Language: Spanish

Announcing Our October Book Club Selection: The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine by Mario Levrero

October 31, 2024  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Georgina Fooks

Life, as Levrero’s literature evidences, is richer and more beautiful when we follow our whims.

In The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine, the idiosyncratic wonderments of Mario Levrero are exhibited in a dazzling array. This first collection was, as the author tells it, ‘turned back into pulp’ in its first print run, but has since grown with tremendous repute, leading into a dedicated following in both its native Uruguay and neighbouring Argentina. It’s easy to see how these tales enthrall; each sees Levrero pushing the narrative form ever further into the enigmatic and the expansive, and any subject, object, and space is rendered as capable of endless transformations, creating portals at the seams of experience for the reader’s own marvelling journey. On live the bizarre, the mysteries, growing and multiplying at the non-existent borders of imagination.

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 USD20 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.   

The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine by Mario Levrero, translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott and Kit Schluter, And Other Stories, 2024

What does reality look like? Might it in fact be more dreamlike than we assume? Does true madness lie in the acceptance of daily routine? All these questions ricochet throughout the stories of The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine, a dazzling array of imaginative exercises from the eclectic Uruguayan writer Mario Levrero. The simplest beginnings—the daily rounds of a bedtime ritual, the anxieties of being late for work—take unexpected turns, leading us to places we never could have imagined. Along the way, chance is revealed to be the dominant factor in reality, rather than routine. Levrero is a dizzying stylist and he is matched with aplomb by translators Annie McDermott and Kit Schluter, who evidently share the author’s passion for imaginative play.

The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine is both a product of the imagination and a book that mirrors it; just like the human psyche, the diverse stories of the collection record both our meanderings and our obsessions. Often, our narrator is a Levrero-like figure: a good-natured, comedic man (prone to yearning for women, as the title attests) who follows his flights of fancy to their utmost ends. He is a charming narrator, skilled with wry turns of phrase, and his inability to leave any stone unturned takes him down curious paths. Whether it’s the miniature world hidden within a lighter in ‘Beggar Street’, or the young boy who grows old searching for a key in ‘The Basement’, Levrero plays with absurd economies of scale by stretching out both space and time. Reality and matter are his playthings, but the ensuing absurdity leads to some profound truths. Life, as Levrero’s literature evidences, is richer and more beautiful when we follow our whims. READ MORE…

Our Fall 2024 Edition Is Here!

October 24, 2024  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Feat. Jon Fosse, Mikhail Shishkin, Natascha Wodin, Bothayna Al-Essa, and Nebojša Lujanović in our Special Feature themed on outsiders

You and I, self and the other—it is the oldest, simplest difference we know. At a time of flooding across the world, from India to the US, the writers of our Fall 2024 issue call attention to physical and social separation, to the rushing waters that pull us apart, rendering us #Outsiders to one another. In exploration of this theme, we proudly bring you new work from 32 countries, including drama from Norwegian Nobel Laureate Jon Fosse, an interview with exiled Russian author Mikhail Shishkin, a review of French icon Simone de Beauvoir’s latest English publication, nonfiction by Omani writer Hamoud Saud, a spotlight on Brazilian artist André Griffo, and, for our final Brave New World Literature entry, a moving essay by the recently announced US National Book Award nominee the Kuwaiti author Bothayna Al-Essa. One year on from October 7th, Al-Essa confronts the limits of literary activism as she reflects on her video calls with a Gazan colleague: “Did I expect a person besieged in an open prison since 2006 to rejoice at the sight of a shelf of books?” In another highlight, German-Ukrainian writer Natascha Wodin’s narrator resuscitates her drowned mother, trying to fathom her across the gulf of time even as she pictures the Regnitz river washing her away. Meanwhile, Swiss poet Prisca Agustoni and Moroccan author Khalid Lyamlahy confront another kind of drowning—that of modern day migrants in search of a better life—in particular, the 269 lives lost to the sea around Lampedusa in a shipwreck, the news of which lights up Agustoni’s phone, and the death of a Gambian Lyamlahy never got to know: “I dream of a book that would contain all the words refused you, all the silences imposed on you. A book where the word ‘help’ is constantly repeated, in which the author would fade from each line, each fragment, to give you back the space denied you in life.”

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Lyamlahy’s feat of empathetic imagination leads off this edition’s wildcard Special Feature, first announced on August 15th. By the time submissions closed one month later, anti-migrant rhetoric in the US had hit a new low with Trump repeating baseless claims of Haitians “eating cats and dogs” in his presidential debate. So, although we received more than one hundred manuscripts spotlighting every stripe of outsider, we decided to carve out space for the racial/national “other” so often denigrated in politics. From Cuban author Odette Casamayor-Cisnero drawing courage from her great-great-grandmother and taking a fiery stand against racism (“I’m done with running away”) to Croatian writer Nebojša Lujanović’s nuanced portrayal of a migrant who cannot bring himself to enunciate his full name for fear of outing himself to other members of his newly chosen community, the myriad voices showcased in this Feature are resounding proof of the struggle and humanity of those we as a society are so eager to condemn to the margins. All of this is illustrated by Spain-based guest artist Anastassia Tretiakova’s haunting photography.

As a magazine that does not receive ongoing institutional support because of our own outsider status—as elaborated in the Fall 2022 issue’s Editor’s Note—Asymptote counts on readers to sustain its mission more than most. If you think this “global literary miracle” (according to Dubravka Ugrešić) deserves to continue, please take a few minutes to sign up as a sustaining or masthead member today. (Interested in joining us behind the scenes instead? Our final recruitment drive of the year closes in four days!) Thank you for your readership and support. We can’t wait to see what 2025 brings!

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Translation Tuesday: “Some Notes on the Land of the Giants” by Luciano Lamberti

October 22, 2024  |  in Translations  |  by Jordan Landsman

Explorers sent to the country of the giants come back different

For this week’s Translation Tuesday, we bring you a tale of another world by the Argentine writer Luciano Lamberti, thrilling and poignant in equal measure. In fragments, the land of the giants is disclosed to us: a wilderness of impenetrable jungle, cloud-topped mountains, and carnivorous titans, all hidden behind mirrored portals. But as the years wear on and human explorers venture farther and farther into this new world, the same mysterious giants that they seek are driven out, until nothing is left but their tombs. Of course, Lamberti’s explorers are as loathe to learn from their mistakes as the colonial plunderers of our own devastated world, and what follows is no mere fable of human avarice, but a much subtler examination of how we fail, even in crisis, to see ourselves clearly in the mirror. The world of the giants is vividly rendered in Jordan Landsman‘s translation, as plain-spoken as any researcher’s fieldnotes, but at the same time as powerfully strange as any dream half-remembered before dawn. Read on!

EXPLORATIONS, ORIGIN. 1926. An eight-year-old Russian boy named Irino Shava accidentally discovers the first portal while investigating the basement of an abandoned house on the outskirts of Moscow. The portal is embedded in the southern wall of the basement, and little Irino cautiously passes through its mirrored surface with his finger, then with his hand and his arm, and finally with his whole body. He sees a wide valley covered in jungle surrounded by a huge chain of mountains lost in a blue fog. A flock of black birds cross the sky. Irino hears a noise that at first he mistakes for thunder, but it is the footfalls of an approaching giant, running and squashing trees as if they were tufts of grass. Terrified, Irino takes a step back and tumbles onto the damp basement floor. The following day he returns with his school friends and shows them his discovery. The two bravest boys cross through the portal. They will never return. In 1972, a team of North American explorers finds one of them living in the jungle. He is bearded and disheveled. The explorers try to carry him back, but the man no longer remembers how to speak or use cutlery, and he dies shortly thereafter for reasons unknown. The other one is never heard from again.

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Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

October 18, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa, Christina Chatzitheodorou, and Kathryn Raver

The latest literary news from France, Greece, and the United States!

In this week’s roundup of world literary news, our team members fill us in on France’s literary awards season and exciting festivals in Greece and the United States. From the race for the Prix Goncourt to feminist literature in Athens, read on to find out more!

Kathryn Raver, Assistant Managing Editor, reporting from France

As the leaves begin to shift their colors, France’s literary scene is shifting into awards season. Last week, Jean-Pierre Montal took home the Prix des Deux Magots for his novel La Face nord, the Prix Medicis announced their 2024 shortlist, and the contenders for the prestigious Prix Femina are to be revealed in just a few weeks. That’s only to name a few!

Perhaps the most esteemed French literary prize, however, is the Prix Goncourt, and the time for its conferral is fast approaching. Awarded annually in November, the Prix Goncourt is bestowed by the Académie Goncourt upon “the best and most imaginative prose work of the year.” They also give separate awards for poetry (conferred this year to Haitian poet Louis-Philippe Dalembert), biography, and a large variety of international works, among others.   READ MORE…

An Allegory of the World’s Starving: ana c. buena by Valeria Román Marroquín

October 17, 2024  |  in Reviews  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa

These untranslatables are signs of the fissures of hegemony, of cracks in its dominance through which other worlds can blossom.

ana c. buena by Valeria Román Marroquín, translated from the Spanish by Noah Mazer, Cardboard House Press, 2024

In his manifesto of New Brazilian Cinema, “An Esthetic of Hunger,” filmmaker Glauber Rocha called for art that communicates the poverty and misery of Latin America, and that could contribute to liberating the region from the “debilitating delirium of hunger.” He wrote this in 1964, at a time of global upheaval when Latin American cultural circles began to grapple with the torment of those left behind by globalization. Sadly, today, sixty years later, Latin America remains one of the most economically unequal regions on Earth. Decades-long neoliberal developmentalism keeps failing at what it—allegedly—has set out to do: eradicating the entrenched social disparities of the region. Instead, inequality only intensifies. The World Inequality Database reports that in 2020, the top 10% of Latin America owned 77.6% of the region’s wealth, a 2% increase from the 75.6% reported in 2000. The trend of increasing inequality is not unique to Latin America, but it is particularly extreme there. In Europe, the top 1% share of wealth rose from 24.9% in 2000 to 25% in 2020, while in the United States it increased from 32.0% to 34.9% in 2020. Capitalism confirms—time and time again—the falsehood of its mythical self-conception as a system that bolsters the progressive enrichment of everyone. Responding to this context, different Latin American groups have, of course, questioned the region’s unequal social conditions, calling for justice and change. In 2011, thousands of Chilean students dressed up as zombies in massive protests against educational debt and the privatization of public universities. More recently, Latin American women have taken to the streets in yearly Women’s Strikes to demand the recognition of care work as unpaid labor and to protest rising femicide numbers. Their demands for justice and their achievements are sources of light in an otherwise darkening global political landscape, and literary communities have taken up the same fight. The book ana c. buena, a 2021 poetry collection by the Peruvian poet Valeria Román Marroquín, presents a critique of capitalism that highlights its disastrous impact on the daily lives of working women. Indeed, the book’s main figure—Ana C. Buena, a woman under precarious and insecure work conditions—also functions as an allegory of the countries wounded by historical colonialism, current neocolonialism, and insatiable global capital. READ MORE…

Languages have their secrets: A Conversation with Mardonio Carballo

October 16, 2024  |  in Interviews  |  by René Esaú Sánchez

...poets are simply those who pay attention, observing what happens, and find a way to tell it…

Poet, journalist, editor, actor, broadcaster, producer, translator, and Nahua activist Mardonio Carballo recently published La canción de las flores, a book that brings together forty-nine poems printed on paper made from corn leaves and vine, published simultaneously in Nahuatl-Spanish, Nahuatl-English, and Nahuatl-French. In this interview, originally held in Spanish, I spoke with Mardonio Carballo about the experience of writing in Spanish and Nahuatl, the relation of memory and language, and the role of translation in preserving an indigenous language.

René Esaú Sánchez (RES): I was reading some of the poems you wrote in La Canción de las Flores, and many of them are quite synesthetic. So I wanted to ask: what smells, sensations, or tastes do you experience when writing poetry?

Mardonio Carballo (MC): This latest collection is atypical. I had resisted for a long time the theme of nature—this tradition of “Flor y Canto” that is always associated with Nahuatl poetry. To a certain extent, it annoyed me. On this occasion, unlike my previous collections, which have been more combative, expressing Mexico’s painful reality, I chose to step away from that theme of pain, blood, and death. In another book, I asked myself how much the dead weigh, for instance. But I realized the same thing happened to me years ago when making documentaries. I no longer wanted to focus on journalists, activists, and the same topics. So, I embarked on a journey to film a series of documentaries called We Insist on Hope. It turned out that all those defending land, water, and forests were either threatened with death or had been harmed in some way, which led me to a reflection: the one that guides this collection.

Just as there are no languages without people to speak them, there are no territories without flowers. That premise is what nourishes this collection, and yes, the physical book—the way it was designed—makes it seem like the typography changes, like everything is in motion. I believe it pays homage to the flowers, birds, and trees. After the whole COVID situation, I was left with the feeling that we were suddenly writing poems that were too profound, sometimes inaccessible and incomprehensible to most people. So in this collection, I sought the ease of understanding. In fact, one of the lines that deeply inspires me is from a Charles Simic poem: “I write so that dogs can understand me.” That line struck me. Because at some point, we start using grandiose words that make us seem special, fantastic, intellectual… but to me, poets are simply those who pay attention, observing what happens, and find a way to tell it. READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: October 2024

October 14, 2024  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Ben Goldman, Christopher Higgs, Jonathon Atkinson, and Matilda Nevin

Discover new work from Turkey, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Cameroon, Sweden, Chile, France, and Cuba!

In this month’s roundup of newly published translations, we introduce nine works from nine countries: Turkey, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Cameroon, Sweden, Chile, France, and Cuba. From a politically tuned memoir embedded with a familial conscience to a series of poems that consider diasporic experience through the lens of spectatorship—read on to find out more! 

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Waiting for the Fear by Oğuz Atay, translated from the Turkish by Ralph Hubbell, New York Review Books, 2024

Review by Christopher Higgs

The oft quoted line from Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, “Hell is other people,” reverberates conceptually across Oğuz Atay’s Waiting For The Fear like a heavy skipping stone slumping across the surface of dark waters. Yet, in each of the collection’s eight stories, a confounding tension arises between the book’s Sartrean misanthropy and another seemingly competing desire: a strong craving to communicate, a yearning to connect. While Atay’s characters avoid human contact, holding deep disdain and even loathing for other people, they still thrum with a surreal pulse, a quivering mixture of rage and sadness in which their hatred comingles with a cry of the heart; they are desperate to embrace, to be accepted, to be acknowledged and valued, to be seen and heard by others. Six of the eight stories, for example, are epistolary, while the others rely on letters as plot devices. When the concept of written communication isn’t foregrounded, the narratives still hinge on concepts of storytelling, connecting, and sharing. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

October 4, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas, René Esaú Sánchez, and Sofija Popovska

The latest from Mexico, North Macedonia, and the Philippines!

In this week’s round-up of literary news from around the world, our editors report on an exciting translation-centric colloquium in Mexico, a prestigious award going to a new translation of one of North Macedonia’s most canonical novels, and the Frankfurt Book Fair’s spotlighting of the Philippines in its 2025 edition—a choice that has met resistance from local publishers due to the fair’s Zionist sympathies.

René Esaú Sánchez, Editor-at-Large, reporting for Mexico

They say that no matter what you do, there is always a saint from which you can ask for help. In the case of translators, that is Saint Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin. Following the Council of Trent, his translation became the official Latin Bible in the western hemisphere.

With this in mind, the fourth Coloquio de Traducción Literaria San Jerónimo (Saint Jerome Literary Translation Colloquium) took place last week in Veracruz, Mexico. The event was dedicated to fully immersing participants in the art of translation and fostering discussions on what it truly means to translate. It was organized by the Culture Office of Veracruz and the independent publishing company Aquelarre Ediciones, which also sponsors a prize dedicated to literary translation.

Among the participants were notable figures such as Fabián Espejel, the recent winner of the Bellas Artes Margarita Michelena Literary Translation Award; Mario Murguía, who won the same prize last year; José Miguel Barajas, the translator of Mallarmé into Spanish; and José Luis Rivas, a poet who has translated works by Derek Walcott, John Donne, Ezra Pound, William Shakespeare, and T.S. Eliot. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

September 27, 2024  |  in Dispatches, Weekly Roundup  |  by Andriana Hamas and José García Escobar

The latest literary news from Bulgaria and Central America!

This week, our editors-at-large fill us in on literary controversies, new releases, and returning festivals. From a conflict over a literary prize in Bulgaria to new short story collections from Asymptote alums, read on to find out more!

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

In July, I reported on the then unfolding conflict surrounding the proclaimed winner of the Novel of the Year award, given by the endowment fund 13 Centuries Bulgaria. It had turned out that Boris Minkov, the editor of the book (Вулкан or “Volcano” by Elena Alexieva), had also been a member of the jury, a fact that seemingly everyone had overlooked. The heated debates surrounding the legitimacy of the final choice led to Alexieva giving up her prize and the annulment of the decision.

In a recent development, Manol Peykov, managing partner at Janet 45, Вулкан’s publishing house, announced he would be withdrawing all nominated Janet 45 books from the competition as a way of making a statement against the way the above-mentioned crisis was resolved. The formal written withdrawal, which he shared on his personal Facebook profile, described the manner of dealing with the situation as “unacceptable, unprofessional, unethical and unfair.” The document questioned an existing legal ambiguity in the contest’s terminology: “No less worrying is the fact that neither [the organizers’] statements nor the published rules of the competition make it clear exactly what the definition of ‘conflict of interest’ is. Is it a conflict of interest for a member of the jury to have been or currently be published by one of the participating publishers? Or be close friends (or even bitter enemies) with any of the nominees? Or to have very recently received an unequivocal rejection from one of the other participating publishers?”

An official reply has yet to be issued. READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: September 2024

September 16, 2024  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Christopher Higgs, Fani Avramopoulou, and Henry Gifford

Ten translated titles that hit the shelves this month!

When we first started the What’s New in Translation column in 2015, it was to offer readers a look at the incredible work done by writers, translators, and publishers all around the world. Gathering some of the most exciting publications coming out each month, the column featured regular reviews from trusted critical voices, giving the spotlight over to this great wealth of literary work. A lot has changed in the last decade; though English still reigns, we’ve seen the advocates of literary translation win a lot of battles as they seek to make our reading landscape a more various, inclusive, and interconnected space. As such, we now feel the need to extend our purview to include more of these brilliant voices, more of this innovative work, more of the insights and wonders that they bring. We are delighted to announce that our monthly column will now feature a greater number of titles —but with the same incisive critical insight that we’ve always aimed to bring.

From Argentinian horror to the latest from a Hungarian master of form, an intergenerational Greek tale to haiku interpretations, read below for a list of the ten most exciting books out in September.

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Documentary Poetry by Heimrad Bäcker, translated from the German by Patrick Greaney, Winter Editions, 2024

Review by Fani Avramopoulou

Documentary Poetry compiles a selection of German poet Heimrad Bäcker’s documentary poems and photographs with his published interviews, lectures, and essays, offering a richly contextualized introduction to his many decades of work documenting and reflecting on the Holocaust. Bäcker does not conceal his relation to the Nazi Party; he was an avid member for about a year, joining at the age of eighteen. He then denounced the Nazi ideology in the wake of the Nuremberg trials, and spent the rest of his life meticulously chronicling the Third Reich’s atrocities through photography and a poetic method he described as his “transcript system.” The collection’s title essay introduces what feels like the conceptual seed of Bäcker’s work: a reflection on the Nazis’ use of ordinary language to conceal, sanitize, enable, and systematize the horrors of the Holocaust. His conceptualization of language as a participatory, covert administrative tool of the Nazi ideological agenda leads to this development of the transcript system as a form of intervention—a way of undressing such language and purging it of its duplicities.

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Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

September 13, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Ibrahim Fawzy, Miranda Mazariegos, and Wambua Muindi

The latest from Kenya, Egypt, and Mexico!

In this edition of our column for global literary news, Arabic titles are celebrated with the National Book Award’s longlist of Translated Literature, a vital literacy program in Kenya travels to a women’s prison, and a new cinematic adaptation of one of Mexico’s most important novels premiers at the Toronto International Film Festival. Read on to find out more!

Ibrahim Fawzy, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Egypt

Against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, literature emerges as a beacon of hope. Now translated into English, three Arabic literary works have been longlisted for the prestigious National Book Award for Translated Literature, standing as testaments to the resilience of the human spirit. Nasser Abu Srour’s The Tale of a Wall: Reflections on the Meaning of Hope and Freedom, translated by Luke Leafgren, is a poignant memoir recounting his decades-long imprisonment in Israeli jails. Through the lens of his imagination, Abu Srour transforms confinement into a realm of boundless possibility, exploring themes of love, justice, and the unwavering power of hope. The book’s evocative prose and its author’s unflinching honesty combine into a compelling narrative that has resonated with readers around the globe; interested readers can also see an excerpt published on Asymptote as a part of our All Eyes on Palestine column.

Additionally, Leri Price, a frequent contender for the National Book Award, has once again made the longlist with her translation of Samar Yazbek’s Where the Wind Calls Home (which Asymptote had selected for the February edition of our Book Club). This haunting novel delves into the complexities of human relationships and the devastating impact of war on individuals and communities. Another longlisted work is Bothayna al-Essa’s The Book Censor’s Library, co-translated by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain. This thought-provoking novel examines the censorship of literature and its profound implications for society. I’m so glad that Arabic literature is shining thanks to the fabulous work of its translators. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

September 6, 2024  |  in Dispatches, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas and René Esaú Sánchez

The latest literary news from Mexico and the Philippines!

This week, our editors-at-large share reflections on prose from Mexico and an event on women in translation in New York. From the wise words of a beloved centenarian writer to a reading celebrating ‘minority’ languages, read on to find out more!

René Esaú Sánchez, Editor-at-Large, reporting on Mexico

“Prose is everything,” said Uruguayan poet Ida Vitale with cheeky irony. “I have a so-so relationship with poetry, but prose… it presents more challenges to me. Poetry is a matter of rhythm, of good or bad taste. But prose… prose is everything.”

Last year, Vitale reached the modest age of 100, and last week, with unparalleled lucidity, she inaugurated the Feria Internacional del Libro de las Universitarias y los Universitarios (Filuni), a book fair organized by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) for students, academics, publishers, and writers. READ MORE…

The Teacher’s Task: Translation in a High School English Classroom

September 4, 2024  |  in Essays  |  by Kena Chavva

They had stumbled upon a fundamental question that interested them more than Benjamin: what does it mean to produce something original?

Where did you first encounter translation—at home, in a classroom, online? In the following essay, Kena Chavva reflects on her experience prompting high school students to consider their own interactions with language and translation, and the ways both shape their lives and the world around them. Throughout the course, she and her students delved into questions of authenticity and identity, of faithfulness and creativity, seeming always to come back to concerns of originality: translation or not, how can we make something that is truly our own? 

It’s not uncommon to hear teachers speak of the joy in teaching something that they, as individuals, love. I had experienced something akin to this in my first year of teaching high school English—I adore Frankenstein and have an abiding affection for Macbeth, and when I taught those texts, it was clear to both me and my students that we were having a better experience of the literature and one another than we’d had with The Canterbury Tales some several months earlier. But what I’ve always found less commonly discussed is how soul-crushing it is to teach something you deeply love when your students aren’t responding to it the way you hope they will.

For me, that text was an excerpt from Pascale Casanova’s 1999 book The World Republic of Letters. The first chapter, titled “Principles of a World History of Literature”, outlines some of the hidden rules that govern the world’s literary economy:

In thrall to the notion of literature as something pure, free, and universal, the contestants of literary space refuse to acknowledge the actual functioning of its peculiar economy, the “unequal trade” (to quote Braudel once more) that takes place within it.

Casanova goes on to explain how “Literary value therefore attaches to certain languages” and that “…literature is so closely linked to language that there is a tendency to identify the “language of literature”—the “language of Racine” or the “language of Shakespeare”—with literature itself”. When I first read this very same chapter as a junior in college, it felt the way that education should feel: like you were presented with a framework through which to understand your lived experiences.

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Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

August 30, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa and Sofija Popovska

The latest in literary news from North Macedonia to the United States!

This week, our Editors-at-Large take us from North Macedonia to New York with updates on literary festivals and fairs. From Jean-Pierre Siméon’s belief in the sustaining nature of poetry, to a celebration of the many languages spoken besides Spanish in Hispanic communities, read on to learn more!

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

The conclusion of the 2024 Struga Poetry Evenings (SPE) brought conversations about the meaning of poetry nowadays to the foreground of the Macedonian literary scene. The festival’s main award, the Golden Wreath—whose recipients over the years include W. H. Auden, Allen Ginsberg, Pablo Neruda, and Ted Hughes—was awarded to French poet, writer, critic, and dramatist Jean-Pierre Siméon this year. In an illuminating conversation with the magazine Nezavisen (Independent), Siméon retraced the well-known, yet often forgotten, connection between poetry, longing, and change.

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