Book Club

Announcing our February Book Club selection: Love by Hanne Ørstavik

February 14, 2018  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Erik Noonan

We're spreading the love this Valentine's Day by giving a 10% discount on three-month book club subscriptions! Until 2359hrs EST today, so hurry!

This Valentine’s Day, we’re sharing Love with our Asymptote Book Club subscribers, in the form of a contemporary Norwegian classic newly published by Archipelago Books.

Love launched the career of Hanne Ørstavik, one of Scandinavia’s leading female novelists. In 2006, newspaper Dagbladet placed it sixth in a list of the best Norwegian novels of the past quarter-century.

We’re also spreading the love by giving a 10% discount on three-month Asymptote Book Club subscriptions, up until 2359hrs EST today, Feb 14. If you’ve been wanting to give our Book Club a try, or if you’d like to surprise your loved ones with an awesome reading adventure, this is the perfect opportunity! Visit our Book Club page right now to sign up to give or receive Love, our February title translated by Martin Aitken, and two more handpicked novels in March and April drawn from the latest offerings in world literature.
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Asymptote Book Club: In Conversation with Rimli Bhattacharya

February 12, 2018  |  in Book Club, Interviews  |  by Chris Power

Doesn’t the strength of a work of fiction lie in its lack of closure?

Our second Asymptote Book Club interview is an in-depth discussion of Aranyak, a seminal work of Bengali literature translated into English by Rimli Bhattacharya.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Asymptote Assistant Editor Chris Power, Rimli Bhattacharya reflects on Aranyak’s enduring importance, how a bout of “language sickness” led to its translation into English, and why author Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s “extraordinarily sensitive” portrayal of women was ahead of its time.

Chris Power’s review of the novel is available to read here.

Chris Power (CP): I’d first like to ask about the history of Aranyak’s reception. Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay wrote this classic Bengali novel, based on his years spent in northern Bihar, between 1937 and 1939. What new significance does it take on in the twenty-first century? What inspired you to translate it? When did you first read it, and how has your reading of it evolved?

Rimli Bhattacharya (RB): Aranyak was serialized in the late 1930s—the same decade in which a clutch of other remarkable novels, such as Aparajito and Drihstipradip, were published. Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay was already celebrated as the writer of Pather Panchali. The interesting thing about Aranyak is that many forests meld in the novel, not only Bibhutibhushan’s years in Bhagalpur in the 1920s, but also his travels in Singbhum and Mayurbhanj in Orissa in the mid-1930s, as his biographer Rusati Sen points out.

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Announcing Our January Book Club Selection

February 1, 2018  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Chris Power

A classic of Bengali literature, available for the first time in English translation.

Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s Aranyak will be our second Asymptote Book Club title. We’re delighted to be sharing one of the gems of Bengali literature with our subscribers: the novel’s English translator, Rimli Bhattacharya, describes it as “a chronicle of the dispossessed in visionary prose.”

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Asymptote Book Club: An Interview with Chris Andrews, Translator of The Lime Tree

January 11, 2018  |  in Book Club, Interviews  |  by Lizzie Buehler

Style seems to give Aira direct access to a past that hasn’t passed.

We begin a new series of monthly interviews for the Asymptote Book Club with a conversation between Asymptote Assistant Editor Lizzie Buehler and Chris Andrews, translator of César Aira’s The Lime Tree. For more about this sparkling novel, check out Emma Holland’s December review.

Josh Honn, reviewing an earlier Aira novel, suggested that Aira moves forward in straight lines only in “an attempt to make the line come back upon itself.” In the interview that follows, Chris Andrews discusses Aira’s “sinuous” writing technique, The Lime Tree’s links with Proust, and the way the novel depicts everyday racism in Perón-era Argentina.

Lizzie Buehler (LB): Tell us a little bit about how you came to translate The Lime Tree. How did the novel’s intensely self-reflective nature affect your process of translation?

Chris Andrews (CA): I read The Lime Tree (or The Linden Tree as it will be in the US edition) when it first came out in Spanish in 2003, and it has been one of my favourite Aira books since then. So I was very pleased to get the chance to translate it.

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Announcing Our First Book Club Selection

December 22, 2017  |  in Book Club  |  by Duncan Lewis, Emma Holland, Jacob Silkstone, Lee Yew Leong, and Marina Sofia

The Lime Tree is the latest novel by the prolific Argentine writer César Aira to be translated into English.

We are delighted to reveal that the inaugural title for the Asymptote Book Club, as chosen by our editorial team, is César Aira’s The Lime Tree. Aira has previously been a Man Booker International finalist, and translator Chris Andrews received the Valle-Inclán Prize for his English version of Bolaño’s Distant Star. The Lime Tree is published by not-for-profit translation champions & Other Stories.

On January 2, 2018, we will be launching our members-only online discussion space where subscribers can talk about César Aira’s The Lime Tree. An interview with translator Chris Andrews will also be posted on the Asymptote blog shortly thereafter. In the meantime, we invite you to tweet about your first reactions on social media using the hashtag #AsymptoteBookClub!

For more on the newly launched Asymptote Book Club, or to start your subscription in January 2018, see details here. We’re already preparing the next exciting title, so don’t delay!

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The Asymptote Book Club: An Update!

December 8, 2017  |  in Book Club  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Our Editor-in-Chief takes some questions about the Book Club!

What an overwhelming ten days since the launch of the Asymptote Book Club! We received queries from as far afield as Australia and Canada—so much interest from Canada, in fact, that we decided to open our book club to Canadians four days ago. But why a book club in the first place? some asked. Well, in a nutshell: the idea was to take the important work we have done with our award-winning, free online journal and our Translation Tuesday showcases at the Guardian—that is to say, showcasing the best new writing from around the world, and giving it a physical presence outside of the virtual arena. We also wanted to celebrate (as well as support) the independent publishers who work hard behind the scenes to make world literature possible.

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What sets your book club apart from others?

Curation is a big part of what makes the book club special. We have a large team of editors based in six continents to research and pick the best titles available from a wide variety of publishers. Subscribers will receive a brand-new (just published or, in many cases, not even in the bookshops yet), surprise work of fiction delivered to their door each month. This is another thing that distinguishes us from a few other book clubs before us: we choose from new releases only—nothing from a backlist that readers may already have on their bookshelves.

Subscriptions are for three or 12 months (for as little as USD15 a month, shipping included!) and, depending on the package the subscriber picks, they may receive additional perks in the form of Asymptote merchandise and ebooks (see below), but the real focus here is on creating a serious book club for a dedicated reading public. Many subscription services focus as much on the gifts as the books themselves, but we do not see ourselves as experts in tea or socks, so we’re concentrating rather on ensuring our readers get their hands on the most amazing literature we can source, applying the same curatorial instincts that won us a London Book Fair Award in 2015. READ MORE…