Posts by Hodna Nuernberg

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

March 6, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Barbara Halla, Hodna Nuernberg, and Rachel Allen

This week's literary news from Morocco, Albania, and the United States!

This week our reporters bring you news of Morocco’s publishing industry—including reports of a plagiarism scandal—the release of Albanian LGBT activist Kristi Pinderi’s memoir, and a series of events celebrating global literary publication and design in New York. Read on to find out more!

Hodna Nuernberg, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Morocco 

The King Abdul-Aziz Al Saoud Foundation, a Casablanca-based non-profit organization that provides rare and rigorous documentation about Morocco’s publishing industry, released its fifth annual report in February to coincide with the Casablanca International Book Fair.

According to the report, some 4,219 titles were published in Morocco last year, representing a steady growth of the publishing industry’s output. In 1987, by comparison, Morocco published 850 titles. But this increased production is served by an increasingly fragile distribution network: whereas Casablanca was home to 65 bookstores in 1987, only 15 remain today. Kenza Sefrioui, author of the meticulously researched (if disheartening) Le livre à l’épreuve, estimates that there is no more than one bookstore per 86,000 inhabitants and 84.5 percent of Moroccans do not have a library card.

The trend towards the Arabization of Morocco’s publishing industry continued in 2019, with Arabic accounting for 78 percent of literary works; French comprised 18 percent, and Tamazight just over 1 percent. Of these literary works, poetry is the dominant genre with the novel coming in a close second. And while 11.5 percent of literary works published last year were translations, nearly half of these translations were from the French (and almost a quarter from the English).

Moroccan books are, on average, the least expensive books in the Maghreb. The average price of a book published in Morocco is 72.74 dirhams, or about the cost of 10 liters of milk. In neighboring Algeria, the average price is 85.93 dirhams, while in Tunisia it’s 90.81. But in a country where a majority of people earn less than 2,500 dirhams a month, 72.74 dirhams can seem a prohibitive price.

The report ends with a sobering statistic: in Morocco in 2019, a whopping 83 percent of published works were written by men. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

January 10, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Hodna Nuernberg, Jacqueline Leung, and Scott Weintraub

Our first weekly roundup of 2020 from across the globe!

Asymptote‘s Weekly Roundup is back for 2020 and this week our editors bring you news of theater adaptations and book fairs in Hong Kong, the continued struggle against freedom of expression in Morocco, and a novel examining Chile’s political activism amidst ongoing protests. Read on to find out more!  

Jacqueline Leung, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong

Hong Kong is stepping into the New Year with a theatrical performance based on a short story by the late Yesi, or Leung Ping-kwan (1949–2013), on January 11 and 12. Yesi was one of Hong Kong’s most renowned writers and essayists; as a literary translator, he brought works from Latin America—notably the poetry of Pablo Neruda—and Eastern Europe into the Chinese language, and was known for translating his own works into English.

“The Banquet at elBulli” hails from Yesi’s short story anthology Postcolonial Affairs of Food and the Heart (2012), featuring an intersecting cast of characters pondering on commonplace matters of love and food. Conceived as a semi-staged Cantonese cantata, The Banquet at elBulli is presented by Hong Kong Voices, the city’s resident chamber choir, in collaboration with theater practitioner Clement Lee and composer Daniel Lo. elBulli is named after El Bulli, a Michelin 3-star molecular gastronomy once run by chefs Ferran Adrià and Albert Adrià. Through the metamorphosis of molecular gastronomy, the characters reflect on life’s flavors and the essence of art.  READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

November 22, 2019  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Eva Wissting, Hodna Nuernberg, Quyen Nguyen, and Sarah Moore

Catch up on this week’s latest news in Morocco, Sweden, Vietnam, and France!

This week, our editors are bringing you news from Morocco, Sweden, Vietnam, and France In Morocco, changes to the ministry of communication are affecting book imports. In Sweden, the announcement of the August Prize has brought excitement, whilst the awarding of the Tucholsky Prize to Swedish-Chinese writer Gui Minhai has been met with indignation in China. In Vietnam, the sales of a much-anticipated translation of bestseller South Korean writer Cho Nam-joo have not been as expected. In France, the centennial of Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company bookshop was celebrated. Read on to find out more!

Hodna Nuernberg, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Morocco

Last month, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI ordered major bureaucratic reform, slashing the government’s thirty-nine member cabinet to just twenty-four—the smallest ever—and doing away with the ministry of communication. While the official line was that the ministry was no longer necessary to regulate the kingdom’s newspapers (a convincing argument, given the state of Morocco’s oppositional press), the abolition of the ministry has had a perhaps unintended side effect: all book imports have been blocked in customs since early October.

The first article of Morocco’s 2003 Press Code guaranteed the freedom of domestic publications. Foreign books, on the other hand, were subject to the ministry of communication’s control. Prior to the October reform, this control was carried out by the foreign publications bureau of the ministry’s public relations division. As such, the bureau was responsible for “analyzing the content of foreign publications” and delivering (or not) the visas necessary for importation. Although Morocco does not officially practice state censorship, this process allowed the king to uphold his three red lines (the monarchy, the kingdom’s “territorial integrity,” and Islam), which were enshrined in article 29 of the Press Code. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

March 8, 2019  |  in Dispatches  |  by Barbara Halla, Hodna Nuernberg, and Jacqueline Leung

This week, catch up on the latest literary news from Morocco, France, and Hong Kong!

We begin and end this week with a look at two of the winter’s biggest book fairs: Hodna Nuernberg accompanies us on a retrospective tour of the 25th Casablanca International Book Fair, while Barbara Halla lets us know what’s in store at next week’s Salon du Livre in Paris. Meanwhile, Editor-at-Large Jacqueline Leung, reporting from Hong Kong, updates us on a symposium taking place today to honor 2019 Newman Laureate Xi Xi.

Hodna Nuernberg, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Morocco

Oft-maligned by Morocco’s cultural elite, Casablanca’s international book fair came to a close on February 17. The twenty-fifth edition of the fair saw 560,000 visitors, or 62% more than in 2017, yet publishing houses bemoaned a lack of serious readers. Indeed, the book fair, whose 10-dirham entry fee—about $1—is roughly the price of a big-city café au lait, is a resolutely popular affair where boiled-chickpea sellers rub elbows with poets, children careen wildly from stand to stand clutching brand-new Barbie notebooks, and azans ring out on loop from the Saudi pavilion. This year, 720 exhibitors from forty-two countries offered up some 128,000 titles, about a quarter of which were literary works. Although 80% of books published in Morocco in 2017-2018 were in Arabic, French punches above its weight in the literary domain, accounting for 30% of all published novels.

Catastrophe was narrowly avoided when Éditions Malika’s stand went up in flames during the fair’s final weekend. Apparently the result of a poorly-wired outlet, the fire destroyed much of the small Casablanca-based publisher’s stock and could have done much worse given that there were no fire extinguishers on site when the fire broke out. Fortunately, the Council of the Moroccan Community Abroad had brought their own and saved the day. After the ashes were swept away and the shelves restocked, one of the book fair’s finest offerings could be found at Éditions Malika: the sumptuously illustrated Casablanca, nid d’artists by Kenza Sefrioui and Leïla Slimani, which features the work of 115 artists.

Meanwhile, New York-based artist Meriem Bennani is back in Morocco, working on a film project about French soft power and neocolonialism for the upcoming Whitney Biennale. The project involves filming the well heeled students of Bennani’s alma mater, Rabat’s Lycée Descartes—the crown jewel of the French Republic’s mission étrangère, whose tuition is about twice Morocco’s annual official minimum wage. Bennani describes it as a kind of “coming out” in the context of a society that has been quick to label her work as that of a marginalized minority artist.

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

October 26, 2018  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Diána Vonnák, Hodna Nuernberg, and Lara Norgaard

This week, the global literary world was busy with prizes, language politics, and festivals.

Join us on a journey around the world from Hungary to Morocco and Brazil to find out more about the latest festivals, prizes, and news in world literature. Come back to our blog next week for other news and pieces about world literature. 

Diána Vonnák, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hungary

One of the highlights of the Hungarian literary scene, Margó Festival and Bookfair took place between 18-21 October. The festival happens twice each year, and while the summer edition focuses on contemporary writers in general, autumn is dedicated to emerging new voices and to literary translation.

The Margó Award is a relatively new initiative that helps to launch a young prose writers’ career each year, awarded to the best debut novel or short story collection of the year. Previous winners include Benedek Totth, whose debut novel Dead Heat (Holtverseny) will be published in English by Biblioasis in 2019 and Mátyás Szöllősi, whose new novel Péter Simon is out now. Short stories of this years’ winner, Anna Mécs peek into young women’s lives as they navigate the chores of adult life. Mécs writes in a voice that merges accuracy with much-needed lightness and acerbic humour.

The audience could meet authors in dozens of readings and roundtable discussions during these densely packed four days. Man Booker winner László Krasznahorkai’s new novel, Aprómunka egy palotáért follows librarian Hermann Melvill’s wanderings in New York into his labyrinth inner world, delivered in Krasznahorkai’s signature, meandering sentences, while György Dragomán’s Rendszerújra collects his politically themed short stories that grapple with oppressive systems, be they political or technological.

Many eagerly awaited new works were discussed from the emerging new generation as well: Boldizsár Fehér debuted with a satirical utopia of social experiment, and a new novel by Péter Gerőcs follows a portrait photographer’s quest against forgetting, Sándor Neszlár published a volume of experimental prose that pairs every kilometre he ran with a sentence, while Ilka Papp-Zakor‘s new collection sketches out a surreal Budapest with zoo-animals on the run. Two documentary films rounded the experience, portraits of Nádas and Krasznahorkai.

As the festival is over, celebrations give way to anxiety over the ongoing culture wars of the Orbán government, that switched to a higher gear in the past months, dismissing the director of Petőfi Literary Museum, and airing plans about a potential centralisation of literary publishing. Meanwhile, many writers protested against a new law that criminalises rough sleeping. Politics and literary production are increasingly different to disentangle, but events like the Margó Festival are strong testimonies of resilience.

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

May 18, 2018  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Barbara Halla, Hodna Nuernberg, Josefina Massot, Poupeh Missaghi, and Sarah Booker

Our weekly roundup of literary news brings us to five different countries.

Woah! It has apparently been a busy week in world literature. Today we bring you news from not just one, not two, but five different countries: Iran, Morocco, Spain, Argentina, and France. 

Poupeh Missaghi, Editor at Large, reporting from Iran:

The 31st Tehran International Book Fair was held from May 2nd to May 12th, 2018, in Tehran, Iran.

In this year’s fair, a much-awaited novel by Iran’s foremost novelist, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, was finally offered to readers. طریق بسمل‌ شدن , a novel about the Iran-Iraq war, had been awaiting a publication permit from the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for ten years. The book has, however, already been offered to English readers, under the title Thirst, translated by Martin E. Weir and published by Melville House in 2014. (You can read a review of Thirst here.) (You can also read a piece by Dowlatabadi in Asymptote’s special feature on the Muslim ban here.)

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In Conversation: Rita Stirn

May 10, 2018  |  in Interviews  |  by Hodna Nuernberg

My book seeks to understand how women manage to become musicians in Morocco.

Rita Stirn is a translator, author, and musician who lives in Rabat, Morocco. Her book, Les musiciennes du Maroc: Portraits choisis (Morocco’s Women in Music: Selected Portraits) was published by Marsam in late 2017. Asymptote’s Editor-at-large Hodna Nuernberg spoke with Stirn about her new publication, Moroccan music, and language politics in the region.

Hodna Nuernberg (HN): How did you decide to write a book on Morocco’s women musicians? And how did being a woman musician yourself shape your approach to researching and writing the book?

Rita Stirn (RS): I’ve always been interested in the silences of history concerning women in art and music. When I started listening to the blues as a teenager, I realized music was a man’s world. Sure, there were plenty of female singers, but very few instrumentalists; I wanted to learn about hidden talents—the women in music who weren’t getting much recognition.

I came to Morocco in 2011. I paid a lot of attention to what was going on here musically. Whenever there was a celebration out on the streets—a marriage, for example—there were inevitably women playing music. So, I’d talk to them. They’d say, “Yeah, sure, people know us,” but none of them were online anywhere. They got all their gigs by word of mouth, and little by little, I began to find out about more and more women musicians.

Around the same time, I was looking though archives for photographs of women in music. All the images were of men. There was no focus whatsoever on women’s talents or the tradition of women instrumentalists, and that’s when the book project started to take shape in my head.

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

March 16, 2018  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Hodna Nuernberg, Jacqueline Leung, and Noah Ross

Our weekly roundup of literary news brings us to Morocco, Hong Kong, and the United States.

We are back with the latest from around the world! This week we hear about Morocco, Hong Kong, and the United States. Enjoy!

Hodna Nuernberg, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Morocco

Some seven hundred exhibitors from Morocco and around the world descended on Casablanca for the Salon international de l’edition et du livre, which took place from February 9-18. Half open-air souk (rumor had it that one of the ambulatory vendors went so far as to offer women’s panties for sale!), half oasis of high culture, the book fair counted over 125,000 titles from forty-five different countries. Egypt, this year’s guest of honor, accounted for nearly fifteen percent of the titles on offer alone, and managed to ruffle more than a few feathers when an Egyptian publisher was allegedly caught displaying a book (A Brief History of Africa) whose cover featured a map of the continent depicting a “mutilated” Morocco—the disputed territory of the Western Sahara appearing as an independent nation under the Polisario flag. The presence of the book was firmly denied by the Ministry of Culture.

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