Place: India

I Carved A Girl Of Stone: Nuzhat Abbas on Feminist, Decolonial, and Anti-Imperialist Translation

October 23, 2023  |  in Interviews  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas

What drives my work at trace is perhaps a desire to destabilize the spaces I was made to enter and reside in . . .

Since its inception in 2019, Tkaronto/Toronto-based trace press has published “literature that illuminates, in complex, beautiful and thought-provoking ways, contemporary and historical experiences of conflict, war, displacement, exile, migration, the environment, labour, and resistance.” Re-emerging after a brief hiatus during the pandemic, their first anthology River in an Ocean: Essays on Translation (2023) assembles emergent and experienced feminist translators, scholars, and writers from Palestine to Uganda, from Indonesia to Kashmir—spotlighted by, among others, Khairani Barokka, Suneela Mubayi, Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, and Yasmine Haj. In the foreword, the decolonialist historian Françoise Vergès describes the vestiges of imperialism, the dominance of the languages of Euro-American colonisers, the myths of globalisation, and the “hegemony of national languages” inflicted by neocolonial nation-states. Having read and reviewed the anthology myself, I think of it as a complex re-mapping of literary hemispheres “twisting through the atrocities of literary empires and post-colonial capitalism.”

In this interview, I asked trace press’ founding editor Nuzhat Abbas, a Zanzibar-born writer and critic of postcolonial mobilities and gender studies, about the literary publishing house she has founded; how independent presses can stay true to a transnational, anti-imperialist and decolonial feminist ethos; and writings from her archipelagic birthplace in East Africa and the Indian Ocean.

Alton Melvar M Dapanas (AMMD): Having founded trace press, in what ways do the values of decoloniality, anti-imperialism, feminism, and anti-racism occur as concrete practices in translation and in publishing? And what is the opposite of that?

Nuzhat Abbas (NA): I prefer to pose such questions to my writers and translators—to inquire how they, in their practice, think through such challenges, especially in relation to localized tensions and displacements, both historic and geographical. For example, trace is located on a forcibly white-settled and renamed space where Indigenous and Black resistance and creativity continues to resist and respond to histories of profound violence and displacement. As racialized im/migrant-settlers working with non-European literatures and languages, how do we ‘translate’ and write toward Black and Indigenous readers in the Americas, and toward each other, as people from the global majority, scattered around the globe, displacing each of our certainties? This is a question for me, a beginning question, one that can only be answered in practice—and differently—by each of the books we make and the conversations that emerge. Building space for these kinds of ‘after-publication’ conversations is very much part of what I want to create with trace. 

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Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

October 20, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Eva Wissting, MARGENTO, and Zohra Salih

The latest in literary news from India, Sweden, Spain, and Denmark.

This week, our editors bring news of commendations, intercultural exchanges, and champions of free speech that highlight the need for bold voices and acts of solidarity. 

Zohra Salih, Editor-at-Large, reporting from India

Winter is here—not just in the air outside, but within our hearts. One finds it hard to write about literature and culture with genuine excitement in times like these, when Gaza, already deeply wounded, is bleeding again with little hope in sight. It feels anachronistic to mention the many literary festivals and prizes that are scheduled for this winter, as if one is inhabiting two distinct worlds: one with cause for celebration, another for mourning. At the very least, it seems right to acknowledge this disparity, and to consider the very real responsibility of all literary enthusiasts in bridging this divide, in keeping our eyes and ears open, and in being willing to allow for other truths and realities to be translated as part of our own.

On that note, the JCB Prize for Literature has announced its longlist for 2023, featuring four works in translation. Simsim by Geet Chaturvedi, translated by Anita Gopalan, and I Named My Sister Silence by Manoj Rupda, translated by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar (who was himself longlisted for the prize previously), are both written originally in Hindi; The Nemesis, Manoranjan Byapari’s latest work, is translated from Bengali by V Ramaswamy, and it is also worth noting that this is the third time that the fiery writer has been featured on the longlist.

Perumal Murugan’s Fire Bird is also on the longlist, and was translated from the original Tamil into English by Janani Kannan. A professor of Tamil literature, Murugan’s works have garnered critical acclaim through translations, including Madhorubhagan (One Part Woman), his best-known work, which won the prestigious ILF Samanvay Bhasha Samman in 2015, and caused massive uproar amidst conservatives because of its bold and feminist themes—leading to the author briefly declaring that he was ‘dead’ and retired from writing until the Madras high court judgment unequivocally upheld his artistic freedom. Murugan’s profound and incisive explorations of caste and its entanglement in every rubric of Indian society have also rightly led to his book, Pyre, being longlisted for the International Booker Prize this year, as well as his receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award at the seventh edition of the Ooty Literary Festival, which wrapped up this October. READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: October 2023

October 16, 2023  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Daljinder Johal, George Newton, and Iona Tait

Discover new work from Venezuela, Poland and India!

In this month’s round-up, we present three works in singular styles. From Venezuela, Maria Pérez-Talavera gives us non-linear journal entries composed from a mental hospital. From Poland, modernist master Witold Gombrowicz puts his own spin on the Gothic tale, painting a psychologically sensitive portrait of a shifting society. And from India, some of the bold, experimental short stories of Rajkamal Chaudhary are gathered in a sharp and comic collection of unconventional plotlines and characters. Read on to find out more!

gombrowicz

The Possessed by Witold Gombrowicz, translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Fitzcarraldo, 2023

Review by Iona Tait, Executive Assistant

A haunted castle, a mad prince, a pair of doubles, and a clairvoyant who saves the day—Witold Gombrowicz’s The Possessed has all the quintessential trappings of nineteenth-century Gothic fiction. Originally released as a serial in the summer of 1939, The Possessed merges its classic motifs with mystery and a comedy of manners, offering a remarkably profound reflection on authenticity at a time when older Polish divisions of social classes were being transformed.

Neighboring the Gothic castle—that relic of “antiquity breathing its last” where a deranged prince and his cunning secretary reside—lies a manor-turned-boarding house. Mrs. Ocholowska, the landowner and member of a downwardly mobile minor nobility, receives guests across all social classes: the petit-bourgeois Councilor Szymczyk, nosy and bickering middle-class women, a curious academic known as Skolinski, and a working-class tennis coach and parvenu named Marian Leszczuk. The latter proves to be a formidable rival to the tennis superstar and spritely daughter of the landowner, Maja Ocholowska, who is at the novel’s outset engaged to the secretary.

Lesczuk and Maja, however, are not only an equal match on the court; they also exhibit an uncanny similarity in their gestures and ways of speaking. Simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by this similarity, the pair undergo a process of self-discovery together, journeying between the manor and the haunted castle, with intermittent getaways to Warsaw. READ MORE…

Affirmation and Erasure: On the Queer Stories of On the Edge

September 25, 2023  |  in Reviews  |  by Matilde Ribeiro

[N]ew and translated works have continued to explore the rich depths of how Hindi literature explores same-sex relationships and queer desire.

On The Edge by various authors, translated from the Hindi by Ruth Vanita, Penguin Random House India, 2023

“We all live in a prison of some kind,” Manoranjan, the protagonist of Sara Rai’s story “Kagaar Par,” tells his lover Javed, from whom he is separated both by barriers of class and religion, and by the glaring fact of social opposition to same-sex relationships. “Not being able to love openly is my prison. . . I know that it’s very hard for an ordinary man to understand my compulsions and to love a prisoner.” The story’s title, translated as “On The Edge,” lends its name to this anthology of translations from Hindi by Indian author, professor, and activist Ruth Vanita, and echoes the themes of queer desire and alienation that run through the collection.

This book comes amid what the Booker Prize-winning translator Daisy Rockwell has described as a “boomlet” in translations of modern Hindi literature—a boom in comparison to the previous dearth of translations, but one in which “so much remains untranslated and unpublished,” including key modern works. On The Edge, which includes modern and older stories, can in some ways be considered part of this boom, which is highlighting the variety and depth of Hindi literature. The story collection also comes at a time when same-sex relationships in India are under increased scrutiny—the Supreme Court is currently deciding a batch of petitions to expand existing marriage laws to include same-sex marriages—and in this context, it is also an attempt to unearth stories depicting queerness in Hindi literature

In this way, Vanita’s anthology makes a powerful statement against the frequent assertion that homosexuality is an aberration or alien to Indian culture. This view of Hindi literature as devoid of queer stories is a common one. In the introduction to this anthology, Vanita demonstrates how widespread this misreading is, quoting Namvar Singh, a revered Marxist critic of Hindi literature, who described homosexuality as “an exception, not a widespread practice,” and declared that “that is how it should be portrayed in literature.” He also derided authors working in English who, he claimed, were “trying to gain cheap popularity by glorifying this exception,” and cautioned the Hindi literary world against this. READ MORE…

My Absence In Those Words: Yogesh Maitreya on Anti-Caste Publishing and the Dalit Memoir

September 14, 2023  |  in Interviews  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas

The metaphorical liberation of the oppressed lies in being the voice, the author, and the producer of their stories . . .

Indian Dalit writer, translator, and publisher Yogesh Maitreya believes in the freeing impulse of literary translation: “a conscious and political decision and process [which can] reclaim the humanness of an oppressed person and make him a free man in the imagination of readers.” He problematises, however, the Anglophone literary production in India, denouncing the Brahminical hegemony that governs it. It comes as no surprise, then, that in Vernacular English: Reading the Anglophone in Postcolonial India (Princeton University Press, 2022), Akshya Saxena sketches Maitreya’s poetry as “self-defense,” operating on “an imperative to write in English” that emphasises language’s function in class and politics. Such writing pursues a continual question: how can the liberated Dalit writer exist within the linguistic imaginary of their former colonial rulers, the British, and the current neoliberal one, the Brahmins? “In writing in English, Maitreya not only takes ownership of a language but also enters a hegemonic discourse that has excluded him,” Saxena adds. It is in this very material condition that Maitreya established Panther’s Paw Publication in 2016, an anti-caste press specialising in original writings in English and translations from Indian languages—especially Marathi and Punjabi, based in the city of Nagpur, Maharashtra. 

In this interview, I conversed with Maitreya on his latest book, Water in a Broken Pot: A Memoir, out this year from Penguin Random House India; his translations of essays and poetry by Marathi-language Dalit writers; the centuries-old oral tradition of shahiri as music, cultural criticism, and poetry; and the archaic ethnopolitical ideologies of India’s caste system, epitomised in literature, literary translation, and publishing. 

Alton Melvar M Dapanas (AMMD): I love what you pointed out in your essay on the Dalit poet-filmmaker Nagraj Manjule: that the world sees India through the lens of writers from the Savarna upper-caste, such as Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, Agha Shahid Ali, and Pankaj Mishra. For those of us non-Indians in the global literary community, can you tell us how caste is deeply rooted in the Indian worldview and way of life—especially in literary, cultural, and knowledge production?

Yogesh Maitreya (YM): Well, so far, the writers from India who have been writing in English and who are known to the world come out of a class that represents 2 or 3 percent of the total population of India—the Brahminical class, who have had the advantage of being with the British administration and their cultural programs from the beginning. Hence, their command over English as both language and literature is overwhelmingly hegemonic. In their English writings, with borrowed sensibilities from the West, they undeniably percolate caste values, which is rooted in denying many people fundamental human rights and ascribing to a few individuals a superior position in society from the moment they are born. India is a linguistic rain-forest, and English, within it, is the most aspirational season to be in, for several decades now. 

English was an aspiration for me, too. However, I eventually had to consider that if my life—lived and imagined—is missing from this language, then I am essentially either not present in it, or I must have been erased. How come the Indian writers I had read for close to a decade did not communicate any sense or sensibilities of the life that was happening around me in their literature? I thought about it for a while—and then I realised that language is also a matter of confinement, in which some are allowed and made into a subject of intellectual contemplation and fascination, and others are denied their right to exist. This happens when the language is subjected to the practice of a certain class, where the majority of society is not present. As caste always gave privileged position to the Savarna class in cultural, literary, and knowledge production, it has been obvious that they have utterly failed to produce the sensibilities of the masses in their works of arts or literature. In fact, they could never do so because theirs is a life in total contradiction with Dalit-Bahujan masses. There is no desire in a caste society for assimilation. English literature from India by a Brahminical class is the most prominent example of it. 

AMMD: Given the current hegemonies haunting the literary landscape in India, in what ways has the anti-caste press you founded—Panther’s Paw Publication—been an answer? 

YM: Back in 2016, when I had thought of establishing a publishing house from my hostel room in Mumbai, I had a simple vision: to translate Marathi writers into English and publish them. Because Marathi is the language in which I have grown up, it was obvious for me to think of it with English, which came to me as an aspirational language of class, and also an indescribable form of freedom because I had read and seen people (mostly whites) being portrayed as “free” and “intellectuals” in it. I wanted to be both those things, and you can say that I also wanted to see my people, my history, and my emotions as being “free” in English from everything I was taught in caste society. English, excluding the writings of Brahmins and Savarna writers from India, felt much more respectful towards me, my history, and my people—hence why I chose it. I remember the first time I had written and read and recited my emotions in English, I felt a certain amount of separation from the drab life around me, and imagining or translating my life and the history of my people into English felt like a touch of liberation to me. 

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Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

August 18, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa, Marina García Pardavila, and Zohra Salih

The latest in festivals, awards, and literary developments from Spain, Mexico, and India!

This week, our editors are bringing some very exciting news from the ground. In India, a working-class writer has been lauded by the prestigious Kerala Literary Academy, and a new documentary has been unveiled with one of our favourite publishers, Seagull Books, as its subject. In Mexico, the country celebrates its most promising young writers with a week-long festival. And in Spain, a comics festival sees the medium undergoing some radical new developments—including, surprisingly, a venture into audiobooks. 

Zohra Salih, Editor-at-Large, reporting from India

Without a doubt, the most heartening literary news we received this month was that of Akhil Kavintarikath being feted by the Kerala Literary Academy. Akhil, at twenty-eight years old, won the academy’s annual Geetha Hiranyan endowment award for his 2020 short-story collection, Neelachadayan. This is an especially significant recognition because of Akhil’s unconventional background; he works as a JCB construction operator at a sand mine by night and a newspaper delivery man in the morning—quite contrary to the popular image of a young and upcoming novelist these days. As a fellow aspiring writer and friend commented while forwarding the link to the news to me, “Now we don’t have any excuses for not practicing our craft!” I completely agree, what better incentive can there be!

Akhil, who hails from a small village in Kannur in the southern state of Kerala, dropped out of school at the mere age of sixteen to support his family by doing odd jobs, all the while sustaining a deeply personal passion for literature and writing. He found inspiration in the mundane, managing to read a few lines here and there from the stories in the newspapers he would deliver, and then, with curiosity getting the better of him, filling in the blanks through inventive speculation. It was this curiosity to delve into the lives around him that drove him to write. This was further bolstered by his time spent working in the mines during night shifts, where the same imagination served as an antidote to the fear and loneliness that accompanied the dark.

Akhil has since authored Story of Lion in 2021, which draws from the ancient practice of theyyam, followed by Tharakanthan in 2022, which is inspired by the epic Ramayana; both are released by Mathrubhumi Books, one of Kerala’s foremost publishing houses. However, winning the prestigious honor has not meant that the tides have completely turned for Akhil, as the reality is that the award money is not enough for him to leave his job and commit to writing full time. This only underscores the need for more avenues in India to support such talent, through both monetary and social encouragement, lest we lose their brilliant voices to the margins.

Speaking of unconventional news, it is not often that one comes across a film celebrates an independent publishing house, so I was surprised to learn about the release of the documentary Of Books and Other Stories—but I was not surprised that the subject of this film is Seagull Books. I came across this publisher while working for the Jaipur Literary Festival in India back in 2019; Naveen Kishore, Seagull’s founder, was an important panelist for the event, and I had the privilege of witnessing his genius in person. While the saying does caution us against judging a book by its cover, I have to admit that I have often been drawn to literary works based on their aesthetics, and this is something that Seagull Publishers understands fully. Their commissioned books are works of art in themselves; you want to have one in your room as you would a gallery piece. Seagull works are distinctive, painstakingly curated, and the attention reflects in their design. The palette is astonishingly wide in breadth, with translations culled from across the world, on topics ranging from philosophy, art, theater, to literature. Fittingly, Seagull Books was awarded the Cesare De Michelis Prize this year for their contributions to the publishing world, and the film, directed by Pushan Kripalani, is an ode to this landmark literary institution, as well as to the joys of publishing and participating in the exchange of books across all barriers.

Marina García Pardavila, Editor-at-Large Spain, reporting from Spain

The Viñetas desde o Atlántico Comic Festival, which takes place in A Coruña (Spain) from August 7 to 13, has opened up its twenty-sixth edition to a striking response from the audience. Streets have been crowded and many visitors dashed to engage in the workshops, book discussions, exhibitions, and literary events organized in the city center, displaying an eager interest for the refreshing ventures of this artform—which will certainly continue to proliferate in the future. The festival highlights the narrative brilliance of authors such as David Rubín, who has been nominated four times for the Eisner Prize; the artistic couple Teresa Radice (screenwriter) and Stefano Turconi (illustrator); Emma Ríos; Xulia Vicente; Luis Yang; as well as the underground pioneers of the female scene—Ana Miralles, Roser Oduber, and Laura Pérez Vernetti. But it does not stop there; as the festival makes clear, times are changing in the comic world.

In collaboration with the actor Xosé Barato, David Rubín presented an audiobook of his last work O lume (The Fire)—his most personal comic up to this day. This new medium has the great potential to spark interest among new readers, who perhaps have not considered the comic, beyond its visual stimulation, as a thrilling opportunity to find good stories. It also fosters a more inclusive audience, as the acting work conveys a vivid feeling which mirrors the exact tone of the comic book. When the theater lit up, I witnessed an overwhelming applause, filling the room with excitement.

Laura Pérez Vernetti guided the exhibition surrounding the release of the Spanish poet Luis Alberto de Cuenca‘s comic, Vive la vida y otras poesías (To live life and other poems). The exhibition, curated by Asier Mensuro, originated from the question: “And why not meld the poetic language with the comic form?” Vernetti has a long track record in the visual translation of poetry into comic strips, having transformed Vladimir Mayakovski, Charles Baudelaire, Marcel Schwob, and Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry into eye-catching comics.

Going along with his astonishing passion for the Greco-Roman classics, Luis Alberto de Cuenca regards comics as a perfect medium wherein the clash between high and low culture is blurred. Despite its underground beginnings, the comic form has reached outstanding recognition in the last decade. In this regard, Vernetti remarked on the anti-academicist nature and thought-provoking power behind this hybrid art.

From this quick contact with the vibrant comic industry, I dare to claim that comics are in the process of reshaping our literary landscape.

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

In recent news, the diverse literary communities in Mexico have proved that they remain vibrant and dynamic forums for both established and emerging voices. Between August 12 and 18, the prestigious cultural center, Xavier Villaurrutia, will hold the Semana de Letras Emergentes (Week of Emerging Literature). The event will give center stage to young poets from all over Mexico: Leopoldo Orozco (Baja California), Mónica Licea (Jalisco), Fabián Espejel (Ciudad de México), Marjha Paulino (Oaxaca), Rebeca Favila (Chihuahua), Delmar Penka (Chiapas-Tseltal), Luis Alberto Mendoza (Colima), Diana Mireya Tun Batún (Quintana Roo-Maya),  Ángel Vargas (Guerrero), Diana Domínguez (Oaxaca-Ayuujk), Roberto López (Tamaulipas), Gabriela Muñoz (Sinaloa), Anaid Gálvez (Hidalgo), and Yolanda Segura (Querétaro). Though all of the presenters have already shown their promise with publications of work accesible online, the most famous name in the lineup is Yolanda Segura. Self-decribed as “a lesbian-queer transfeminist writer,” she has been at the forefront of contemporary queer poetry in Mexico, with three published books under her name and a raft of prestigious awards.

Segura is from Querétaro, the state that hosts the annual Hay Festival, which just announced its lineup for this year. Running between September 7-10, the Hay will feature diverse panels, books readings, and presentations with acclaimed writers from around the world. Among the most well-known participants this year is the Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra, whose short stories have been featured in Asymptote several times. But the ambitious event will also feature other famous individuals from beyond the literary world. One of them is the Mexican actor Gael García Bernal, known worldwide for starring in internationally acclaimed films such as Y tu mamá también and Amores Perros. Bringing together these cultural luminaries, this years’ Hay Festival is poised for an exciting and vivacious edition.

*****

Read more on the Asymptote blog:

The Dance of Śiva

August 9, 2023  |  in Essays, Retellings  |  by Kanya Kanchana

Śiva moves in dance, in sculpture, in painting, in poetry, in ritual, in physics . . . And still he is not done. What are we to do?

In our new column, Retellings, Asymptote presents essays on the translations of myths, those enduring stories that continue to transform and reincarnate. In this essay, Kanya Kanchana follows the whirling story of Śiva through dance, science, and myth.

“A life in which the gods are not invited is not worth living. It will be quieter, but there won’t be any stories.” 

– Roberto Calasso,
The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

There was sound and the sound was colossal. From within the pulsing sound, from the heart of the creation and dissolution of the cosmos, a single beat could be heard—ḍam. Incantatory, the beat started to repeat—ḍam ḍam ḍam ḍam ḍam ḍam ḍam. The beat was coming from the ḍamaru, a small handheld drum. There was a god and he was dancing. He was Śiva and he shook all the worlds. 

His matted locks flew wild. Gaṅgā, the holiest of rivers who was nestled in them, swelled in spate, tried in vain to keep him cool. The lambent crescent moon that adorned them, intoxicating soma, now glinted crazily. Vāsukī, the great serpent coiled around his blue, kālakūṭa-holding throat, reeled. Śiva’s locks were a forest (jaṭa, matted locks; aṭavī, forest, as the asura king Rāvaṇa sings).

Once upon a time, another forest: a forest of cedars (devadāru, wood of the gods, Cedrus deodara), into which Bhikṣāṭana Śiva, the mendicant, wanders naked, deep in despair for the sin of having killed Brahmā, his outheld palm an escutcheon, Brahmā’s skull still stuck to it somewhat like an alms bowl. The illustrious sages in the forest are not pleased to see this beautiful beggar who drives their women mad with desire. They send a tiger to shred him to bits; he flays the tiger and wears its bloody skin around his waist. They throw venomous serpents at him; he wraps them around himself as sinuous ornaments. They send a demon dwarf, the malign Muyalaka. Śiva steps on him and breaks his back. And then he dances. He dances until it dawns on them that he is none other than Śiva. 

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Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

August 4, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Areeb Ahmad, Charlie Ng, and José García Escobar

Dispatches from Hong Kong, Central America, and India!

In this week of dispatches from around the world, our Editors-at-Large report on literary awards, the establishment of a literature museum, and book fairs! From controversy surrounding the new museum in Hong Kong to the most recent Indian texts in translation, read on to learn more!

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

Public voices demanding for a museum of literature have been around for years in Hong Kong. On July 22, during the Hong Kong Book Fair 2023, Poon Yiu-ming, the Chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Writers, announced that the Museum of Hong Kong Literature would be inaugurated in April next year in Wan Chai with support from Chief Executive Lee Ka-chiu and the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Poon petitioned Lee last year on the establishment of a literary museum. However, the announcement has attracted controversy in the literary arena. 

The concept of a museum for Hong Kong literature was proposed by a group of local writers and scholars, including Dung Kai-cheung, Tang Siu-wa, Yip Fai, Liu Waitong, and Chan Chi-tak, among others, who formed the “Hong Kong Literature Museum Advocacy Group,” in 2009. A signed petition that successfully solicited signatures from hundreds of local and international Chinese writers and scholars was published in Ming Pao, which proposed to establish a literary museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District. Since the suggestion was not adopted by the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority then, the Advocacy Group proceeded to establish the House of Hong Kong Literature as a non-governmental organization for promoting and preserving Hong Kong literature.

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Translation Tuesday: “Broken Dreams” by Homvati Devi

July 11, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Tanvi Srivastava

Thoughts swirl in Gafoor’s mind. Pakistan...? I wonder how it will be.

This Translation Tuesday, we deliver a provincial story by Homvati Devi, a writer celebrated in her time, but since sadly overlooked. Following the daily routine of a junk shop keeper as he bears witness to his neighbors dreams of a better life in Pakistan, Devi beautifully captures a nation’s psyche – restless and uncertain– on the precipice of change. Hear translator Tanvi Srivastava’s first impression of Broken Dreams: “I found this story particularly interesting because it is a ‘partition story’—but set miles away from the borders of newly established Pakistan. It is one of the few stories I have read of the time which grapples with the critical question of citizenship and choice.”

Gafoor runs a junk shop; he travels across the city, from home to home, gathering unwanted items. He buys and sells broken boxes, punctured canisters, torn old blankets, discarded glass vials, cracked soap dishes, used brushes, dirty bottles, and so on. He even sells old mosquito nets and raincoats. Fine-quality objects—like flower vases, vacuum flasks, and toy vehicles—often fall into his hands, either discarded by rich Hindu households, or cajoled off memsahibs.

Over the last few days, work at his shop has increased substantially and so has his income. Those migrating to Pakistan are anxious to sell off their belongings. Gafoor promises to sell their items for more than they are worth, and so they end up giving all their junk to him. Soon his shop is crowded with broken vessels, old beds, musical instruments like tablas, footballs, wooden toys, used shoes and sandals; an unimaginable array of objects—from old burqas to a set of balance scales and weights; from damaged bird cages to nickel and brass jewellery. On the day of the weekly market, Gafoor’s shop is the busiest amongst all the shops on the mile-long road; he makes the most sales.

A traveller to Pakistan asks him, ‘Tell me, miya, how are you?’

‘I am well, by the grace of god,’ Gafoor immediately responds. The reason—the Hindu families he knows trust him implicitly; they agree to whatever price he quotes. To argue with Gafoor, people soon say, is to shoot oneself in the foot.

He knows how to keep his customers happy. He thrusts two cardamom pods into a child’s hand; he unwraps the shawl from his shoulders and lays it on the ground for his customers to sit on; he takes the trouble to arrange a paan for someone else. And in this manner, he reassures those who come to sell to him: ‘Ajji, I will recover at least two rupees from the torn pieces of this mat; this broken spittoon will sell for a full two and a half rupees; and spending twenty paise worth of polish on these sandals will make them as good as new.’

Gafoor rambles on, convincing people he will sell their items for a considerable sum before they leave for Pakistan.

And over there? Over there—it is heaven on earth; they will be given the best— beautifully decorated houses with electric fans and quality furniture, a retinue of servants, shining cars, the finest jobs. Those who stand on the margins of society today will be in a position of power tomorrow, enjoying the luxuries of life, marching ahead.

Hearing such tempting tales convinces many to sell off even the items they can easily carry, like handheld mirrors, cups and plates, knives and forks, coats and quilts.

Thoughts swirl in Gafoor’s mind. Pakistan…? I wonder how it will be. And the cities where so many people are rushing off to? Leaving their homes and jobs—they aren’t stupid, are they? They are all well-educated and intelligent. They say they’ll get large houses and bungalows to live in, jobs in prominent positions. An ordinary telegraph clerk or postman today will become a collector or commissioner tomorrow in Pakistan. Those staying in slums today will get palaces to live in, those who walk barefoot today will fly in motor vehicles, and then there’s me—despite twisting the truth, I still take home a pittance. Oh, the expenses have become unbearable. And Hamida doesn’t stop nagging me—get a necklace made for me, and so on. As if we’ll need such things over there—a land where gold is available at the price of silver. Here, even after slaving for a full year, one can only afford a nose ring worth a gram of gold. We’ve heard that the Congress party will make houses for the poor here; but a house is a house. Maybe they’ll build something better than a thatched hut, perhaps covering it with tin sheets or even levelling the roof flat. But in front of the palatial bungalows over there, what is a mere house?

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The 2023 PEN/Heim Grantees Talk Translation: Part III

June 5, 2023  |  in Essays  |  by Margaret Litvin, Noor Habib, Priyamvada Ramkumar, and Zara Khadeeja Majoka

. . .to rely not on formulaic logic but the magical leaping flame that brings to life static words on a page, that defamiliarizes. . .

In this three-part series, Asymptote has asked the 2023 PEN/Heim grantees to talk about their work in progress; their responses, brimming with excitement, conviction, and connection, are a testament to how much translators put themselves into their labor. Through the varied approaches and languages, they share the important commonality of surety: that the work they’ve been entrusted with has an immense potential to illuminate our reality, enlarge our world, and enrich our experiences of literature.

For this final instalment, Margaret Litvin is moved by the living mind behind the words; Priyamvada Ramkumar renders a vivid polyphony of suffering and survival; and co-translators Noor Habib and Zara Khadeeja Majoka work together on poems that both gather and transcend meaning.

Margaret Litvin on Khalil Alrez:

At first it was the rhythm of his sentences: polished and wry, leisurely but not ornamented, like no Arabic prose style I had seen. Next it was the Russianisms: what were all these references to Chekhov, Turgenev, and Bondarchuk doing in contemporary Damascus, as if tailor-made for my research on the literary legacies of Arab-Soviet ties? Finally, it was the personality of Syrian novelist Khalil Alrez himself, glimpsed through every gleaming line. Who else could write such a lovable and quirky novel while escaping from bombed-out Damascus suburbs through Turkey and Greece, eventually completing it in a refugee shelter in Brussels? Who else, well aware of Russia’s role in the war, would set that novel in a fictional zoo run by a Russian former journalist named Victor Ivanitch, and furnish it with a wall newspaper, two wolves, three eagles, a hyena, an Afghan hound, and her friend the poodle Moustache? Khalil and I spoke over Zoom, and for a while I told myself I was just asking questions, not preparing to translate the book. But who was I kidding? The Russian Quarter had captivated me; I needed to share it.

Keeping the Syrian civil war in the background for most of the novel, The Russian Quarter reads nothing like a news dispatch. The action stays close to the unnamed narrator and his Russian-speaking girlfriend Nonna, who live in a rooftop room inside the zoo, next to rebel-held Ghouta. The book’s moral center is a giraffe. Time plays Proustian games, uncoiling spirals of memory. The virtuosic opening paragraph sets up the tension between the narrator’s mounting anxiety (his girlfriend is late in a war zone) and his cool descriptive eye:

On the roof of the zoo in the Russian Quarter, my 14-inch television, balanced on its table near the giraffe’s snout, was showing an archival soccer match between Spain and Uruguay. The rumble of nearby mortar fire had not stopped since early morning; my tea had gone cold waiting for the apple fritters baked by Denis Petrovitch, the clarinet teacher at the Higher Institute of Music, as I sprawled next to the giraffe watching tiny black-and-white goals filmed in Madrid fifty years ago. The artillery was shelling neighboring Ghouta from the orchards of the Russian Quarter. But my ears were trained on the long, still-empty staircase behind the couch on which I lay, expecting it to fill with the sound of Nonna’s elegant footsteps at any moment. She had gone to the cultural center in downtown Damascus to visit her dad. The full moon shone on me, and the screen’s silver light reflected brightly in the giraffe’s wide black eyes and flowed over her thick-fuzzed lips, which nearly touched the long-vanished players, the long-vanished spectators, and the long-vanished grass of the soccer pitch. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

May 26, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Areeb Ahmad, Eva Wissting, and MARGENTO

Literary news from India, Sweden, France, and Belgium!

This week, our editors are bringing some fascinating news from their respective regions: the controversy surrounding a new prize for translated literature; the newest additions to the Swedish Academy (which adds two extra voices to the future electors of the Nobel Prize for Literature); and the latest visual art exhibitions and programmes that study the intersection between image and text. Read on to find out more!

Areeb Ahmad, Editor-at-Large, reporting from India

Earlier in May, the winner of the inaugural edition of the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation was announced to be Musharraf Ali Farooqi, for his translation of Siddique Alam’s The Kettledrum and Other Stories from the Urdu. The book will be published next year by Open Letter, and an excerpt is available now on Words Without Borders. The prize, however, has had its fair share of controversy over the last few weeks regarding another author, Nandini Krishnan, who had appeared twice on the shortlist. According to her, the prize had confidentially informed her that she was chosen as the winner for her translation of Charu Nivedita’s Raasa Leela from the Tamil and then asked for more excerpts; upon receiving the text, however, they then withdrew the win, citing “reputational risk and potential liability.” Krishnan in turn withdrew both of her books from consideration after revealing the incident, and the prize eventually released a statement; the announcement of the winner was then postponed from early April to mid-May.

Zubaan, a small feminist press that only publishes women, recently released The Keepers of Knowledge: Writings from Mizoram, edited by Hmingthanzuali and Mary Vanlalthanpuii—the fourth entry in a series of anthologies that seek to highlight work from Northeastern states of India, which are often neglected from the mainstream. The project is in collaboration with the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, and the four anthologies so far have featured writing in English and in translation—poetry, prose, essays—as well as visual art. It is significant in collating various indigenous literatures and making them available to a wider audience, going far beyond the limits of an archive. The fifth entry, We Come from Mist: Writings from Meghalaya, edited by Janice Pariat, is currently in the works and expected to be out in a few months. Zubaan has also consistently championed Indian women writers in translation, and two other notable recent releases were Andhar Bil by Kalyani Thakur Charal, translated from the Bengali by Ajit Biswas, and The Stomach that Chewed Hunger and Other Stories, edited by Bama and translated from the Tamil by Ahana Lakshmi. READ MORE…

As Close to 600 BC As We Are to Tomorrow: A Conversation with Saudamini Deo

May 8, 2023  |  in Interviews  |  by Tristan Foster

The role of the translator is to madden a language, drive it insane, do unimaginable things with it.

Writer and translator Saudamini Deo is expanding the English-speaking world’s understanding of Hindi literature, working to translate forgotten works by avant-garde literary outsiders into English for the first time. Several years after she began this series of translations with a collection of short stories by Bhuwaneshwar, the second book in the project, Traces of Boots on Tongue by Rajkamal Chaudhary, is being published by Seagull Books as part of their India List series. 

I first spoke to Deo about her translation project in 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The writers she was interested in were almost totally unknown outside of India, and I was curious to know what it meant to have them recovered, translated, and presented to an English readership navigating life in the twenty-first century. We exchanged questions and answers while both of our countries were in strict lockdowns—her in India, me in Australia. In the fog of fear and uncertainty that had overcome us, I wondered if Deo’s project was a way of coping with the immediate reality of living through something lifted straight from a history book—would it last beyond those early days of COVID-19 or was it a mere distraction?  

Three years later, the project has not only outlasted lockdowns, it has expanded and matured, taking on the shape that Deo had envisioned from the beginning: where Bhuwaneshwar’s stories are dreamy and deeply pessimistic, Chaudhary’s stories face the concrete absurdity and hardships of the everyday head on—their subjects span time and culture. As Deo states in her introduction: “Written more than 70 years ago, the stories sometimes read like they were written just this morning.”

Chaudhary wrote at a time when India was still a young nation, yet its promises of a future filled with hope and opportunity were slipping further and further beyond the horizon; as Deo puts it, it was a “world where there is no longer either god or morality, not even the desire for it.” Maybe, regardless of time and place, we always feel as though the riches we were promised never actually eventuate.

I asked Deo about the act of translation, the direction her translation project will take from here, Chaudhary the writer, and the parallels between his time and the present moment.

Tristan Foster (TF): Your English translation of Traces of Boots on Tongue by Rajkamal Chaudhary is due to be published by Seagull Books. What, in your view, makes Chaudhary significant to a modern English readership?

Saudamini Deo (SD): I think, in the last few decades, there has been some interest in Indian writing and Indian writers in the anglophone world. However, this interest or exposure is, to a large extent, limited to diaspora writers and writing. It’s about time that India is no longer seen or understood as a mere background to its diaspora. It’s not just a reference point or historical source, it’s a living and evolving country where people live fully human and complex lives, and is just as interesting or incomprehensible as anywhere else in the world. Rajkamal Chaudhary takes his readers through this maddening incomprehensibility of the modern Indian existence in the 1950s and 1960s. And India is not just about India much the same way as Europe is not just about Europe. It’s part of the entire world, it’s part of the reason why our present reality looks and feels the way it does. Chaudhary’s work would be significant to anyone interested in arriving at a fuller understanding of the human existence in these mad modern times. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

April 21, 2023  |  in Dispatches  |  by Areeb Ahmad, Eva Wissting, and MARGENTO

Literary news from Sweden, Romania, and India!

In this week’s updates on world literature, our Editors-at-Large bring you updates on literary awards and interdisciplinary festivals! From applied computer science for literature to books for Dalit History Month, read on to find out more!

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

Earlier this month, Norwegian novelist Vigdis Hjorth was announced the recipient of the inaugural Sara Danius Foundation Prize. Vigdis Hjorth is one of Norway’s most prominent writers, with over twenty novels and several young adult books published over the last forty years. English-language readers know her from titles like Is Mother Dead (2022) and Will and Testament (2019), both available in translation by Charlotte Barslund. Is Mother Dead was longlisted for the International Booker Prize, and Will and Testament was longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award in the USA for best translated novel. The Danius Foundation emphasized Vigdis Hjorth’s “groundbreaking and magnificent narrative that disrupts the order with style and clarity” in explaining their motivation for awarding Hjorth the Sara Danius Foundation Prize. The award consists of SEK 50,000 and an artwork depicting Sara Danius, painted by Stina Wirsén. Sara Danius was a Swedish scholar of literature and aesthetics, a literary critic and an essayist, and the first female permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy. After her passing in 2019, her family created the Sara Danius Foundation, with the purpose of supporting female pioneers in literature, humanities research, criticism, essay writing, journalism, and artistic activities. This year’s award ceremony will take place at the Sven-Harry Art Museum in Stockholm on May 3. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

March 3, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa, Areeb Ahmad, and Wambua Muindi

Dispatches from Mexico, Kenya, and India!

This week at Asymptote, our Editors-at-Large report on book fairs, Annie Ernaux’s visit to India, and celebrations of International Mother Language Day all around the world. From the efforts of Trans activists and performance artists in Mexico to a recent multilingual anthology published by Olongo Africa, read on to learn more!

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

The literary community in Mexico City has been vibrant and active in the first months of 2023. Between February 23–March 6, the Feria Internacional del Libro del Palacio de Minería took place in Mexico City. This forty-fourth edition of one of the biggest international book fairs in Mexico brought together writers, scholars, editors, and artists from all over the world. They gathered in the historic downtown to host readings, panels, and roundtables on literature, social sciences, and politics.

There were more than a hundred events, ranging from book presentations to movie screenings to workshops for children. In one panel, Asymptote contributor Tedi López Mills presented an edited anthology of her poetry, published by the National University of Mexico in its pamphlet series Material de lectura. The publication will bring López Mills’s poetry to a wider public. In another event, Cuban poet Odette Alonso moderated a talk with Lía García and Jessica Marjane, two Trans performance artists and organizers that have been at the forefront of the movement for Trans rights and recognition in Mexico. García and Marjane founded the National Network of Trans Youth, which has strengthened the community bonds among Trans young people in Mexico. García has acquired international recognition, having been invited to perform and read to institutions outside of Mexico, among them Harvard University and the University of Illinois’s Humanities Research Center.

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