Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

October 11, 2024 | in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup | by Asymptote, MARGENTO, and Xiao Yue Shan

The latest in literary updates from Ireland, Hong Kong, and a special on the Nobel laureate!

A world of news in this week’s roundup! From Ireland, discover the ambitious and innovative work of Macha Press, a collective pursuing a literature that is “international and intergenerational”; from Hong Kong and China, the fifteenth edition of the renowned International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong highlights the topic of translation; and from the Asymptote team as a whole, catch up on Han Kang, this year’s Nobel laureate in Literature.

The Asymptote Team, Reporting from our Fortnightly Airmail

And the winner of the Nobel is . . . Han Kang! After Annie Ernaux, the latest female winner in 2022, Han Kang is the eighteenth woman—and the first from South Korea—to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Nobel committee’s citation commends her “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”. Her works confront acutely difficult subjects with a rare fearlessness and sensitivity, whether it be the personal, as in the Booker International Prize-winning The Vegetarian—a feminist classic of modern Korean literature that offers a powerful rebuke to a world that too often silences women—or the historical in Human Acts, where she depicts the Gwangju student massacre of 1980. In an exclusive essay for our Winter 2016 issue, her longtime English translator Deborah Smith describes the impenetrable potency of her style in this book: “Whenever I translate her work, I find myself arrested by razor-sharp images which arise from the text without being directly described there . . . the images themselves are so powerfully evoked by the Korean that I sometimes find myself searching the original text in vain, convinced that they were in there somewhere, as vividly explicit as they are in my head.”

After checking out our coverage of her latest novel in English translation, Greek Lessons, dive into more Korean Literature in the two Special Features we organized in partnership with LTI Korea, available for free in our Spring 2018 and the Winter 2023 editions.

MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large, Reporting from Ireland

One of the most significant events in recent Irish letters was the establishment of Macha Press in August and the subsequent announcement regarding its first two book launches, the debut already scheduled for October 17. Macha Press is a collective endeavour recently founded by seven poets with wide-ranging practices and experience: Siobhan Campbell, Ruth Carr, Natasha Cuddington, Shannon Kuta Kelly, Kathleen McCracken, Alanna Offield, and Lorna Shaughnessy. As stated in their first newsletter; “all founders are currently based on the island of Ireland and share a vision for the press that is international and intergenerational.” According to Lorna Shaughnessy, one of the founders, a poet-translator (featured in Asymptote Spring 2020), and a personal friend of mine, the aim of the press has always been to produce two books of poetry a year, one by an established or historical poet whose work the editors feel merits recovery, and one by an emerging poet.

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emerging poets
emerging writers
feminist literature
interdisciplinary art
intergenerational literature
international literature
International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong
IPNHK
Irish Literature
Korean literature
LTI Korea
Macha Press
music and literature
music and poetry
Nobel Prize in Literature
poetry events
revolutionary literature
translation

Announcing Our Final Recruitment Call of the Year

September 26, 2018 | in News | by Asymptote

Join our dynamic team today!

Are you passionate about world literature? Do you want to play a role in agitating for a more inclusive canon? Are you looking for a way into a career in world literature?

If you answered yes to any of the above, we have good news for you: we’re recruiting again! From Social Media Manager to Assistant Blog Editor (yes, of this Blog no less!), one of the many newly advertised roles on this page may be a fit for you. Check out testimonials by some former staff below, before applying to join our dynamic team! But hurry! The deadline to send in an application is next Monday, October 1st. This will be the final recruitment drive of the year.

Asymptote is the only literary magazine I’ve ever worked for or heard about that has the editorial brain-power and resource of generous and highly-talented translators to pull off a 20-language project in 10 days. This is what we did with our Mexican poetry project, which, thanks to the on-hand blog, graphic and social media team, caught the wave of worldwide solidarity for the victims of the Ayotzinapa massacre in September 2014 and the subsequent protests. It was shared in its thousands, including retweets by organizations like English PEN, Words Without Borders and Granta Magazine. I put the call out for translators for the project on a Wednesday and that same day received an offer of an introduction from NY-based Mexican author Valeria Luiselli and 9 offers of translators. One of the first messages came from our Israel editor-at-large, saying: “We all do our tiny little part in the world: mine is translating.” Asymptote does not only have impeccable taste in global literature (from ancient to contemporary), it also continues to prove, in a very tangible way, that translation is not tiny; it is a vital force for good in the world. I’m very proud to be editor-at-large for Mexico and can’t wait to see what we at Asymptote do next.

—Sophie Hughes, former Editor-at-Large, Mexico READ MORE…

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Announcing the Summer 2018 Issue of Asymptote

July 19, 2018 | in News | by Asymptote

Introducing our thirtieth issue, which gathers never-before-published work from 31 countries!

We interrupt our regular programming to announce the launch of Asymptote’s Summer 2018 issue!

Step into our bountiful Summer edition to “look for [yourself] in places [you] don’t recognize” (Antonin Artaud). Hailing from thirty-one countries and speaking twenty-nine languages, this season’s rich pickings blend the familiar with the foreign: Sarah Manguso and Jennifer Croft (co-winner, with Olga Tokarczuk, of this year’s Man Booker International Prize) join us for our thirtieth issue alongside Anita Raja, Duo Duo, and Intizar Husain, and our first work from the Igbo in the return of our Multilingual Writing Feature.

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Announcing the Winter 2018 Issue of Asymptote

January 18, 2018 | in News | by Asymptote

Celebrate our 7th anniversary with this new issue, gathering never-before-published work from 30 countries!

We interrupt our regular programming to announce the launch of Asymptote‘s Winter 2018 issue! Here’s a tour of some of the outstanding new work from 30 different countries, which we’ve gathered under the theme of “A Different Light”:

In “Aeschylus, the Lost,” Albania’s Ismail Kadare imagines a “murky light” filtering through oiled window paper in the ancient workroom of the father of Greek tragedy. A conversation with acclaimed translator Daniel Mendelsohn reveals the “Homeric funneling” behind his latest memoir. Polish author Marta Zelwan headlines our Microfiction Special Feature, where meaning gleams through the veil of allegory. Light glows ever brighter in poet Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine’s “syntactically frenetic” “Arachnid Sun”; and in Erika Kobayashi’s fiction, nuclear devastation blazes from Hiroshima to Fukushima.

The light around us is sometimes blinding, sometimes dim, “like a dream glimpsed through a glass that’s too thick,” as Argentine writer Roberto Arlt puts it, channeling Paul to the Corinthians in The Manufacturer of Ghosts. Something dreamlike indeed shines in César Moro’s Equestrian Turtle, where “the dawn emerges from your lips,” and, as if in echo, Mexican writer Hubert Matiúwàa prophecies for his people’s children “a house made of dawn.” With Matiúwàa’s Mè’phàà and our first works from Amharic and Montenegrin, we’ve now published translations from exactly 100 languages!

We hope you enjoy reading this milestone issue as much as everyone at Asymptote enjoyed putting it together. If you want to see us carry on for years to come, consider becoming a masthead member or a sustaining member today. Spread the word far and wide!

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Translator Questionnaire: Ilan Stavans

March 7, 2016 | in Translator's Profile | by Asymptote and Ilan Stavans

"To me, inspiration feels like a downpour."

Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College and the publisher of Restless Books. His most recent translations are Mariano Azuela’s The Underdogs (Norton, 2015, with Anna More), and Lazarillo of Tormes (Norton, 2016). A recent conversation with him on translation, with Charles Hatfield, is “Silence Is Meaningful,” Buenos Aires Review, July 15, 2015.

What is the best translated book you’ve read recently?

I am in the middle of a strange yet fulfilling experiment: I am rereading Madame Bovary in various translations at once (Eleanor Marx-Aveling, Geoffrey Wall, Lydia Davis, Adam Thorpe), along with the French original and a Spanish translation. I first read Flaubert’s novel in my teens, while still in Mexico. Coming back to it in all these dress-ups is, at times, an embarrassment of riches. Marx-Aveling was the daughter of Karl Marx. Wall wrote a biography of Flaubert. Davis is Davis. And Thorpe talks about the task as “the Everest of translation.” Unfortunately, the Spanish version (not the same one I encountered when young), in its title page, refers to the author as Gustavo Flaubert and to the novel as Madame Bovery. The rest, one might say, is indeed like climbing the Everest. READ MORE…

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Proust Questionnaire: Tim Wilkinson

February 24, 2015 | in Proust Questionnaires | by Asymptote

...a "Lydia Davis" questionnaire for Hungarian-language translator Tim Wilkinson

Tim Wilkinson (b. 1947) grew up in Sheffield, S. Yorks., but has lived most his adult life in London. He is the primary English translator of Hungarian writer Imre Kertész (titles including Fatelessness, Fiasco, Kaddish for an Unborn Child, Liquidation, Detective Story, The Pathseeker and Dossier K) and, more recently, Miklós Szentkuthy (Marginalia on Casanova, Towards the One and Only Metaphor), among others, as well as shorter works by a wide range of other contemporary Hungarian-language authors. Fatelessness was awarded the PEN Club/Book of the Month Translation Prize for 2005.

Q: How did you learn your foreign language, and how did you begin working as a literary translator?

A: I learned Hungarian “on the hoof,” mainly by moving to Budapest around Easter 1970 and marrying the girl with whom I had by then fallen in love, having made several trips there since 1964. I might add that I sort of picked up German in much the same way (minus the love complications), by taking up a job in Switzerland, 20 years later. Contact with speakers of a language is, for me, the important feature, just as it is with small children… The strictly “literary” translation work only really came about ten years ago, after I had been translating a fairly wide range of non-fiction (mostly with a pronounced historical flavor) as an add-on to my main job (which was in an altogether different field and had little or nothing to do with translation). READ MORE…

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A Big Thank You From All Of Us At Asymptote!

January 30, 2015 | in Essays | by Asymptote

Your $25,276 will help us fight for world literature another day

We are bowled over! Our crowdfunding campaign just closed on the gorgeous number of $25,276 and we made our target (just in time!). Thanks to 287 AMAZING donors, we will be able to continue our passionate work in world literature. Thank you, 谢谢, dankjewel!!

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Where Are We Going, Where Have We Been?

January 29, 2015 | in Dispatches | by Asymptote and Lee Yew Leong

With 6 hours remaining, we're closing in on the gap with less than $1,000 to go!

In true Asymptote fashion, the script for the following video was written in Berlin and edited and polished in Taipei, Singapore, New York, London, and many other cities. The talking heads were recorded in Ithaca and then edited together in Virginia, all the while being sent all over the globe in various stages of completion so other team members could chime in with their two cents—we could think of no better way to not only explain why we we do what we do, but also to showcase how.

Presenting world literature to a wide audience all over the world is our main goal, but our main strength is our team, which works tirelessly behind the scenes all over the world to showcase that otherwise obscured poet or this overlooked writer in the best possible light and style. Please help us — all 70 of us — keep Asymptote alive beyond January 2015 and for many more years to come by donating to our Indiegogo campaign here.

—Lee Yew Leong, on behalf of the entire Asymptote team

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Unveiling Our Winter 2015 Issue Video Trailer!

January 28, 2015 | in Multimedia | by Asymptote

Get excited for Friday with this high-octane sneak peek at our 4th Anniversary issue, out January 30!

From the sparkly trailers for previous issues that you’ll find below to our beautifully designed website, with its gorgeous illustrations and immersive slideshows of visual art, Asymptote is committed to presenting and promoting its writers and artists in great style. If you like what we do, please consider donating to our campaign—only 30 more hours to go!

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Winter 2015 Issue

A Weekend Treat

January 24, 2015 | in News | by Asymptote

Start your weekend right by grabbing these new perks! Hurry, as there are very limited copies available!

Reif Larsen, author of the New York Times best-selling The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet and frequent contributor, made us the following brilliant lighthouse-themed video in support of our fundraiser. It’s a scream, really. After getting your fill of laughs, head over to our Indiegogo campaign to check out the newest perks that have been created just in time for the weekend! Yes, it’s true! We’re giving away the very latest titles by our illustrious supporters—other than Reif Larsen, Adam Thirlwell and Deborah Smith, who recently joined us in London for our anniversary event (photos already up here), are also lending a hand. Our Singaporean editor-in-chief couldn’t resist creating the perk “Gateway to Singapore Lit!” comprising a pair of the latest titles by two of the best Singaporean writers today: Desmond Kon and Christine Chia. These books are specially autographed for the campaign; in fact, some are personalized even further—e.g., Reif has said he will even create diagrams for 10 lucky donors! Hurry, as there are limited copies!

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Spotlight on Asymptote‘s Partner: Hong Kong’s Fleurs des Lettres

January 22, 2015 | in Essays | by Asymptote, Charlie Ng, and Daniel Aristi

Testimonials from Asymptote's global literary partnership in Hong Kong, with journal "Fleurs des Lettres"

One thing that Asymptote certainly delivers is fresh literature. That is, we don’t just sit back and wait for submissions to ping! in our inbox, and make do with whatever we get. In fact, submissions—which we do take seriously, with five dedicated slushpile readers sifting through works that come in over the transom throughout the year—probably make up less than 20% of our published content, if we go by wordcount. Some sections, such as Drama, Interviews, Visual, Criticism, and Writers on Writers are heavily commissioned/solicited sections. These need very resourceful/persistent section editors, who can convert the most tenuous of leads into actual contributions. An entire blog post or probably even a book could be written about how we wooed author X or publisher Y or translator Z or guest artist A to come on board.

Even with very resourceful section editors, however, given our mission of diversity, no one editor can cover his or her section for too long and still do his or her job well. That’s where our supporting cast comes in: we have a jet-setting commissioning editor who is able to network on our behalf at writers’ festivals, we have contributing editors to pitch and contribute content, and as mentioned previously, we have an assistant editor researching hitherto unpublished languages, as well as editors-at-large with their fingers on the pulse of their regions’ literary scenes. Today we’ll talk about one facet of editorial work undertaken by editors-at-large that few of our readers may be privy to: journal partnerships.

It makes sense to partner with journals because as the first gatekeepers of literature everywhere, journals publish the freshest and most cutting-edge literature being produced in its region. As for how the partnership works: we take an article or a set of articles from a foreign language (i.e. non English-language) print journal and translate it into English to present in our quarterly issues. In return, the foreign language print journal then takes an article that we have published and commissions a translation of that article to be presented in its pages. All rights are cleared with the author of the article before proceeding. This is a model that stimulates the transmission of literature (in both languages) and benefits magazines, readers, authors, and translators alike.

A list of our journal partners to date can be found on our map here—two more slated for 2015 are Steaua in Romania and Writer in Thailand—but today we’ll only feature testimonials that shed light on one journal partner, the very stylish 《字花》from Hong Kong (also Fleurs des Lettres).

—Lee Yew Leong, Editor-in-Chief

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Close Approximations Winners: Where Are They Now?

January 20, 2015 | in Essays, News | by Asymptote and Lee Yew Leong

Our very first contest honored emerging translators. Now, a year later, our winners reflect on just what this contest means today

To witness the broad reach of Asymptote, one need look no further than Close Approximations, Asymptote’s first-ever international translation contest targeting fledgling translators and awarding $3,000 in prize money for two categories: poetry and fiction. (That’s $3,000 from your generous donations going directly into the pockets of these literary practitioners, but don’t forget that running a contest also requires heavy promotion—both paid and unpaid—, Asymptote‘s own editorial brainpower—in this case, to screen for the 20 best prose entries—, unseen but substantial administrative work—organizing contest entries and fielding queries from prospective contestants.)

Judged by no less than acclaimed translators Eliot Weinberger (in the poetry category) and Howard Goldblatt (in fiction), this contest received close to 200 submissions. Those who emerged victorious were lauded for their ability to “successfully cross the linguistic boundary,” and render translations that “zip along.” (Here are the complete judges’ citations.) Read on to see where these gifted newcomers find themselves now, a year after winning. If you would like to help us run a second contest (that will include a new nonfiction category!), give us some love—especially now that we’re entering the final stretch of our fundraising campaign, with TEN NERVE-WRACKING DAYS left!

—Lee Yew Leong, Editor-in-Chief

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Asymptote’s First Ever Reader Survey (+Prizes)!

September 7, 2014 | in News | by Asymptote

Do you like Asymptote? (Yes). Do you like free prizes? (Obviously). Participate in our reader survey!

A quick PSA for our dear blog readers: if you read the journal (check!), love world literature (check!), would like to snag some Asymptote-swag (check!), and would like to help us cater to you (check—we hope!), please consider filling out our reader survey, which you can find here.

It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes or so, and we’d certainly appreciate the feedback! Be sure to finish it by tomorrow—Monday, September 8th—to be eligible for Asymptote-related swag!

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