Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

October 6, 2023 | in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup | by Marina García Pardavila, Sofija Popovska, and Wambua Muindi

The latest in literary news from North Macedonia, Spain, and Kenya!

In this round of weekly updates from our Editors-at-Large, we hear about literary festivals, awards, and the latest translations from North Macedonia, Spain, and Kenya! From a festival themed “Air. Wind. Breathing.” to a recently completed translation of the Bible, read on to learn more!

Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large, reporting from North Macedonia

The first weeks of autumn in North Macedonia brought exciting developments to the literary scene: the third installment of the Skopje Poetry Festival took place from September 24–28. The event spanned several venues, including the historic movie theater “Frosina”, the Skopje city library, and the bookshop-cafe “Bukva”. The festival opened with a performance entitled “Air. Wind. Breathing.”—a theme that was maintained throughout, as some of the readings were accompanied by musical improvisations with wind instruments.

Represented at the Skopje Poetry Festival was a diverse range of cultures; Danish, Serbian, French-Syrian, Maltese, and Croatian poets gave readings alongside local authors. Aside from readings, there were screenings of several movies based on the poetry of Aco Šopov. One of the adapted poems was Horrordeath, which was featured in the Winter 2023 issue of Asymptote Journal in Rawley Grau and Christina E. Kramer’s translation. The screenings were followed by a musical concert, a creative writing workshop headed by Immanuel Mifsud (a Maltese author and recipient of the European Union Prize for Literature), a panel discussion on increasing the visibility of Macedonian literature abroad, and a yoga session in nature. Young Macedonian poets also had a chance to make their voices heard, during the “Springboard” event on September 24 dedicated to poets between the ages of 16 and 25.

The 2021 International Booker Prize Longlist

April 8, 2021 | in Essays | by Sarah Moore

As well as being notable for texts that cross geographical borders, the 2021 longlist features works crossing the boundaries of traditional genres

Last week, the judges of the International Booker Prize announced the 2021 longlist. The prestigious prize is always followed with great excitement by critics, writers, and readers of international literature, and is particularly pertinent to us here at Asymptote. This year’s eclectic list features eleven languages from twelve countries. While we await the announcement of the six-book shortlist on April 22, let this be your guide through the thirteen books on the longlist.

The announcement of the International Man Booker, which celebrates the finest translated fiction from around the world, is always a pivotal event in the year for those interested in world literature. This year’s judging panel, consisting of Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Aida Edemariam, Neel Mukherjee, Olivette Otele, and George Szirtes, has selected a longlist dominated by newcomers and focusing above all on migration.

A welcome inclusion on the 2021 longlist, which is (as always) extremely Eurocentric, is the renowned Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi. Written in Gikuyu, this is Ngũgĩ’s first attempt at the epic form and explores the theme of disability through the story of nine sisters journeying to find a magical cure for their youngest sibling, who cannot walk.

Ngũgĩ was previously nominated for the International Booker in 2009 but has made history with this second nomination by becoming the first writer to be nominated for the prize as both author and translator of the same book, and the first nominee writing in an indigenous African language. Given that Ngũgĩ began his writing career in English before resolving to write works in his mother tongue (works for which he was detained by Kenya’s government), this nomination opens the way for much-needed conversations about literature in indigenous languages, as well as about the fascinating practice of self-translation. With the recent controversies surrounding translators of Amanda Gorman’s poetry collection The Hill We Climb, and questions of diversity and visibility of translators, Ngũgĩ’s self-translation adds a new angle to the debate about who gets to translate a text.

Chinese author Can Xue has also been previously nominated for the prize. In 2019, Xue was nominated for Love in the New Millennium, while this year’s nomination is for her first collection of stories, I Live in the Slums (translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping). READ MORE…

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His Defiance: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and the Struggle for an Independent African Literature

June 14, 2018 | in Essays | by Olufunke Ogundimu

These words cannot just exist in a vacuum; they provoke reactions that demand political change.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was born 5 January, 1938 in Limuru, Kenya and is a perennial favourite for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Ngũgĩ is at the forefront of a war of resistance regarding the use of language that has spanned many decades. He advocates that African writers write in their mother tongues, because he understands how integral language is to a culture and its identity. Since African literature is mostly written in languages of the minority, the language of the colonizers, Ngũgĩ asserts that this choice stifles the imagination of Africans and their propensity to be creative.

Nearly fifty years ago, Ngũgĩ wrote his first novel, Weep Not, Child (1964), the first written in English by an Eastern African. Ngaahika Ndeenda (1977), translated as I Will Marry When I Want, was co-written with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii. It is a play that depicts the injustices and excesses of post-colonial Kenya. It was acted by “non-intellectuals” in an open-air theater at the Kamirithu Educational and Cultural Center, Limuru. Ngũgĩ’s Gikuyu play sought to bring the theatre closer to the masses and encourage the audience to interact with the play. The play appealed to a wide audience and, because of the resultant reaction by people, the Kenyan government threw Ngũgĩ in prison for a year.