Language: French

Announcing Our April Book Club Selection: Gentlemen Callers by Corinne Hoex

April 28, 2022  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Laurel Taylor

Hoex’s playful romp through the transformative powers of female sensuality . . . toes the line of taste and teases the reader.

In the world of letters, sex is too often strangled with extremes. Whether entrenched in symbolism, proliferate with diverse politics, or avoided altogether, this pervasive element of human experience is too often deprived of its more irreverent, mirthful, and pleasurable evocations. In our Book Club selection for April, award-winning Belgian writer Corinne Hoex presents a series of sexual dreams and fantasies in Gentlemen Callers, a collection that astounds, subverts, and engages with physical pleasure in joy, levity, and dreaminess. Unabashedly funny and fiercely sensual, Hoex’s journey through the erotic is a breathless delight.  

The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers around the world. You can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website for as little as USD15 per book; once you’re a member, join our Facebook group for exclusive book club discussions and receive invitations to our members-only Zoom interviews with the author or the translator of each title.

Gentlemen Callers by Corinne Hoex, translated from the French by Caitlin O’Neil, Dalkey Archive Press, 2022

Literature has—particularly in the last century or so—become a Serious Business. I’m not speaking here of economics or occupations, but rather the affect of seriousness. Very often, the more tragical, gritty, and dark a tale is, the more lauded its reception becomes. For whatever reason, we have decided that comedy is not as worthy of critical attention or canonization, in spite of the fact that, in my estimation at least, comedy is infinitely harder to pull off. Humor is culturally specific, temporally tied, and situationally contextual, and all of these facets are amplified in the context of translation, where puns and plays become tangled in tongues. This is what makes Gentlemen Callers, by Corinne Hoex, translated from the French by Caitlin O’Neil, a truly astonishing outlier. While French literature enjoys a fairly prolific publication rate in English, the kinds of literature chosen for publication are often cerebral, philosophical, and introspective. Hoex’s series of vignettes, too, are interiorized, in that they are dreamworlds, but they are also fleshy, sensuous, and gilded with a teasing tone firmly rooted (pun intended) in sexual exploration and fulfillment.

Gentlemen Callers is somewhere between a novel and a short story collection; a first-person narrator delivers each brief tale, and her power to call men (and other more fantastical lovers) into her dreams perennially returns, but nearly every chapter is self-contained, and the narrator shapeshifts as she sees fit, all the better to become the tool with which her lovers might exercise their expertise. Each vignette is titled after an occupation, some of which happily gesture to the realm of tried and true pornographic tropes (like The Mailman or The Schoolteacher) while others are more oblique: The Butcher, The Furrier, The Beekeeper. Following each chapter title comes an epigraph, all taken from some of Europe’s most famous canonical authors: Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Émile Zola. As one might expect, all the referenced authors are men, and all the epigraphs gesture to the occupation under examination, albeit some more obliquely than others. The narratorial play here is not only to reference the heights of physical joy one can achieve with a skilled workman, but also to reference the heights of intellectual joy one can achieve when toying with the phantom canon, with the master’s ghost.

Take, for example, the epigraph from “The Young Priest 2,” one of only three vignette continuations in the book. It’s from Thomas à Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ, perhaps one of the most widely read Christian works after the Bible itself. The quote: “How pleasant and sweet to behold brethren fervent and devout, well-mannered and disciplined!” This earnest, chaste sentiment takes on a new and sensually playful valence when paired with the priest’s vignettes, in which a handsome man of the cloth visits the narrator in her dreams and delivers an intercession upon which, “the Holy Spirit enters me. God clasps me in His arms, possesses me with His mouth, radiates His light by waking the wild urges of his servant’s potent sap.” No doubt Kemis himself, who in his teachings stressed silence, solitude, resisting temptation, and purging fleshly pleasures, would be outraged at the implication that actions “fervent and devout” might be found in the narrator’s oblique allusion to fellatio, “kneel[ing] on [her] white cloud, back arched, face upturned, lips parted, surrendering [her] flesh to the Redeemer.” READ MORE…

Our Spring 2022 Issue Has Landed!

April 21, 2022  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Individuals of the woodland canine persuasion run amok in our Spring 2022 issue, thanks to Theis Ørntoft and Nina Yargekov!

Welcome to our Spring 2022 edition, released just as Russia’s invasion enters a brutal new phase. We’ve been curating a space for writers in support of Ukraine in a new Saturday column. Now, we proudly bring you Andrii Krasnyashchikh’s letters from Kharkiv, Kate Tsurkan’s interview with Zenia Tompkins, and Ian Ross Singleton’s review of Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine. Complemented by guest artist Shuxian Lee’s poignant cover, these pieces and the new issue remind us that if “humans are destructive”—as frequent contributor Theis Ørntoft puts it across so powerfully in his essay “Our Days in Paradise are Over”—“we are also an organising phenomenon in the cosmos.”

An absolute highlight amid new work from thirty-four countries, Ørntoft’s essay is itself an organizing phenomenon that deserves to be dwelt on. According to him, civilization “began with the delineation of a garden,” but capitalism has taken it to the point where every inch of planet Earth has been altered and nature no longer exists “out there”—no wonder, then, that his expedition to the West of Jutland yields zero sightings of wolves. Heavily mythologized across cultures, wolves most often represent danger, chaos, the unknown—yet, in the author’s telling, they also stand for the primeval and, therefore, a certain elusive real, in stark contrast to the various symbolisms thrust upon them. Ørntoft then inverts the anthropocentric paradigm that humans are used to—with them at the top of the food chain, even though they do not necessarily self-identify as animals—and asks us to consider what message wolves might hold for us instead.

Apart from Nina Yargekov’s uproarious adaptation of “Little Red Riding Wolf” for the age of the #MeToo movement—the obvious story with which Ørntoft’s nonfiction might be paired—“Our Days in Paradise are Over” echoes Nobel laureate Hermann Karl Hesse’s empathetic Weltanschauung in two new translations of his poems by Wally Swist; it also asks us to pay attention to the various animals conjured in this edition: from the suffering, captive bat in Bosnian author Aljoša Ljubojević’s “How We Started the War” to the suffering, liberated “Fish” in Georgian writer Goderdzi Chokheli’s story about a man who jumps into a lake and renounces his very own humanity along with the social contract it entails. Then there is the elusive boar in Pedro de Jesús’s slippery poem, in which various hunters discuss the “art of the hunt” only to miss the point; the cats with beautiful eyes in Agnieszka Taborska’s fascinating piece on surrealists vis-à-vis their chosen suicides, “yawn[ing] and stretch[ing] in all their dignity, distance, and above all their enormous indifference to the person standing there on the chair with her head in a noose.” READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

April 15, 2022  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Matilde Ribeiro and MK Harb

Festivals and prizes from India and Lebanon!

This week, our editors from around the world highlight literary festivals, events, and publishing trends in India, along with accolades for previous contributors to Asymptote from Lebanon. Read on to find out more!

Matilde Ribeiro, Copy Editor, reporting from India

Geetanjali Shree’s novel Tomb of Sand was shortlisted on April 7 for the International Booker Prize. This is the first novel written in Hindi to have come this close to winning the prestigious award. The novel was translated to English by Daisy Rockwell, who emphasized the polyphonic nature of the text, which uses loanwords from other Indian languages like Punjabi, Hindustani, Urdu, and Sanskrit.

This linguistic choice, which mimics the way in which speakers of many dialects of Hindi borrow words from other languages, is especially important in light of persistent attempts to “purify” and standardize the Hindi language by removing all non-Sanskrit words. Moreover, in a literary field that is still dominated by twentieth-century authors like Premchand and Yashpal, Shree’s achievement could encourage more contemporary authors writing in Hindi.

However, there remains in general a fundamental disconnect between Indian literary awards and festivals and the choices of the Indian reading public, especially in non-English languages. This was one of the problems addressed during the online discussion “Karimeen for the Soul,” a panel on Malayalam literature hosted by the Bangalore International Centre on March 28, featuring Sahitya Akademi award-winning author Paul Zacharia, publisher Karthika VK, translator Nisha Susan, and journalist Nidheesh M K. Karthika noted that a major problem with regard to “mainstream” publishing and awards is their reliance on the novel as the main form of storytelling, rather than the short story, based on relative sales figures for the two forms. In the meantime, regional newspapers and magazines continue to publish experimental, pathbreaking local-language short stories, a medium that, Zacharia noted, “comes alive when innovation is dead.”

READ MORE…

The International Booker Comes Home

April 4, 2022  |  in Essays  |  by Barbara Halla

There is much to be said about the (fleeting) feeling of accomplishment in seeing a favorite longlisted.

With the upcoming announcement of the Booker International shortlist on April 7, our in-house Booker expert is here to take you through the impressive longlist, discuss the intersection between closed-door judging and fervent public online discourses, and the increased visibility of the translator in bringing these vital titles into the English-language sphere, Read on to find out more!

The International Booker Prize, like a number of other British literary prizes, has become a unifying topic amidst a very active online community. Twitter is the kind of place where bubbles of connections and affinities naturally form, but participating in this nexus simultaneously fosters a detached sense of irony that makes any earnest acknowledgment to it a touch mortifying. I am willing to take the risk of too much earnestness today because, for the sake of honesty, my relationship to the International Booker would not be the same without this community.

I became a regular follower of the prize after attending a meeting with the judges at Shakespeare and Company in Paris back in 2016 (a discussion I left certain in the knowledge that Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, translated by Deborah Smith, was going to win, as it did). But it was entering in conversation with other readers and translators through Twitter that made the International Booker an event that I await impatiently every March. We make a friendly race out of reading the entire longlist, and debates about the merits of each selection get unreasonably heated, as we work to change the minds of others about the books we love—or even loath at times. Not to mention that I would be very happy not to have the “what constitutes nonfiction” debate again in my lifetime, which was in full swing both last year, with the longlisting of In Memory of Memory and The War of the Poor, and in 2019 when The Years was shortlisted.

Perhaps more importantly, being part of this community has shaped the approach I take the reading (and reviewing) the list. Thanks to it, I am constantly aware of the labor that goes into each book, not merely the translation but the efforts by the translators themselves, often acting as both agent and publicist. For instance, when Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights won the International Booker in 2018, Jennifer Croft had spent a decade advocating for it to be published. Furthermore, participating even somewhat actively in the discussion happening on places like Twitter is to be aware of the uneven dynamics of the publishing world. Much has rightfully been said about the International Booker’s Eurocentrism (which this year’s longlist provides a refreshing break from), but at the same time, as an online participant in these communities, you see in real time that the Booker is probably replicating trends that exist within publishing at large. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

April 1, 2022  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Cristina Pérez Díaz, MARGENTO, Peera Songkünnatham, and Suhasini Patni

Book fairs, Booker longlists, and magazine launches from Thailand, Puerto Rico, India, and Romania!

This week, our editors from around the globe report on the political undertones of a Bangkok book fair, new translations of Indian literature, new magazines out of Puerto Rico, and celebrations of Francophone literature in Romania. Read on to find out more!

Peera Songkünnatham, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Thailand

Bookworms are back wheeling their suitcases around in the country’s biggest book fair. It is the place to get another year’s worth of kong dong (“pile of pickles”)—i.e., unread books. After a cancellation last year and a move online the year before, the twelve-day National Book Fair, organized by the Publishers and Booksellers Association of Thailand is being held at the new rail transport hub, Bangsue Grand Station, until April 6. Many publishers, both major and independent, release new books in anticipation of this event, where they can get a bigger cut from sales and buyers have come to expect extra-special discounts. With over 200 publishers participating, author meet-and-greets, and predictable logistical complaints at the temporary new venue, we can perhaps sense a return to normalcy.

If one looks at this normalcy more closely, however, one can see an increasing trend of explicit politicization in the largely commercial enterprise. The calendar of main-stage events includes book launches by pro-democracy politicians from the Move Forward Party and the Progressive Movement (of the disbanded Future Forward Party). The names of four such politicians, all men, grace the official calendar—without the titles of their books, oddly enough. The Progressive Movement is also publishing its first translation: an illustrated children’s book, นี่แหละเผด็จการ (Así es la dictadura) by Equipo Plantel, first published in 1977 in post-Franco Spain. These examples provide quite a contrast to ostensibly political but effectively depoliticizing events led by, for lack of a better word, the literary establishment, like the panel discussion “Stepping into the Third Decade of the Phan Waen Fa Award: Political Literature for Democratic Development,” featuring three award committee members and a literary scholar.

READ MORE…

Happy World Poetry Day!

March 21, 2022  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Celebrate with an eclectic selection of the best poems from our archives!

In honor of World Poetry Day, we invite you to revisit some of the best international poetry from our eleven-year archive. For a start, Brazilian poet Lêdo Ivo’s work soars to great heights through its accumulation of brilliant specificities. But it also catches one unawares with looser, breath-taking lines like these: “Life itself is a round thing / so that when we go wrong, we go wrong roundly.” Revisit Lêdo Ivo’s “The Earth Is Round” from our Summer 2021 issue.

 

A leading light of South Korea’s contemporary poetry scene, Yi Won takes ‘avant-garde’ to new extremes. Catapulting the reader into a future where technology rules the human spirit, her lacerating social commentary interrogates the very nature of poetry itself. Courtesy of translator Kevin Michael Smith, discover Yi Won’s radical work from our Summer 2018 edition. READ MORE…

Section Editors’ Highlights: Winter 2022

February 2, 2022  |  in News  |  by Barbara Halla, Bassam Sidiki, Caridad Svich, and Lee Yew Leong

Highlights from the Winter 2022 edition, presented by our section editors!

Gathering new work from 43 countries, the Winter 2022 edition might be overwhelming at first. But don’t let that stop you from diving right in! Whether you consume the issue from cover to cover or click on whatever catches your fancy, we just hope you enjoy reading this eleventh anniversary edition as much as our section editors have loved putting it together! Here to tell you more about their lineups are Yew Leong, Barbara, Bassam, and Caridad. If, after reading the issue, you’re inspired to submit work, don’t forget that we welcome submissions all year round; if you are a Swedish-English translator, take note that we’re currently inviting submissions to a paid Swedish Literature Feature, slated for publication in Spring 2022. For guidelines on how to submit, go here.

From Lee Yew Leong, Fiction, Poetry, Special Features, and Interview Editor:

The statistics are undeniable: With one language dying every two weeks, ninety percent of all languages will go extinct within the next one hundred years. Even as we at Asymptote celebrate another milestone with our most diverse issue yet, loss—specifically that of entire worlds indexed by languages—is never quite far from our minds. In Dear You, translated brilliantly by Samantha Farmer, Croatian author Jasna Jasna Žmak takes us on a playful thought experiment inspired by Barthes: ”What if one word was removed each time a speaker of its language died as an act of remembrance?” Intended as an enjoinder to Eliot Weinberger’s essay published in these very pages one year ago, Yeshua G. B. Tolle’s submission to this issue’s Brave New World Literature Feature examines Aaron Zeitlin’s poetry, written in a language “half of whose speakers had been wiped off the face of the earth” when Nazis invaded his native Poland. “On what world do we gaze,” he asks poignantly, ”when the poet himself believes the world is over?” Whole worlds are rendered believably before our eyes in Matt Reeck’s skillful rendering of Rachid Djaïdani’s 1999 classic of banlieue literature that smashed Parisian tropes, and in Kim Su-on’s atmospheric science fiction brought to us by talented translators Spencer Lee-Lenfield and Lizzie Buehler. My two personal highlights from the Poetry section couldn’t be more diametrically apposite: the first (the Kazakh poet Anuar Duisenbinov) is as light (and alive with defiance) as the second (Spanish poet Pepe Espaliú) is weighted (with clear-eyed acceptance of inevitable death); both are powerful and moving. Rounding up the issue’s stellar lineup, Neske Beks and Charlotte Van den Broeck (in the Flemish Literature Feature I curated) as well as Jamaican-born artist Cosmo Whyte (in the Visual section, which Eva Heisler assembled) make important contributions to the conversation on our collective racial past.

From Barbara Halla, Criticism Editor:

In many reviews, the very act of translation can feel like an afterthought; usually reviewers will include a short line or paragraph to acknowledge the deftness of the translator’s skill, but that will be the extent of their engagement. I can understand why that happens: at times, without some familiarity with the original, it can feel impossible to speak in detail about the translator’s craft—which is why Tom Abi Samra’s review of Huda J. Fakhreddine and Jayson Iwen’s translation of Salim Barakat’s poetry is such a revelation. In his review, the translation features front and center, as Abi Samra investigates how Barakat’s attempt to defamiliarize Arabic is rendered into English, doing an almost phrase-by-phrase analysis of the translation. There are some texts, however, where the reviewer does not have a choice but to engage with the translator, because the very book they are reviewing questions the porous borders between author and translator. This is the case with Catherine Fisher’s fascinating review of Tomaž where Joshua Beckman appears not merely as a translator, but as a co-writer having had a direct hand in choosing how to present Tomaž Šalamun’s poetry into English. READ MORE…

Our Winter 2022 Issue Is Here!

January 20, 2022  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Featuring new work from a record 43 countries!

Shout it from the rooftops: Asymptote turns eleven today! We celebrate our 43rd issue with new work from a record 43 countries in our most bountiful edition yet. Highlights include an exclusive interview with acclaimed poet George Szirtes and a Flemish Literature Special Feature organized in partnership with Flanders Literature, showcasing new translations of International Booker Prize nominee Stefan Hertmans, YA superstar author Bart Moeyaert, and up-and-coming raconteur Rachida Lamrabet.

Our Winter 2022 edition not only puts the “world” in “world literature,” it also interrogates the meaning of it. Take the case of Aaron Zeitlin, the Yiddish poet who was stranded overseas when the Nazis invaded his native Poland and killed his entire family. Written in a language “half of whose speakers had been wiped off the face of the earth,” Zeitlin’s grief-stricken poetry appears to be without a world, and therefore can not, as Yeshua G.B. Tolle argues beautifully, be classified as world literature. In her fiction, Jasna Jasna Žmak imagines a similar apocalyptic fate for the speakers of her language in a thought experiment inspired by Barthes, only to emerge with a newfound appreciation for all the words in her language, including the ones she hates. After all, words can summon entire civilizations—even the bygone ones—as they do in Gesualdo Bufalino’s thrilling list of extinct professions (the lady with the bloodsuckers, among them!). “The disappearing world” is also the subject of visual artist—and the first public figure in Spain to openly discuss his HIV status—Pepe Espaliú’s devastating poems evoking his final days under a sky dense like “the mouth of black clouds.” By contrast, bilingual Kazakh poet Anuar Duisenbinov’s exuberant “overloved, overdosed” narrator “float[s] in exultation” through his “luminous and windy capital,” contemplating “the ability of speech to sprout.” As it turns out, speech does sprout everywhere all over the world. Alongside Duisenbinov, we’re thrilled to debut in English Emil-Iulian Sude, one of the first award-winning writers of Roma ethnicity in Romania; Rachid Djaïdani, a French filmmaker whose 1999 bestselling novel and classic of banlieue writing is only now available, thanks to frequent contributor Matt Reeck; and Kim Su-on, a young Korean writer whose dazzlingly atmospheric story is a masterclass in worldbuilding.

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The tagline of this eleventh anniversary edition is “The Worlds We Live In”—pointedly not “The World We Live In”—meant to express the simultaneity of all our myriad existences, such as those inhabited by George Szirtes, who discusses his new collection of poems, the state of Hungarian literature, and translation in the age of Brexit. Also working from the liminal space of migration is Jamaican-born artist Cosmo Whyte, who explains why Barbados’s recent renouncement of the Queen is only the first of many necessary steps in healing (since, according to him, there is no “post” to colonialism). Neske Beks also performs a necessary act toward healing on behalf of Black women everywhere by centering the story of Ann Lowe, the Black designer responsible for Jackie Kennedy’s bridal gown in 1953, in her retelling of haute couture’s history. Pair her 2020 essay sparked by an exhibition with Charlotte Van den Broeck’s nonfiction excavating the curious real-life case of the Princess Caraboo of Javasu aka Mary Wilcocks—who might very well be the first yellowface captured in any artistic medium (an 1817 oil painting that shared a moment with Van den Broeck at the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery in her last gallery visit before the pandemic). All of this is illustrated in talented Singaporean guest artist Yeow Su Xian (Shu)’s irresistible palette and forms—I dare you to say hers isn’t the most fun cover we’ve had in a while!

For more Asymptote goodness, subscribe to our newsletter or Book Club, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and our two Instagram accounts, and consider submitting work (Swedish-English translators take note: our recently announced call for submissions to a paid Swedish literature feature ends Mar 1). And of course, we’d be delighted if you’d like to come on board as a team member (apply by Feb 1) or, to honor our eleven full years in world literature perhaps, as one of our generous sustaining members! As always, thank you for your readership and support.

BECOME A SUSTAINING MEMBER TODAY

—Lee Yew Leong, Editor-in-Chief

What’s New in Translation: January 2022

January 17, 2022  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa, Barbara Halla, and Charlie Ng

Featuring newly released titles from France, Spain, and Japan!

Though this new year comes with its own shares of doubts and questions, what remains certain is  that new titles and texts from around the world hold their own promises of enthrallment, knowledge, and beauty. This month, we present three works of fiction that traverse the realms of history, politics, and family. From a new collection of stories from Japanese master Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, to a novel interrogating the psychologies surrounding sexual predation by the award-winning Lola Lafon, to an imaginative journey into turn-of-the-century Barcelona with Eduardo Mendoza—these writings are sure to keep you thinking and dreaming.

reeling

Reeling by Lola Lafon, translated from the French by Hildegarde Serle, Europa Editions, 2022

Review by Barbara Halla, Assistant Editor

What we may reflexively call the “#MeToo era” has served as a cataclysm for the publication of several books of fiction and memoirs centered around women’s experiences with sexual violence. Far from being an Anglo-centric phenomenon, French works such as Vanessa Springora’s Consent (translated by Natasha Lehrer) and Camille Kouchner’s La Familia Grande (translated by Adriana Hunter) have garnered great acclaim for their unflinching and complicated portrayal of childhood sexual abuse. Lola Lafon’s Reeling, as well, lends itself easily to this movement, seeming particularly prescient considering the recent conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell for her role in the trafficking of underaged girls. The novel’s direct protagonists, Cléo and Betty, are two women whose lives are derailed by the Maxwell-like figure of Cathy—a stylish older woman who approaches young girls between thirteen and fourteen, offering them prestigious scholarships through the fictive Galatea foundation.

As Cathy prepares the girls for their “interviews,” she plies them with cares and attention, clothing and expensive perfumes; she makes them feel special, or rather that they are destined for something special. Yet, it is clear that something far more sinister hides behind the promises of scholarship. By the time the girls are to “interview” with the older male jurors, Cathy has earned their trust and affection; they would do anything to please her, to deserve her trust, to fulfill her expectations as she emphasizes the need for maturity and openness, the main criteria these “jurors” are looking for in the candidates.

Two important elements come to the fore in the figure of Cathy and her relationship to the young girls she grooms, and also in the encounters of girls like Cléo, Betty, and dozens of others with these older men. On the one hand, it is important to unpack the way Cathy manufactures consent through manipulation: although these girls do not want to do anything of a sexual nature during their “interviews,” many decide to go forward with it—not solely because of their own ambitions, but also to please a figure they have come to trust and revere. Secondly, the “jurors” themselves prey on the girls’ desire to appear mature, to show they are not “frigid” and thus somehow inadequate. This particular mind-game speaks also to the way sexual liberation—the result of the social and political movements that swept France during the 1960s and 1970s—often framed physical freedoms in ways that prioritized women’s and girls’ availability to men. As a thirteen-year-old Cléo thinks after her assault, “Cléo, thirteen years, five months, and however many days, had consented. To say no was to be frigid.” READ MORE…

Salvation Written Elsewhere: Mohamed Choukri and Abdellah Taïa at the Limits of World Literature

January 13, 2022  |  in Essays  |  by Alex Tan

[T]he works of Mohamed Choukri and Abdellah Taïa narrate points of silence to enact the difficulty of speaking as oneself.

In the first part of this essay, Alex Tan discussed Arab texts that anticipate their own reception in translation or as world literature, and how Mohamed Choukri and Abdellah Taïa—in For Bread Alone and Salvation Army—desacralise the languages of Classical Arabic and French respectively. Here, the discreet elements of these two “autobiographical” works are further analysed, in order to understand how a self can be written into existence amidst erasure, shame, and even the savagery of love.

“All of us already wanted to forget our past, forget last night,
forget the troubles that brought us here and couldn’t be shared no matter who asked.”

—Abdellah Taïa, Salvation Army (tr. Frank Stock)

“And So I Felt Ashamed”: An Affective Education

Caught in between Arabic and Western autobiographical conventions, the works of Mohamed Choukri and Abdellah Taïa narrate points of silence to enact the difficulty of speaking as oneself. Whereas the Arabic tradition is associated with a concealment of the shameful and a preference for collective voices, the Western takes pride in confessing the abject and centering the individual’s coming-of-age. In negotiating one’s place within the collective, the self-portraits in Choukri’s and Taïa’s work inevitably confronts a culture that, to secure deference to authority, forbids people from thinking as individuals.

Both texts are abundantly punctuated with moments of non-verbal expression amidst Moroccan society’s conspiracies of silence. In Salvation Army, the parents of Taïa’s narrator—also named Abdellah—have a “preferred language” of “sex”; here, the father’s silence conveys his desire. Less benignly, Choukri’s surrogate, Mohamed, in For Bread Alone ironises his father’s draconian assertions by addressing him “without speaking”: “O Khalifa of Allah on earth.” Left unelaborated, this phrase evokes the quiet imaginative gestures that the author performs as a mode of survival—as it is known only to himself. It mirrors the larger vocabulary of violence that saturates the book, such as when his father speaks “only in shouts and slaps,” a dialogue of abuse which forms their exclusive mode of interaction.

The narrator grows to be adept at reading signification into embodied cues, like those of Yasmina and an unknown young man whose “eyes tell me” he “wanted something”—the language remaining vague as if to re-enact the man’s reticence. A European woman, catching Mohamed “staring” at her handbag, similarly communicates with “her eyes.” They “seemed to be saying: Aren’t you ashamed? And so I felt ashamed.” The woman’s eloquent silence performs an affective education: Mohamed learns how a white person views someone of his class and race, and realises where and when he should feel shame. Yet in giving language to these moments, Choukri displaces the locus of shame from the personal to the systemic. READ MORE…

Languages of Silence: Mohamed Choukri and Abdellah Taïa Desacralising Adab and Isnad

January 12, 2022  |  in Essays  |  by Alex Tan

Nothing about a translated novel—or anything that has warranted the fraught label of “world literature”—can be taken for granted.

Mohamed Choukri and Abdellah Taïa have been celebrated by the literary world as writers defying tradition in their transgressive tellings of migration, sexuality, and selfhood; yet, in the Anglophone sphere, their works have also been exoticised and misappropriated in Orientalist contexts, filtered through the othering perspectives of a western literary hierarchy. In this following essay, Assistant Editor Alex Tan delineates a reading of these two Moroccan writers that situates them in the vehicles of their own language and cultural context, with the unique ways their writing interrogates the borders of being. This essay is part one of two, the second of which can be read here.

 “The Maghrebin is always elsewhere. That’s where he makes himself come true.”

— Habib Tengour, Exile is My Trade (tr. Pierre Joris)

1998, Cairo. Midway through her Modern Arabic literature class at the American University in Cairo (AUC), Professor Samia Mehrez receives urgent missives from the university administration. Though she does not yet suspect the storm to come, she is compelled to cease the lecture and dismiss the students. Walking over to the administrative office, she is greeted with the news that several parents have complained about the inclusion of “pornography” on her syllabus, sufficiently blasphemous to “corrupt an entire generation.”

What text could claim such power? At the heart of the controversy was Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri’s Al-Khubz Al-Hafi (translated by Paul Bowles into English as For Bread Alone), which would soon precipitate the eruption of a nation-wide culture war over the uses of literature in the classroom.

Fast forward to 2012—El Jadida in Morocco, six years after Abdellah Taïa comes out as gay in the magazine Tel Quel and is hailed as the first Arab writer to be open about his homosexuality. Certain Islamist groups, anxious about moral taint, are clamouring for the outlawing of his oeuvre. Taïa had been invited to speak at a university about his latest work to be translated from French into Arabic; unfortunately, before it could happen, professors and students organised a protest to shut down the event. Slogans such as “don’t spread homosexuality on campus” were intoned.

It has become, by now, somewhat commonplace for the West to fetishize Arab writers and intellectuals who suffer widespread condemnation in their countries of origin—particularly from Islamist quarters—before enshrining them in the exclusive club of world literature. One thinks of works like Sonallah Ibrahim’s That Smell, banned immediately upon its 1966 publication in Egypt, or Haidar Haidar’s A Banquet of Seaweed, which induced accusations of heresy from Al-Azhar clerics and protests by university students against its inclusion on syllabi. At times, it almost seems as if censorship, political oppression, and exile are a rite of passage for international renown—a disturbing reality that signals to us what Anglophone literary markets value in a work from the Arab world. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Véronique Bergen

January 4, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by MARGENTO

in the ocean of tattoos / sea urchins shaped like fully loaded syringes

In our first Translation Tuesday feature for the new year, revel in two outrightly explosive and psychedelic poems by the Belgian poet, novelist and philosopher Véronique Bergen. “I petal blue,” is how Bergen begins one of these poems and it is in this frenzied flowering of one’s subjectivity that we meet the speaker in their radiant and radical metamorphosis. Following her own warped and dynamic syntax, Bergen’s poems lay bare an “orgy of guns”: she construes a poetic world that riots our senses and, in her turbulent re-contextualisation of the technologies that engender this anarchy, refracts a history of global violence. Always, they combust with a frank and freakish sexuality. Translated by our very own Editor-at-Large for Romania and Moldova, MARGENTO brings to our readers the spectrum of technicolour brilliance and virtuosic world-building that is Bergen’s verse. 

Suave Blue 

I petal blue
looking for the way out of my maze
safe behind the bat my effigy

I curaçao
at the bottom of a swimming pool
in search of Isabelle A. of a Gin Cloud
inhaling vapors
of methylene blue
to deoxidize my moths

In the hollow of my sex
my sunken Atlantis
the Amazon of Mytilene
rapes me Lesbos earthquake
a touch of futuristic pornography
to stifle
my desire to sink
among water lilies
where Opheliacs drift

My mission is
to bleed out my blue blood
daily autistic drip
at the time when the sun
deviates into indigo

Periwinkle-colored
death
will have Isabelle A.’s eyes
an amniotic liquid
released from a cosmic uterus
will flow over my wounds
Yves Klein’s patented Tuareg blues.

Dirty Banditry Hour 

Capital Execution
would you like it in black and white crystalline powder
or technicolor pills?
The syringe between your teeth
stereophonic host
for a reality check
who does what
who empties the septic tanks
shoots the rainbow

From the magazine to the barrel
the same current is flowing through the revolver
long cartridges slipped under the tongue
loaded with electromagnetic whisky

The boa girl, smoke lens glasses, bare shoulders
is going to blow up the world’s leadership
decapsulate the tragedy of the spheres
her chain necklace says “yes” to the finger squeezing the trigger
her naked flesh a trap
the new Salome shoots the way we love doing it
point-blank range
firing a life-giving bullet
in the backs of the heads of order apostles
a poppy bullet spouting out
lost weapons undergrowth

Never forget to say
to heaven and earth
yin and yang
who does what
what nerd gives him the heads-up
on the dum-dum bullet rain
on a hero-in shoot-
up white as a fucking shroud

Never forget
in strip poker
blue orgasm cards lose
chemical mutations in language
give birth to counter-letters READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

December 17, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa, Andriana Hamas, and MARGENTO

The latest from Mexico, Bulgaria, Belgium, and Romania!

Though Asymptote is winding down with the year, literary events and going-ons continue to thrive around the globe. In Mexico, the Guadalajara International Book Fair presents its impressive line-up, and Polish female poets are celebrated in a new collection. In Bulgaria, the Christmas Book Fair returns to delight the locals. and in Romania, the Gaudeamus Book Fair features over one hundred exciting events. Read on to find out more!

Alan Mendoza Sosa, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Mexico

On December 10, Mexican editor, poet, and translator Isabel Zapata presented Dentro del bosque, an English-Spanish translation of the autobiographical essay Into the Woods by American author Emily Gould. The essay reflects on contemporary capitalist precarity through Gould’s personal experience as a young woman trying to make a living as a writer in New York City. Originally published in 2014, its translation into Spanish is part of the Editor’s Collection from Gris Tormenta, an independent publisher based in Querétaro, a rapidly growing state three hours north of Mexico City. Gris Tormenta has published several Asymptote contributors in the past, including Yuri Herrera, Tedi López Mills, and Thomas Bernhard.

On December 4, Mexican poet Rocío Cerón and Polish poet Marta Eloy Cichocka presented Luz que fue sombra, a Polish-Spanish bilingual collection of seventeen Polish female poets born between 1963 and 1981, translated by Abel Murcia and Gerardo Beltrán. The book was published in the Spanish independent press Vaso Roto, which has published Spanish translations of important authors such as Anne Carson, John Ashbery, and Ocean Vuong. It includes poems by Justyna Bargielska, Barbara Klicka, Krystyna Dąbrowska, and Urszula Zajączkowska. Julia Fiedorczuk, whose book Oxygen was reviewed for Asymptote by Elisa González, is one of the most renowned authors in the collection. The event took place in Talleres de Arte Contemporáneo (TACO), a cultural centre south of Mexico City dedicated to promoting and teaching contemporary art.

The 35th edition of the Guadalajara International Book Fair took place in Guadalajara, one of Mexico’s largest cities, between November 27 and December 5. It is considered one of the most important book festivals in Latin America. This year, the guest of honor was Peru, from where several important authors and artists travelled to Mexico to present their work, lead workshops, and host panels. Among them was Asymptote contributor Victoria Guerrero. Importantly, the events featuring Peru offered significant representation of literature written in indigenous languages, including books by Dina Ananco Ahuananchi, Gabriel Pacheco, Cha’ska Ninawaman, and Washington Córdova. The fair also featured both emerging and established authors from all over the world. Many of them have previously appeared in Asymptote, such as Ana Luísa Amaral, Georgi Gospodinov, Abdellah Taïa, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, and Alejandro Zambra.

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

Bulgaria has, for a long time now, been in the grips of mass paranoia, an all-encompassing misinformation campaign, and political turmoil. The health situation also not looking up; according to official statistics, the COVID-19 deaths are, sadly, approaching the chilling number of 30 000 since the beginning of the pandemic—a figure that definitely cannot be trivialised given the overall population. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

December 3, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Carol Khoury, Laurel Taylor, and Mary Hillis

Workshops, festivals, and plenty of new publications and announcements to celebrate in this week's round of literary news.

The “great moon of December” leads us into the final starts of 2021, though the literary world shows no signs of winding down. Let our editors introduce you to classical poetry reawakened, Arab literature awards, star-studded literary events in Tokyo, the latest from the European Literature Festival, and much more!

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

Once upon a time, the so-called ‘women’s magazines’ of today had a completely different form (though they were never truly intended for women per se). Back in the tenth century, there was a celebrated Shiʻite Muslim Arab court poet, master chef, and polymath called Kushājim; originally from Ramla in Palestine—near contemporary Tel Aviv—Kushājim lived during the turbulent war-ridden period of the Middle and Late Abbasid Caliphates, which led him to move between Jerusalem, Damascus, Baghdad, and Cairo before finally settling in Aleppo. During his lifetime, Kushājim was considered the epitome of excellence in literature, and was highly commended by the literary critics of his time, both for his poetic works and intellectual faculties. His canon “vividly chronicles culinary, social, and intellectual aspects of court life [. . .], detailing numerous native and exotic foodstuffs and recipes; the social etiquettes of sharing wine and food; the various musical instruments used at the time to entertain the caliphs and their guests; the harem with its cross-dressing male and female dancers, concubines, and odalisques; the wide variety of plants and geometric designs found in courtly gardens; indoor pastimes and outdoor sports; the art of gift-giving; and the traits of coveted courtiers and boon companions.” What does this resemble but the contemporary women’s magazine?

Ancient Exchanges, an online journal at the University of Iowa devoted to literary translations of ancient texts, has recently published four gastronomic poems by Kushājim—on asparagus, mushabbak, khushkanaj (both desserts), and pomegranates. Translated from classical Arabic by Salma Harland, the four poems are run bilingually, accompanied with art by ArabLit Quarterly art director Hassân Al Mohtasib.

In her translator’s note (which includes a teaching guide), Harland explains that “although the original poems were written in accordance with the fixed feet and rhyme schemes often used in classical Arabic poetry, I have chosen to prioritize aesthetic grace and readability over meter without completely eliminating musicality.”

One is invited to take a seat at Kushājim’s table, set by Harland, and to take in a feast by a master who “not only details the preparation methods and ingredients needed for certain dishes but also the impact that their elegant presentation has on the banquet guests. Mouths water and eager hands cannot keep their distance”; even “[a] sedulous ascetic would break his fast / and yield before such a repast.” READ MORE…