In this round-up of literary news, our editors inform on the dialogues and contemporary themes surrounding literary festivals in Kenya; an event celebrating genre fiction in India; and what publishers are doing to switch things up in Sweden. Read on to find out more!
Wambua Muindi, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Kenya
Book festival season is back in Nairobi, and first in line is—as always—Alliance Française’s Nyrobi Book Fest. The fourth edition of this festival, held from April 11 to 13, was a vibrant celebration of Kenyan storytelling, drawing a significant attendance under the theme “A Decade of Kenyan Stories: Past, Present and Beyond.” The festival offered a rich program, including writing masterclasses, storytelling sessions, book launches, and engaging panel discussions, between which attendees had the opportunity to connect with a diverse array of exhibitors such as Writers Space Africa-Kenya, eKitabu, Mvua Press, NAICONN, Mystery Publishers, NuriaBookstore, Writers Guild Kenya, and Jahazi Press, as well as interact with acclaimed authors like Peter Kimani, author of Dance of the Jacaranda; Billy Kahora, editor of Let Us Conspire and Other Short Stories; Iman Verjee, author of Who Will Catch Us if We Fall; Wangari the Storyteller; Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, author of Dust; and Remy Ngamije, author of The Eternal Audience of One. The three-day festival particularly celebrated the creativity of young Kenyan writers, fostering inspiring conversations and discussions that underscored the dynamic landscape of Kenyan literature.
Following the Book Fest, Nairobi’s literary scene will continue to thrive with the fourth Nairobi Litfest, a festival of ideas by Bookbunk and Hay Festival, which is scheduled for June 26 to 29. Curated by Wanjeri Gakuru under the compelling theme of “exploring alternative knowledge systems,” this year’s edition will activate public spaces across the city, taking place at the McMillan Memorial Library, Eastlands Library, and Kaloleni Library. Building on the success of previous NBO Lit Fests, this edition promises a “thrilling experience” that will gather readers, thinkers, and writers for deep reflection, radical imagination, and collective action, addressing the urgent need for fresh perspectives in today’s world.
Sayani Sarkar, Editor-at-Large, reporting from India
As April commenced, excitement grew among readers, writers, and translators in India as we continued to celebrate the increased recognition of South Asian languages on the global stage; this time, the good news came in the form of the International Booker Prize shortlist, which includes Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi. This year’s shortlist features a couple of intriguing details: four of the selected books are under two hundred pages long, signifying that impactful narratives can be delivered in shorter formats; and it is the first time that all six shortlisted books have been published by independent publishers. This trend suggests that the Prize may be entering a new phase of increased diversity.
With such advances, I do hope many copies of Heart Lamp will be able to reach the women in marginalized spaces whose lives inspired these stories in the first place. Although Mushtaq’s impactful book—spanning three decades and depicting women living under religious and patriarchal domination—is finally receiving the recognition it deserves, there are still significant challenges ahead in the work to decentralize translated literature.
On a lovely spring afternoon last month, people gathered at the vibrant Storyteller Bookstore in Kolkata to attend the inaugural Kolkata Crime Writers’ Festival, curated by Mayura Misra, the founder of the bookstore, and author Amrita Mukherjee. It’s no surprise that the city’s love for Bengali literature has produced an impressive list of iconic sleuths, including Feluda (Prodosh Chandra Mitra), Byomkesh Bakshi, and Kiriti, among others. However, in this local literary event, there was also room for new authors and fresh protagonists amidst the cherished nostalgia of familiar stories.
Highlights include author Arindam Basu, who conducted an interactive, well-attended workshop on crime writing, focusing on story structure and elements such as plot, characters, and resolution. And among the many panellists, which included authors and filmmakers, one of the most captivating sessions was led by Deepta Roy Chakraverti. She discussed occult crimes—a niche topic within the genre—and shed some insight on their history around the world, their prevalence in India, and prominent titles surrounding the topic.
The evening ended with the presentation of prizes for the crime story competition, of which the winning entry was “The Cure” by Koustuv Chatterjee, which featured an intriguing plot about world hunger, scientific advancements, and the terrifying aspects of human psychology. Interested readers can find the winning stories on Readomania’s blog here!
Linnea Gradin, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden
As the export of Anglophone literature to non-English-speaking markets increases across Europe, Swedish booksellers are seeing a phenomenon emerge: more and more translated books are keeping their original English titles. This is particularly true for genre fiction and BookTok darlings like Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros or Sunrise on the Reaping, the fifth book in The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, but up until recently, using English titles for Swedish-language books has largely been considered a big no-no, with only a few exceptions (Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood comes to mind as an example). Some titles are hard to translate without losing the original meaning or impact, but taken word by word, Fourth Wing is arguably not one of them—so why has the Swedish publisher chosen to keep the original title?
Marketing seems to be the most obvious answer, as publishers can capitalise on the buzz already generated across English-language social media to market to Swedish readers. Or maybe it’s a demand from the author’s representatives. Whatever the reason may be, perhaps this can be seen as an attempt to gain back some of the ground lost to English-language books, allowing Swedish readers to join the conversation with fans across the world, reading the same works, with the same covers and the same titles, but in their own native tongue.
In related news, the Swedish government has pledged to increase the allocation of their spring budget towards reading promotion, after reports of decreased reading comprehension amongst students. At the same time, revenues for audiobooks are predicted to surpass that of the physical book in 2025. According to sociologist Karl Berglund, this has the potential to polarise the market, with ‘popular literature’ (genre fiction like crime, thrillers, romance, and romantasy) represented by the audiobook market, and ‘quality literature’ (literary fiction, poetry, and nonfiction) represented by the traditional, physical publishing market. Experts fear that this runs the risk of making the physical book into a luxury good, leaving the issue of improving reading comprehension amongst students a bit up in the air.
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