Language: Chinese

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

July 16, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Andriana Hamas, Charlie Ng, and Eva Wissting

Find out what’s been happing in the literary scenes of Bulgaria, Sweden, and Hong Kong!

“Lazy to shake the white fan, nude in green woods . . .” The languorous summer words of Li Bai are perhaps demonstrative of these mild months, but even a writer too lethargic to fan himself is still scrawling poems. The pen never rests, as proved by a bounty of literary news from Bulgaria, Sweden, and Hong Kong this week, as our editors report on book fairs, awards, and festivals. Read on to find out more!

Andriana Hamas, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Bulgaria

It is a truth universally acknowledged that books—with their magical power to still the world and inspire us in previously unimaginable ways—can transform the course of human lives for good, and this seems especially obvious when it comes down to interpersonal relationships, especially the queen of them all—love. The recently organized Bulgarian literary festival Пловдив чете (Plovdiv reads) demonstrated that by uniting fiction and the deep appreciation of others, resulting in a happy collaboration.

On the last day of the tightly packed program, which included an afternoon poetry reading under the blooming linden trees by the up-and-coming authors Aleksandar Gabrovski, Dimitar Ganev, Gabriela Manova, and Liliya Yovnova, a rather nervous young man from the public stood up and, under everyone’s curious gaze, asked his speechless girlfriend for her hand in marriage. Once it was established that a “happily ever after” was soon to follow, the audience was assured that the world would continue to spin—possibly in patterns that, more often than not, rhyme.

Hosts of this particular occasion were one of the country’s best-renowned writers Georgi Gospodinov (whose verse is available in Asymptote’s pages!) and the talented poet, essayist, and screenwriter Ivan Landzhev. Both shared their fascinating insights into the qualities required of a helpful editor, the art of mentoring gifted adolescents without erasing their unique personalities, as well as the importance of authors reading each other. Another point that was touched upon was the ability to trace foreign influences in one’s works.

Alas, for even more thrilling discussions of this sort, we’ll have to wait until the 2022 edition. Until then, however, let us enjoy the rest of what global literature has to offer!

Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden

This month, Swedish writers Elin Anna Labba and Alma Thörn have been awarded the Norrlands litteraturpris—a literary prize of northern Sweden. The prize has been given annually since 1973 by a literary association of the region, Norrländska litteratursällskapet, along with the region’s writers’ organization, Författarcentrum Norr. Since 2014, there have been two categories: adult literature and children’s literature. For this year’s edition of the adult category, Swedish Sámi journalist and writer Elin Anna Labba was awarded for her nonfiction book Herrarna satte oss hit: Om tvångsförflyttningarna i Sverige (Sirdolaččat: The Deportation of the Northern Sámi). The jury’s statement pointed to how Labba has woven a literary fabric—oral testimonies, archived documents, yoiks, maps, and photographs that highlight the state abuse and colonial exercise of authority previously made invisible in Nordic history, and calls her book a hybrid that reveals the possibilities of literature. In the children’s book category, Alma Thörn is awarded for the graphic novel Alltid hejdå (Always Goodbye). Thörn’s book is about divorce from a child’s perspective, which the jury deemed “a visually and emotionally strong story.”

Another recent book that calls attention to serious issues is Dansa med corona (Dance with Corona) by the staff of the care home Östergård 2 in Kristianstad. Last year, media frequently wrote about the place, which was one of the first care homes in southern Sweden to be struck by COVID-19. Now, the staff are sharing their own experiences through the recent publication: “Your children beg you to stay home from work because they believe you will die if you go there. Media depict you as the executioner and your friends flee when they see you. At the same time, the elderly need you at work to survive.” The book gives precious insight into the life of the caretakers during extreme times, with guilt and fear as only a couple of the challenges they have had to manage.

Charlie Ng, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong

Having been suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the Hong Kong Book Fair returns this year with the theme “Inspirational and Motivational Reading,” running from June 14 to 20 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai. Besides collaborating with numerous publishers to showcase new books in Chinese and English, the organizer also invited famous local and international writers to participate in talks and workshops, including Neil Gaiman and Julia Lovell. However, with the introduction of the national security law, Hong Kong’s publishing sector is overcast by the anxiety over tightened freedom of speech and expression. As reported by the Hong Kong Free Press, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council announced that police would be notified should they receive complaints on exhibits that breach the national security law. This warning is among a series of censoring actions taken against oppositional voices, including the forced closure of the Apple Daily newspaper and the removal of some political books from public libraries.

Despite the tense political situation in Hong Kong, Hong Kong literature is varied enough to represent Hong Kong in different ways. In a recent interview published by Words without Borders, Louise Law, the director of Spicy Fish Cultural Production Limited and publisher of the local literary magazine Fleurs des Lettres, speaks to translator Jennifer Feeley on Hong Kong’s literary scene and the translation of Hong Kong literature. Feeley is a major translator of the works of Xi Xi, and her translation, Not Written Words: Selected Poetry of Xi Xi, was a prizewinning collection. Zolima CityMag’s recent Hong Kong’s Great Writers series also highlights Xi Xi as their second feature. The article introduces Xi Xi’s literary life and explores the playfulness in her characters as well as her literary style.

*****

Read more on the Asymptote blog:

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

July 9, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Nestor Gomez, Thuy Dinh, and Xiao Yue Shan

The latest news from Central America, China, and the Vietnamese diaspora!

Want to keep up with the newest literary developments across the world? This week, our team members cover: an academic conversation on the state of Central American literature, the gargantuan literary output commemorating the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party, as well as the politics and poetics of translation in the film and literature of the Vietnamese diaspora. Read on to find out more!

Nestor Gomez, Editor-at-Large, reporting from El Salvador

Cátedra Centroamerica, an online space for academic analysis of Central America, recently held a series of talks on Zoom focusing on the state of art and literature in the Central American region since its independence about 200 years ago. The conversation, held on July 2, revolved around the question of the future of Central American art and literature after 200 years of independence.

Alexandra Ortiz Wallner, a researcher who specializes in Central American literature and culture at the Freie Univesitat Berlin, presented a “literary roadmap” on how Central American literature has developed after the turn of the century. Currently, Central America is in a postwar era following the wars, dictatorships, and political upheavals of the 1970s to the 1990s. The transition from war to democracy and peace has had two notable effects in the identities, histories, and cultures of Central Americans. The first effect is the mass exodus of Central Americans to settle in other parts of the world. This mass migration has redefined the borders of Central America and the identity of Central Americans as people living in the region of the isthmus. Because of the large and growing size of the Central American diaspora, Central Americans are redefining themselves as global citizens. Secondly, the rise of alternative publishing through social media has provided new spaces that welcome new literary voices in postwar Central America. These new literary voices have led the movement in reconstructing political and cultural identities as well as histories of individual Central American countries into a new, shared regional identity and culture that includes the diaspora.

Wallner also shared an example of postwar literature, Horacio Castellano Moya’s novel El Arma En El Hombre, which describes a new aesthetic of violence. This new violence is born in the urban environment of a postwar city. There is no explanation as to where this violence originated from and the main character of the novel, a displaced ex-soldier, is left alone in the city to combat this new urban violence that attacks from every corner: politics, economy, education, society, family, etc. El Arma En El Hombre is a key novel that aptly foretells the state of affairs in Central America. It describes perpetual chaos and oppression as the normal state of everyday lives of Central Americans. READ MORE…

All Literature Is Worth Investigating: An Interview with Translator Stefan Rusinov

June 21, 2021  |  in Interviews  |  by Andriana Hamas

All cultures are exciting, both for their achievements and failures, for their beauty and nastiness.

In 1999, almost 170 years after his birth, Bulgaria honored publisher Hristo G. Danov’s legacy by establishing national literary awards in his name. In 2021, Stefan Rusinov, a translator who isn’t afraid to ask the important questions about the essence of his trade, won Best Fiction Translator for multiple books he had worked on over the course of twenty-four months. In addition to these admirable recent endeavors in Chinese prose, he juggles his work at Sofia University and his tasks as a freelance interpreter. Our conversation highlights his current projects, the importance of honest answers, and the value of simply “hanging out” with writers.

Andriana Hamas (AH): I would like to begin by asking you about your Бележка под линия (Footnote) podcast, thanks to which you meet fellow translators and discuss “behind-the-scenes torments,” the decisions they eventually have to make, and their inevitable missteps or failures. What have you learned so far?

Stefan Rusinov (SR): I’ve learned a lot, which was really the selfish reason to start this project to begin with. Private conversations with other translators and several years of translating gradually made me realize how case-specific this activity is and that mastery comes rather from accumulating solved problems than from learning universal principles (not to underestimate translation theory). That’s why I wanted to create a space where we won’t so much muse over the nature of translation and other such abstract questions, but we would dig into the specifics, where translators would be put in the position of explaining their considerations and decisions to someone who doesn’t know their working language. Nine episodes on, I’m even more certain that discussing actual problems encountered by translators from all kinds of languages is an important way to understand this activity (and also a major way to pump up my own translation skills).

I’ve learned, or rather, I’ve confirmed, that uncertainty is part of the game, and it should be. I find it very hard to trust a confident translator. There are tons of problems we need to solve and tons of decisions we need to make and, to borrow Wolfgang Iser’s idea of interpretation, the mere existence of these cases means that we are bound to create a gap between the original and the translation. So, in a way, we are bad translators by default.

I also learned that in French unfuckable means “incomprehensible.” READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

June 18, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Darren Huang and Suhasini Patni

Hear about some of the most recent literary news from Taiwan and India!

This week, find out from our editors-at-large what has been happening around the literary world. Taiwanese literature appears in French translation, introducing a diverse swathe of writers across Taiwan’s linguistic backgrounds to French readers. India continues to reel from the impact of the pandemic, as the literary community remembers the writers they’ve lost, and many organizations stepping up to advocate for pandemic relief work. Read on to learn more.

Darren Huang, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Taiwan 

In February, the French publishing company L’Asiatheque released Formosana: Stories of Democracy in Taiwan, a collection of nine short stories by contemporary Taiwanese writers. L’Asisatheque is focused on making available books in translation from Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, South America, and Africa to French readers. In 2015, the company launched a “Taiwan Fiction” series, led by editor Gwennaël Gaffric, who is also a Chinese translator and professor in China Studies at the University of Lyon. The series seeks to amplify Taiwanese literature with themes of environmentalism, cultural identity, Taiwanese dialects, gender, postcolonialism, and the impacts of globalization. The series has published a number of modern classics of Taiwanese literature in French including A City of Sadness by Chu Tien-wen and Wu Nien-jen, The Membranes by past contributor Chi Ta-wei (recently reviewed in our blog), and multiple works by Wu Ming-yi, including The Man With the Compound Eyes and his novella, The Magician on the Catwalk.

In Formosana, the writers grapple with turbulent periods in Taiwanese history, including that of Japanese colonialism, the White Terror, martial law, and democratization. The stories also contend with social issues, such as nativist movements, LGBT rights, and environmentalism. In a recent interview, Gaffric discussed his choice of centering the collection on the theme of Taiwanese democracy. He believes that though there is increasing coverage of Taiwan in the French press, most French people do not understand its historical and cultural intricacies. He states: “We attempt to allow people to understand the fate of Taiwan from the past to the future, through various types of literary works which provide different channels and voices.” For his next book, Gaffric plans to publish the works of indigenous writer, Syaman Rapongan, to introduce indigenous writing to French readers.

On May 29, Taiwanese literature was also highlighted in France when Chi Ta-wei was invited to join the ninth annual “Nuit de la literature,” organized by the Forum of Foreign Cultural Institutes in Paris (FICEP). A reading of Chi’s “Pearls,” one of the stories from his eponymous science-fiction collection, was conducted in both English and Chinese at the virtual event with the author and Gaffric. READ MORE…

Selfhood is a Queer Fiction: On The Membranes by Chi Ta-wei

June 16, 2021  |  in Reviews  |  by Shawn Hoo

Writing the self into being from a hodgepodge of cultural texts—that is what’s elemental to queer life

The Membranes by Chi Ta-wei, translated from the Chinese by Ari Larissa Heinrich, Columbia University Press, 2021

Dwelling on a female classmate’s romantic advances in her youth, and belatedly cognisant of her learned aversion towards all forms of intimacy, the thirty-year-old Momo realises the incongruence of the one self-guided decision she had made in her life—to become a dermal care technician: “She could just as easily have chosen a more solitary profession, like a novelist. Why did she have to choose a job reliant on intimacy?” It is the year 2100 and humanity, terrified of the ultraviolet rays seeping through the depleted ozone layer, has evacuated from land en masse to settle on the seabed. Amidst the residual trauma of the sun’s lethal rays, the dermal care trade booms and Momo climbs the profession steadily, eventually becoming the owner of Salon Canary and something of a celebrity in T City. As Momo spends her days massaging her wealthy clients with M skin—a technology that gives her access to their private lives—what she cannot shake off is the feeling that “there was at least one layer of membrane between her and the world.”

In The Membranes, Chi Ta-wei, renowned Taiwanese novelist (and past Asymptote contributor), tackles a central problem of existentialism: how do we account for the estrangement between ourselves and the world? The thrilling sci-fi classic (originally published in 1995) then proceeds to compellingly insist on exploring the question’s social dimensions, getting under the skin of its queer, inscrutable protagonist. A slim, intelligent novella that ambitiously projects a militarised and corporate new world order in the rubble of environmental collapse, Chi’s brand of world-building is equally invested in envisioning new global formations as it is in attesting to emerging sexual subjectivities. It bristles with the emancipatory energy that characterises the novels coming out of post-martial-law Taiwan. Read together with works such as Chu T’ien-wen’s Notes of a Desolate Man or Qiu Miaojin’s Notes of a Crocodile and Last Words from Montmartre, English readers can now appreciate a fuller scope of the queer efflorescence unleashed in the experimental fiction of Taiwan’s nineties and the internal heterogeneity of its cultural moment. Ari Larissa Heinrich’s translation of Chi’s award-winning work comes a quarter of a century after its Chinese publication, but contemporary readers will relish going back to the future in a work that ventriloquises our present, its conjectures at once anachronistic and prophetic. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

June 11, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Carol Khoury, Eva Wissting, and Jacqueline Leung

Catch up on the latest literary news from Palestine, Sweden, and Hong Kong!

This week, Gaza’s reading community reels from the devastating loss of a beloved bookstore, and Sweden debates a new library to promote freedom of expression. In Hong Kong, leading literary voices pay homage on the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest, even as the annual Victoria Park vigil was canceled due to coronavirus concerns. Tour the literary world without leaving home; Asymptote‘s editors-at-large will punch your passport.

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine

When his mobile phone rang at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, May 18, Samir Mansour was not asleep anyway, as the bombardment of Gaza was still on. The caller, the Israeli military, was asking if Mansour was inside his bookshop and publishing house, as they “didn’t want to hurt” him. They hung up, and shortly after, their shells reduced what was once “happy and loving memories” to a pile of rubble.

The beloved local bookshop, which stood on the ground floor of a larger building, was one of the two blockaded Gaza Strip’s largest sellers of books. The other bookshop, owned by Shaban Aslim, was also destroyed by an airstrike the same week. Mr. Aslim spoke of the work he put into creating his store in an interview, saying “this was my dream that cost me so much.”

To Palestinians living in Gaza, the two bookstores played a key role as a center of intellectual ‎life, and their destruction represents the wider loss of culture in Gaza.‎ Mansour’s bookshop, located near several universities, ‎was also the unofficial home of several English-‎language book clubs, and printed and published works by local authors for the past twenty-one years. “Books are my life,” said Mansour, who would like to rebuild his store one day. Hopes are high that the bookstore will be rebuilt with donations after an online fundraiser was set up and managed by human rights lawyers.

A post to the bookshop’s Instagram page laments the loss of the sense of ‎community the store offered to people in Gaza. But not all stories are lost! Tareq Hajjaj’s piece in Middle East Eye gives a glimpse of fear and loathing in Gaza from before the latest war. The Palestine Book Award, now celebrating its tenth year, is publishing Writing Palestine, with Arabic and English texts, which “uniquely brings together revered names.” The Award’s list of winners honors and endorses the best written in English on Palestine. And do not miss M. Lynx Qualey’s list of seventeen new books by Palestinian writers worth reading. READ MORE…

Asymptote at the Movies: Love in a Fallen City

June 10, 2021  |  in Asymptote at the Movies  |  by Allison Braden, Shawn Hoo, and Xiao Yue Shan

A literary style that lends itself so naturally to cinema has its pleasures and, in some cases, its perils when it comes to adaptation.

The allure of Eileen Chang’s prose is a bewitching combination of insight and precision—sensual acuity married with an editorial scrupulousness. Earning widespread renown with renderings of the delicate, tenuous relationships in the volatile societies of her time, Chang has become known for her ability to create vivid, lasting images. It’s no wonder, then, that her works have served as the material for several celebrated films; today, our blog editors are taking a look at Hong Kong director Ann Hui’s adaptation of Chang’s rich novella of courtship and compromise, Love in a Fallen City (1984). What follows is a discussion on the transposition of Chang’s “cinematic” language, the pitfalls of overly faithful adaptation, and the difficulties of portraying interiority.

Shawn Hoo (SH): I have always thought of Eileen Chang’s prose style—her montage of overlapping timelines; her patient, exquisite visualising of scenes; her keen ear for dialogue—as having an affinity with the language of film. That is, her stories come to me almost ready-made for film. Unsurprisingly, Chang herself did write fourteen screenplays (a neglected part of her oeuvre), and several of her stories have been adapted by celebrated Sinophone filmmakers such as Stanley Kwan, Ang Lee, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and of course, Ann Hui (all of whom have no doubt disseminated Chang’s legacy to new audiences). A literary style that lends itself so naturally to cinema has its pleasures and, in some cases, its perils when it comes to adaptation. Just hear what Hui admits when asked about her interpretation of Chang’s story: “There is no interpretation at all,” she says, “It’s more a representation. The novel is so good that adding anything at all seems impossible.” If by “representation” Hui means to hew close to the original text, then this bears out in the film’s dialogue, which is used almost verbatim in its Cantonese translation, as well as in its rendering of key scenes which appear largely unmodified on screen. Consequently, what is arguably Chang’s most loved story has had a relatively lukewarm reception in its filmic context (and in Hui’s otherwise prolific oeuvre). Faithfulness—that contested word so frequently used to discuss translation—it seems, does not always reward.

This for me raises questions about the merits of transferring what is ostensibly cinematic writing onto the film medium, and how their relationship—as well as mutual realisation—can be understood beyond a scene-for-scene, image-for-image correspondence, which is at least how I conceive of Hui’s approach: too faithful. To be clear, there is much to admire in this film, especially Hui’s treatment of early 1940s Shanghai and Hong Kong. Whereas the former has the camera concentrated on the decaying, claustrophobic Bai household and moves between adjacent rooms only to hear Liusu’s relatives badmouthing her, the latter moves liberally between the historic Repulse Bay Hotel, couples dancing to a jazz number at the Hong Kong Hotel, outdoor Chinese opera, and a rendition of Greensleeves all heard while Liusu and Liuyuan walk the city. The film’s construction of these two settings dramatises the shifts in Liusu’s psychology, one that liberates her from the sad huqin of an insular household into the cacophonous colonial cosmopolitanism of British Hong Kong which signifies new beginnings. Or rather, three settings: if we distinguish Japanese-occupied Hong Kong for its distinct aural and visual qualities. Here, I think Hui successfully leverages on the medium to elaborate on Chang’s vision, that is the role of contingency—of situated time and place—to precipitate love.

At this point, I wonder if either of you might have a different take on the relationship between representation and interpretation, to borrow Hui’s own distinction?

Allison Braden (AB): The film did strike me as a fascinating testament to the idea that extreme faithfulness can be, paradoxically, a detriment to adaptation. Conventional wisdom holds that books deal in emotions, plays in dialogue, and films in images. The limited visual scope of the first part of Love in a Fallen City—the repressively close Bai home, the tight shots in various hotel settings—calls to mind a teleplay, with more reliance on dialogue than images. This approach shortchanges Liusu’s interiority and writer Eileen Chang’s careful attention to emotional nuance. I spent the initial Hong Kong portion of the movie baffled by Liusu’s ambivalence. She clearly needs to escape her family but also seems determined to make a match for herself rather than meet anyone else’s expectations. “The first marriage is for your parents,” she says, “the second is for yourself.” But can she afford to dawdle? To repulse a supremely eligible suitor? Sure, Fan represented a foreign sensibility and exhibited domineering and misogynistic traits, but Liusu’s alternate reactions—charmed and put off—and quiet (is it too much to say sulky?) responses to his overtures didn’t offer a sufficient window into her feelings. The viewer is left to project her own interpretation on Liusu’s mystifying reticence, which I see less as intentional ambiguity and more as a failure to adequately adapt the interiority of the novel to a medium that relies on a different form of exposition. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

May 28, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Jacqueline Leung, Julia Sherwood, and Suhasini Patni

The latest news from Hong Kong, Slovakia, and India!

This week, our writers deliver the latest literary news from Hong Kong, Slovakia, and India. Read about the newest translations to come out of Hong Kong, including works by Duo Duo and Leung Lee-chi. Meanwhile, the pandemic continues to shake the literary world: we hear of how the arts continue to be neglected in Slovakia’s recent recovery plan, and India losing some of her brightest writers amidst this crisis. Despite this, some hopeful signs that things might change. Read on to find out more! 

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

Chinese poet Duo Duo’s Words as Grain, translated from the Chinese by award-winning translator Lucas Klein, is out this month. A recipient of the PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant, Words as Grain is a new collection spanning approximately five decades of the poet’s oeuvre since the 1970s, with a full representation of Duo Duo’s work since his return to China from exile in 2004 and a selection of earlier poems. Duo Duo is hailed as an exponent of the Chinese Misty Poets and has been described by essayist and critic Eliot Weinberger as “a political poet who makes no statements; a realist poet in an alternate universe.” One may revisit Duo Duo’s poem, “Promise,” published in Asymptote’s July 2018 issue and translated by Klein, for a taste.

May also sees the publication of Jennifer Feeley’s translation of Hong Kong writer Leung Lee-chi’s short story, “Empty Rooms,” up on Two Lines Journal. A 2020 winner of the Award for Young Artist in Literary Arts by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, Leung is among a younger generation of Hong Kong writers starting to get exposure in the English language. “Empty Rooms” is a response to late novelist Liu Yichang’s short story “Turmoil” depicting the chaos of the 1967 riots through the perspectives of inanimate objects. In a similar vein, “Empty Rooms” portrays the interior of an apartment to piece together moments of memory and departure.

It is also exciting to see the announcement of results for the 7th Bai Meigui Translation Competition organized by The Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing. “The Season When Flowers Bloom,” Francesca Jordan’s winning translation of an excerpt from Taiwanese writer Yang Shuangzi’s novella, is selected by the judging panel consisting of Susan Wan Dolling, Mike Fu, and Darryl Sterk. Jordan will be offered a place in the upcoming “Bristol Translates” Literary Translation Summer School in July. Honorable mentions from the competition include entries by Stella Jiayue Zhu, Will Jones, and Lucy Craig-McQuaide. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

April 23, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Barbara Halla, José García Escobar, and Xiao Yue Shan

The latest news from China, Albania, and Central America!

This week, our writers bring you news from China, Albania, and Central America. In China, the prestigious October Literature Prizes have been presented, with Jidi Majia awarded the 2020 Special Achievement Award; in Albania, the National Center for Books and Reading has revealed the winners of the its 2020–2021 translation fund; and in Central America, Carlos Fonseca and José Adiak Montoya have been featured on Granta‘s best young Spanish-language authors list. Read on to find out more! 

Xiao Yue Shan, Blog Editor, reporting for China

October 十月, the renowned literature magazine founded in August 1978, gets its name from the downfall of China’s Gang of Four (a group of Communist Party leaders who took most of the blame for the Cultural Revolution’s devastations) in the October of 1976—upon which, as the line goes, the people of China were able to put behind them ten years of terror, and begin anew the aspirational proceedings of a new national context. As such, it is a publication that took upon itself the tremendous responsibility of delineating the rapidly changing cultural milieu, as well as rousing once more the imaginary and illuminating capacities of a language crippled from years of demolishment. It remains today one of the most prestigious publications of the nation, and the October Literature Prize amongst the highest honours awarded to Chinese writers.

On April 16, the sixteenth and seventeenth October Literature Prizes were presented in “the first town built on the Yangtze”—Lizhuang in Sichuan province. Of each edition, twelve writers were honoured in categories of Novel, Novella, Short Story, Essay, Poetry, and Special Achievement. Jidi Majia 吉狄马加 received the 2020 Special Achievement Award for his book-length poem, 裂开的星球 (The Split Planet), a totemic work that brings the soaring epics of myth into the startling light of the present, as inquiries to the human soul once again come to the poet’s consciousness; the work is emblematic of Jidi’s conviction that poetry holds a knowledge of the future. Also amongst the awardees was writer A Lai 阿来 for his novel 云中记 (In the Clouds), which describes the complete disappearance of a Tibetan village in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, and a local priest’s invocations of how one copes in the face of profound, replete obliteration. A full list of winners can be found here (Chinese only).

If you are to find yourself somewhere near Nanjing, it would be worth your time to visit the Tangshan Quarry Park, a devastatingly beautiful, painterly topography formed from a past limestone mine. It is also the site of the latest location of the Librairie Avant-Garde, a chain of bookshops well-respected for its literary selections, newly opening this month. Taking over the site of an abandoned processing plant, the newly opening Librairie is a stunning feat of contemporary architecture, preserving the red-brick facades rounded towers of its past life, while adopting cleanly to the slopes and gentle light of its natural surroundings. And even if you’re not the type to be impressed with elegant arches and staircases, the books should do; Librairie Avant-Garde is known especially for their revere of poetry, and the thousand-volume collection available here, ranging from Bei Dao to Pessoa, is given proper regard and pertinence. The opening event, held on April 17, also featured the first Librairie Avant-Garde Poetry Awards. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

April 16, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Charlie Ng, Eva Wissting, and Kwan Ann Tan

The latest news from Hong Kong, Sweden, and Malaysia!

This week, our writers bring you the latest news from Hong Kong, Sweden, and Malaysia. In Hong Kong, a commemoration of the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death and Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine talks are some of the live events that have started taking place again; in Sweden, Axel Lindén was awarded the Aftonbladet annual literary award; and in Malaysia, Catherine Menon’s debut novel, Fragile Monsters, has been released in English translation, while the Malaysian Poetry Writing Fortnight (MPWF) has been launched. Read on to find out more! 

Charlie Ng, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong

As the fourth wave of the COVID-19 outbreak slows in Hong Kong, cultural and literary activities have begun to return to live venues. Local bilingual poetry magazine Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine organised a poetry talk on the theme of wine, titled “If Our Poetry is Wine” on April 10 in Lai Chi Kok. Poet Chan Li-choi and translator Ko Chung-man were invited to share their views on poetry and wine. Participants could enjoy wine together with the guests to celebrate the inspirations endowed by Dionysus.

Hong Kong’s Dante Alighieri Society hosted three sessions of “Dante Alighieri Flash Readings” to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the death of the great Italian poet. Italian actress Nicole Garbellini and local actor Marc Ngan were invited to give lectures on Dante’s The Divine Comedy, covering the three cantiche: Paradiso, Purgatorio, and Inferno. The events took place at landmarks of the Central and Western District, and Causeway Bay to engage the public in the appreciation of the famous medieval poet.

From March 2 to April 14 artist Michael Leung’s exhibition “Publishing (To Find Each Other)” was open to the public at the Floating Projects in Wong Chuk Hang. The interdisciplinary exhibition explores the themes of publication and storytelling. Throughout March, Michael Leung also hosted sessions to discuss his experience of hybrid publishing with the audience. Workshops were held by the artist to produce zines with participants.

As well as face-to-face events, going online is still a popular way to stay connected with the public however. Local arts centre MILL6 Foundation is organising an online discussion forum, “Poetic Emergences: Organisation through Textile and Code,” to explore cross-boundary aspects of textile and weaving, including technology, art-making, and social mediation.

Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden

Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet has announced that its annual literary award will go to Axel Lindén this year. Lindén’s first book, Fårdagboken, was published in 2017 and translated into English by Frank Perry as Counting Sheep: Reflections and Observations of a Swedish Shepherd in 2018 (Atria Books). It was followed up in 2020 by Tillstånd, with the English title Every Other Pine, Every Other Fir. The jury’s motivation is that Lindén’s authorship “takes on the largest questions of our time by turning away from the center and all literary salons, towards the rural areas, the animals, the forest, and the self-doubt.” READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “For T. Tranströmer” by Bei Dao

March 16, 2021  |  in Translations  |  by Jonathan Chan

memory of a hurtling night train, how has/it caught up to the darkness ahead?

For this week’s Translation Tuesday, we celebrate the start of National Poetry Month (U.S. and Canada) with an ode from one of China’s greatest contemporary poets to one of Sweden’s. Bei Dao’s “For T. Tranströmer” recounts the sights and sounds of Tomas Tranströmer’s home life while channeling the concrete, narrative accessibility of the Nobel laureate’s work. Like a sequence of developing photos, Bei Dao’s vivid imagery creates snapshots that are dreamlike yet somehow worldly: the poet’s creative “center” is likened to echoing church bells and dancing headless angels, while the subject’s piano (a well-known source of solace for the late poet) sits atop a cliff and produces a “roar like thunder.” The subject’s “blue home” (which we also see in Bei Dao’s essay collection Blue House, a philosophical memoir which details his visits with Tranströmer) becomes the setting of a poet’s silent sanctuary—a place where music, poetry, and nature coexist. The artistic comradery between these two literary giants is a fitting launch to National Poetry Month as we recognize the international kinship between poets and translators.

For T. Tranströmer’

you place the final line of a poem
in your heart, locked. that is your center,
like the echo of ringing church bells
or the moment when the headless angels
begin to dance. you have held your balance.

your piano sits perched on a cliff, its
audience gripped, tighter and tighter, by a roar
like thunder, its keys roused to sprint. your
memory of a hurtling night train, how has
it caught up to the darkness ahead? READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

February 12, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by MK Harb, Sarah Moore, and Vivian Szu-Chin Chih

The latest news from Lebanon, Taiwan, and France!

This week, our writers bring you the latest news from Lebanon, Taiwan, and France. In Lebanon, translator Dr. Mona Kareem has won the National Endowment for the Arts Award and the Barjeel Poetry Prize winners have been announced; in Taiwan, the February issue of INK literary magazine presents work by sixteen Taiwanese authors on “A Memo for Literature of the Next Decade”; and in France, Vanessa Springora’s bestselling memoir about sexual abuse will be released in English translation. Read on to find out more! 

MK Harb, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Lebanon

In Lebanon, the cultural world and the literary sphere has been rocked by the news of the assassination of Lokman Slim. Slim was a prolific writer and intellectual, and was an influential member of the cultural and political community, opening his research and documentation practice UMAM in southern Beirut. A celebration of his life and work was held on February 11.

In translation news, Dr. Mona Kareem, translator of Octavia Butler’s Kindred into Arabic, won the National Endowment for the Arts Award. Her award supports the translation from the Arabic of the poetry collection Falcon with Sun Overheard by Ra’ad Abdulqadir, a pioneer of Iraqi poetry. Here is Dr. Kareem’s haunting translation of his poem “A Song for the Lightning Bird.” Interested in learning more about the Arabic prose poem? Then listen to author Huda J. Fakhreddine’s online talk about it at Dartmouth College!

In more thrilling translation news, Sawad Hussain’s translation from the Arabic of A Bed for the King’s Daughter is being published by University of Texas Press. Written by Syrian author Shahla Ujayli, whose past work was long-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, this collection of short stories is experimental, witty, and loaded with uncanny images dealing with modernity, alienation, and patriarchy.  READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

February 5, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Charlie Ng, Clémence Lucchini, and José García Escobar

The latest news from Central America, Hong Kong, and France!

This week our writers bring you news from Central America, Hong Kong, and France. In Central America, renowned Guatemalan writer Eduardo Haldon has released his latest novel, Cancón, and Savladoran writer Claudia Hernández’s book Slash and Burn has been released in English translation by & Other Stories. In Hong Kong, literary journal the Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine has pertinently published a special feature about “Distance,” while in France, Italian writer Sandro Veronesi has won the Foreign Book Prize for Le Colibri, to be published in English translation in spring. Read on to find out more! 

José García Escobar, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Central America

Guatemalan poet Carmen Lucía Alvarado was recently nominated for the Rhysling Award for her poem El vacío se conjuga entre tus manos (The void blends in your hands), translated by Toshiya Kamei. Read the poem in English and Spanish here. Famed Guatemalan writer Eduardo Halfon released his new novel called Canción (Song). Published by Libros del Asteroide, his latest book tells a new chapter of the history of Halfon’s family, centering on his maternal grandfather and his kidnap during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996). You can read an excerpt of Canción in English at The New York Review of Books site.

Also in Guatemala, the veteran poet and journalist Ana María Rodas released a new collection of short stories entitled Antigua para principiantes (Antigua for beginners). This new book includes several of Ana María’s most renowned short stories, plus other unpublished stories. This marks Ediciones del Pensativo’s first book of the year.

Additionally, in early January, & Other Stories published Slash and Burn, by the Salvadoran short story writer Claudia Hernández. The book was translated into English by Julia Sanches, who has translated the work of writers such as Daniel Galera (Brazil) and Noemi Jaffe (Brazil). READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

January 29, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Kwan Ann Tan and Shawn Hoo

The latest news from Singapore and Malaysia!

This week, our writers bring you news from Singapore and Malaysia. In Singapore, the literary community has been remembering the achievements of eminent Chinese-language writer Yeng Pway Ngon after he passed away. While in Malaysia, a new anthology has been published, which has collected writing about the lockdown. Read on to find out more! 

Shawn Hoo, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Singapore

On January 10, the literary community in Singapore and abroad mourned the passing of eminent Chinese-language writer 英培安 Yeng Pway Ngon. Winner of the Cultural Medallion, SEA Write Award, and four Singapore Literature Prizes, Yeng’s writing spans poetry (his latest collection is 石头 Stone), novels (including award-winning 骚动 Unrest and 画室 Art Studio), radio plays, and essays in the manner of Lu Xun. To fully appreciate Yeng’s contribution to Singapore’s cultural landscape, one must also look to his role as a bookseller, having founded two iconic Chinese-language bookstores, Vanguard Books and Grassroots Book Room, that have indelibly shaped the reading culture. In an online literary memorial service on January 15, organised by Grassroots that was attended by more than 170 participants, former students, friends, writers, and cultural workers recited some of Yeng’s verses and looked back at his public and private life. The singularity of Yeng’s influence on Singapore literature has led the Chinese-language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao to pose the question of finding the next Yeng Pway Ngon. As we remember this acclaimed cultural figure, read a play by Yeng (translated by Jeremy Tiang) from the January 2014 issue of Asymptote.

In other news, the Epigram Books Fiction Prize 2021 announced its winners on January 16 in a virtual ceremony. For the first time in the prize’s five-year history, the prize has been awarded to not one but two novels. The winning manuscripts are Sebastian Sim’s And the Award Goes to Sally Bang! and Meihan Boey’s The Formidable Miss Cassidy. They each receive SGD$15,000 in prize money as well as publication. This comes as Epigram Books announced just days before that they will stop publishing in the United Kingdom and focus on their Singapore business. Setting up its London arm in 2016, founder Edmund Wee had initially hoped that the move would allow a Singapore title to get onto the longlist of the coveted Man Booker Prize. After more than thirty titles and four years of work, the effort has proved—at least for the time being—futile. The good news, on the other hand, is that the cost savings from discontinuing the UK endeavour will be redirected to prize money for expanding the Fiction Prize shortlist from four to six novels. READ MORE…