Language: French

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

March 20, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Allison Braden, Eva Wissting, and MARGENTO

The latest news from Argentina, Sweden, Belgium, and the United Kingdom!

Rainer Maria Rilke writes in Letters to a Young Poet, “We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.” As countries around the world enter lockdown in response to the COVID-19 situation, readers, writers, and translators find other ways to thrive, to share their stories, and to respond to the crisis. In Argentina, female writers engaged with International Women’s Day; in Sweden, organizers found novel ways to interview authors after the cancellation of its Littfest festival; and in the UK and Belgium, publications and exhibitions look to live-streaming and online platforms to overcome cancellations.

Allison Braden, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Argentina

Around the world, women and men recognized International Women’s Day on Sunday, March 8. In Argentina, women protested pervasive violence against women and abstained from going to work or school on “Un día sin nosotras,” or “A Day Without Us,” the following Monday. But the day also marked an opportunity to celebrate the gains women have made in math, science, and literature, among other fields, and 2019 marked an unprecedented year for global recognition of Argentine women authors. One of the many authors recognized was María Moreno, a leading voice in the #NiUnaMenos (#NotOneLess) women’s movement in Argentina. Chile’s Ministry of Culture awarded her the Premio Iberoamericano de Narrativa Manual Rojas, and she recently read from her work Mujeres de la bolsa at the Mariano Moreno National Library in Buenos Aires.

This year, Argentina inaugurates a national literary prize, modeled on the Booker and Pulitzer prizes. The Premio Fundación Medifé Filba de Novela will honor a novel published in 2019 and award its author, who must be Argentine or a naturalized citizen, a cash prize. Authors and publishers are able to submit works for consideration until April 15. Organizers hope the prize will be a welcome source of conversation about Argentina’s literature for years to come. READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: March 2020

March 16, 2020  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Daljinder Johal, Georgina Fooks, Josefina Massot, and Rachel Allen

We're feeling the need for great literature in these strange times.

These last few weeks of winter will be known as the time of stockpiling, and as countries around the world are shutting doors in response to COVID-19, stores are being cleared out and preserved goods and household necessities are piled up in cupboards. But just as it is vital to care for your body in these perplexing times, it is equally important to nurture your mind. So it is with that in mind that we present the newest and brightest in translated literature from around the world, in hopes that what is available to us remains our compassion, our desire to understand one another, and the privilege to travel amidst isolation. Below, our editors present a book of poetry written in a defiant border-language, a poignant Turkish critique of human cruelty, a Colombian novel depicting a young girl’s inner wildness, and the latest translated poems of Jacques Roubaud, written in the Oulipo tradition of valuing absence as equally as presence. 

night in the north

Night in the North by Fabián Severo, translated from the Portuñol by Laura Cesaro Eglin and Jesse Lee Kercheval, Eulalia Books, 2020

Review by Georgina Fooks, Communications Manager

How do we choose which language to write in?

For some of us, that choice can be fraught. Whether you’re a child of immigrants (as I am), or from a contested border region (as Fabián Severo is), there is a great deal at stake when making that choice. It impacts your identity, it shapes your politics. There’s no doubt that when reading this collection, Severo’s decision to write in Portuñol is a political act. READ MORE…

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…

The 2020 Booker International Longlist

March 2, 2020  |  in Essays, News  |  by Barbara Halla

This year the specter of violence, visceral brutality, and even hauntings loom large.

Every year, the prestigious Booker International Prize is always announced to a crowd of critics, writers, and readers around the world with much aplomb, resulting in great celebration, some dissatisfaction, and occasional puzzlement. Here at Asymptote, we’re presenting a take by our in-house Booker-specialist Barbara Halla, who tackles the longlist with the expert curiosity and knowledge of a reader with voracious taste, in place of the usual blurbs and bylines, and additionally questioning what the Booker International means. If you too are perusing the longlist in hunt for your next read, let this be your (atypical) guide.

I tend to dread reading the Booker wrap-ups that sprout immediately after the longlist has been announced. The thing is, most critics and bloggers have not read the majority of the list, which means that the articles are at best summaries of pre-existing blurbs or reviews. Plus, this is my third year covering the Booker International, and I was equally apprehensive about finding a new way to spin the following main acts that now compose the usual post-Booker script: 1) the list is very Eurocentric (which says more about the state of the publishing world than the judges’ tastes); 2) someone, usually The Guardian, will mention that the longlist is dominated by female writers, although the split is around seven to six, which reminds me of that untraceable paper arguing that when a particular setting achieves nominal equality, that is often seen as supremacy; and 3) indie presses are killing it, which they absolutely are because since 2016, they have deservedly taken over the Booker, from longlist to winner.

I don’t mean to trivialize the concerns listed above, especially in regards to the list’s Eurocentrism. Truth is, we talk a lot about the unbearable whiteness of the publishing world, but in writings that discuss the Booker, at least, we rarely dig deeper than issues of linguistic homogeneity and the dominance of literatures from certain regions. For instance: yes, three of the four winners of the International have been women, including all four translators, but how many of them have been translators of color? To my understanding, that number is exactly zero. How many translators of color have even been longlisted? The Booker does not publish the list of titles submitted for consideration, but if it did, I am sure we would notice the same predominance of white voices and white translators. I know it is easier said than done, considering how hard it is to sell translated fiction to the public in the first place, but if we actually want to tilt the axis away from the western literary canon, the most important thing we can do is support and highlight the work of translators of color who most likely have a deeper understanding of the literatures that so far continue to elude not just prizes, but the market in its entirety. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

February 28, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Sarah Moore and Xiao Yue Shan

This week's latest literary news from China and the United Kingdom!

This week our writers report on the impact of coronavirus on writers and readers in China, as well as the release of the International Booker Prize longlist. Read on to find out more! 

Xiao Yue Shan, Blog Editor, reporting from China

“Fear can cause blindness, said the girl with dark glasses, Never a truer word, that could not be truer. . .” The words of José Saramago hover in the virus-stricken towns and cities of China: illness, the great equalizer. The streets freed of people, the antiseptic taste of disinfectant wafting, mask-ridden faces—outside China, the news grow its own, furious legends. Reports of the dead waver between hundreds and thousands, there is panic and disillusion and boredom and most of all, uncertainty.

So it is through this continual trajectory of doubt, compounded by fear, that Saramago’s renowned novel Blindness (published in China as 失明症漫记) has surged amidst the Chinese literary community as a compass towards what directions human nature may turn in times of encompassing hardship. In the growing scope of a blindness epidemic, Saramago unites fiction and ideology into a profound portrayal into how disease can infiltrate and dismantle the lattice of moral order, as well as how we may comfort one another, how the degradation of societal norms does not definitively mean the regression of one’s humanity. It is, albeit dark, a story of triumph, and triumph—even in books—is solace. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

February 14, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Barbara Halla, Nestor Gomez, and Shelly Bhoil

This week's latest news from Tibet, El Salvador, and France!

This week our writers bring you the latest news from Tibet, El Salvador, and France. At Indiana University, a new Tibetan translation of Elie Wiesel’s Night sparks discussion; in El Salvador, the contemporary poet Vladimir Amaya gives an interview about his poetic decisions; in France, the accusations of sexual assault in the literary establishment ignite urgent discussion about French law and the #MeToo movement. Read on to find out more! 

Shelly Bhoil, Editor-at-Large, reporting from United States

There was a powerful coming together of two exile stories—the Tibetan and Jewish—at the Central Eurasian Studies Department of Indiana University through a panel discussion—The Tibetan Translation of Elie Wiesel’s Night—on January 29. The Nobel Peace Prize-winner Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night (1960), discussed by the distinguished Jewish literature scholar Alvin Rosenfeld in the panel, has been translated into more than thirty languages, its Tibetan version being the most recent. Wiesel was a Holocaust survivor upon whom the Dalai Lama conferred the International Campaign for Tibet’s Light of Truth award in 2005.

Wiesel’s Night is the first work to be translated into Tibetan under New York-based Latse Library’s 108 translations project and made available for free here. According to Latse’s statistics, “In the first two weeks alone [since the book’s publication in Oct 2019], there were 3,300 downloads of the ebook and PDF, and countless more instances of sharing and forwarding on social media and email.” Gendun Rabsel, the Tibetan language expert, spoke in the panel about the welcoming reception of Night among Tibetan readers. Pema Bhum, Night’s translator and a leading Tibetan intellectual, discussed his meeting with Wiesel and the challenges and choices in translating this work into Tibetan, including his consultations with the celebrated historian on Tibet, Elliot Sperling, and with IU Jewish Studies faculty. READ MORE…

What’s New with the Crew? (Feb 2020)

February 13, 2020  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

We’re bursting out of the gate with publications galore!

Other than editing your favorite literary journal, what have Asymptote staff been up to in the New Year? Catch up with our talented team with this latest quarterly update.

Gustave Roud’s “Air of Solitude” followed by “Requiem,” is finally coming out with Seagull Press at the end of February 2020 in Communications Manager Alexander Dickow and Sean Reynolds’s English translation; it is already available for preorder here. Alexander also published the story, “Rican’s Tale of the Expedition to Perigonne,” in Big Echo Critical Science Fiction.

Assistant editor Andreea Scridon read excerpts of her translations from the Romanian at a poetry reading in Pembroke College, UK, on February 12.

The  TA First Translation Prize was announced on February 12, and the runner-up went  to People in the Room by Norah Lange, translated by Charlotte Whittle and edited by our new Copy editor Bella Bosworth.

Contributing editor Ellen Elias-Bursac published her translation of Croation author Kristian Novak’s Dark Mother Earth with Amazon Crossing on January 14.

Editor-at-large for Morocco Hodna Nuernberg‘s co-translation, with Patricia Hartland, of Raphael Confiant’s Madam St. Clair, Queen of Harlem was published by Lavender Ink / Diálogos in January 2020.

Editor-at-large for Iran Poupeh Missaghi published her debut novel trans(re)lating house one with Coffee House Press on February 4. READ MORE…

Fiction as Seduction: An Interview with Anne Serre

January 29, 2020  |  in Interviews  |  by Tristan Foster

A writer’s only responsibility is to seduce without cheating.

Anne Serre has been published steadily in her native France since the release of her debut novel, Les Gouvernantes, in 1992, but it wasn’t until October 2018, when New Directions published it as The Governesses, translated by Mark Hutchinson, that her writing was made available to an English-speaking audience. The Governesses was followed by The Fool in October 2019, a collection of three unlinked but thematically cohesive novellas. Serre’s two books tell enchanting and surprising stories, both delightful in style and shocking in their disregard for moral norms. At their heart is the subject of the fulfillment of desire—desires which range from living absolutely for the story to the taboo of incest; this jarring mix of charm and discomfort makes for a unique and surprising reading experience. Here, in a rare English-language interview, Serre speaks about her work in translation, her “infinite conversation” with longtime friend and translator, Mark Hutchison, and unravels some of the mystery surrounding her untranslated work.

—Tristan Foster

Tristan Foster (TF): In your essay published in Granta, entitled “How I Write My Books,” you state that you begin with a sentence, that this is the gate through which the rest of the story enters—this sentence and those which follow are the product of your reading and your thinking and living life. You write: “It requires on my part months of silence and solitude, a form of inner tranquillity, and close attention to what is taking shape inside me.” You frame this as something less serendipitous than it is magical, using the language of the occult—mystery, trickery, secret ceremonies—to describe it. How important is the magical for you, both in your writing and how you think of it? 

Anne Serre (AS): I don’t believe in magic, neither in life nor in writing! When I try to describe how I write, I’m describing a mental process in which memory and imagination meet like two rivers that suddenly flow together. It’s a bit of a mystery because, for me, this only ever happens in writing. You might compare it to a child at play. When a child pretends to be a character and invents a situation, he is both himself and the invented character.  

TF: It was also a delight for me to read, in that same piece, your view that the writing is a patchwork—of memories, your previous work, and the imagination, but one which “appears to be cut from the same cloth, and a cloth that is new and without a snag.” I say that because the story told in The Governesses seems to me to contain a perfect world of its own, one that is recognisable from fairy tales encountered as a child as well as, perhaps, Emma and Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair, an ecosystem in total balance, so much so it might pop if poked with a stick. The Governesses was your first book, originally published in 1992; why has building this kind of world been so important to you from the outset? 

AS: I used to say that I came to literature through “the door of enchantment” because it was the only door open to me. I tried to find other doors but I couldn’t. Sometimes I think that 99% of my early material was made up of my reading and my daydreams about my reading. I was full of fiction. Maybe a little too much to make do with just living. READ MORE…

Section Editors’ Highlights: Winter 2020

January 27, 2020  |  in News  |  by Caridad Svich, Eva Heisler, Lee Yew Leong, Sam Carter, and Varun Nayar

Our Section Editors pick their favorites from the Winter 2020 issue!

We thought of the Winter 2020 issue as a fantastic salad, surprising and delightful in its compact variety. We’re willing to concede, however, that it is a large salad; the challenges it presents might be more approachable if they’re coming from a buffet. With so many delights and delectables on offer, where does one begin? Perhaps, we humbly suggest, with these selections from our section editors, which include a Federico García Lorca play and an Eduardo Lalo essay.

From Lee Yew Leong, Fiction, Poetry, and Kurdish Feature Editor:

Brought into English by Caitlin O’Neil (a former team member, I’m thrilled to say), Corinne Hoex’s sensuous—and sensational—Gentlemen Callers is full of exquisite treats, rivaling Belgian compatriot Amélie Nothomb’s wit, humor, and imagination. Although Asymptote makes it its mission to move beyond world literature’s Eurocentric focus, it’s gems like this that remind me that there’s still much to discover from smaller, less heard-from countries within Europe. I would consider it scandalous if Hoex’s fiction is still unknown in the world literature canon ten years down the road. From the Poetry section, Gnaomi Siemens accompanies her sexy, updated take of Ephemeris (horoscopes from the 16th century) with a thought-provoking note: “Horoscopes (hora / time, skopos / observation) are ephemeral. Translation is an observation of time and a holding up of the writings and ideas of one time to observe them in a new temporal context.” Pair with Joey Schwartzman’s 21st-century renderings of T’ang dynasty poet Bai Juyi. Whip-smart and bittersweet, these timeless poems about transience will stay with you for at least a little while.

From Sam Carter, Criticism Section Editor:

This issue’s Criticism section introduces us to two poetry collections that embody the Asymptote mission by refusing to be contained by borders, whether linguistic or geographic. Our very own Lou Sarabadzic takes us through the important work done by Poetry of the Holocaust: An Anthology, which contains poems from ninety-three writers and nineteen languages in order to provide a comprehensive portrait of this terrible atrocity. And Emma Gomis reviews Time, Etel Adnan’s latest exploration of temporality and poetic form that arose from a series of postcards exchanged with the Tunisian artist Khaled Najar. READ MORE…

Brusque Lyricism: Liesl Schillinger on Translating Inès Cagnati

January 23, 2020  |  in Book Club, Interviews  |  by Andreea Scridon

Cagnati’s images . . . her intentionally repetitive reflections and refrains, have a force and strength that are magnified by their rough grain.

Inès Cagnati’s award-winning Free Day is a potent and imagistic work that speaks powerfully on isolation, self-actualization, and freedom through the interior monologue of a young girl—we at Asymptote were incredibly proud to present it as our December 2019 Book Club selection. During a time in which much about our ideas of self is under scrutiny, Free Day is a fearless psychological exploration. In the following interview, Assistant Editor Andreea Scridon speaks to translator Liesl Schillinger on bringing Cagnati’s distinct roughness and rhythm into English, neologisms, and her “reservoir of lived memory”.

The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers in the US, the UK, and the EU. 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, you can join the online discussion on our Facebook page!

Andreea Scridon (AS): Inès Cagnati is not a name that has been frequently circulated in the Anglophone sphere up until now. Could you tell us what drew you to her as a writer, and why you thought her work would appeal to English-speaking readers?

Liesl Schillinger (LS): It was my editor at NYRB who brought Inès Cagnati to my attention; like you, I hadn’t known of her before. But as soon as I started reading Free Day, I became aware of her strong, glowing (sometimes searing) individual voice. Her writing struck me as brusque, incantatory, and strangely lyrical in places. Entirely original. Originality always compels me; and not only was her voice original, so was her subject. The experience of Italian immigrants in southern France during the postwar period was entirely new to me. In the past, I’d thought about immigration mostly in terms of how the country that received the newcomers treated them; I’d given less thought to how they treated each other. This book opened my eyes. Cagnati continually expressed emotionally gripping truths that disturbed and moved my heart and conscience. I read another of her books, Génie la Folle (Genius the Fool⁠—“Genius” was the nickname of the narrator’s unfortunate mother) and found it more haunting still. Wanting to know more about Cagnati, I went online, and was surprised to discover next to no biographical information, but I learned that every one of the books she wrote won a French literary prize. I felt it was time to shine a light on this forgotten writer and her experience—particularly at a moment when we, as Americans, ought to be reflecting on the refugee crisis at our southern border, and thinking about the men, women, and children who are suffering there. READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: January 2020

January 13, 2020  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Eva Wissting, Leah Scott, and Samuel Kahler

A darkly comical Cuban fiction, the collected texts of an impassioned French thinker, and an Israeli story of radical empathy.

We’re starting up 2020 with what we do best: bringing you a selection of brilliant titles that have most recently landed in world literature. Our picks this month span the radical, the intimate, and the dark, with the stunning cross-section of twentieth-century Cuban society, a collection of essays by the notorious Jean Genet, and an Israeli tale of survival and struggle told in a great feat of imagination. Go ahead and take advantage of that new-year urgency to fulfill your resolution to read more, and start here.

black cathedral

The Black Cathedral by Marcial Gala, translated from the Spanish by Anna Kushner, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020

Review by Leah Scott, Social Media Manager

A dark mosaic of interwoven narratives, The Black Cathedral by Marcial Gala lures the reader straight into the complicated dramas of Cienfuegos, a small Cuban town riddled with poverty and conflict. The novel features a broad cast of idiosyncratic characters, whose histories we come to understand not only through their own unique voices, but by the tales told by others; Cienfuego’s harrowing history emerges through decades of local gossip, placing the reader right at the center of the town’s most turbid rumors and confessions—stories that ultimately culminate in a vicious and bitter end.  READ MORE…

Mother-Daughter Collaboration: An Interview with Jean Paira-Pemberton and Catherine Piron-Paira

January 3, 2020  |  in Interviews  |  by Lou Sarabadzic

This was what we could share together at this time in her life; I think it added much tenderness between us.

I met Catherine Piron-Paira last June in Paris at the annual poetry market, and at the time was already aware of Éditions des Lisières, a remarkable independent press committed to translation and multilingualism. I had recently read their latest bilingual English-French release, Seeds in My Ground/Ma terre ensemencée by Jean Paira-Pemberton, and discovered that the translator (or co-translator), Catherine Piron-Paira, was the author’s daughter. Many poems were substantially re-written in their French translation, suggesting a very creative working relationship. The press’ website says the text is “adapted” rather than merely translated, and the book itself indicates that the French version was developed “in collaboration” between Jean and Catherine. A few months later, all three of us scheduled a video chat. Jean and Catherine were then sent the condensed and edited transcript of this interview for approval and final edits, and it is now our great pleasure to bring it to Asymptote’s readers.

Lou Sarabadzic (LS): In the foreword, Catherine, you explain that your mother, Jean Paira-Pemberton, “is a nomad between two languages, two cultures, two countries.” Could you tell us a bit more?

Catherine Piron-Paira (CPP): Mum settled in France in 1952, but she continued going to England for reasons of both business and pleasure. She also went from Strasbourg to Saverne every day for work. There was a place where we went for holidays: Chapeau Cornu, near Lyon. We used to go from Strasbourg to Lyon, from Lyon to Strasbourg. As for “nomad,” how do you feel about that?

Jean Paira-Pemberton (JPP): Well, I have a relationship now with French, which is almost like the relationship with a mother tongue. I think I am completely bilingual. I can use both languages for practically everything, except poetry. Poetry is only in English.

LS: Why do you think that is?

JPP: Because English is my mother tongue, and I have wanted to be a poet ever since I learnt how to write, so it goes back to way before I learnt French. I started to learn French in secondary school, when I was eleven. It is very much a second language. I have never written poetry in French. I have written lots of other texts in French, of course, as part of my job; I was a university teacher, and I published articles and all sorts of things on linguistics in French–my thesis about John Clare’s life was in French. But not poetry. READ MORE…

New Year, New Horizons!

January 1, 2020  |  in Essays  |  by Rachel Allen, Sarah Moore, and Xiao Yue Shan

Reading resolutions for 2020—brought to you by the blog team.

Happy New Year, reader! To ring in the ’20s, we are getting personal and sharing our own reading resolutions. From literature engaged with the effects of climate change to classic theological texts, here are the reads we have on the radar for 2020. Maybe our titles overlap with some of yours? If you’re inspired, share your resolutions with us in the comments below.

Xiao Yue Shan, Assistant Blog Editor:

We are becoming ever more impelled by the worst-case scenarios, the ultimate consequences of our carelessness. Climate change is cemented at the pinnacle of every engaged mind, consuming the concerns of those on the forefront of human progress—the writers. December is a month of returns, and a trip across the Pacific on my part meant a reabsorption into the beloved stacks of books left behind by a past self who had endlessly imagined the present. I found in those volumes an incredible vitality—it takes considerably more courage to speculate on the future now, yet in our infinitely ideating language, we can’t help it, we imagine naturally, as we have always done.

Usually my reading directives are predictable, by which I mean they’re somewhat “in accordance” with my being a female Chinese poet—the tendency veers towards a healthy majority of women writers, plenty of Chinese literature, and as much poetry as possible. As we approach the new decade, however, I’ve turned my attention to literature more specifically in dialogue with our planet. In Amitav Ghosh’s beautifully urgent book-length essay, The Great Derangement, he convincingly argues for an overhaul of the fiction genre so that it may better address and reflect upon our contemporary precarity. Though the best of our stories are inevitably engaged with our environment, I found Ghosh’s take riveting in its insistence that we continue to build and invent language that is ever more precise, alert, and curious. READ MORE…

Announcing Our December Book Club Selection: Free Day by Inès Cagnati

December 30, 2019  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Andreea Scridon

We readers, used to idealizing arcadia, are reminded of the fear and constraint that can be a part of being, in a way, another person’s property.

Winner of France’s Prix Roger Nimier in 1973 and now published for the first time in English, this month’s Book Club selection is a powerful portrait of childhood and the struggle between freedom and nostalgia. Written by Inès Cagnati, who was born in France to Italian immigrants, Free Day vividly depicts feelings of estrangement within a community and the surrounding environment. Through the interior monologue of fourteen-year-old Galla, Cagnati poignantly conveys the conflicts of childhood experience: hostility, fear, cruelty, yet overwhelming curiosity and desires. 

The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers in the US, the UK, and the EU. 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, you can join the online discussion on our Facebook page!

Free Day by Inès Cagnati, translated from the French by Liesl Schillinger, NYRB, 2019

In Free Day, Inès Cagnati—with evidently great subtlety and focus—examines a young girl’s manner of interacting with the world around her, in addition to developing that which lies within her. Though the basis of the book is that of a poor Italian family of farmers in mid-century France, the novel is in actuality a character study of fourteen-year-old Galla, chronicling the sacrifices she makes in order to attend high school.

Initially, the reader senses a degree of ambiguity regarding the narrator’s age before it is revealed, as Galla seems to pendulate between the thinking of a child and that of an adult—indeed as one does at that in-between age. Though by no means convoluted or rambunctious, here one could argue that there is something Joycean in Cagnati’s book, as the dramatic guise is stylistic in a manner that we have originally come to know and love in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Cagnati immediately sketches Galla not as bratty or melodramatic, as teens are sometimes written, but as a likeable freethinker despite her condition: “The English professor, too. He talks to us endlessly about people who’ve been dead forever, instead of leaving them in peace, which they definitely deserve, or telling stories of his own.” READ MORE…