News

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

March 4, 2022  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Andriana Hamas, Carol Khoury, and Eva Wissting

Literary awards, bookstore revivals, and political upheavals from Sweden, Bulgaria, and Gaza!

This week, our editors bring news of a major literature prize in Sweden, disturbing governmental policies repressing freedom of speech in Bulgaria, and the rebirth of a central bookstore in Gaza. Read on to find out more!

Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden

The Nordic Council has announced the nominees of its annual Literature Prize, which has awarded a work of fiction in a Nordic language­­­ since 1962. The languages include Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Icelandic, Greenlandic, Faroese, and Sámi. The literary works considered may be novels, plays, essays, short stories, or poetry of artistic and literary quality. The purpose of the award is to create interest in the literatures and languages within the cultural community of the Nordic region. This year, eleven nominated writers represent all the countries and languages of the region, and four of the works are novels written in Swedish.

Kerstin Ekman is one of Sweden’s most acclaimed writers, with a long list of publications since her debut in 1959. In 1994, she was awarded the Nordic Council Literature Prize for the novel Blackwater, available in English translation by Joan Tate. This year, she is nominated for The Wolf Run, a novel about a man in his seventies and his relationship to nature as he comes to terms with his life. The other Swedish nominee is Jesper Larsson, for Den dagen den sorgen (literally translated as That Day That Sorrow, or also as “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it”), about a single father and his relationship to his teenage daughter. Finnish writer Kaj Korkea-aho, nominated for Röda rummet, also writes in Swedish, and so does Ålandic writer Karin Erlandsson, who is nominated for the novel Hem. The winner will be announced on November 1, during the Nordic Council’s Session in Helsinki. Previous winners include the internationally renowned Sofi Oksanen (Dog Park, Purge, When the Doves Disappeared), Jon Fosse (The Other Name, Trilogy, Morning and Evening), and Nobel Prize laureate Tomas Tranströmer.

More financial support to Swedish writers is on the way in the form of a crisis package. Because of the consequences of the pandemic faced by many writers during the past two years, the Swedish Authors’s Fund has received thirty million SEK from the government. The organization has now decided that around 1,500 writers and literary creators who were previously granted scholarships will each receive an additional amount of approximately twenty thousand SEK.

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

February 25, 2022  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by David Boyd, Peera Songkünnatham, and Thuy Dinh

News this week from Vietnam, Japan, and Southeast Asia!

This week, our editors from around the world present reimaginings of Sophocles in Hanoi, memorials and debuts from Japan, and witness writing from Southeast Asia. Read on to find out more!

Thuy Dinh, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Vietnamese Diaspora

Since November 2021, The Goethe Institute in Hanoi has been in collaboration with the Youth Theatre of Vietnam (Nhà Hát Tuổi Trẻ) to produce six interpretations of Sophocles’s Antigone, exploring a variety of salient themes—fate versus freewill, the family versus the state, moral integrity and political order, feminism versus patriarchy, reason and emotion, loyalty and disobedience. While most of the productions were performed live in Hanoi after the gradual easing of COVID-19 restrictions, “Portrait” (“Bức Chân Dung”)—Antigone’s fifth iteration—is shown online from February 19 through February 26, 2022.

Directed by Lê An of Ho Chi Minh City’s Saigon Theatreland, “Portrait” shifts the first act of Antigone into 1970s wartime South Vietnam, where An (Huỳnh Ly)—whose name means peace and contentment—must forge her identity out of her family’s traumatic past. Creon, Antigone’s uncle in Sophocles’s play, is transposed into her emotionally repressed father, Đắc (Công Danh), a high-ranking officer in the South Vietnamese Army. Đắc forbids An to bring home Kỳ’s dead body—his son and An’s brother—an enemy soldier who fought and died for the Communist cause. Despite the obvious ideological landmines evoked by this premise, director Lê An, in a pre-performance podcast, sidestepped politics by discussing her heroine’s psychological quest “to find herself”— possibly to detract from the production’s more provocative implications.

While ideological heresy still cannot be addressed explicitly in modern adaptations of Antigone within Vietnam (despite the heroine’s Greek name which can mean “one who resists/is of the opposite bend”), this theme plays a central role in Vũ Thư Hiên’s oeuvre—including his newest story collection, Confessions at Midnight (Lời Xưng Tội Lúc Nửa Đêm) (California: Văn Học Press, 2022). A well-known dissident writer and translator, Vũ Thư Hiên has become Vietnam’s persona non grata since the 1997 publication of Night at Midday (“Đêm Giữa Ban Ngày)—a memoir, inspired by Arthur Koestler’s 1940 novel Darkness at Noon, which recounts the nine years (1967-1976) he spent in various North Vietnamese prisons after being charged with “anti-Party, anti-State, spying and revisionist conduct.” READ MORE…

What’s New with the Crew? (Feb 2022)

February 21, 2022  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

What do Asymptote staff get up to when they're not seeking out the best in world literature? Answer: Quite a lot!

Senior Copy Editor Anna Aresi recently translated a selection of Laura Corraducci’s poems for The Antonym.

Various Wanted. An (almost) missing original and five—literary, computational and visual—translations, the latest collection by Chris Tanasescu, aka MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large for Romania and Moldova, co-authored with Steve Rushton and Taner Murat, has recently been described by Servanne Monjour at the Sorbonne as “a pioneering translation using topic modeling for the very first time.“

Editor-at-Large for Sweden Eva Wissting was longlisted for ROOM Magazine’s annual poetry contest. She has also had essays published in Nordic literary journal Kritiker, issue #61-62, and Finland-based cultural journal Horisont, issue #2021:3.

Educational Arm Assistant Katarzyna Bartoszyńska recently published a book review of Nastassja Martin’s In The Eye of the Wild at the KGB Bar Lit Mag.

Director of the Educational Arm Kent Kosack has new essays in Minor Literature[s] and the Cincinnati Review.

Copy Editor Nadiyah Abdullatif recently published a short extract of her English co-translation, with Anam Zafar, of Lebanese author Lena Merhej’s hit graphic novel Mrabba wa Laban at The Markaz Review. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

February 18, 2022  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa, Julia Sherwood, and Kristina Tatarian

Literary festivals, translation contests, and more from Mexico, Armenia, and the Czech Republic!

This month has seen the publication of new essays in Mexico highlighting the importance of editors, literary festivals in the Armenian capital, and the screening of restored screen adaptations of Czech literary classics. Read on to find out more!

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

The literary community has not been discouraged by the global pandemic. February is already blooming with a host of literary events and new publications, some of which—announced early to build excitement—will reach readers later in the year.

On February 4 and 5, the fourth edition of the Kerouac International Festival took place. The event featured poetry readings and performances, showcasing work that disturbs traditional boundaries between visual art, music, and literary creation. The festival takes place every year in Vigo, New York, and Mexico City. This year, the lineup included several nationally and internationally recognized poets. Among them was Hubert Matiúwàa, who has been translated by Paul M. Worley for Asymptote. Poet Rocío Cerón also participated in the festival, presenting performances that blurred the lines between digital art and poetry. Shortly after the Kerouac Festival, she also kicked off a solo video art and poetry exhibition called Potenciales Evocados (Evoked Potentials), hosted in the convent where Early Modern poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz lived.

Four hours north of Mexico City, in the state of Querétaro, another event of international importance took place: the publication of Editar Guerra y paz (Editing War and Peace) by the independent publishing house Gris Tormenta. Written by Argentine editor Mario Muchnik, the book is part of Gris Tormenta’s Editors Collection, a series that highlights the work behind designing, planning, and putting out a book.

Finally, February also brought thrilling news to writers. Translated by seasoned Asymptote contributor Christina MacSweeney, Daniel Saldaña Paris‘s novel Ramifications was featured in the longlist of the Dublin Literary Award. Similarly, poet, translator, Asymptote contributor, and champion of contemporary literature in Spanish Robin Myers had her poem “Diego de Montomayor” selected for the compilation The Best American Poetry 2022.

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

February 11, 2022  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Carol Khoury, José García Escobar, and Suhasini Patni

New translations and upheavals in publishing from India, Central America, and Palestine!

Around the globe, February has seen upheavals in Indian publishing, the release of new translations of Central American literature, and the loss of a giant in Palestinian letters. Read on to find out more! 

Suhasini Patni, Editor-at-Large, reporting from India

The Indian publishing industry was taken by storm on February 1, when Amazon India announced that it was shutting down Westland Books, home to some of the fiercest writing from the country. The details of how it will affect the backlog of books, whether they will remain available or be taken out of circulation, are still unclear. Westland is one of the largest English-language trade publishers in India, with an imprint called Context that publishes literary fiction and another called Eka that publishes translations. They have consistently released daring titles, such as The Price of the Modi Years by Aaker Patel and Modi’s India by Christophe Jaffrelot.

The Mint Lounge, one of the first publications to break the news, wrote: “The editors of Westland were informed about the impending closure only earlier today, a member of the staff at the publishing house said, requesting anonymity.” After hearing the devastating news, many have posted on social media to appeal to readers to buy books before they run out. The Bookshop, an independent bookstore in New Delhi, wrote: “For a company to acquire an independent, local publisher of books that will in future certainly prove to be foundational texts of Indian literature, and then to arbitrarily shut it with no forewarning is a highly reprehensible act that the entire community of booksellers condemns.”

Westland recently published best-selling Malayalam author KR Meera’s latest novel Qabar, translated by Nisha Susan. A short novella of magical realism, the book is a riff on the Babri Masjid case. It explores increased communalism in India and ultimately magnifies the tensions that lead to lynching, mob-making, and dehumanization.

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

February 4, 2022  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Amaryllis Gacioppo, Andriana Hamas, and Eva Wissting

Ecopoetry and code-breaking are capturing readers around the world in this week's dispatches.

In this week’s dispatches, Bulgarian readers brave the winter for an event highlighting environmental literature, Sweden commemorates the beloved children’s book author, Astrid Lindgren, and Italy celebrates what would have been Umberto Eco’s 90th birthday with a new publication. Read on to find out more!

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

Believe it or not—it is already February, and despite the cold weather in Bulgaria, various cultural events are popping up here and there. With an ever-increasing focus on climate change and the dire consequences we are already facing, different local artists are attempting to highlight the need for conscious, collective action.

One of the strategies employed to combat phenomena such as global warming constitutes the recycling of different materials. Interestingly enough, the whole concept also happens to be at the heart of literary critic and professor of literary theory Amelia Licheva’s latest poetry collection, The Need for Recycling, which considers the act through the prism of creative impulses and intuitive journeys through one’s feelings and experiences. The book, officially published by Lexicon Publishing House on Christmas Eve, 2021, also contains illustrations by the painter Veselin Pramatarov. In an interview for the Bulgarian National Radio, Licheva revealed that the title could be interpreted as “the search for lost meaning.” She is fully aware that the formula is far from light, but insists that the initial shock—bound to rock the reader’s inner world—is in fact a sought-after provocation of sorts.

The launch of the book, which took place not long ago at Sofia City Library, was attended by over fifty people eager to hear the poetess’s newest verses. The lively discussion was hosted by the prominent writer Georgi Gospodinov (whose works have previously appeared in Asymptote) and translator Daria Karapetkova, with the actress Snezhina Petrova was in charge of recitation. After the long-anticipated premiere, the author used her social media profile to extend her gratitude to “all of my colleagues, friends, and students who attended the debut of my poetry collection. Thank you for the solidarity and for the unique privilege to be able to feel like a part of a meaningful community.”

Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden

A week ago today, on January 28, Sweden commemorated twenty years since the country’s most internationally known writer, Astrid Lindgren, passed away at the age of ninety-four. The creator of strong, ingenious, and unforgettable children’s book characters like Pippi Longstocking, Karlsson on the Roof, Ronja the Robber’s Daughter, and Lotta on Troublemaker Street, Lindgren has enthralled and inspired readers around the world for generations. Her books have been translated into 107 languages, including numerous translations into English by Joan Tate—who also has translated other significant Swedish writers like Ingmar Bergman, Kerstin Ekman, and P.C. Jersild. Lindgren has been awarded both national and international literary awards, as well as received honorary degrees from Linköping University in Sweden, the University of Leicester in the UK, and the University of Warsaw in Poland. On the year of her passing, the Swedish government instituted the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA), which awards a writer, illustrator, or promoter of reading in March every year. During her lifetime, Lindgren not only wrote for and about children, but she was also an activist for children’s rights––which is why the Astrid Lindgren estate today, together with Save the Children, continues to work on the Pippi of Today campaign for refugee girls. READ MORE…

Section Editors’ Highlights: Winter 2022

February 2, 2022  |  in News  |  by Barbara Halla, Bassam Sidiki, Caridad Svich, and Lee Yew Leong

Highlights from the Winter 2022 edition, presented by our section editors!

Gathering new work from 43 countries, the Winter 2022 edition might be overwhelming at first. But don’t let that stop you from diving right in! Whether you consume the issue from cover to cover or click on whatever catches your fancy, we just hope you enjoy reading this eleventh anniversary edition as much as our section editors have loved putting it together! Here to tell you more about their lineups are Yew Leong, Barbara, Bassam, and Caridad. If, after reading the issue, you’re inspired to submit work, don’t forget that we welcome submissions all year round; if you are a Swedish-English translator, take note that we’re currently inviting submissions to a paid Swedish Literature Feature, slated for publication in Spring 2022. For guidelines on how to submit, go here.

From Lee Yew Leong, Fiction, Poetry, Special Features, and Interview Editor:

The statistics are undeniable: With one language dying every two weeks, ninety percent of all languages will go extinct within the next one hundred years. Even as we at Asymptote celebrate another milestone with our most diverse issue yet, loss—specifically that of entire worlds indexed by languages—is never quite far from our minds. In Dear You, translated brilliantly by Samantha Farmer, Croatian author Jasna Jasna Žmak takes us on a playful thought experiment inspired by Barthes: ”What if one word was removed each time a speaker of its language died as an act of remembrance?” Intended as an enjoinder to Eliot Weinberger’s essay published in these very pages one year ago, Yeshua G. B. Tolle’s submission to this issue’s Brave New World Literature Feature examines Aaron Zeitlin’s poetry, written in a language “half of whose speakers had been wiped off the face of the earth” when Nazis invaded his native Poland. “On what world do we gaze,” he asks poignantly, ”when the poet himself believes the world is over?” Whole worlds are rendered believably before our eyes in Matt Reeck’s skillful rendering of Rachid Djaïdani’s 1999 classic of banlieue literature that smashed Parisian tropes, and in Kim Su-on’s atmospheric science fiction brought to us by talented translators Spencer Lee-Lenfield and Lizzie Buehler. My two personal highlights from the Poetry section couldn’t be more diametrically apposite: the first (the Kazakh poet Anuar Duisenbinov) is as light (and alive with defiance) as the second (Spanish poet Pepe Espaliú) is weighted (with clear-eyed acceptance of inevitable death); both are powerful and moving. Rounding up the issue’s stellar lineup, Neske Beks and Charlotte Van den Broeck (in the Flemish Literature Feature I curated) as well as Jamaican-born artist Cosmo Whyte (in the Visual section, which Eva Heisler assembled) make important contributions to the conversation on our collective racial past.

From Barbara Halla, Criticism Editor:

In many reviews, the very act of translation can feel like an afterthought; usually reviewers will include a short line or paragraph to acknowledge the deftness of the translator’s skill, but that will be the extent of their engagement. I can understand why that happens: at times, without some familiarity with the original, it can feel impossible to speak in detail about the translator’s craft—which is why Tom Abi Samra’s review of Huda J. Fakhreddine and Jayson Iwen’s translation of Salim Barakat’s poetry is such a revelation. In his review, the translation features front and center, as Abi Samra investigates how Barakat’s attempt to defamiliarize Arabic is rendered into English, doing an almost phrase-by-phrase analysis of the translation. There are some texts, however, where the reviewer does not have a choice but to engage with the translator, because the very book they are reviewing questions the porous borders between author and translator. This is the case with Catherine Fisher’s fascinating review of Tomaž where Joshua Beckman appears not merely as a translator, but as a co-writer having had a direct hand in choosing how to present Tomaž Šalamun’s poetry into English. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

January 28, 2022  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa and Charlie Ng

The latest from Mexico and Hong Kong!

January brought a plethora of literary events, from author talks to publishing announcements. In Mexico, the publishing house Juan de la Cosa / John of the Thing put out a new bilingual poetry volume. In Hong Kong, the Dante Alighieri Society hosted a discussion on writing in your second language. Read on to find out more!

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

The first month of 2022 has seen many commercial and independent publishers announce new books, both in Spanish and in translation. Though the year, like the two before it, will also be strangled by the global pandemic, the exciting vitality of the publishing scene brings momentary solace and hope.

North American publishing house Deep Vellum published The Love Parade, George Henson’s translation of El desfile del amor, a detective fiction by acclaimed Mexican writer Sergio Pitol originally published by Anagrama in 1985. An expert in contemporary fiction from Latin America, Henson has also contributed to Asymptote in the past, publishing the translated work of other outstanding Spanish-speaking authors such as the Mexican Alberto Chimal and the Peruvian Pedro Novoa. Deep Vellum is not new to Mexican literature either; its catalogue includes the names of contemporary international luminaries from Mexico, among them the poets Carmen Boullosa, Rocío Cerón, and Tedi López Mills.

The renowned Mexican writer Valeria Luiselli co-edited the sixty-fifth edition of independent San Francisco-based literary journal McSweeney’s, assembling a stellar collection of stories, letters, and translations. The compendium is not only dazzling but also urgently political. According to the journal’s website, the issue “delves into extraction, exploitation, and defiance.” The quarterly includes work by several internationally acclaimed writers from the American continent. Many are authors whom Asymptote has featured in the past, such as Gabriela Wiener, Samanta Schweblin, and Claudia Domingo. Their names are listed alongside other famous voices who have rapidly achieved international fame, including Laia Jufresa, Megan McDowell, and Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil.

READ MORE…

Blog Editors’ Highlights: Winter 2022

January 24, 2022  |  in News  |  by Darren Huang, Erica X Eisen, and Xiao Yue Shan

The reconstituting of memories that have been erased is a central concern for the playful yet meditative Winter 2022 issue.

Asymptote’s Winter 2022 issue is now out, marking the magazine’s eleventh year in publication! The newest edition features writing from a record forty-three countries and twenty languages. Here to introduce you to what this issue has to offer are our blog editors with some thoughts on the pieces that stood out to them the most.

In Maria Stepanova’s 2021 genre-defying work In Memory of Memory, she wrote that her excavation of family history was motivated by a desire to discover “the way memory works, and what memory wants from me.” Stepanova was absorbed with not only recovering the stories of her Jewish family but also probing her own obsessive relationship with memory itself. The memoir suggests the faultiness of memory in its rips and tears, while betraying an anxiety over its artifice in the way the memoirist manipulates the archive through inclusion, exclusion, and distortion for the purpose of her narrative. The reconstituting of memories that have been erased through the forces of time and displacement is a central concern for the playful yet meditative Winter 2022 issue. Like Stepanova, the authors of these varied works construct complex inquiries into the past through reappraisals of memory, dreams of alternate lives, and imaginative play with form. They seek the truth through memories while contesting their inevitable artificiality and malfunctioning.

In Rose Bialer’s deeply affecting interview, the Hungarian poet, memoirist, and translator George Szirtes speaks of returning to certain memories and themes in his personal history throughout his career in poetry, sometimes writing new poems that function as continuations of collections published decades before. This idea of Szirtes’s “return” to the same moments for their comprehension reflects his mistrust of memories but also his belief that truths are embedded within them. One of the talk’s many astonishing moments is when Szirtes claims that the return over time to the same memories in his poems reveals parallel narratives that add up to a palimpsest of personal history and identity. For Szirtes, formal constraints such as the terza rima continuously open the same memories to new facets and understandings. This illuminating conversation demonstrates how the fluidity of memory allows the poet-translator to construct an unstable past and self while “registering the sense of truth in all its complexity.”

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

January 21, 2022  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Carol Khoury, Erica X Eisen, and Julia Sherwood

New festivals, publications, and films from Slovakia, Palestine, and Kazakhstan!

This winter, festivals and events across the globe introduce new literature in translation, while literary magazines and film festival screenings amplify underrepresented voices. In Slovakia, recent works explore sexual identity, the weight of twentieth-century history, and trauma. From Palestine, Arablit and Arablit Quarterly launched its first “In Focus” section, spotlighting Iraqi literature. In Kazakhstan, the film Akyn highlights the political power of writing, acquiring greater significance in the context of recent governmental restrictions on free speech. Read on to find out more!

Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting on Slovakia

In October 2021, Barbora Hrínová was declared the winner of Slovakia’s most prestigious literary prize, the Anasoft Litera. The jury praised her remarkable debut collection Jednorožce (Unicorns) for writing “about otherness without exoticizing or exploiting it, thus enabling us to accept different ways of life or the search for identity.” As the author herself put in a recent interview: “Otherness in Unicorns occurs on two levels; one is literal, where the characters from the LGBTI+ community belong by definition, and the other is universal, all-human; after all, every person is a minority in their own right. I didn’t want to emphasize the element of sexual identity or outward difference in the characters, because I think that such people are part of everyday life and no different from the majority in any essential way. Rather, I was interested in and irritated by the way they are perceived by society, which often reacts very dismissively and critically to even a minor deviation from the norm. I wanted to create a space in the stories where we could also look at the ‘different characters,’ or a variety of shortcomings in a somewhat more human way.” The fact that Hrínová’s collection also won the 2021 René Prize, chosen by secondary school students, testifies to the author’s empathetic handling of a sensitive subject.

November 2021 marked the centennial of the passing of Slovakia’s national poet, Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav. This brief video, recorded for the Slovak consulate in New York City by Columbia University professor Christopher W. Harwood, is a great primer for anyone not familiar with Hviezdoslav’s work. Literature scholar Charles Sabatos gave a captivating Zoom talk on Gejza Vámoš (1901–1956), another Slovak writer not yet widely known in the English-speaking world. Sabatos, who is translating Vámos’s seminal Atómy boha (God’s Atoms), published in 1928 and 1933, focused on issues of language and identity in this book, summed up by one critic as “a novel of heroism and syphilis.”

While this translation awaits publication, two recent works by contemporary Slovak writers appeared in October, inaugurating Seagull Books‘s Slovak list: Boat Number Five by Monika Kompaníková (translated by Janet Livingstone) and Necklace/Choker by Jana Bodnárová (translated by Jonathan Gresty). TranslatorsAloud features excerpts from both books: a bilingual reading by the author and translator in one case and a reading by the translator in the other, while an interview with Jana Bodnárová is available on Trafika Europa Radio.

READ MORE…

Our Winter 2022 Issue Is Here!

January 20, 2022  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Featuring new work from a record 43 countries!

Shout it from the rooftops: Asymptote turns eleven today! We celebrate our 43rd issue with new work from a record 43 countries in our most bountiful edition yet. Highlights include an exclusive interview with acclaimed poet George Szirtes and a Flemish Literature Special Feature organized in partnership with Flanders Literature, showcasing new translations of International Booker Prize nominee Stefan Hertmans, YA superstar author Bart Moeyaert, and up-and-coming raconteur Rachida Lamrabet.

Our Winter 2022 edition not only puts the “world” in “world literature,” it also interrogates the meaning of it. Take the case of Aaron Zeitlin, the Yiddish poet who was stranded overseas when the Nazis invaded his native Poland and killed his entire family. Written in a language “half of whose speakers had been wiped off the face of the earth,” Zeitlin’s grief-stricken poetry appears to be without a world, and therefore can not, as Yeshua G.B. Tolle argues beautifully, be classified as world literature. In her fiction, Jasna Jasna Žmak imagines a similar apocalyptic fate for the speakers of her language in a thought experiment inspired by Barthes, only to emerge with a newfound appreciation for all the words in her language, including the ones she hates. After all, words can summon entire civilizations—even the bygone ones—as they do in Gesualdo Bufalino’s thrilling list of extinct professions (the lady with the bloodsuckers, among them!). “The disappearing world” is also the subject of visual artist—and the first public figure in Spain to openly discuss his HIV status—Pepe Espaliú’s devastating poems evoking his final days under a sky dense like “the mouth of black clouds.” By contrast, bilingual Kazakh poet Anuar Duisenbinov’s exuberant “overloved, overdosed” narrator “float[s] in exultation” through his “luminous and windy capital,” contemplating “the ability of speech to sprout.” As it turns out, speech does sprout everywhere all over the world. Alongside Duisenbinov, we’re thrilled to debut in English Emil-Iulian Sude, one of the first award-winning writers of Roma ethnicity in Romania; Rachid Djaïdani, a French filmmaker whose 1999 bestselling novel and classic of banlieue writing is only now available, thanks to frequent contributor Matt Reeck; and Kim Su-on, a young Korean writer whose dazzlingly atmospheric story is a masterclass in worldbuilding.

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The tagline of this eleventh anniversary edition is “The Worlds We Live In”—pointedly not “The World We Live In”—meant to express the simultaneity of all our myriad existences, such as those inhabited by George Szirtes, who discusses his new collection of poems, the state of Hungarian literature, and translation in the age of Brexit. Also working from the liminal space of migration is Jamaican-born artist Cosmo Whyte, who explains why Barbados’s recent renouncement of the Queen is only the first of many necessary steps in healing (since, according to him, there is no “post” to colonialism). Neske Beks also performs a necessary act toward healing on behalf of Black women everywhere by centering the story of Ann Lowe, the Black designer responsible for Jackie Kennedy’s bridal gown in 1953, in her retelling of haute couture’s history. Pair her 2020 essay sparked by an exhibition with Charlotte Van den Broeck’s nonfiction excavating the curious real-life case of the Princess Caraboo of Javasu aka Mary Wilcocks—who might very well be the first yellowface captured in any artistic medium (an 1817 oil painting that shared a moment with Van den Broeck at the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery in her last gallery visit before the pandemic). All of this is illustrated in talented Singaporean guest artist Yeow Su Xian (Shu)’s irresistible palette and forms—I dare you to say hers isn’t the most fun cover we’ve had in a while!

For more Asymptote goodness, subscribe to our newsletter or Book Club, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and our two Instagram accounts, and consider submitting work (Swedish-English translators take note: our recently announced call for submissions to a paid Swedish literature feature ends Mar 1). And of course, we’d be delighted if you’d like to come on board as a team member (apply by Feb 1) or, to honor our eleven full years in world literature perhaps, as one of our generous sustaining members! As always, thank you for your readership and support.

BECOME A SUSTAINING MEMBER TODAY

—Lee Yew Leong, Editor-in-Chief

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

January 14, 2022  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Eva Wissting, MK Harb, and Peera Songkünnatham

From Scheherazade to Avicii, the literary news of the week spans new looks at pivotal figures.

From book fairs to bestsellers, the world of international letters knows no rest. In Qatar, the 31st Doha International Book Fair has launched with an in-person schedule. In Japan, a new project aiming to promote Southeast Asian and Indian literature has published an impressive roster of short fiction, and in Sweden, two beloved figures are immortalized in text. Read on to find out more!

MK Harb, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Lebanon

Happy New Year from the world of Arabic literature! With Omicron, media frenzies, and restrictions around the world, we could all use some escape. Travel might be limited, but how about an escape to the fantasy world of Arabian Nights? The iconic collection that has inspired countless others around the world, from the Brothers Grimm to Naguib Mafhouz, has received a fresh new translation by Yasmine Seale—known for her riveting new translation of Aladdin. Enter the world of ghouls, mystics, and enchantresses, and enjoy your COVID-free time travel (it has some brilliant images!).

The theme of time travel continues with the launch of the Winter issue of Arab Lit Quarterly! Responding to the theme of folk and featuring great writers such as Palestinian author Sonia Nimr, this issue promises to “cover stories, songs, and poetry from the last millennium, from Andalusia to Yemen, with stops across the cities in between!” You can get your copy here.

That being said, the world is not entirely being relegated to the virtual, as Qatar launches the 31st Doha International Book Fair for the year of 2022, under the theme of “light is knowledge.” Finally, we will visit our first in-person book fair in years, which will host renowned Arabic book distributors such as Samarkand Books from Qatar and Antoine Cachet from Lebanon! READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

January 7, 2022  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Carol Khoury, José García Escobar, and Suhasini Patni

The latest from India, Central America, and Palestine!

Despite the pandemic, literary festivals and magazines around the world continue to highlight important voices, both emerging and established. In India, the Bangalore Literature Festival presented a series of literary conversations, while the Sahitya Akademi announced the winners of its various awards. In Guatemala, the literary community mourned the loss of the beloved writer and editor, Julio Calvo Drago. In Palestine, the first-ever edition of Granta in Arabic was published. Read on to find out more!

Suhasini Patni, Editor-at-Large, reporting from India

Despite the restrictions COVID imposed, 2021 was a successful year for literature in India, with many virtual festivals and award ceremonies.

In Bangalore, the tenth edition of the Bangalore Literature Festival commenced in a hybrid form at the Bangalore International Center. Featuring authors such as Chitra Divakaruni, Dolly Kikon, Jahnavi Barua, Vivek Shanbhag, and Rijula Das, the festival was spread over two days. In one conversation, sociologist Arshia Sattar and filmmaker Anmol Tikoo introduced a new literary podcast on the life of Kannada playwright Girish Karnad. Titled “The River Has No Fear of Memories,” a line taken from the English translation of the play Hayavadana, the podcast follows the life of Karnad, including his work, inspirations, and personal life.

Sahitya Akademi also announced the winners of its prestigious awards: the Sahitya Akademi Award, Yuva Puraskar, and Bal Sahitya Puraskar 2021 on December 30. Twenty authors writing in different Indian languages were awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award. The award for the Sahitya Akademi in the Tamil language was given to Ambai for her short story collection Sivappu Kazhuththudan Oru Pachai Paravai (A Red-Necked Green Bird). Born in 1944 in Coimbatore, Ambai is only the fourth woman to win the award in her category, in the sixty-six years of the award’s history.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

December 17, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa, Andriana Hamas, and MARGENTO

The latest from Mexico, Bulgaria, Belgium, and Romania!

Though Asymptote is winding down with the year, literary events and going-ons continue to thrive around the globe. In Mexico, the Guadalajara International Book Fair presents its impressive line-up, and Polish female poets are celebrated in a new collection. In Bulgaria, the Christmas Book Fair returns to delight the locals. and in Romania, the Gaudeamus Book Fair features over one hundred exciting events. Read on to find out more!

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

On December 10, Mexican editor, poet, and translator Isabel Zapata presented Dentro del bosque, an English-Spanish translation of the autobiographical essay Into the Woods by American author Emily Gould. The essay reflects on contemporary capitalist precarity through Gould’s personal experience as a young woman trying to make a living as a writer in New York City. Originally published in 2014, its translation into Spanish is part of the Editor’s Collection from Gris Tormenta, an independent publisher based in Querétaro, a rapidly growing state three hours north of Mexico City. Gris Tormenta has published several Asymptote contributors in the past, including Yuri Herrera, Tedi López Mills, and Thomas Bernhard.

On December 4, Mexican poet Rocío Cerón and Polish poet Marta Eloy Cichocka presented Luz que fue sombra, a Polish-Spanish bilingual collection of seventeen Polish female poets born between 1963 and 1981, translated by Abel Murcia and Gerardo Beltrán. The book was published in the Spanish independent press Vaso Roto, which has published Spanish translations of important authors such as Anne Carson, John Ashbery, and Ocean Vuong. It includes poems by Justyna Bargielska, Barbara Klicka, Krystyna Dąbrowska, and Urszula Zajączkowska. Julia Fiedorczuk, whose book Oxygen was reviewed for Asymptote by Elisa González, is one of the most renowned authors in the collection. The event took place in Talleres de Arte Contemporáneo (TACO), a cultural centre south of Mexico City dedicated to promoting and teaching contemporary art.

The 35th edition of the Guadalajara International Book Fair took place in Guadalajara, one of Mexico’s largest cities, between November 27 and December 5. It is considered one of the most important book festivals in Latin America. This year, the guest of honor was Peru, from where several important authors and artists travelled to Mexico to present their work, lead workshops, and host panels. Among them was Asymptote contributor Victoria Guerrero. Importantly, the events featuring Peru offered significant representation of literature written in indigenous languages, including books by Dina Ananco Ahuananchi, Gabriel Pacheco, Cha’ska Ninawaman, and Washington Córdova. The fair also featured both emerging and established authors from all over the world. Many of them have previously appeared in Asymptote, such as Ana Luísa Amaral, Georgi Gospodinov, Abdellah Taïa, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, and Alejandro Zambra.

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

Bulgaria has, for a long time now, been in the grips of mass paranoia, an all-encompassing misinformation campaign, and political turmoil. The health situation also not looking up; according to official statistics, the COVID-19 deaths are, sadly, approaching the chilling number of 30 000 since the beginning of the pandemic—a figure that definitely cannot be trivialised given the overall population. READ MORE…