My Sister Silence by Manoj Rupda, translated by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar (who was himself longlisted for the prize previously), are both written originally in Hindi; The Nemesis, Manoranjan Byapari’s latest work, is translated from Bengali by V Ramaswamy, and it is also worth noting that this is the third time that the fiery writer has been featured on the longlist.
Perumal Murugan’s Fire Bird is also on the longlist, and was translated from the original Tamil into English by Janani Kannan. A professor of Tamil literature, Murugan’s works have garnered critical acclaim through translations, including Madhorubhagan (One Part Woman), his best-known work, which won the prestigious ILF Samanvay Bhasha Samman in 2015, and caused massive uproar amidst conservatives because of its bold and feminist themes—leading to the author briefly declaring that he was ‘dead’ and retired from writing until the Madras high court judgment unequivocally upheld his artistic freedom. Murugan’s profound and incisive explorations of caste and its entanglement in every rubric of Indian society have also rightly led to his book, Pyre, being longlisted for the International Booker Prize this year, as well as his receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award at the seventh edition of the Ooty Literary Festival, which wrapped up this October.
Meanwhile, the 15th Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize was recently awarded to Nikita Deshpande, a writer based in Mumbai. The jury this year, which included poet Sridala Swami and two faculty members of the Department of English at the University of Hyderabad, selected Deshpande from a list of one hundred and twenty entries, and she will be awarded with a cash prize of Rs. 15,000 and presented with a citation. Poet and translator Shalim Hussain, from Assam, was also announced as a part of the shortlist.
MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Spain and Denmark
The most important event of the Romanian literary diaspora this month was the CultuRo Book and Arts Festival in Madrid, Spain (October 5 through 8), which featured over seventy Romanian writers and artists from across Europe alongside an impressive number of publishers, cultural centres, universities, professional associations, and NGOs. The well-attended festival was organized by the Centro Cultural La Tierra Tracia – Asociación Socio-Cultural Romanati (based in Andalucía), and supported by the Romanian Governmental Department for Romanians Abroad in Bucharest, and received generous coverage from the mainstream media in Romania—especially on the radio station, Romania Cultural. Among the most covered events of the festival was a round table on “Romania – Spain, Intercultural Translations and Reformulating the Literary Canon” presided by past Asymptote contributor Felix Nicolau, an internationally known poet, fiction writer, critic, essayist, and academic, currently the Romanian Lecturer at Complutense University of Madrid. Among Nicolau’s remarkable interviewees were established literary critic and historian Antonio Patraș, internationally awarded digital humanities scholar and author Roxana Patraș, and literary critic and radio journalist Georgeta Drăghici.
Another outstanding representative of Romanian literary diaspora, past Asymptote contributor Flavia Teoc, launched no less than two books simultaneously three weeks ago in Copenhagen. The first one was an anthology of Romanian poetry she edited: Rumænsk poesi (from the publisher Frolaget Synapsis) in Robin Wildt Hansen’s Danish translation, the first instalment of a two-volume collection; this first volume features poems by twenty-three poets, most of them established voices from younger to more seasoned generations, as well as several rising stars in an impressively wide range of styles and poetics, inclusively diverse cultural orientations, and a well-balanced gender representation. The second book launched on the same day was Kyrie Lex (from Forlaget Silkefyret), Teoc’s own novel in Danish translation, which has been widely praised and anthologized in the original Romanian. The event was organized by the Romanian-Danish Academic Association at the residence of the Ambassador of Romania to the Kingdom of Denmark, and was attended by foremost Danish writers and literati as well as representatives of the Romanian diaspora.
Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden
Last week, the Swedish PEN organization announced that it has awarded the 2023 Tucholsky Prize to Ukrainian writer and poet Serhiy Zhadan, with the following motivation:
As a writer, Serhiy Zhadan unapologetically depicts the war of aggression against his country. At the same time, he works tirelessly to bring literature to people, thereby allowing art to operate for a better world.
The Tucholsky Prize is an award that was established by Swedish PEN in 1985 and honors the German-born author and journalist Kurt Tucholsky (1890-1935), who had to flee Germany because of his criticism of Nazism. From 1929, Tucholsky lived in Sweden, and while there he learned that his books were being burned in his home country, and he was also stripped of his German citizenship. This prize is thus awarded to authors who have made special contributions to the freedom of expression, and previous recipients include Dawit Isaak, Gui Minhai, Salman Rushdie, Bei Dao, Nuruddin Farah, and Samar Yazbek.
This year’s recipient, Serhiy Zhadan, is one of Ukraine’s most prominent writers. His work spans drama, memoir, and travelogue, and he also collaborates with musicians. Zhadan’s writing has been published in over twenty languages. Internationally, he is perhaps most recognized for the novels Depeche Mode (translated into English by Miroslav Shkandrij, Glagoslav Publications, 2013) and The Orphanage (translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler, Yale University Press, 2021), and he has also been previously published in Asymptote in 2014, 2016, and 2019, and reviewed by Kate Tsurkan in 2021.
During Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, Zhadan has become a voice of freedom for the invaded nation. According to Kerstin Almegård, President of Swedish PEN, Zhadan’s work shows the important role that literature can play under terrible circumstances. An award ceremony will be held in the Swedish capital Stockholm on November 15, the Day of the Imprisoned Writer. Zhadan, who lives in Kharkiv on the front lines and works with the humanitarian efforts, is not expected to be able to attend the ceremony in Stockholm.
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