Place: Armenia

Announcing an Animal-themed Special Feature

January 12, 2023  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

“There is a different way of knowing here and I see all around me a constellation of animals.” —Linda Hogan

For our Spring 2023 Special Feature, we will be putting together an animal-themed feature that looks at wildlife in a new light. We seek fictional and nonfictional narratives that place such animals at the center, whether in natural or urban environments (the animal or animals in question must play a central role in the story’s plot; we also welcome stories where the narrator is an animal).

Of special interest are texts that illuminate what Linda Hogan has called a “different way of knowing” or imagine the coexistence of the animal in question with human beings. Hrant Matevossian’s “The Green Field” from the current issue, or Zsófia Bán’s “On the Eve of No Return” from the Summer 2014 edition are excellent examples of the kind of work we are looking for. The Feature is intended to be a showcase of the many nonhuman existences who share this planet with us.

For once, we’ll be accepting original English-language submissions (although translations will still be prioritized in our curation). Fees will be waived for the first submission to this Special Feature; in addition, contributors whose work is accepted will receive an honorarium of USD100 per article. Check out our full guidelines and send in your best work today!

Principle of Decision: Translation from Armenian

January 2, 2023  |  in Principle of Decision, Translations  |  by Kristina Tatarian, Lusine Kharatyan, Margarit Ordukhanyan, and Nazareth Seferian

[This] will, we hope, allow for a more direct look at the choices translators make—at the principle of decision they employ in their practice.

Each translation speaks with two voices; that of the author and that of the translator. Yet, it is often when they have done their work well that the voices of translators go unrecognized. Their names are left off of covers, and their efforts mentioned only as brief asides in reviews. 

This neglect fails to give translation its due. Walter Benjamin wrote: “Reading a translation as if it were an original work in the translation’s own language is not the highest form of praise;” it is, rather, a failure to fully considering a work in translation, with its two voices and two languages. In an essay for Astra, translator and writer Lily Meyer references Susan Sontag’s definition of style when discussing translation as an art, stating that “to make art without having or consulting your own stylistic preferences strikes me as impossible . . . [Sontag] defines style, more or less, as ‘the principle of decision in a work of art, the signature of an artist’s will.’ Surely a translator’s will can also be found inside anything they translate, animating the text and powering it to full-fledged life.” 

This new column, Principle of Decision, is an effort to make the styles of translators more visible. In each installment, one translator will select a famous sentence or brief passage from the literature of a certain language, and several translators will then offer their own translations of it. The differences and similarities between the translations will, we hope, allow for a more direct look at the choices translators make—at the principle of decision they employ in their practice.

For our first edition, we are proud to feature a selection from the Armenian, chosen by Editor-at-Large Kristina Tatarian. Kristina’s word-for-word translation is accompanied by translations from three translators, whose work can also be found in the Fall 2022 issue’s Special Feature on Armenian literature. Kristina has also provided explanatory commentary on her selection, as well as on the translators’ choices.

—Meghan Racklin

 

One peaceful morning  was   one     sad      morning

Մի խաղաղ  առավոտ  էր  .  մի  տխուր  առավոտ :

Mi  haghah    aravot         er      mi   tehur  aravot
˘       ˘     ¯      ˘  ˘   ¯          ˘        ˘    ˘   ¯    ˘  ˘  ¯

This sentence is from the beginning of “Gikor” by Hovhaness Tumanian, one of the central figures in Armenian literature. Based on a real story that Tumanian had heard as a child, “Gikor” is a tale about the dreams and hardship of a twelve-year-old boy, the eponymous Gikor, as his father sends him away from his home in the village to “become a man” and earn a living in the big city. Unfortunately, the boy’s precocious aim to alleviate his family’s hardship eventually ends his life. This sentence marks the moment in the story when Gikor’s mother and siblings watch him leave; accompanied by his father, he moves further and further away from home. The story comes full circle as the father returns to the village—only this time, Gikor is not there anymore. The different translations of this sentence, which presages the early death of the young protagonist, highlight the theme of the Armenian Special Feature (half-lives) by presenting us the “half-life” of the protagonist, a life that prematurely ended. This poignant story may be seen as an emblem of cultural memory about the Armenian Genocide, as Tumanian himself was at the forefront of humanitarian efforts to save children. The contributing translators have each found their own way of translating this memorable sentence, which marks the day when this young and sensitive boy leaves his home, and never returns.

—Kristina Tatarian READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

December 9, 2022  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Kristina Tatarian, and Wambua Muindi

Literary news from Armenia, the Philippines, and Kenya!

This week, our editors on the ground are watching out for multilingual poetry events, emerging Armenian writers, solidarity in language and literature, the favourite texts of Filipino readers, translation in Southeast Asia, dialogues between authors in Nairobi, and PEN/HEIM Translation Grants winners. Read on to find out more!

Kristina Tatarian, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Armenia

The beautiful auditorium of the Carfesjian Center for the Arts, located at the Cascade Complex in Yerevan, is a frequent stage for literary readings. On the night of October 8, the center hosted a performance as part of antiBabylon, a multilingual poetry event that brought together literary communities from Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, Moldova and Germany. Organised by PANDA Platforma, an NGO from Berlin, the event took place in Georgia, Armenia, Moldova, and Ukraine, as poets visited each other’s countries for joint workshops and performances to create, translate, and perform. The Project’s aim is to create a “free multilingual poetic space,” and test if poetry can answer the most burning existential questions of today’s troubled world.

On the same day, IALA’s Emerging Writers Showcase took place online. This showcase featured readings from Armenian authors championed by the organisation as mentees or winners of the Young Armenian Poet Award. By supporting emerging literary talent, the organisation adds to the global effort of Armenian artists to accelerate cultural revival in the country.

The Armenian diaspora around the world plays a crucial part of setting the cultural agenda for Armenian literature, and now, the groundbreaking collection We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora, edited by Aram Mjorian, is available from University of Texas Press. The collection will feature essays from writers and poets of Armenian origin, shedding light on diverse experiences of “Armenianness” and personal perspectives on ethnicity, identity, and the sense of home. READ MORE…

Fall 2022: Highlights from the Team

November 2, 2022  |  in News  |  by Alex Tan, Annilee Newton, Barbara Halla, Bella Creel, Caridad Svich, Heather Green, Ian Ross Singleton, Janet Phillips, Marina Dora Martino, Megan Sungyoon, and Sofija Popovska

Where to start with our glorious Fall 2022 issue? Here are some entry points, courtesy of our global team!

Emma Ramadan’s work as a translator has been so important to me and my literary journey—not least because of the attentiveness she lends to the writers she translates from Francophone North Africa, such as Ahmed Bouanani. I also really admire the way she speaks about her process with Claire Mullen in her interview, the passion and commitment and genuineness that shine through, for instance, in how she discusses her feelings at finally finding a copy of Molinard’s Panics. It reminded me a little of Alice Guthrie’s work with Malika Moustadraf’s Blood Feast, which was also out of print and circulated online as low quality scans.

I really love the slow, meditative writing of Dejan Atanacković’s absent narrator in Lusitania (tr. Rachael Daum). When it ranges with a kind of radical exteriority over the ephemera that remains of Teofilović, and the marginal annotations of Stojimirović that accompany his journals, it reads almost like the prose of Sebald—with the enigma of Teofilović as one such central, inaccessible figure around which the story endlessly circles, never losing sight of the larger political and social context.

Laksmi Pamuntjak’s “The Tale of Mukaburung” could easily have been written and translated to pander to a white gaze, and it’s really to the credit of both Pamuntjak and her translator Annie Tucker that there is a pervasive self-sufficiency to the story and its world, a refusal to explain itself, a matter-of-fact revelling in the ordinariness of its own magic and ritual. This seems especially commendable when a dominant affect in the story is puzzlement and defensiveness, in confrontation with foreigners whose presence and purpose are unknown, even to the reader, until much later in the story when it is revealed that many among them are political prisoners.

—Alex Tan, Senior Assistant Editor (Fiction)

Olavo Amaral’s “Steppe” (tr. Isobel Foxford) is exquisite in every way: the writing of the translation, the unusual subject matter, the relationship and emerging love between the two main characters and how it is described, the mood created by the atmosphere of snow and remoteness.

I have been following closely the horrors of Putin’s war in Ukraine and though still angry and frustrated by its continuation, I thought I was fairly hardened to the extent of Russian atrocities. But I broke down towards the end of Galina Itskovich’s War Diary (tr. Maria Bloshteyn), where the unspeakable rape and violence against children is put into words.

—Janet Phillips, Assistant Managing Editor

Kudos to Jonathan Chan for beautifully translating such ancient poems of Choe Chi-won, whose characteristic loneliness metaphorized in natural images is successfully rendered in translation.

I think one of the most important missions of Asymptote is to sustain languages under oppression, be that a national language that is close to extinction or the voice of a people amid a political process of erasure. Lauren Bo’s review of The Backstreets by Perhat Tursun undertakes this mission in remarkable earnest and rigor, by not only posing the biopolitical question of survival faced by the Uyghurs but also diligently analyzing the text via a close reading, and ultimately marrying the two to derive a conclusion that engages readers with the enduring challenge of humanity that surpasses the violence that is immediately palpable: “The Backstreets is an account of survival and a reminder that even the cruelest elements of humanity are fabricated out of absurdity and fear of the uncertain.”

The elusive language of Krikor Beledian’s “Unpeopled Language” (tr. Taline Voskeritchian and Christopher Millis) is delicate yet piercing, and while  the history of the Armenian genocide cannot be separated from the poetics of Beledian, its implementation of “the tool against the game of expression“ speaks to the broader context of the survival of a people and their language in and after the era of mass murder.  

—Megan Sungyoon, Assistant Editor (Poetry)

READ MORE…

Blog Editors’ Highlights: Fall 2022

October 24, 2022  |  in News  |  by Xiao Yue Shan

Writing life as it is lived—that is, writing life that is half-lived.

In our Fall 2022 issue, we are presenting work ranging across thirty-two countries and nineteen languages, moving and shifting the demarcations of nation and language with the fluidity and imaginative capacities of language. Here, blog editor Xiao Yue Shan presents a roadmap through some of the most moving, exciting content encased within this latest release, including a text from our feature on Armenian literature, an essay on the “job” of writing from Catalan writer Montserrat Roig, and a Indonesian fiction of human distances—colonial, geographical, and carnal.

In every country there is a river, along the banks of every river there are people, and within the minds of each person there persists a single heartbeat of a mind that begins, as they situate themselves along the river, to pulse with that river’s inimitable current, to infiltrate that moment of flow with a different rhythm, that which they have carried with them and now relieve into the waters, and the water does what it does—it merges. In Aram Pachyan’s fluid, lyrical excerpt from P/F, translated sensitively from the Armenian by Nazareth Seferian, this instance of communion is fortified with the author’s masterful command of oratory and soliloquial language, iterating a return to faith “. . . like the prodigal son, sitting on your rib seeing my salvation in your murky waters, my peace in your obscurity, the lymph of life still gurgling in your grime.” The excerpt demonstrates not only the immense living intelligence of inhuman bodies, but also their pivotal and profound point of contact with human emotion—grief, loneliness, resolution, and hope. P/F is described as a text that swims in memory, and even in this brief extract we are afforded a wide-ranging glimpse at memory’s infinitely mutable potentials, of the seeds of experience which exponentiate into monuments of time, equally deceptive as it is formative, equally polluted as it is seeking of purity, and ever-changing even as it attempts to convince us of its sameness. In long, ranging lines melding concrete situation with poetic abstractions, Pachyan begins to tells us of this river:

This is not the Euphrates, nor the Tigris; not the Seine, the Thames, the Danube, nor the Po. The Getar has no bloodline in common with the daughter of the ocean, the Styx that flows in the land of Hades. The gods have not taken any oaths on its waters. There are no emphatic proverbs about it, no books or odes. It is left out of all possible discussions, it is off the planet’s axis.

And still it flows, merging what is cast in with what is hidden in its depths, and it is this movement that reminds us of the eternal sanctuary, in cities and villages alike, where one can stand and watch one thing become another, to watch time become memory and memory urge back to feed once again into time, and find in this merging some solace. READ MORE…

The Fall 2022 Issue Is Here!

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

Featuring Kyung-Sook Shin, Emma Ramadan, Aram Pachyan, and Álvaro Fausto Taruma amid new work from 32 countries and 19 languages

Welcome to “Half-Lives,” our new Fall 2022 issue, where never-before-published work from 32 countries and 19 languages confront life as it shouldn’t be: stunted, degraded, perversely foreshortened—in short, half-lived. Its centerpiece is the Armenian Special Feature, generously sponsored by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, under the aegis of which we are proud to present stunning new translations of emerging authors such as Aram Pachyan, last year’s winner of the EU Prize for Literature—Armenia’s first recipient!—alongside more established voices like Narine Abgaryan, Krikor Beledian, and Hrant Matevossian. Inescapably harrowing because of their historical contexts, many of these works set the tone for the rest of the issue—including a gritty dispatch from Ukraine via Galina Itskovich and a spotlight on Ukraine-born artist Sergey Katran. Elsewhere, Claire Mullen chats to Emma Ramadan about the joy of translating from the archive, past contributor Anton Hur brings us a new short story by 2012 Man Asia Literary Prize recipient Kyung-Sook Shin, and Grant Schutzman delivers our first work from Mozambique in the form of moving poetry by Álvaro Fausto Taruma. All of this is illustrated by our amazingly talented guest artist, the London-born creative Louise Bassou.

On the heels of Roe being overturned, our editors have also responded by centering one half of the human condition in this issue. Pregnancy is the subject of Lusine Kharatyan’s keenly observed #America_place Pregnant and S. Vijayalakshmi’s intimately recounted Just Like a Womb. Growing up (a “difficult art” according to a very wise Montserrat Roig in this issue’s inspiring Brave New World Literature Feature), the women in these pieces are made to feel less than human in contradictory ways, shamed for the developing bodies in which they are trapped (Rosabetty Muñoz) while becoming objects of unwanted desire at the same time (Eszter T. Molnár). In Mexico, Karen Villeda reminds us that the consequences of being a woman can be fatal, writing that women are not alive, but only “still alive” until they are not. How do women counteract the stunting forces of a hostile world? From the ventriloquism of an Abuela who talks to herself to ensure that no one else speaks for her in Alejandra Eme Vázquez’s You’ll Leave Your Body Behind to the adoption of a third language by Jhumpa Lahiri to develop her own linguaggio, as revealed in Translating Myself and Others reviewed by Caterina Domeneghini, giving voice to female experience, as we endeavor to do in this issue, is one shared mode of resistance.

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No matter your taste, there’s something for everyone in this edition, so circulate this glorious new issue by printing our Fall 2022 flyer (downloadable here); like and share our issue announcement and article plugs on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

To read the world and read it more fully is itself a recipe for a fuller existence. If we’ve made a difference in that regard to your lives, please consider celebrating our full twelve years of publishing the best in world literature by joining us a masthead or sustaining member from as little as $5 a month—for a limited period only, we’ll even throw in a bonus 2023 digital Asymptote calendar!

READ THE NEW ISSUE

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

July 22, 2022  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Josefina Massot, Kristina Tatarian, and Rubén López

Literary news from Argentina, Armenia, and Guatemala!

In this week’s round-up of global literary goings-on, our editors report on efforts to highlight queer Armenian literature, plurilingual Argentine writing, and a Guatemalan festival that seeks to redress fragmented memories through art and literature. Read on to find out more!

Josefina Massot, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Argentina

Last Thursday, New York-based writer and critic Sylvia Molloy passed away at the age of eighty-three. She was, among other things, a pioneer—the first woman to gain tenure at Princeton University back in the seventies, the first person to found a U.S. writing program in Spanish, and, perhaps most notably, the first Argentine author to really tackle LGBTTIQ+ culture in her work; her debut novel “En breve cárcel” (1981), an icon of queer literature, was written during the Argentine dictatorship and first published in Spain to avoid persecution.

Molloy established a fruitful link between queer themes and translation: “queer means twisted, weird, out of place, and if people think my texts deviate from the norm, so much the better,” she once said. “I’m interested in texts that take unusual turns, including those that go from one language to another. I’ve always had that sort of linguistic conflict, because I write in Spanish but will often explore phrases in other languages.”

Translation at large was central to Molloy, who grew up speaking Spanish, English, and French. Her short essay collection Vivir entre lenguas (Living Between Languages) is an attempt to portray this plurilingual experience. While her own English version of the work hasn’t been published in full, an excerpt did run in Asymptote’s Fall 2019 issue; meanwhile, her brilliant Desarticulaciones will be released by Charco Press in both Spanish and English.

As we bid adieu to one of our greats, we also welcome a newcomer—the latest press to sprout up in Argentina’s bustling indie ecosystem. Sergio Criscolo’s Híbrida has just published its first four titles, all by South American authors: Aspas by Belén Zavallo, El placer de abandonar by Schoë Blintsjia, El corazón adelante by press co-editor Humphrey Inzillo (all three of them, Argentines), and Elis Regina, una biografía musical by the Brazilian Arthur de Faria. The first is a book of poetry; the second, a debut novel; the third, a collection of journalistic columns; the fourth, a translation into rioplatense (rather than neutral) Spanish. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

April 8, 2022  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Charlie Ng, Josefina Massot, and Kristina Tatarian

News this week from Argentina, Armenia, and Hong Kong!

As the scope of literature continues to take in the shifting realms of experiences and global relations, our editors from around the world report the latest updates, from festivals, activisms, and the spotlighting of vital voices both new and familiar. Read on to find out more!

Josefina Massot, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Argentina

Last week, we mourned the loss of the great Sergio Chejfec, whose work spanned grammars, genres, and geographies. Chejfec spent his time between his native Buenos Aires and New York City, where he lived and taught at NYU’s Creative Writing Program. During a 2018 interview with Télam, he spoke about the impact of migration on his work: “In my experience, moving from one country to another accentuates the passage of time: the gap isn’t merely geographic. Exiles are far away from their countries, but also from the network of simultaneities they were accustomed to while living there; notable among these is language.” Fortunately, gaps and absences can be bridged through translation. Chejfec’s works are available in French, German, Portuguese, and English, and US readers can delight in them via Open Letter.

Meanwhile, Other Press is on the verge of releasing Kit Maude’s rendition of Camila Sosa Villada’s Bad Girls (incidentally, Sosa Villada’s latest has just come out in Spanish). Equal parts gritty and tender, Bad Girls narrates a trans woman’s exploits at the margins of society; a recipient of the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Award in 2020, it’s bound to take America by storm. The award’s previous winner, Maria Gainza’s Portrait of an Unknown Lady, just out from Catapult, was also widely celebrated upon its reception. The novel, translated by Thomas Bunstead, follows an auction house employee on the trail of an elusive forger; like Gainza’s The Optic Nerve, it draws from art and literature to great effect. 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…

Translation Tuesday: “Proclamation of Gugo” by Narek Topuzyan

November 9, 2021  |  in Translations  |  by Lilit Topuzyan

Gugo is talking, while she is silently sewing, he is talking, she is sewing [. . .]

This Translation Tuesday, we are thrilled to feature a hilarious piece of short fiction from the award-winning Armenian writer Narek Topuzyan. “Proclamation of Gugo” follows the titular Gugo and Zhanna, an elderly husband and wife duo who frequently quarrels with one another over seemingly frivolous matters: food, flowers, how the other “doesn’t fucking care.” Lilit Topuzyan’s translation conveys the frenetic energy of domestic squabbling and enables the author’s acerbic wit to shine through in the brief three paragraphs that compose the entire story. Reading this comedy of errors is sure to leave one reflecting on how even our most intimate relationships might be composed of a series of loving miscommunications. 

Gugo and Zhanna have been living together for thirty years already, but their relationship has recently taken a wrong turn. Gugo and Zhanna’s relationship has taken a wrong turn, and like cosmonauts having appeared in oxygen deficit due to weightlessness, Gugo and Zhanna, knock on wood, do not know exactly how long all this will last, and this is why they try not to talk to each other much so that the oxygen in their lungs is not needlessly exhausted due to their conversations. If you take a look at this couple, each of who is over sixty, it seems that they are trying, with implicit feud, to postpone the termination of their coupledom, to the extent that they have enough resources for tolerance that they drain in a state of weightlessness of a family. Gugo has found or, who knows, has probably invented the reason for himself: “You don’t fucking care about me,” Gugo says, protruding his lips like a baby, and turns to the TV, anticipating floods of rebuttals, but alas, rebuttals do not follow. Rebuttals do not follow because Zhanna does not really care, at least not about this statement of Gugo, which is new in the usual course of events that have taken place in the last thirty years. Until then, this proclamation of Gugo had never crossed anyone’s mind—what does “caring about him” mean? They live together, share the same bread and maintain a living together. This statement of Gugo is so new that Zhanna does not know what to think. To think that she can calm him down by picking him up in her arms and putting her tits in his mouth would not be correct because the tits that she has are no longer the tits that she used to have; after all, Gugo is no longer a child. She is compelled to think that this man has definitely eaten bad food in the evening or in the afternoon and perhaps this outburst of his is the reaction of what he has eaten. Besides being new, this outburst of his is so unpredictable that Zhanna is sitting in front of a sewing machine, with her glasses on the tip of her nose, and is silently sewing her client’s curtain. Gugo is talking, while she is silently sewing, he is talking, she is sewing, and the more Zhanna remains silent, the more Gugo gets furious. “You don’t fucking care about me,” Gugo says and reiterates, and it is not new that Zhanna does not “fucking care about” Gugo. It is impossible to say exactly how long all this has been going on, but it’s definitely not new. It probably started the day when life lost the charm of hidden dates, but again, it is impossible to say exactly when. Whether it is possible to say the exact time or not, in any case, it is not new, but Gugo has noticed it recently, and the reason for this is that his brother-in-law recently hugged and kissed Zhanna and held her in his laps a bit longer and a bit tighter right in front of Gugo. READ MORE…

Intimate Work: Lisa C. Hayden on Translating Narine Abgaryan

April 23, 2020  |  in Book Club, Interviews  |  by Josefina Massot

Translation is a very intimate line of work and translating an author’s text tells you a lot about them as people.

Of her award-winning novel, Three Apples Fell From the Sky, Armenian-Russian author Narine Abgaryan said: “I wanted to write a story that ends on a note of hope.” We at Asymptote were proud to present, as our March Book Club selection, this magical realist folktale exploring both the merciless procession of worldly tragedies and the human capacity for courage and imagination. In the following interview, our own Josefina Massot speaks to Lisa C. Hayden, the translator of Three Apples Fell From the Sky and other renowned Russian fictions, about the book’s internal logic, the relief of routine amidst a global strangeness, and the instinct of switching between narrative voices.

The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers around the world. You can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website for as little as USD15 per book; once you’re a member, you can join the online discussion on our Facebook page! 

Josefina Massot (JM): You’ve made a point of only translating books you love, and many of them delve into the concept of history. Vladislav Otroshenko’s Addendum to a Photo Album and Marina Stepnova’s The Women of Lazarus seem to specifically explore it through the lens of family, which is also the case with Abgaryan’s Three Apples Fell From the Sky—the story of Maran is reflected in a series of family sagas: Anatolia’s, Vasily’s, Vano’s, and Valinka’s, etc. Tolstoy’s own War and Peace, which you’ve referred to as your favorite novel, chronicles early-nineteenth-century Tsarist society by honing in on five aristocratic clans . . . Could you elaborate on why you’ve been so consistently drawn to the theme of family history, and whether there’s something eminently “Russian” about it?

Lisa C. Hayden (LCH): I’m not sure I have a good direct answer to your questions! I’ll try to approach them from a slightly different angle, though. One of the elements I look for in books is a solid sense of internal logic: ideally, I want each piece of a novel, each layer, each word, to fit together harmoniously. That doesn’t mean they can’t be chaotic, but the chaos should fit the book’s logic. I wonder if perhaps fictional families—be they functional or dysfunctional, chaotic or calm—inherently bring a natural order to a novel. And if that order, which may at least hint at genre- and/or family-related hierarchies, structures, and motifs, might give the novelist a sort of head start on writing a book where all the pieces fit together. All that said, other aspects of novels draw me, too. Psychology and even a certain voyeurism are important to me as is (always!) interesting writing that innovates without becoming overwritten, purple prose.  READ MORE…

Announcing our March Book Club Selection: Three Apples Fell From the Sky by Narine Abgaryan

April 2, 2020  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Josefina Massot

Given the array of epic horrors she alludes to, Abgaryan could’ve opted for fast-paced . . . narration; instead, she goes for delicate portraiture.

On the tails of its celebrated success in Russia, Narine Abgaryan’s award-winning novel, Three Apples Fell From the Sky, is now available to English-language readers in Lisa C. Hayden’s expert translation. This tripartite tale takes on the form and mysticism of fable to spin a narrative of a village constantly at the mercy of catastrophe, and, as Josefina Massot points out in this following review, may act as a poignant response to our current age of precarity. With its characteristically sensitive descriptions, Abgaryan’s work explores the human things that evolve in the aftermath of disaster; in times that teeter on the edge of dystopia, it invites us to read our lives into them—a reminder that one of literature’s most enduring gifts is its expansiveness.

The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers around the world. You can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website for as little as USD15 per book; once you’re a member, you can join the online discussion on our Facebook page!

Three Apples From the Sky by Narine Abgaryan, translated from the Russian by Lisa C. Hayden, Oneworld Publications, 2020

They say the best way to ward off anxiety is to focus on the here and now. At the moment, though, “here” is a seemingly shrinking apartment and “now” is any time I hit refresh on decidedly growing pandemic statistics. It’s been that way for weeks, so when Abgaryan’s novel hit my inbox (my locked down city’s impermeable to foreign paperbacks), I was desperate for a folktale. What better than a nowhere, no-when land to flee the grim here-and-now—a tale that would end happily, or at the very least end, flouting the boundless infection curves that plagued my feeds and fed my dread?

Three Apples Fell From the Sky isn’t the strictly uchronic utopia I’d expected: most of it unfolds in the Armenian village of Maran during the twentieth century. When I googled “Maran Armenia,” however, I found no such place, and the search I then ran on “Մառան Հայաստան,” courtesy of Google Translate, yielded a stub on a village for which “no population data had been retained.” In fact, there seems to be no data at all—just an unverified note on villagers’ deaths and deportations during the Genocide. As far as I was concerned, Maran might as well have been fictional. Grounding the novel in time proved equally tricky: save for a few scattered references to telegrams or left-wing revolutions, its protagonists could’ve just as easily lived through the 2015 constitutional referendum or the Russo-Persian Wars. My sense of chronology was further challenged by recurring flashbacks, occasional changes in verb tense, and the Maranians’ own cluelessness regarding dates. Near perfect fodder for escapism, you’d think, but by the time I’d put it down, I was more firmly rooted in the times than ever. READ MORE…

Armenian Literature: A History, A Future in Translation

June 13, 2019  |  in Essays  |  by Andreea Scridon

It is something of a surprise that a country with such an ancient literary tradition has not had more of its corpus translated into English.

Armenia is a small country with an enormous diaspora and a rich literary tradition—so why hasn’t more Armenian literature been translated into English? Today, Assistant Editor Andreea Scridon takes us on a tour of Armenian literary translation, introducing us to influential writers, both ancient and contemporary, who have yet to appear in English.

Many people in the English-speaking world, upon hearing of Armenia, naturally tend to think of the Armenian Genocide. While the recognition of a national tragedy beyond its borders is central to acts of both justice and healing, this notoriety can serve as a double-edged sword for a country’s culture. On the one hand, healing implies a significant act of transcendence, and so cross-border translation of Armenian literature has been important in the past for victims of the Genocide and presumably remains important for the Diaspora today. On the other hand, the works by (and about) Armenians that have received the most exposure have been those written in other languages, outside of Armenia. Franz Werfel’s The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (originally published in German in 1933) is the most notable example of this kind, creating a ripple effect immediately after the dramatic effects took place and raising awareness for the Armenian plight tremendously; decades later, Varujan Vosganian’s The Book of Whispers (first published in Romania in 2009) was longlisted for last year’s PEN America Award. Vasily Grossman’s An Armenian Sketchbook (originally written in Russian), along with two English-language books, Chris Bohjalian’s The Sandcastle Girls (Doubleday, 2012), and Elif Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul (Viking Press, 2006) have enjoyed great success and are examples of the many texts that make up a sort of canon on the subject. But although the topic of the Armenian Genocide remains relevant and important, the fact that none of the best-known books on the topic were written in the Armenian language point to a lacuna that continues to present a question mark today. What’s more, though the Genocide is a central point in Armenian history, we still don’t publish enough Armenian literature in translation. Let us take a trip through this part of the world, then, and explore its literary history. READ MORE…

Fall 2015: Taking the Spaceship Back

September 19, 2018  |  in 30issues30days  |  by Charlie Ng Chak-Kwan

Time, the fourth dimension of our existence, threads through the whole Fall 2015 issue as its unifying motif.

The third quarter of 2015 is thorny with developments. On July 31, we announce the second edition of our international translation contest judged by Michael Hofmann (Poetry), Ottilie Mulzet (Fiction), and Margaret Jull Costa (Nonfiction—a new category), this time awarding a total of $4,500 in prizes. Technical Manager József Szabo (also one of the editors behind the fabulous Tumblr blog Writers No One Reads) completes a laborious site migration that has taken almost two years. Our website is now both adaptable to mobile devices and optimized for search engines. On October 1, I receive an invitation from The Guardian initiating a partnership that would see Asymptote simultaneously running our blog’s Translation Tuesday articles on their site for 76 weeks, starting from October 27. (Of the 11 Guardian Books Network Members announced on October 21, we are the only magazine dedicated to translation and also—I can’t help noting—the only one from Asia.) This turns out to be the first of three partnerships that we formalize in October (the other two being with PEN America and Lithub), all three of which we announce proudly via our first-ever Fortnightly Airmail, launched on October 29, thanks to then Communications Manager Matthew Phipps and then Graphic Designer Berny Tan (who valiantly turns around a new newsletter design within 24 hours after I veto the first). This inaugural newsletter doesn’t yet spotlight PEN/Heim grant winners (the first boatload of these would arrive on November 13). Instead, it carries Jennifer Croft’s essay “When the Author You Translate [i.e., Olga Tokarczuk] Gets Death Threats,” which Lithub republishes on their website on November 2. (We would also go on to be the first to excerpt Olga Tokarczuk’s 2018 International Man Booker Prizewinning Flights in our Winter 2016 edition before it hit bookstores anywhere.) October 2015 also ushers in our first-ever virtual event featuring Mexican author Albert Chimal’s “The Time-Traveller.” Originally composed in Spanish as a series of tweets, the English translation by George Henson, which also respects Twitter’s character limit of 140, is published twice: first, as a headliner in our Fall 2015 issue, and then via our English Twitter channel as a long string of tweets pushed out (by then Marketing Manager David Maclean) to the world over a span of 40 hours. If you were there for the tweetathon, thank you for being a part of the work. Here to introduce our Fall 2015 issue is Hong Kong editor-at-large Charlie Ng Chak Kwan.

If I were able to travel back to 2013 and meet my younger self, I would enthusiastically tell her that she was about to become part of a community devoted to breaking cultural and linguistic borders in the literary world and that she would never regret joining a journal whose mission was translating and publishing works written by people far and wide. It is unbelievable that I have now been a Hong Kong Editor-at-Large for Asymptote for more than five years. The many issues of Asymptote have seen me face a few life hurdles—graduating from my Ph.D., securing my first job as a translator, and becoming a full-time university teacher—and still I stay with Asymptote. Time definitely changes a lot of things—for good or for bad—but the ever-expanding archive of Asymptote tells me there are some things that remain constant, like the journal’s perseverance.

Time, the fourth dimension of our existence, threads through the whole Fall 2015 issue as its unifying motif. The issue’s pieces transport us to a wide range of times, from the Armenian genocide in Gostan Zarian’s “The Traveler and His Road” to the forensic anthropological investigation of the dead in Leila Guerriero’s “The Trace in the Bones”. We are not restricted by conventional time frames that confine our experience as words allow us to exist in the past, the present and the future simultaneously. The first line of Alberto Chimal’s “The Time Traveller” actually says it all: “Good morning, afternoon, evening, says the Time Traveller when his machine is moody and doesn’t ask him where (or to when) he’s going.” The Time Traveller’s trouble, in other words, is not where to go but rather the lack of a good temporal compass. Chimal’s story—comprised of a series of the Time Traveller’s wild and witty Tweets—portrays a compassionate titular character with ample knowledge of history and literature. Although its protagonist is no Gulliver—he is much more sophisticated than that 18th century traveller—Chimal’s story amuses and fascinates as much as Swift’s, even as it avoids the latter’s satiric bitterness. READ MORE…