This week, our editors-at-large take us to India, Kenya, and México. From a cross-cultural poetry retreat to a crime writer’s conference, read on to find out more!
Réne Esaú Sánchez, Editor-at-Large, reporting from México
Not so long ago, I was talking with some friends about the Guadalajara International Book Fair and how, for many locals, an event like that was actually their only chance to find certain books, meet certain authors and even reflect upon their literary activities. Despite the importance of the Fair, literary circulation remains centralized in Mexico City, while book commercialization in other places like Guadalajara, Monterrey, or Oaxaca is always secondary.
This is why I find it important to celebrate events like the Yucatán International Reading Fair (FILEY), which will conclude this Sunday, March 30. This year, it has hosted important authors including Cristina Rivera Garza, Verónica Murguía, Brenda Lozano, Jorge Comensal, and Xita Rubert. At the Fair, the 2025 José Emilio Pacheco Award for Excellence in Literature was presented to Alberto Ruy Sánchez, a prolific novelist who, in his unique style, shared the reasons behind his writing:
I write to know, to explore vast dimensions of reality that only literature can penetrate. I also write to remember, but no less, I write to forget. I write to extend my body, my senses, to experience the sensuality of the world day after day. I write for pleasure, for desire, for rage. To expose the falsification of icons, the abuse of public power. I write to be hated and to be loved, more so, to be desired. I write to propose new spaces in this world, to create places.
As its name suggests, FILEY has also been a space to reflect on why, how, and from where we read, something essential if we want to address the problem of cultural centralization. As María Teresa Mézquita, the Fair’s director, said in her opening remarks at the festival, beyond numbers and sales, the event is driven by a desire to foster personal growth, learning, and a cultural environment enriched precisely through reading.
It is good, as Ruy Sánchez’s remarks suggest, to know why we write; just as important is knowing why we read.
Wambua Muindi, Editor-at-Large reporting from Kenya READ MORE…
Blog Editors’ Highlights: Winter 2025
Reviewing the manifold interpretations and curiosities in our Winter 2025 issue.
In a new issue spanning thirty-two countries and twenty languages, the array of literary offers include textual experiments, ever-novel takes on the craft of translation, and profound works that relate to the present moment in both necessary and unexpected ways. Here, our blog editors point to the works that most moved them.
Introducing his translation of Franz Kafka’s The Trial in 2012, Breon Mitchell remarked that with every generation, there seems to be a need for a new translation of so-called classic works of literature. His iteration was radically adherent to the original manuscript of The Trial, which was diligently kept under lock and key until the mid-fifties; by then, it was discovered exactly to what extent Max Brod had rewritten and restructured the original looseleaf pages of Kafka’s original draft. It is clear from Mitchell’s note that he considers this edit, if not an offense to Kafka, an offense to the reader who has lost the opportunity to enact their own radical interpretation of the work: an interpretation that touched Mitchell so deeply, he then endeavored to recreate it for others.
In Asymptote’s Winter 2025 Issue, the (digital) pages are an array of surprising turns of phrase and intriguing structures—of literature that challenges what we believe to be literature, translations that challenge what we believe to be originality, and essays that challenge what we believe to be logic. I am always drawn to the latter: to criticism, and writing about writers. As such, this issue has been a treat.
With the hundredth anniversary of Kafka’s death just in the rearview and the hundredth anniversary of the publication of The Trial looming ever closer, the writer-turned-adjective has not escaped the interest of Asymptote contributors. Italian writer Giorgio Fontana, in Howard Curtis’s tight translation, holds a love for Kafka much like Breon Mitchell. In an excerpt from his book Kafka: A World of Truth, Fontana discusses how we, as readers, repossess the works of Kafka, molding them into something more simplistic or abstract than they are. In a convincing argument, he writes: “The defining characteristic of genius is . . . the possession of a secret that the poet has no ability to express.” READ MORE…
Contributors:- Bella Creel
, - Meghan Racklin
, - Xiao Yue Shan
; Languages: - French
, - German
, - Italian
, - Macedonian
, - Spanish
; Places: - Chile
, - France
, - Italy
, - Macedonia
, - Switzerland
, - Taiwan
, - Turkey
; Writers: - Agustín Fernández Mallo
, - Damion Searls
, - Elsa Gribinski
, - Giorgio Fontana
, - Lidija Dimkovska
, - Sedef Ecer
; Tags: - dystopian thinking
, - identity
, - interpretation
, - nationality
, - painting
, - political commentary
, - revolution
, - the Cypriot Question
, - the Macedonian Question
, - translation
, - visual art
, - Winter 2025 issue
, - world literature