Death, Discourse, and Disarray: A Review of Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza

March 19, 2025  |  in Reviews  |  by Linnea Gradin

Is it possible to write a novel that seeks to have a clear political message while arguing against the desire to look for answers in literature?

Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza, translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker and Robin Myers, Hogarth, 2025

Death Takes Me, the latest novel by Cristina Rivera Garza to be translated into English, starts with a sort of epigraph titled “The Castrated Men.” The epigraph is a quote by Slovene philosopher and sociologist Renata Salecl: “However, with humans, castration should not be understood as the basis for denying the possibility of the sexual relationship, but as the prerequisite for any sexual relation at all. It can even be said that it is only because subjects are castrated that human relations as such can exist.”

The novel thus immediately establishes its premise, both in terms of tone and theme, but also hints at Rivera Garza’s fragmentary and intertextual writing style. By quoting Salecl, who was inspired by Lacanian theory on castration not as a physical mutilation but as a limitation on language, culture, and social norms, she throws the reader right into the middle of the type of discourse on gender dynamics with which Death Takes Me will attempt to engage.

As the novel begins in earnest, we find Professor Cristina Rivera Garza—the main character as well as the name of the author herself—on a run through the alleys of an unknown city when she comes across the body of a young man. The man has been mutilated, his penis cut off, laying in “a collection of impossible angles.” Accompanying the body are four lines of poetry, written in a red lipstick, from “Árbol De Diana” by Alejandra Pizarnik, a legendary Argentinian poet active in the 50s and 60s:

beware of me, my love
beware of the silent woman in the desert
of the traveler with an emptied glass
and of her shadow’s shadow

After reporting the crime to the police, Cristina, herself an expert in Pizarnik’s poetry, becomes entangled with The Detective, the woman assigned to investigate the case, both as an accomplice and a suspect. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Seven Poems by Manglesh Dabral

March 18, 2025  |  in Translations  |  by Nisarg P.

Opening the invisible doors of air, water, and dust, you have left for a mountain, river, or star, to become a mountain, a river, a star yourself.

For this week’s Translation Tuesday, we bring you a selection of works by Indian poet and journalist Manglesh Dabral. Dabral wrote in deceptively simple yet precise language; his artistic sensibility, which comes across as modest and humble in its ambitions, inquired into some of the most pressing questions of postcolonial India. Ranging from social themes, like the way postcolonial modernity blinds itself to its own past, to themes of personal memory, the experience of displacement, and the unending longing for home, Dabral embraced a vast spectrum of human emotions. A line from “In Memory of my Father” could serve as a statement for his poetic vision: “Within empty containers[,] torn-up books[,] and things infested with granary weevil, whatever life was left in them[,] you used to believe in it.” Translated from the Hindi by Nisarg P., the seven poems featured here are perfect representations of Dabral’s poetics―in their language, their form, and the themes with which they engage.

Here was that River

She wanted to reach there in haste
the place where a man
was heading for a bath in her water
a boat
was waiting for its travelers
and a line of birds
were approaching in search of her water

In that river of our childhood
we used to see our faces moving
on her shore were our houses
always over-flooded
she loved her islands and her stones
days used to begin from that river
her sound
audible at all the windows
her waves knocking on the doors
calling us incessantly
we remember
here was that river [,] in this very sand
where our faces once moved
here was that awaiting boat

now there is nothing
except at night when people are asleep
a voice is sometimes heard from its sand.

READ MORE…

Bungaku Days 2025: A Celebration and Symposium on Translation from the Japanese Literature Publishing Project

March 17, 2025  |  in Dispatches  |  by Mary Hillis

The symposium demonstrated that literature, like music, is not confined by borders—it moves, it transforms, it finds new voices.

Bungaku Days, an annual event presented by the Japanese Literature Publishing Project, is comprised of a symposium of topical discussions surrounding Japanese writing, as well as an award ceremony for the organization’s International Translation Competition. This year, translators, writers, and literati gathered in Kyoto to discuss the craft of translation and recognize new achievements in the field, with various experts dispensing knowledge of both the creative and the logistical matters of international literature. Here, Mary Hillis reports on the goings-on of this year’s edition.

In At the End of the Matinee by Keiichiro Hirano (tr. Juliet Winters Carpenter), the character Makino recalls when he first understood how to breathe life into his classical guitar performances: “Music is born in opposition to the beauty of silence; the creation of music lies in the attempt to use sound to bring about new beauty that contrasts with the beauty of silence.” Just as music relies on silence to give it shape, literature rests on pauses, echoes of history, interstices where interpretation takes root. In bringing Japanese literature to a wider audience, it is necessary to bridge these gaps, not merely by transferring language but by truly transforming it. Whether in rendering nuance across cultures, adapting novels into visual media, or retranslating classical works, translators often dwell in the space between the lines.

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

March 14, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Andriana Hamas, Carol Khoury, and Ibrahim Fawzy

The latest from Bulgaria, Palestine, and Egypt!

This week, our editors report on the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, a profound new collaboration drawing attention to the “obliteration” in Gaza, and a movement highlighting women writers and creators in Bulgaria. Read on to find out more!

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

Last month, the six-book shortlist for the 2025 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) was announced at a press conference held at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt. The honored books includes two authors previously recognized by the prize: Azher Jirjees, shortlisted in 2023 for The Stone of Happiness after being longlisted in 2020, and Taissier Khalaf, longlisted in 2017 for The Slaughter of the Philosophers. Ahmed Fal Al Din, Mohamed Samir Nada, Nadia Najar, and Haneen Al-Sayegh are first-time IPAF nominees.

The shortlist for this eighteenth edition of the IPAF was revealed by this year’s Chair of Judges, Egyptian academic Mona Baker. She was joined by fellow judges—Moroccan academic and critic Said Bengrad, Emirati critic and academic Maryam Al Hashimi, Lebanese researcher and academic Bilal Orfali, and Finnish translator Sampsa Peltonen—as well as IPAF Chair of Trustees Professor Yasir Suleiman, Prize Administrator Fleur Montanaro, and Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Professor Ahmed Zayed. READ MORE…

The Cairo Book Fair and a Lost Classic Returned Through Translation

March 13, 2025  |  in Dispatches  |  by Susan Curtis

It’s almost impossible to decipher the Arabic publishing market without the help of professionals and enthusiasts. . .

Since its inauguration in 1969, The Cairo Book Fair has become a central hub of Middle Eastern publishing and cultural exchange, drawing millions of attendees from dozens of countries to the Egyptian capital each January. This year, the edition’s theme was ‘Read. . . In the beginning was the word’, emphasising the importance of early texts and the evolution of language. Here, Susan Curtis reports from the event and its varied offerings—which includes the announcement of a pivotal title in Egyptology and its first translation into Arabic.

In January of this year, I attended the Cairo Book Fair, one of the biggest fairs in the world and a hub for international exchange and the celebration of Arab literature. The fair exceeded all expectations with over 5.5 million visitors—more than eight hundred thousand attending on the busiest day—marking a record-breaking attendance in the fifty-six years of the fair’s history. This year’s edition took place over a period of twelve full days from 23 January to 5 February, with dedicated event spaces for panels, discounted books, and poetry evenings. Amongst the wide-ranging discussions, one announcement made this year’s event truly stand out: the launch of the first Arabic translation of The Age and Purpose of the Pyramids, as Indicated by Sirius by Mahmoud Bey, an essential text in Egyptology first written in French, then translated into English by Tessa Dickinson in 2023, and finally, in 2025, brought back to Egypt in its first Arabic translation by Youssef El Sherif from Al-Arabi.

I attended the fair as the director of my company, Istros Books, joining the ‘Cairo Calling’ publishers fellowship programme, which, together with a group of thirty-five publishers from a diverse array of countries, offers a unique opportunity for global collaboration. Attendees engage in personalized, one-on-one meetings with publishers from across the Arab world, with the support of a dedicated team of ‘angels’—student volunteers from the Translation & Languages faculty of Badr University, keen to practise their linguistic skills and to promote Egyptian culture. In a city whose infrastructure and customs can sometimes be surprising, challenging but also charming, their devoted duty to our care was both touching and most welcome. The angel initiative is one aspect that makes the Cairo Calling Fellowship programme a unique experience and brings the participants in closer contact with Egyptian society, beyond the usual rights meetings. READ MORE…

I wake to face the candle’s red bloom: A Conversation with Wendy Chen about Translating The Magpie at Night: The Complete Poems of Li Qingzhao

March 12, 2025  |  in Interviews  |  by Tiffany Troy

Translating taught me to interrogate my positionality to the languages I know and write in.

The Magpie at Night takes its title from one of Li Qingzhao’s surviving poetic fragments: “The feelings I make into poems / are like the magpie at night, / circling three times, unable to settle.” A woman poet from the Song dynasty, Li (1084-1151 CE) was recognized for her mastery of the classic ci form, and is described in this newly published, wide-ranging collection as an “indomitable voice . . . [that] still sings to us across the centuries” by translator Wendy Chen. In this complete series of poems commonly accepted to be written by Li, Chen brings about this singing in Li’s wondrous sense of listlessness, in recurring motifs of dreams, and in the clarity of awareness: “I wake to face / the candle’s red bloom.”

Here, I speak with Chen about her translation of The Magpie at Night, a process involving familial recitations, happenstance, and wounds towards encounters with true selves.

Tiffany Troy (TT): What is the act of literary translation to you?

Wendy Chen (WC): It is inventive, playful, and an homage to the writer and the original work. The process of translation itself is like figuring out how to unlock a puzzle of language, while exploring its possibilities.

TT: For readers unfamiliar with the work of Li Qingzhao, can you describe what it was like to hear her work recited for the first time?

WC: In my family, recitations of classical Chinese poems were a part of the everyday fabric of conversation. The older generations would recite these poems as commentary on contemporary issues or events in our daily lives. In this way, I was raised to see these poems in dialogue with whatever might be happening, and Li’s work was no different. Hearing her recited in this way allowed me to see the continued relevance of her work, and how it could speak to a modern audience of readers who might also be grappling with desire, grief, longing, homesickness, resentment, and love. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Silent Bird” by Csenge Fehér

March 11, 2025  |  in Translations  |  by Dorottya Mária Cseresnyés

I vanished too. Bird’s wing, crone’s water, old man’s beard—nothing could hide me.

For this week’s Translation Tuesday, we bring you a haunting short story by Hungarian author Csenge Fehér, translated by Dorottya Mária Cseresnyés. In this eerie tale, A young woman, ostracized for her otherworldly beauty by the inhabitants of her small town, flees into the forest at the exhortations of her abused and overworked mother. There, she is pursued by a huntsman, here transformed from the noble rescuer of Western fairy tales into a rapacious brute, with none but the creatures of the forest to protect her—men and women whose transformations have left them barely human, ravaged by time. But even they cannot protect her forever—not from the violence the huntsman brings.

There lived I, a girl with black nails and pale soul, in a raven ravine, deep into the woods. My small village―bones banging―was wrapped in a thicket. I was so pretty that I was pelted with dung if I dared to speak, was chased by hounds if I dared walk alone. You’re such a treasure, not even pigs would desire you, they said. In vain did the moonbeams weave your skin. In vain does your river of hair flow after your feet. In vain do your eyes mirror the ashes of the nights―no one will desire you. You’ll be of no use, bear no fruit, grow old alone, what a shame.

READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: March 2025

March 10, 2025  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Ben Goldman, Eamon McGrath, Jonathon Atkinson, Matilda Nevin, Michelle Chan Schmidt, and Xiao Yue Shan

Reviews of eleven newly published books from Argentina, India, Austria, France, Japan, Chile, Bulgaria, Sweden, and Denmark!

This month, our selection of noteworthy titles include a collection of revolutionary Hindi poetry, an erotic thriller from an extraordinary Chilean modernist, an incisive novel concerning the disabled body in contemporary Japan, an intimate socio-philosophical contemplation of a loved one’s life and death by one of France’s foremost intellectuals, and more. 

bazterrica

The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica, translated from the Spanish by Sarah Moses, Scribner, 2025

Review by Xiao Yue Shan

There’s something seductive about the nightmare, perhaps because fear is the most vivifying sensation, perhaps because beauty and horror are so finely intertwined. In Agustina Bazterrica’s The Unworthy, the night-terror has never looked so exquisite, so shimmering. With an eye for the luminous and ear for the otherworldly, familiar gothic tropes are here relieved from their muted gloom; a chimeric language sings the shadows awake, and in this chorus even the most basic signifiers of darkness regain their fearsomeness, mysticism, sensual enthrallment. The cockroach has a gleam, a crunch; a derelict cathedral is as diaphanous as a dragonfly’s wing. There are the recognisable plot-pieces—violent sacraments, echoing halls, and a wasted world—but those who command fear’s aesthetic know that the most disturbing capacity of pain and transgression lies not in their repellence, but their strange and unpronounceable allure. It is not the torturous that Bazterrica is adept at bringing to life, but the smile that slowly creeps across the face of the tortured, when they are somewhere we can no longer reach.

The Unworthy is a post-apocalyptic convent story, wherein the only known patch of livable land is occupied by the House of the Sacred Sisterhood, a cult that is at once spiritually vacuous and deeply devotional, with its faith reserved more for the House’s singular rites, rituals, and rules than any principle or entity. As is the standard for any secluded sect that positions oblivion as the only alternative to obeyance, the Sisterhood’s hierarchy is strict and immovable, the leaders are mysterious and merciless, the eroticism is violent, the violence is erotic, and the practices are senseless but methodical. The founder and head of the House is a man, but in the name of Sisterhood, all his acolytes are woman: some are servants, some are the Unworthy, some are Chosen, some are Enlightened—and only this latter group is given contact with the one known only as He. One guess as to what that means. Our nameless narrator wants to rise through the ranks, but stubborn fragments of selfhood prevent her from completely assimilating into the Sisterhood’s processions. She still has memories, desires—though they are but frayed remains. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

March 7, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas and Mary Noorlander

The latest in literary news from the Philippines and the United States!

This week, our Editors-at-Large take us from the Philippines to the United States for updates on literature around the globe. From an eclectic and exciting annual book festival to the grand re-opening of a local queer-owned bookstore, read on to learn more. 

Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Editor-at-Large, Reporting from the Philippines

The 2025 Philippine Book Festival (PBF) is set to take place from March 13-16 in SM Megamall’s Megatrade Hall in Mandaluyong City of the country’s capital region.

While I’m particularly excited to dive into Ang Propeta (Southern Voices, 2023), Layla Perez’s Filipino translation of Kahlil Gibran’s book of prose poems, The Prophet, the 2025 PBF lineup offers something for every participant: a cosplay event of characters from Philippine literature, panel discussions of contemporary queer and women writers, and a book talk on graphic novelist M.A. del Rosario’s Gods of Manila. The festival’s itinerary also includes a crime fiction panel, workshops on zine-making, book illustration, and writing in Baybayin (the script used in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century central Luzon), and sessions on pitching stories to filmmakers (led by studios Gushcloud Philippines and J Creative Entertainment). Festival-goers can enjoy a poetry slam, a Balagtasan (Filipino debate using rhymed verse), and book talks with authors of boys’ love (BL) and girls’ love (GL) fiction.

READ MORE…

Elementalia: Chapter II Water

March 6, 2025  |  in Essays  |  by Kanya Kanchana

The more I try to hold it, to shape it, the more it slips away from me, laughing at my hubris that tries to contain water.

Humans throughout history have been fascinated by the elements. Unfathomable forces of nature, they entered our myths and minds aeons ago. There’s no time when we’re not in their thrall. Drawing from the vast store of our collective imagination across mythology, philosophy, religion, literature, science, and art, I present Elementalia, a series of five element-bending lyric essays that explores their enchanting stories and their relationship with the word—making, translating, and transforming meaning and message. This is not an exhaustive (nor exhausting) effort that covers every instance of and interaction with each element, but rather an idiosyncratic, intertextual, meditative work—a patchwork quilt of conversations with other writers, works, and texts across space and time.

Water above and below.
Water outside and inside.
Water of the past and water of the future.
Water of the world and water of the word.
Water always finds a way.

 

READ MORE…

Translating Macedonian Literature and Lidija Dimkovska’s Personal Identification Number: An Interview with Christina Kramer

March 5, 2025  |  in Interviews  |  by Sarah Gear

No matter how much I read, no matter how well I know the language, that language is constantly changing, and authors are creative.

Christina Kramer is a writer and translator known for her prolific work introducing Macedonian literature to the Anglosphere. I had the pleasure of corresponding with Christina about her role as a translator and linguist, the interplay between these two professions, and the excerpt of Lidija Dimkovska’s Personal Identification Number, which recently appeared in Christina’s translation in Asymptote. Throughout the conversation, we touched on Christina’s fascinating translation process, her love of Balkan music, her collaborative poetry translation, and the increasing number of translations coming from Macedonia.

Sarah Gear (SG): I very much enjoyed your translation in the current edition of Asymptote, an excerpt from Lidija Dimkovska’s 2023 novel Personal Identification Number. As an overworked parent of three, I can absolutely see the appeal of the ‘wasteland’ the narrator describes! Can you tell me how you came to translate the excerpt, and what challenges were specific to the text?

Christina Kramer (CK): I first learned about the novel from Lidija in 2022, then received a copy from her when we were both in Skopje in 2023. I was somewhat reluctant to translate the book because I saw many difficulties in moving between the narrative sections about Katerina and her family and the sections describing the wasteland. I knew virtually nothing about the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. Then, last summer I ended up working intensively on a full translation so it could be presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair. I will be editing that draft, of course, but I was forced to push through, to make quick decisions, and with that intensive, compressed timeframe, I was immersed in the story, and what had seemed difficult became more natural.

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Unknown” by Marianna Vitale

March 4, 2025  |  in Translations  |  by Laura Venita Green

It reminds her of when she was a kid and she used to swim into open water, out to where she couldn’t reach, abandoning herself to it.

For this week’s Translation Tuesday, we present a delicate story of young love from Italian writer Marianna Vitale, translated by Laura Venita Green. We accompany high schoolers Sara and Lorenzo on their first date, which unfolds in fragments—clinking glasses, tentative touches, and finally, the shared thrill of a ride on a Ferris wheel. The freshness of their budding relationship imbues every moment with a tense beauty. But as their connection deepens, a sudden encounter with death shifts Sara’s perspective, forcing her to confront life’s essential ephemerality. Struggling to articulate her emotions to Lorenzo, she finds herself overwhelmed by the desire to let go. With its subtle exploration of first love and the inevitability of loss, the story intertwines themes of youthful passion and untimely death with lyrical elegance.

Leaning against a wall, his hands in his jeans pockets, Lorenzo has by now stopped tracking the minutes. He’d been told that girls make you wait, but Sara should have been there half an hour ago and he’s beginning to worry she’s changed her mind. 

The San Giuliano streetlamps tint the alleys with warm light, and the Saturday evening crowd mixes with the Rimini neighborhood locals. Lorenzo checks his phone again. Then he goes back to staring at his white Nikes and the frayed hem of his jeans. He unrolls his shirt sleeves because the air is growing cooler and more humid. 

When he looks up, he finally sees her: thin, straight legs moving in a hurry, wrapped in dark tights and shorts, a satin blouse that falls softly on her chest, revealing small freckles just above her breasts.

“I’m late,” Sara says.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, greeting her with a kiss on both cheeks. “Want to get a drink?” He points to the entrance of Retroborgo and guides her there, resting a hand between her shoulder blades, barely touching her. “I’ll go ask if we can sit outside.” 

She waits on a stool between barrel-shaped tables. Across the street, two little boys are playing soccer outside a house with red shutters. Sara thinks she’d like to live in this area, so close to downtown. Then she wouldn’t be stuck having her parents drive her around everywhere. 

“Okay, I ordered two spritzes,” Lorenzo says when he returns, sitting down next to her. “And they’re bringing something to eat.” 

“Great.” Sara smiles and exposes her imperfect teeth. They’re one of the first things Lorenzo noticed about her—her slightly crooked right canine overlapping her incisor. 

“You look really nice tonight…I mean, you always look nice.” 

READ MORE…

Handshake with the Devil: The Violin with Human Strings and Other Tales of Musical Madness by Antonio Ghislanzoni

March 3, 2025  |  in Reviews  |  by Richard Cho

[T]he real value of this collection is its aptly drawn portrait of the music world in nineteenth century Europe. . .

The Violin with Human Strings and Other Tales of Musical Madness by Antonio Ghislanzoni, translated from the Italian by Brendan and Anna Connell, Snuggly Books, 2024

Bach, Liszt, Paganini, Beethoven. . . these virtuosos have been immortalized in western societies—but what about the supremely talented musicians who clawed their path toward the zenith, only to ultimately fall short? In The Violin with Human Strings: And Other Tales of Musical Madness, written in Italian by Antonio Ghislanzoni and translated by Brendan and Anna Connell, the author paints the journey of four such less fortunate individuals. Throughout the collection, a recurring motif seems to ask: Is musical renown attained via wits and ambition, or via preternatural gift? Whatever the answer to the perennial debate on nature versus nurture in musical talent, the four stories here testify that a destructive impulse for mastery will eventually lead to madness.

A contemporary of revolutionaries such as Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi, Antonio Ghislanzoni (1824-1893) was a multi-talented Lombard who began his career as a musician (principally as a vocalist), but turned to devote the latter half of his life to writing, resulting in a prolific corpus of articles, novels, short stories, and some eighty librettos. He was also an important member of the Scapigliatura movement, a loose-knit group of artists in Milan who gathered after the 1860 Unification of Italy. An Italian counterpart to the French Bohèmi, the group idealized patriotism, anti-conformism, and intellectual independence, with its writers being receptive to international writers such as Mary Shelley and Edgar Allen Poe—an influence that shows in Ghislanzoni’s fiction. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

February 28, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Linnea Gradin, Sofija Popovska, and Wambua Muindi

The latest literary news from Kenya, North Macedonia, and Sweden!

This week, our editors-at-large report on clashes between writers and politics, recent awards, and exciting events. From Pippi Longstocking’s 80th birthday to a brand-new book fair, read on to find out more!

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

Venko Andonovski was recently named the most influential writer and educator of 2024 by TRI, the renowned, Skopje-based publishing house. Andonovski, whose novels and plays have been translated into twelve languages, is known as “the most widely read Macedonian writer and the most performed Macedonian novelist in the last twenty years.” Despite his fame, he is generous with both the public and his colleagues: he taught six writing workshops in 2024 and made a statement congratulating fellow Macedonian author Rumena Bužarovska on being named TRI’s most-read author of 2024, and condemning the “culture of silence” surrounding the accomplishments of domestic authors in the same breath. Andonovski termed the disinterest demonstrated by Macedonian politicians towards the literary scene “an embarrassment”, adding that the situation is exacerbated by authors who are equally silent about their colleagues’ attainments, and whose “bodies are 80% water and souls are 80% vanity.” Adding that “if we remain a culture of silence, our culture is bound to remain in silence [on the world stage]”, Andonovski posed a question that is both incisive and (unfortunately) relevant: “If we do not appreciate ourselves, who will appreciate us?” READ MORE…