Language: Spanish

Yet So Alive: A Collection of Groundbreaking Latin American Horror Stories

April 1, 2024  |  in Reviews  |  by Sharon Beriro

The horror in all of these stories slithers in stealth . . .  it quietly intoxicates, revealing its true colors in a hypnotizing fashion.

Through the Night Like a Snake: Latin American Horror Stories, Two Lines Press, 2024

For some time now, Latin American literature has engrossed readers with magical realism, fantasy, surrealism, and most recently, horror. These aren’t necessarily the stories of the region’s most considered authors—Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Horacio Quiroga, Amparo Dávila, and other giants among them—but rather the work of bold, fearless, and independent writers who, in the last decade, have honored and twisted these genres in unprecedented ways. Their work represents a new generation of talents, who are redefining their region’s legacy in gothic literature.

Many call it horror. Others, like Carmen Alemany Bay, a literary scholar at the University of Alicante, call it “narrativa de lo inusual”—narrative of the unusual, or the strange, defining a subgenre “in which the reader is ultimately the one who decides what is possible and what is not.” Whatever one wants to call it, the certainty remains that these voices are as powerful as they are unflinching, grounded by a sincerity and authenticity faithful to their geographies; that is to say, these stories are as “unusual” as they are Latin American, which is in part what makes Through the Night Like a Snake all the more visceral.

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

March 29, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Matthew Redman, René Esaú Sánchez, and Wambua Muindi

Literary news from Kenya, Mexico, and the UK!

This week, our editors bring news of literary realms colliding, collaborating, and interchanging in future- and truth-seeking dialogues. In Kenya, a titan in publishing is commemorated, and a Nobel Laureate establishes presence in a Swahili translation. In Mexico, World Poetry Day is celebrated wit aplomb. And in the UK, the London Book Fair brings vital interrogations pertaining to literary translation in the age of AI. Read on to find out more!

Wambua Muindi, Editor-at-Large, reporting from for Kenya

To paraphrase V.S. Naipaul, the world is what it is, and men who allow themselves to become something have a place in it. Such men, when death waylays them, come to define particular eras. Henry Chakava, a pioneer African publisher, is such a man.

On Sunday, March 24, Chakava was laid to rest. For a man who, from a young age and until his untimely demise, redefined publishing in Africa in many ways: publishing in Swahili and promoting publishing in African languages, focusing on educational publishing to promote literacy, diversifying traditional publishing to incorporate new literary thought besides the infamous African Writers Series. With this legacy, his death attracted reverential eulogies from across the book and knowledge industry. He had become the face of African book publishing when he became the managing director of Heinemann Educational Books, which he would eventually steer to a new dispensation under the banner of East African Educational Publishers, and his work endeared him to many in Africa and beyond, attracting global assignments including being named the chairman of Global Book Alliance in 2021. An ode to Chakava, surely, cannot be captured by a word-bound dispatch. All in all, go well, Chakava. READ MORE…

Ambiguities, Ruptures, and Shifting Perspectives: On Enchanted Lion’s “Unruly” Imprint

March 20, 2024  |  in Essays  |  by Colin Leemarshall

Each of these Unruly publications presents a semiotically hybrid and richly aporetic narrative.

The art of book illustration has long accompanied the story in its imaginary expeditions—to vivify settings, to enrich character, and to extend language along sensorial planes. Yet, in contemporary publishing, there are few fictions for older readers that truly explore this complex reciprocity between image and text. In fall of 2020, the independent press Enchanted Lion addressed this lack with the announcement of Unruly: a new imprint that would be dedicated to “the picture book’s full potential for readers of all ages”. This was followed by the issuing of several titles dedicated to the dialogues between visual and literary languages, manifesting in enthralling alternatives of description, evocation, and narrative realities. In the following essay, Colin Leemarshall takes a close look on the three works out now.

In the popular imagination, the picture book is a highly circumscribed form. The apparent consensus—fomented both by market protocols and by entrenched reading habits—is that picture-heavy storybooks are for children up to the age of about eight; beyond this age, children are expected to graduate to chapter books, then to young adult novels, then finally (it is hoped) to sophisticated adult literature. (Those who remain drawn to the artistic gestalt of text and image have recourse to the graphic novel—a form that is now widely afforded the status of ‘serious’ literature.) This imagined trajectory not only obscures the fact that the world of illustrated children’s literature has always had its more provocative practitioners (from Heinrich Hoffmann to Tomi Ungerer), it also erects an unnecessary palisade against any ‘incursions’ from the adult world.

The New York-based Enchanted Lion seems to be one of the few anglophone presses invested in upending this prejudice. The publisher has long been open to putting out more challenging and unexpected works, and several of the books on its main title list might be said to be as much for adults as for children. However, it wasn’t until fairly recently, with the 2021 establishment of its Unruly imprint, that Enchanted Lion canalised these preferences into something more systematic. On its website, the publisher writes:

We’re launching Unruly because we believe that the possibilities for the illustrated book are larger and richer than the categories of board book, children’s picture book, graphic novel, and art book that currently exist [….] Picture books are rich with design and story, and yet the genre has come to be seen as one strictly for children. At Enchanted Lion, picture books are for readers of all ages, and sparking awareness of this boundlessness might finally be what is needed to allow the unique form that is the picture book—where word and image live together as nowhere else—to be seen as the expansive narrative medium it is.

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

March 1, 2024  |  in Dispatches, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa, José García Escobar, and Kathryn Raver

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

This week, our team brings you literary news from around the world, including an experimental poetry reading and a festival celebrating comics! From cross-continental prize to a new exhibit at the Centre Pompidou, read on to find out more.

Alan Mendoza Sosa, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the United States

On February 7, I watched as the internationally-renowned Mexican poet and recent Asymptote contributor, Rocío Cerón presented a spellbinding performance at New York University’s KJC Center. Through sound, voice, and moving images, the performance expands on Cerón’s 2022 book Divisible corpóreo, a poetry collection that thematizes the relationship between language, poetry, and the body.

While Cerón read from the book, the screen behind her projected images featuring her bedroom and herself. These visuals were not static. Rather, they transformed in rhythmic syncopation along with Cerón’s voice. In addition, Cerón not only read the book out loud. She also brought her poems to a further experiential dimension through several resources grounded in her voice: she raised and lowered her pitch and volume, repeated words and phrases with different speeds, and sometimes elongated vowels and stuttered consonants. The effect was dreamlike. I was immediately thrown into a trance, a characteristic effect of Cerón’s awe-inspiring transmedia readings.

After the audience’s applause, Cerón was interviewed by Irma Gallo, a student in NYU’s Spanish MFA program. During this Q&A, Cerón reflected on her creative process and approach to live readings, noting that her performances often include improvisation, which makes each one of them a unique, ephemeral experience. She also talked about the feminist elements in her poetry, such as references to lineages of women writers and reflections on the mitochondrial DNA, only transmissible from mother to child. To conclude, she specified that the book Divisible corpóreo is the second installment of a trilogy that explores the connection between poetry and different senses. The other two books are Spectio (2019) and Simultáneo sucesivo (2023). Paraphrasing Cerón’s own words, these collections explore the interrelation between what we can observe and what we can hear. Each text establishes an intertextual dialogue with the other two “creating,” in Cerón’s words, “a network of signifiers and symbolic fields that touch and traverse one another.” READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

February 9, 2024  |  in Dispatches, Weekly Roundup  |  by Charlie Ng, René Esaú Sánchez, and Sofija Popovska

The latest literary news from Hong Kong, Mexico, and North Macedonia!

This week, our Editors-at-Large explore blockchain publishing, poets’ novels, and literary surrealism. Read on to find out more!

Charlie Ng, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong

In December, Hong Kong independent bookstore Mount Zero Books announced that it will be closing in March 2024 due to anonymous complaints on the bookstore’s “illegal occupation of government land”, and the resulting warning from the Lands Department regarding the tiled platform outside of the bookstore. Mount Zero Books’ experience is not an isolated issue; it is part of the narrowing of Hong Kong’s cultural space under the current political climate, in which independent publishers and bookstores are facing increasing control and censorship. In 2022, for instance, local independent publisher Hillway Press was not allowed to participate in the annual Book Fair organised by Hong Kong Trade Development Council. The publishing house then planned to host a “Hongkongers’ Book Fair” featuring 14 independent local publishers and bookstores in the shopping mall Mall Plus in Causeway Bay. Unfortunately, the book fair was forced to cancel as they were accused of violating the terms of venue use. In December 2023, one of the founders of Hillway Press emigrated and the company decided to close down. What is more, two of Hong Kong’s remaining independent bookstores, Have A Nice Stay and Hunter Bookstore, have said that they face frequent complaints and regular monitoring by government departments.

In light of increasing challenges — both economic and political — faced by the local publishing industry, Hong Kong writers are beginning to explore new means of publishing their works and reaching out to readers. Hong Kong writer Dung Kai-cheung has been counting down to the 15 February publication of his new work, Autofiction, on his own writing platform, Dungfookei. Autofiction will be published in the form of an NFT. The new autobiographical nonfiction is part of the writer’s exploration of the potential of Web3’s blockchain technology for decentralizing publishing and granting more autonomy in user control and ownership of data. In 2023, Dung joined Likecoin — an application-specific blockchain for decentralized publishing developed by Hong Kong entrepreneur Ko Chung-kin — to republish his famous novel Tiangong Kaiwu·Lifelike, which became the first Chinese novel to be published as an NFT. While Tiangong Kaiwu·Lifelike is available for purchase on Likecoin’s website, Dung also developed his own platforms Dungfookei and DKC in Translation to digitalise his works and interact with readers in new ways. Although the project is still experimental, by turning to the web for more freedom and opportunities, Dung’s foray into Web3 and NFT publishing represents an innovative frontier in the evolving landscape of literature and author-reader interaction. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

February 2, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Carol Khoury, Ibrahim Sayed Fawzy Elsayed, and Miranda Mazariegos

Literary news from Palestine, Egypt, and Latin America!

This week, our Editors-at-Large bring us news of a “literary cartography” of Palestine, the most recent literary fairs and festivals in Egypt, and censorship of Latin American authors in Florida. Read on to learn more!

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large for Palestine and the Palestinians, reporting from Palestine

Despite the burgeoning array of literary endeavors in support of Gaza, this dispatch aims to shed light on a profoundly comprehensive initiative. Back in July 2023, when we unveiled our coverage of the podcast entitled “Country of Words,” conceived and orchestrated by Refqa Abu-Remaileh, little did we fathom the vastness of Refqa’s overarching vision under the same title.

“Country or Words: A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature” was inaugurated by Stanford University in the last weeks of 2023. Rooted in the constellation paradigm within literature, this digital-born project aspires to retrace and remap the global narrative of Palestinian literature throughout the twentieth century, traversing the Arab world, Europe, North America, and Latin America. Nestled at the confluence of literary history, periodical studies, and digital humanities, “Country of Words” establishes a networked locus for the data and narrative fragments of a literature in constant motion, harmonizing porous, interrupted, disconnected, and discontinuous fragments into a resilient, open-ended literary chronicle.

READ MORE…

There Must Be a Poem: A Conversation With Alí Calderón, Founder of Círculo de Poesía

February 1, 2024  |  in Interviews  |  by René Esaú Sánchez

. . . this is the best time for poetry: there were never as many readers as there are today. . .

Mexican poet and scholar Alí Calderón is one of the founders of Círculo de Poesía, an online poetry journal that celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in 2023. From the very beginning, the project aimed to diversify the cultural panorama of Mexico and has now established a publishing company that explores world literature. In this interview, I spoke with Calderón about the nature of translation, the importance of dialogue with other cultures, and how publishing can be an alternative to sustain literary projects. 

René Esaú Sánchez (RES): You have mentioned in other interviews that Círculo de Poesía was born as a project to perceive Mexican poetry from other angles. Why was that necessary?

Alí Calderón (AC): When we talk about Mexican poetry, it is a deceiving category; we think of it as something inclusive when it’s not. Just by analyzing the indexes of poetry anthologies or by seeing who receives certain scholarships, we realize that it is more of a cultural elite. 

In 2008, with the birth of the internet and other forms of media, we decided to reinvent culture from other sources. We started working against the tide, promoting poetry from other states of México, like Puebla, Sinaloa or Colima; we decentralized it.

That’s how the journal was born: with the intention of democratizing poetry and making it more visible. But we didn’t do it only with Mexican poetry: we included poetry written in other Spanish-language countries and, out of curiosity, in other world languages.

READ MORE…

Asymptote Podcast: In Conversation with David Unger

February 1, 2024  |  in Podcast  |  by Vincent Hostak

The Asymptote Podcast returns after a hiatus of two years!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS

Esteemed translator David Unger joins our new Podcast Editor Vincent Hostak for a conversation with readings of the poetry of Jaime Barrios Carillo. Born in Guatemala City in 1954 and living in Stockholm since 1981, Carrillo is known principally as a writer and columnist. His Two Poems from the Spanish Language volume Ángeles sin dios (Angels Without God; Ediciones Fenix), make their English language debut in the milestone 50th issue of  Asymptote, himself well acquainted with the social and political landscapes of Guatemala, provides rare insight into Carillo’s vision and style, influenced by the tradition of what Chilean Nicanor Parra called the Anti-poem. David Unger’s translations of Carrillo’s Two Poems sit alongside new work from 35 countries and 21 languages in the Winter 2024 issue dedicated to the theme of coexistence christened “Me | You | Us.” Listen to the podcast now.

Winter 2024: Highlights from the Team

January 29, 2024  |  in News  |  by Alex Tan, Anna Rumsby, Bridget Peak, Ellen Elias-Bursac, José García Escobar, Julie Shi, Mia Manns, and Michelle Chan Schmidt

Get excited to dip into our Winter 2024 issue with these highlights from our team!

Ilya Kaminsky’s “Reading Dante in Ukraine” makes an impassioned case for the crucial role of art amid the horrors of war. What we need, as Dante’s journey shows us, is to defend ourselves with it: a tune to walk to, even in the underworld, as long as one still walks. In Miklós Vámos’s “Electric Train,”  translated by Ági Bori‚ the question-answer format gives the piece levity and rhythm, and the counterpoint of the humor interplaying with the troubled relationships brings it powerful depth. I found wisdom in the wry humor of Jaime Barrios Carrillo’s poems in David Unger’s translation. I love the image of angels spending the evening in their hotel rooms, ironing their enormous white wings.

—Ellen Elias-Bursac, Contributing Editor

The masterful language in Ági Bori’s translation, as though hand-holding the reader through a children’s story, and the simple act of gifting a present in the story belie the depth and complexity of emotional turmoil that wash over Miklós Vámos’s characters in “Electric Train,” a turmoil that seemingly hits out of nowhere like a wave yet in fact stems from a deep brewing well of built up memories and tensions. The contrast highlights all the more the challenges, and perhaps even limits, of recognizing and understanding another’s intentions, experiences, and feelings.

Rage, sorrow, resilience, helplessness, hope, a hunger for life and love and connection, grief, a numbing screaming despair: it is difficult to put into words the sensations that ran through me as I read Samer Abu Hawwash’s “My People” in Huda J. Fakhreddine’s translation. It cannot possibly compare to the feelings and thoughts of Samer Abu Hawwash and the Palestinian people, to the reality of having each day and moment narrow down to dried bread and tear tracks.

I was intrigued by Laura Garmeson’s discussion, in her review of Brazilian author Itamar Vieira Junior’s Crooked Plow, of the tongue as “both creator and destroyer. It has the power to make and unmake worlds.” It is a through line in Crooked Plow that reminds us of the power and possibilities of language and story to shape our lives. Garmeson’s review, in a way, is also a fire that kindles awareness of Itamar Vieira Junior’s work and the legacies, realities, and possible futures for Afro-Brazilian communities. The tongue as symbol also feels like a through line between these pieces in their rumination on what is gained and lost and pushed aside in the choices we make of what, how, and when we say (or write) things, or not.

—Julie Shi, Senior Executive Assistant

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

January 26, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by MARGENTO, Rubén López, and Wambua Muindi

Literary news from Guatemala, Ireland, and Kenya!

This week, our editors are bringing news of book launches, emerging talents, one of the biggest literary awards in the world. Read on to find out more!

Rubén López, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Guatemala

Last December, Argentinian author Dolores Reyes visited Guatemala to discuss her latest novel Miseria (Misery) and the process of creating it. It was the author’s second time in the country, her first visit being the occasion of the literature festival Centroamérica Cuenta (Central America Narrates) in 2021.

I arrived early at Catafixia, an independent bookstore in Guatemala City downtown—the only one with its own editorial house. There was a small group, perhaps thirty enthusiastic people, waiting for the author to arrive. Carmen Lucía Alvarado and Luis Mendez Salinas—Catafixia’s founders, editors, and trusted libreros (booksellers)—arranged golden plastic chairs for the public and created a welcoming stage for Dolores.

When Dolores arrived, the audience was enraptured, viewing the beautifully hand-curated collection of books. People were quick to find their seats; some had to stand in the back because space was limited.

Dolores and Carmen then discussed how her novels Eartheater and Miseria portray the flagellum of missing persons in Argentina—in particular of abducted women. This issue is something that is terribly close to home in Guatemala, since during the process of state terrorism in the second half of the 20th century, more than 45,000 people were disappeared by State operators. Most of their families are still looking for them. Cometierra (the titular Eartheater), her main character, is a teenager with an ability to eat earth, in order to talk to the dead and find missing people. READ MORE…

Blog Editors’ Highlights: Winter 2024

January 22, 2024  |  in News  |  by Bella Creel and Xiao Yue Shan

Taking a closer look at Asymptote’s milestone issue!

Not sure where to start with our tremendous fiftieth issue? Our blog editors talk their favourites.

In its overarching theme of “Coexistence,” Asymptote’s monumental 50th issue draws together the quiet, the forgotten, and the unseen, allowing us to inhabit worlds that are not our own. From the bright unease of Elena Garro’s “The Week of Colors” (tr. Christine Legros), to the serene, dynamic stanzas of Eva Ribich’s Along the Border (tr. Julian Anderson), to the dedicated love in Almayrah A. Tiburon’s “Keyboard and Breastfeed” (tr. Bernard Capinpin), Asymptote’s Winter 2024 Issue examines the relationships we have with each other, with the world, and with ourselves.

Dark and unflinching, Maria Grazia Calandrone’s Your Little Matter delves into the ambiguous history of the author’s mother Lucia, her parents’ joint suicide in Rome, and all that was left behind. Central to the piece are physical mementos—two old photographs of Lucia, a list of items left in a suitcase, clippings from a newspaper—from which Calandrone pieces together the story of her parents’ lives, revealing aspects of a woman her daughter barely knew. Alongside the photos come memories passed down and memories created, as Calandrone pieces together the life of a young woman who was nearly forgotten. 

Translated by Antonella Lettieri, Your Little Matter is a work of empathy—of putting on a parent’s shoes, of imagining the pain and the love of the life that led to yours. The lives of our parents are distant, disconnected from our own. Even for those who knew their parents, the question of who they were before we existed can be haunting. What did you lose when you had me? What did you gain? It can be a self-centered venture, as relationships with parents often are, and Your Little Matter simultaneously veers away from and embraces this selfishness. Who were you? Why did you have to leave? I want to remember you; I want you to be remembered. Calandrone’s condemnation of the society that killed her parents; the somber moments spent amidst photographs, imagining; the love she holds for someone who can only be known retroactively—these elements draw you into Lucia’s life, her story, unforgettable. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

January 19, 2024  |  in Dispatches, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa, Andriana Hamas, and René Esaú Sánchez

The latest literary news from Mexico and Bulgaria!

This week, our Editors-at-Large take us to bi-national experimental poetry festivals and a community for children’s literature. From prize-winning novels to poetry that spans genres and mediums, read on to find out more!

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

On Monday, January 15, Mexican poet Rocío Cerón launched the online series of panels “Diálogos Bifrontes” (Bifrontal Dialogues), alongside digital artist and poet Carlos Ramírez Kobra. Their conversation was the first of several upcoming chats about experimental, transmedial, and expanded poetry, a genre of literature that combines sounds, performance, and visual elements with poetic writing. They talked about how the transformation of poetry into different artistic and sonic registers entails a process of thinking, reflection, and attention that dissolves traditional boundaries between genre, media, and performance. They also reflected on their creative processes, highlighting how their works consist of — paraphrasing Cerón — an infinite codifying and re-codifying of language and symbols.

These Dialogues complement last year’s special, celebratory 13th anniversary edition of Enclave, an annual festival of expanded poetry founded by Cerón, which ran between November 23 and 25. As a bi-national event, Enclave 2023 was co-sponsored by several Mexican cultural institutions and the Goldsmiths University of London, and co-curated by Cerón and the German-British sound artist Iris Garrelfs. It invited collaborations between Mexican and British artists and poets exploring intersections between poetry, sound, music, and visual art.

Diálogos Bifrontes builds on Enclave’s mission of bringing together poets, artists, and musicians. Like the festival itself, the series will feature conversations by cutting-edge poets from Mexico and the U.K. who are redefining what poetry can mean. READ MORE…

Our Milestone 50th Issue Has Landed!

January 18, 2024  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Featuring Emily Wilson, Ilya Kaminsky, Michael Cronin, Nam Le, and Samer Abu Hawwash alongside new work from 35 countries!

Living today is a feat of coexistence. In Me | You | Us, our Winter 2024 edition—Asymptote’s landmark fiftieth!—people seek ways to equably share a world of jostling values, languages, and stories. Embracing the rare spotlight in mainstream English media almost never afforded translators, Emily Wilson discusses her groundbreaking translation of Homer and its place in the constellation of existing English Odyssies. Public intellectual Michael Cronin makes the case for translation’s centrality in the construction of new narratives necessary for the continued survival of our species amid other species. Headlining our Special Feature themed on coexistence, Nam Le’s frenzied poems are just as preoccupied with Carl Linnaeus’s taxonomy in the original Latin as they are driven to distraction by the insufficiency of that same scanty alphabet against the tonal splendor of Vietnamese. In Ilya Kaminsky’s Brave New World Literature contribution, truckloads of Dante’s Inferno being delivered to a besieged Kharkiv speak to a different, tenuous, and moving, coexistence. As support for Ukraine wavers in the US, we at Asymptote have kept up our coverage of the region also through Elina Sventsytska’s devastating poetry, a review of Oksana Lutsyshyna’s latest award-winning novel in English translation, and a dispatch about the chilling aftermath of a Russian dissident’s self-immolation. Alongside these, I invite you to discover the Mexican pioneer of magical realism Elena Garro, Palestinian poet Samer Abu Hawwash, Cuban artist Gertrudis Rivalta Oliva, and Romanian playwright Edith Negulici amid never-before-published work from a whopping thirty-five countries. All of it is illustrated by the Netherlands-based guest artist Ehud Neuhaus.

Winter-2024-v9
If, as Taiwanese author Lin Yaode put it, “literature’s history is really a history of readers of literature,” the history of Asymptote might also be in part a tale of its readers. But why should it stop there? To all collaborators and supporters, past and present, I say gratefully: this one is for you! As hinted at by last year’s closures of The White Review and Freeman’s—both similarly prestigious journals with a focus on world literature—existence (by which I mean mere survival) has not been easy. We made it to our 1st, 2nd, 3rd . . . and to our 50th edition because of you.

If you are an avid reader of the magazine and haven’t yet signed up, we hope you’ll consider becoming an official sustaining or masthead member today for as little as USD5 a month in addition to subscribing to our socials (Facebook, X, Instagram, Threads) and our monthly Book Club. If you represent an institution advocating for a country’s literature, check out this (slightly outdated) slideshow and get in touch to sponsor a country-themed Special Feature, as FarLit has recently done. (The deadline to submit to our paid Faroese Special Feature is February 15th, 2024; the guidelines and a new call for reviewers to contribute to our monthly What’s New in Translation column can be found here). If you work for a translation program, prize, or residency, consider advertising through our myriad platforms, including our newly launched “Upcoming Opportunities in Translation” column. And, finally, if you’d like to join us behind the scenes in advocating for a more inclusive world literature, we just announced our very first recruitment drive of the year (deadline to apply: February 1st, 2024). Thank you for your readership and your support. We can’t wait to hear from you!

Translation Tuesday: “His Type” by Laura Marcos

January 16, 2024  |  in Translations  |  by Robin Munby

Everything was set up: the chains, the handcuffs, the gag, and the bath, one of those adapted ones for disabled people.

We’re in sunny rural Asturias on the northern tip of Spain this Translation Tuesday, courtesy of Laura Marcos, where a happy afternoon with pals is starting to drag on. It really has been nice, but David has to go. He makes his excuses, bats away the protests of his mates, and hurries home in quiet relief. The lie that David offers his mates is unconvincing, but the truth, the real reason he must leave so abruptly, is scarcely believable.

Marcos’s characters chatter, banter, spar, and deflect; their speech has been translated from the Asturian by Robin Munby into a kinetic, quipping English with a marked Scouse inflection. He explains:

“One of the great pleasures in working on this piece was building a textual bridge stretching across the thousand or so kilometres that separate Mieres from my own hometown of Liverpool. […] This is the English I most commonly speak myself, and so it is the form that comes most naturally to me when rendering the kind of informal dialogue present in Laura’s story. Choosing to use it here was also a conscious attempt to forge a textual link, to narrow distances, as well as to reject the universality of supposedly ‘standard’ forms of English.”

The afternoon had passed by in a happy haze of sunshine, laughter and more than a few drops of sidra, but for the last while, David had been shuffling about in his seat, stealing glances at his watch. He was getting restless. As well as his frustration at having to go home so soon, he knew he’d be in for some grief. It was always the same when he made an early exit. The best he could do was to let it all wash over him, try and get through it as quickly as possible without it turning into an argument. Arguments weren’t his thing, even if the others – Frechi especially – seemed to treat them as sport. Without them noticing, David had been gently edging his chair back with his bum so he’d have enough room to stand up. He waited for the opportune moment – one of those slight pauses between conversations – then said:

‘Okay, time for me to head off…’

‘What? We’ve only been here five minutes!’ Frechi shot back.

‘Yeah, yeah, but I’ve got Paula waiting at ours…’

‘Why don’t you call her and tell her to come and join us? We can go and get some food, it’s ages since we’ve seen you,’ said Tamara, Frechi’s girlfriend.

‘I know, it’s just I can’t today. Next weekend, maybe…’

‘I can’t, I can’t. Go on then, why can’t you?’ said Frechi. ‘Give her a call! And if she wants to stay in, no problem, but at least you can stay here. Just for once, try being your own man…’

‘Thing is we’re up at the crack of dawn tomorrow…’ David was standing now, and he was getting tired of having to explain himself.

READ MORE…