Join us this week as our Editors-at-Large bring us news on the most recent bestsellers in the Philippines, the translation of board games in Bulgaria, and the posthumous publication of García Márquez’s final novel in Colombia. From Wattpad-homegrown Filipino authors to the politics of posthumous publication, read on to learn more!
Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Philippines
The memoir of Korean mega boy band BTS (both its English and Filipino translations) and the novel Queen of the Universe (Tuttle Publishing, 2023) by 2015 Miss Universe titlist Filipino beauty queen Pia Wurtzbach have triumphed over the early 2024 bestsellers list as gazetted by the National Book Store (NBS), the Philippines’ largest chain of commercial bookshops.
A source of the so-called ‘Pinoy Pride’ from said list are The New York Times chart-topping debut fantasy novel by Thea Guanzon, The Hurricane Wars (Harper Voyager, 2023); journalist and historian Ambeth Ocampo’s Cabinet of Curiosities: History from Philippine Artifacts (published last year by Anvil, NBS’s sister company); and Panda Book Awards-shortlisted Gail Villanueva’s Lulu Sinagtala and the City of Noble Warriors (HarperCollins, 2024), a children’s book imbued with ancient Tagalog mythological lore—all testaments that Filipinos read books written by Filipino authors.
Populating the local fiction hits are Wattpad-homegrown Filipino genre fictionists, their works ranging from new adult to romance, from chick lit to fantasy—among others, Gwy Saludes’ The Rain in España (which has since been adapted into a popularised Viva One web series) and Safe Skies, Archer, both released last year by Precious Pages under Saludes’ penname 4Reuminct; Disney Panganiban’s Zombie University 3 (Lifebooks, 2023); and No Perfect Prince (Majesty Press, 2023) by Jonahmae Pacala or Jonaxx, dubbed as the country’s ‘Pop Fiction Queen’ and the most celebrated contemporary writer from my hometown.
Released in 2023, Others Were Emeralds and Self-Love for Small-Town Girls by Khmer-born Australian writer Lang Leav, who rose to global fame as a Tumblr and Instagram poet, doubtlessly enthralled the hearts of Filipino readership, with Leav never leaving the Philippine pop literature bestsellerdom since her poetry debut in 2013.
Other 2024 favourites so far are The Woman in Me, the buzzed-about tell-all memoir of pop music royalty Britney Spears, as well as inspirational self-help titles by Panganiban and James Clear, a cookbook by French-Filipino celebrity chef Myke ‘Tatung’ Sarthou, and graphic literature by Japanese manga artist Gege Akutami and Chinese danmei novelist Mo Xiang Tong Xiu.
Andriana Hamas, Editor-at-Large, Reporting from Bulgaria
Luckily for everyone who navigates between two or more languages on a daily basis, the act of translation doesn’t have to be confined to the literary or scientific worlds. In the most recent episode of Бележка под линия (“Footnote”), a Bulgarian podcast dedicated to the art of interpretation, Stefan Rusinov (interviewed previously for Asymptote!) talked with Vasil Lozanov, a philosophy teacher and an avid translator of board games.
Lozanov delved into the specifics of the Bulgarian market and the relatively limited need for the translation of board games, especially because many of the local players don’t mind playing the foreign language versions. He also shared some details about the publisher-translator dynamic, revealing that he would often be required to “test out” the original before being given the green light to adapt it for the potential audience. During the insightful conversation, Lozanov made sure to address some of the unique challenges this type of translator faces, including the need to come up with a text that fits, for instance, the size of a particular card. Another interesting example was the collaboration between his team and a film distribution company shortly before the release of the movie Dune: Part One (2021) and the eponymous board game.
For his part, Rusinov highlighted a crucial aspect of the job, one he feels is partially missing in the more or less “fuzzy” literary translation market: “We [translators of fiction] sometimes forget about the reader.” For him, the consideration for the players themselves and how they would perceive the game constitutes the driving force without which the final result could never be as inspiring.
Miranda Mazariegos, Editor-at-Large for Latin America, Reporting from Colombia
Before he died, García Márquez told his youngest son, Gonzalo García Barcha, that he wanted the manuscript he was working on destroyed. However, a decade after the Nobel Laureate’s death, his sons are publishing that manuscript as a novel titled Until August. The novel follows Ana Magdalena Bach, who finds a new lover on each of her pilgrimages to a Caribbean island to visit her mother’s grave. It was published last week, on what would’ve been the author’s 97th birthday.
Reviews about the book have been mixed. Some critics have slammed the García Barcha brothers, saying they’re only looking to make more money from their father’s legacy; others have argued that the book ends so abruptly it was clear it was unfinished, and The Guardian called it “a faded souvenir.” The Nobel Laureate’s sons, however, said their father was too deep into his dementia to judge his own work. “He lost the ability to judge the book,” Rodrigo García, the eldest of his two sons, told The New York Times. “He was no longer able to even follow the plot, probably.” They thought he probably had judged himself too harshly and thought his fans would appreciate a new book from him, as the last one, Memorias de mis putas tristes, was published 20 years ago. And some fans have. Colombian author Hector Abad said all the virtues that made a García Márquez novel were there, and David Mills thought it was “immediately recognizable.” Regardless, the publication of his novel is sure to spark debates about the role of the author’s wishes upon the publication of their posthumous work.
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