Place: Japan

What’s New in Translation: February 2025

February 10, 2025  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Eamon McGrath, Marcel Krueger, Rosalia Ignatova, and Xiao Yue Shan

February's latest in translation.

In this month’s round-up of recent translations, we present eleven titles from Japan, Iraq, Colombia, Indonesia, Austria, Ukraine, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Slovenia. From neorealist postwar fiction to the graphic novel, stories capturing the tides of time and the turbulent eras of violence, narratives of migration and mystery, innovations of the short fiction form and unconventional looks into classic tales . . . these titles are invitations into hidden places and profound sights, stark realities and dreamy visions.

aperfday

A Perfect Day to be Alone by Nanae Aoyama, translated from the Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood, Other Press, 2025

Review by Rosalia Ignatova

Nanae Aoyama’s short novel, A Perfect Day to Be Alone, is the English-language debut of its lauded young author, offering a delicate exploration of existential drift through the eyes of Chizu, a restless twenty-year-old, and Ginko, her elderly relative who takes her in for a year. While the narrative is sparse on action, it is rich in atmospheric detail, focusing on the quiet moments that shape their unlikely cohabitation.

READ MORE…

Winter 2025: Highlights from the Team

February 3, 2025  |  in News  |  by Anna Rumsby, Carissa Coane, Daniel Yadin, Devi Sastry, Ellen Elias-Bursac, Michelle Chan Schmidt, and Sayani Sarkar

Dive into our new issue with these choice recommendations from our amazing intercontinental team!

Translated by Samuel Bollier, Jurj Salem’s “At the Circus” is a discombobulatingly charming, disarmingly hair-raising tale that elides joy and frustration, obfuscates reality and performance, and makes irony sincere. Things are not what they seem, which renders Bollier’s excellent translation of Salem’s easygoing prose all the more stirring; there, suited in the circus, we must imagine S. happy.

I’ve had the chance to read Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng’s breathstopping beautiful self-translations in The Margins before; these two pieces in the new issue exude that same intrinsic conscience of precarious simultaneity, numbered and reversed, punctuated with “+” signs, a “delirious net of ten thousand dewdreams.” Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng’s wordly creations turn from imagistic manifestation into pure interpretation.

Samuel’s parodic brilliance in his essay “Poets of Mirror Hatred” yields real laughter in an entirely serious, paradoxically internal essay about the division between the social and the cultural in poetic personas. What language exists for that which must not be expressed, at all costs, lest the self split? How must the reader read repression? Linking Kafka to two generations of modern Korean poetry, Samuel ends by critiquing the bright, hegemonic Asian American discourse of pain, transformed by their loudness into white noise: “To want more representation of Asian-American faces in American literature is to dream of your own cage.”

When Brandon Breen translates that “writing is obliquitous, but also ubiquitous,” I return to Ubah Cristana Ali Farah’s original contrast, “obliqua” versus “ubiqua,” in “The House of Termites,” a juxtaposition that encapsulates the attractions of Ali Farah’s style. By obliquely rebounding between various writers of exile, from Baldwin to Said to Kristeva, Mernissi, and Zambrano, Ali Farah’s essay makes a sensual ubiquity of this obliquitous displacement. To misappropriate Baldwin, you need strength to live in the “house of termites”; another kind of strength to let the termites get at it. Both strengths inhabit this essay.

Zhou Junyi’s conversation with filmmaker Tan Pin Pin crystallizes a certain vision of Singapore: a prism of public languages, spaces, and systems that shift as the microwave’s glass plate spins. I particularly love how the interview conveys the sounds of Singapore, and how we intellectualize it through subtitular structures, and formal and editorial decisions. Tan’s work lies in the instant before the intellectualization: “People will always know when a guest of honor arrives, but they don’t know what it feels like before the guest of honor arrives or even question why we have a guest of honor in the first place.”

—Michelle Chan Schmidt, Senior Assistant Editor READ MORE…

Our Winter 2025 Issue Has Landed!

January 23, 2025  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

New forms abound in our bountiful 14th anniversary issue, from Robin Munby’s “parasite poem” to Elsa Gribinski’s absurdist diary entries. 

With Trump’s inauguration, the world’s strange turn continues apace in the new year and the old ways of apprehending reality are struggling, as ever, to keep up. As Olivier Domerg puts it succinctly: “What can language do face to face with the inertia and the power of something?” This pressing question finds an enjoinder in #NewForms, our 14th anniversary issue, featuring never-before-published writing from 32 countries, by some of the most beloved names in world literature—Osip Mandelstam, Natsume Sōseki, Andrey Platonov, Agustín Fernández Mallo, and Damion Searls in our wildcard feature on new forms. Organized in memory of the recently deceased postmodernist Robert Coover, this Special Feature highlights works that transgress the boundaries of the literary form, opening our eyes to new aesthetic and ethical possibilities. From Robin Munby’s “parasite poem” whose hyperbolic language tests the boundary between translation and original authorship, to the laconic and darkly absurd diary entries of Elsa Gribinski’s “A Finger of Blue,” these pieces chafe against the strictures of traditional form (the poem, the journal, the letter) even as they pay homage to the artists who have shaped them.This spirit of formal ambition is by no means limited to our Special Feature. After all, “as the reality of each time changes,” says Fernández Mallo in an illuminating interview, “so does the notion of realism that the works of each era explore.” Thus, Vietnamese poet Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng splices words and fragments into a manifesto for a new writing and both Macedonian novelist Lidija Dimkovska and Syrian author Jurj Salem put their fingers on an unexplored aspect of the contemporary condition—the urge to retreat from society—and envision new ways of being. Elsewhere in Fiction, Johanna Sebauer’s Pickled presents the anatomy of a cancelling in rural Austria, when a journalist splashed by acid pickle juice launches a media crusade against Big Gherkin. Notable among our nonfiction entries is frequent contributor Ubah Cristina Ali Farah’s The House of Termites, a slow-burning, lyrical meditation on her “unstoppable nomadism,” which finds an echo in award-winning Singaporean director Tan Pin Pin’s many evolving versions of banjia (Moving House) from the Visual section. Finally, in our Criticism lineup, Tomoé Hill trawls the thrilling concepts—around truth, and storytelling, and immortality—buried in Douglas Penick’s The Oceans of Cruelty, while Samuel notes the arrival of a new wave of talented young Korean poets on the shores of the United States and distills the lessons their work might hold for their Asian American counterparts.

For all the world really. The lessons that Samuel comes away with apply just as well to those not writing from a hegemonic position but who have to pitch themselves to a readership unfamiliar with their culture. It’s a conundrum we know all too well, having been the first point of contact between countless authors and readers in our fourteen years’ of work in world literature. If you’ve personally benefitted from the “Asymptote effect” (which former President of ALTA Aron Aji cited in 2017 as one of the key factors contributing to the ever-growing reception of international literature in translation), we hope you’ll consider standing with us as we enter our fifteenth year. The best way to support us is to sign up as a sustaining member from as little as USD5 a month. If you are able to afford it, come aboard as a masthead member, as wonderful readers like Yann Martel have done. Finally, if you would like to be part of an upcoming issue or even our dynamic volunteer team, check out our submission guidelines (Korean translators, take note: submissions to our upcoming paid Special Feature, organized in partnership with LTI Korea, closes Feb 15) and our latest recruitment drive (we’re on a lookout for a new Nonfiction Editor, among others; deadline: Feb 2). Thank you for your readership and your support, which have made this all worthwhile.

READ THE ISSUE

GET INVOLVED

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

January 3, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Bella Creel, Carol Khoury, and MARGENTO

Literary updates from Japan, Palestine, and airports in Ireland and France.

Only three days into 2025, the Asymptote team is hard at work reporting on literature across the globe. In the first roundup of the year, our staff introduces a thirty-one day reading challenge of Japanese short stories, the liminal thoughts of a busy poet in European airports, and a look back on the numerous achievements of Palestinian writers throughout 2024.

Bella Creel, Blog Editor, Reporting from Japan

It’s often said that short stories and collections thereof sell poorly in the publishing market—and what a shame! There’s something about the short story, its attention to detail, the palpable shift between acts, the transience of characters and settings, that has made up some of the most impressive pieces of literature. Particularly in Japan, the short story has historically been a dominant mode of writing, pioneered by the “father of the Japanese short story” Ryunosuke Akutagawa, and is still today one of the most common genres seen in bookstores around the country.

To our delight, much of this oeuvre has been translated into English, and Read Japanese Literature (RJL), an extensive online resource for Japanese literature, has created a list of thirty-one Japanese short stories in translation available to read for free online—one for every day of January—in celebration of #JanuaryinJapan. These stories range from the great Akutagawa’s “Dreams,” a chilling and meandering tale of a paranoid artist, to Kenji Miyazawa’s satirical “The Restaurant of Many Orders,” an Alice-in-Wonderland-esque commentary on posturing and westernization following the Meiji period. Many of these stories and authors are also discussed in detail in the RJL Podcast, including deep dives into authors such as Osamu Dazai and Izumi Suzuki, historical context, and more. 

If this is your first time hearing of this month’s reading challenge, don’t despair. We’re only three days into the month, and it won’t take you long to catch up—the stories are short, after all.

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

2024 has been a tragic year for the Palestinian; still, Palestinian authors made significant strides in the literary world, garnering prestigious awards and recognition on both regional and international stages.

In April, imprisoned novelist Basim Khandaqji won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the Booker Prize) for his novel A Mask, the Colour of the Sky. His brother Youssef and publisher Rana Idris accepted the award in Abu Dhabi. Nabil Suleiman, chair of the judging committee, confirmed that the decision was unanimous. Moroccan writer Yassin Adnan, who hosted the ceremony, emphasized that Khandaqji’s win highlights literature’s ability to transcend borders.

READ MORE…

The It Girl in Her Own Words: Helen O’Horan on Translating Izumi Suzuki

December 19, 2024  |  in Book Club, Interviews  |  by Bella Creel

I wanted the translation to feel more emotionally driven, and that’s what I prioritized.

In her first novel to be published in English, the counterculture icon Izumi Suzuki draws from her real-life experiences to craft a musical, vulnerable portrait of nonconformism during a tumultuous era in Japan. From passion to nihilism, dreaminess to self-destruction, Set My Heart on Fire is unafraid of contradiction in its approach to the self, inscribing mind and body in all of its varying desire and directions. As our final Book Club selection for November, Suzuki proves to be a particularly resonant writer for contemporary readers in her audacious pursuit of pleasure and mutability in identity, all told in a vivid voice conjured by translator Helen O’Horan. In this interview, O’Horan speaks to us about how Suzuki channels a sense of disconnection, her knack for performativity, and the centrism of human relationships in her literary work.

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 USD20 per book; once you’re a member, join our Facebook group for exclusive book club discussions and receive invitations to our members-only Zoom interviews with the author or the translator of each title.   

Bella Creel (BC): How did you initially discover Izumi Suzuki’s work, and what drew you to her writing?

Helen O’Horan (HOH): I first worked on a short story for Suzuki’s collection, Terminal Boredom, just before the pandemic. I joined the project relatively late; by then, the reports had been written and the research done, so I want to credit the other translators and the publisher. That’s how I first learned about her work.

After that story, I really got into her writing—the timing was significant too. During the pandemic, I found myself feeling increasingly disconnected from my mind and body. My work as a translator wasn’t disrupted much since most of my clients are outside the United Kingdom, and it’s all online, but I started feeling like my mind and body were splitting apart.

That sense of disconnect reminded me of Suzuki’s writing—she often describes her body as something separate from her mind. Her work resonated with me at that moment, though of course, that’s just my interpretation. READ MORE…

Announcing Our November Book Club Selection: Set My Heart on Fire by Izumi Suzuki

November 28, 2024  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Bella Creel

Izumi feels emotions at their extremes, and she considers ideas to their ends.

When the cult writer Izumi Suzuki debuted in the English language with stunning, subversive short stories of counterculture and fantasy, critics and readers alike were astounded by her utterly individual voice, speaking candidly about emotional heights and lows, womanhood, and the chaotic world of drugs, music, and dreams in which her narrators found themselves. Now, we are given the chance to learn more from Suzuki’s own tumultuous life in the newly published autofiction, Set My Heart on Fire, written in the same mesmerizing, phantasmagoric tone of brusqueness and vulnerability that gave reality to her imagination. As our November Book Club selection, this novel enlivens the sharp mind, loves, and frivolities of a woman who sought and fought for her individuality, as well as the decades in which Japan was also undergoing changes of both revel and devastation.

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 USD20 per book; once you’re a member, join our Facebook group for exclusive book club discussions and receive invitations to our members-only Zoom interviews with the author or the translator of each title.   

Set My Heart on Fire by Izumi Suzuki, translated from the Japanese by Helen O’Horan, Verso, November 2024

Strung-out bass, clunky keys, psychedelic vocals. Abundant patterns, colors, and substances. Dancing, libating, popping, fucking. The groovy, knocked-out backdrop to 1960s Japan. In Honmoku, a district in Yokohama known for its American military base, Japanese youth had reveled in the abundance of American-influenced music, rock and roll, and rebellion, fueled by the financial prosperity of the “Golden Sixties” and its reigning youthful, nonconformist spirit. Izumi Suzuki, a prolific science fiction writer in the late 1970s, moved to Tokyo in 1969 with a year remaining to soak in that rhythm, as in the following decade, Japan would face the first hint of its coming economic breakdown as GDP growth slowed significantly during the global oil crisis. The former revelers, strung out and blissed out, were suddenly thrust into a decade of fading glory and no direction.

Izumi Suzuki’s latest work in English, translated by British linguist Helen O’Horan, is a novel titled Set My Heart on Fire—a notable deviation from the original title’s reference to The Doors’ “Light My Fire.” Song-inspired titles are a near-constant in Suzuki’s oeuvre, and her first novel in translation is no exception, with each chapter taking its name from a track from the sixties. While the references are upheld throughout much of the translation, O’Horan’s choice to alter the title better reflects the broader, underlying sense of desperation—for a dying age, a lost youth—and self-destruction that runs through the novel. READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: November 2024

November 11, 2024  |  in Reviews  |  by Eva Dunsky, Jonathon Atkinson, Rachel Stanyon, and Xiao Yue Shan

Discover new work from Denmark, Mexico, Palestine, Spain, Argentina, Japan, France, and Taiwan!

In this month’s review of newly released titles, we’re looking at works from Denmark, Mexico, Palestine, Spain, Argentina, Japan, France, and Taiwan. From a haunting volume of ecopoetics to the first book in an acclaimed metaphysical septology, from powerful anticolonial verses to a meditation on the art of translating, read on for some of the best work being released now in English!

Balle CALCULATION vol1 rgb

On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) by Solvej Balle, translated from the Danish by Barbara J. Haveland, New Directions, 2024

Review by Rachel Stanyon

After an unremarkable day spent on a business trip in Paris, Tara Selter is enjoying breakfast in her hotel when it strikes her that it is yesterday again. In the first book of Solvej Balle’s seven-part On The Calculation of Volume, Tara’s eighteenth of November begins repeating itself.

What possibilities exist upon the dawning of an old day? Are there wrongs to right, missed opportunities to seize, risks to take or temper? Balle’s heroine does not seem to perceive any such problems or desires; she likes her fairly routine job as an antiquarian book dealer, and works alongside her husband, Thomas, whom she loves. She does not seem to want for nor regret anything, and has blind faith in Thomas, who believes her when she tells him about her repeating days (at least the first umpteen times).

So why has her time “fallen apart”, and what can be gleaned from observing this procession of almost identical days—slowly, meticulously, rhythmically—through the diary Tara keeps? (In this version of eternal return, some of Tara’s physical imprints on the world remain indelible.) Book I details a year (the first of many?) spent haunting the all-too familiar patterns of her husband, all the while lost in loneliness and musing on the volume of her existence. Is she an all-consuming “beast, a pest” or a “tiny monster in an immense space”? READ MORE…

Rudderless in the samidare-rain: On Naoko Fujimoto’s Reinterpretation of Heian Period Japanese Woman Poets

September 25, 2024  |  in Reviews  |  by Tiffany Troy

. . . Fujimoto has rendered her translations to “restore some of the freedom of form in which these original works were made.”

09/09 Nine Japanese Female Poets / Nine Heian Waka Poems, translated from the Japanese by Naoko Fujimoto, Toad Press/Veliz Books, 2024 

My parents were criticized for allowing a girl to study advanced language skills and piano lessons–for what–“Why don’t you keep your daughter in Nagoya?” Some teachers looked at me saying, “You are not even the smartest, nor a boy.”

Have you ever wished to be a boy? And have you ever interrogated the root of that wish? Perhaps you have been told by your family members that a woman’s role is not to utter garbage-talk like a hen pooping. Or perhaps your family’s insistence that you get married off has grown more insistent over the years. Maybe it’s shameful to admit that you’ve never been seated at the center of the table, that you’ve internalized a certain misogyny, or that you live in a society that has instated men as the heads of households, as breadwinners and intellectual superiors—not because they are smarter, but because they were given the opportunity to pursue their education.

This was the case for the men and women in my grandparents’ generation, who grew up under the Japanese occupation of Taiwan and the Confucian teachings that compare the “tiny man” (the scoundrel) with the “women.” I grew up learning about the Nineteenth Amendment and the Declaration of the Rights of Women in a neighborhood that largely continues to unlawfully segregate jobs by gender. The number of times I have been told that my writing is “frivolous” and that I was “not serious” about my literary career is innumerable.

How remarkable it is then to behold 09/09 by Naoko Fujimoto as a testament to the resilience and remarkable artistry of Japanese women writers during the Heian period (794 to 1185), a time of both gender segregation and cultural flourishing. I find myself seeing my obstacles mirrored in the Heian court custom of referring to women by their relationship with their male relative, or in Fujimoto’s lament in being called out as “not even the smartest”—with smart being measured by her ability to repeat what she has memorized verbatim on these make-you-or-break-you high stakes examinations that are characteristic of East Asian countries like Japan, Korean, or Taiwan. The idea that only the “best women” are afforded the same education as the most ordinary man is pernicious and deeply ingrained in East Asian society, even with the ongoing women’s rights movements in those countries. That identity is further complicated in East Asian-American communities overseas, where western values of independence clash with Asian values of Confucian filial piety and female subservience to men, and where leadership positions continue to be wielded by men in all types of professions. READ MORE…

The Sea Will Dream In My Ears: Megumi Moriyama on Recasting Virginia Woolf into Japanese and Spiral Translation

September 18, 2024  |  in Interviews  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas

Translation can never be just a flat movement between two points, merely returning to its origins.

Japanese poet, critic, and translator Megumi Moriyama has so far worked on metamorphosing Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (1931) into the Japanese and on a ‘back translation’ of Arthur Waley’s poetic rendition of the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki Shikibu, in collaboration with her sister, haiku poet and critic Marie Mariya, published by Sayusha. As a poet, Megumi confesses that even her original poems in Japanese are layered with translation across varying texts within and outside her native language. Of her forthcoming poetry collection, she told me, “Perhaps you might say that through translation, I have made a journey into the depths of Japanese language.”

In this interview, I spoke with Megumi, currently in Tokyo, on rendering Virginia Woolf and Waley’s The Tale of Genji into the Japanese; how spiral translation goes beyond back-translations; and the new-age scene of literary translation in Japan.

Author headshot courtesy of Benjamin Parks.

Alton Melvar M Dapanas (AMMD): You translated Virginia Woolf’s experimental classic The Waves into the Japanese as Nami (2021), published by Hayakawa. Could you speak about your process in rendering a 1931 polyphonic novel set in England by a prose writer known for her stream of consciousness narrative mode with the modern-day Japanophone readership in mind? I heard there was so much hype about it, especially on Japanese book Twitter, as it was the first translation of this novel in almost 50 years.

Megumi Moriyama (MM): The new translation of The Waves was welcomed much more enthusiastically than I had expected. When I posted the announcement on social media, it went viral. And after the publication, the book was immediately put into reprint.

I studied Virginia Woolf as a student, and The Waves was one of my favorites of hers, but I never thought I would have the opportunity to translate it. It was thanks to social media that I got the chance. I tweeted very casually that I was interested in translating The Waves, an editor took notice of it, and the project became a reality.

READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: September 2024

September 16, 2024  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Christopher Higgs, Fani Avramopoulou, and Henry Gifford

Ten translated titles that hit the shelves this month!

When we first started the What’s New in Translation column in 2015, it was to offer readers a look at the incredible work done by writers, translators, and publishers all around the world. Gathering some of the most exciting publications coming out each month, the column featured regular reviews from trusted critical voices, giving the spotlight over to this great wealth of literary work. A lot has changed in the last decade; though English still reigns, we’ve seen the advocates of literary translation win a lot of battles as they seek to make our reading landscape a more various, inclusive, and interconnected space. As such, we now feel the need to extend our purview to include more of these brilliant voices, more of this innovative work, more of the insights and wonders that they bring. We are delighted to announce that our monthly column will now feature a greater number of titles —but with the same incisive critical insight that we’ve always aimed to bring.

From Argentinian horror to the latest from a Hungarian master of form, an intergenerational Greek tale to haiku interpretations, read below for a list of the ten most exciting books out in September.

Backer-Promo-Cover-150

Documentary Poetry by Heimrad Bäcker, translated from the German by Patrick Greaney, Winter Editions, 2024

Review by Fani Avramopoulou

Documentary Poetry compiles a selection of German poet Heimrad Bäcker’s documentary poems and photographs with his published interviews, lectures, and essays, offering a richly contextualized introduction to his many decades of work documenting and reflecting on the Holocaust. Bäcker does not conceal his relation to the Nazi Party; he was an avid member for about a year, joining at the age of eighteen. He then denounced the Nazi ideology in the wake of the Nuremberg trials, and spent the rest of his life meticulously chronicling the Third Reich’s atrocities through photography and a poetic method he described as his “transcript system.” The collection’s title essay introduces what feels like the conceptual seed of Bäcker’s work: a reflection on the Nazis’ use of ordinary language to conceal, sanitize, enable, and systematize the horrors of the Holocaust. His conceptualization of language as a participatory, covert administrative tool of the Nazi ideological agenda leads to this development of the transcript system as a form of intervention—a way of undressing such language and purging it of its duplicities.

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Diary” by Edogawa Ranpo

September 3, 2024  |  in Translations  |  by Erin Vastola

A sudden thought struck me—could my brother have been in love with Ms. Yukie?

This Translation Tuesday, we bring you an intricate puzzle by master mystery-writer Edogawa Ranpo, translated from the Japanese by Erin Vastola. An admirer of Edgar Allan Poe (to whom his pen name was an homage), Edogawa is celebrated both in Japan and abroad for incorporating Japanese cultural elements into suspenseful narratives driven by rigorous logic, and “The Diary” is no exception. Following the death of his younger brother, the unnamed narrator of this peculiar short story mourns the fact that his sibling died too young to experience romantic love. But as he inspects his brother’s diary and letters, he begins to doubt his assumptions. What follows is an elaborate psychodrama of code-cracking, thwarted courtship, and the correspondence culture of early twentieth-century Japan. Read on!

It was the evening of my younger brother’s memorial service, exactly seven days after his passing. I entered his study and picked up the writings he had left behind. Alone with my thoughts, I sank into deep contemplation.

Though it was not particularly late, the household—still damp with tears—had fallen into complete silence. From afar came the plaintive echoes of street vendors’ cries, somehow imbuing the scene with the flavor of a modern play. Touched by the gravity of long-forgotten childhood emotions, I unconsciously opened the diary on my brother’s desk.

Gazing at the diary, I mournfully thought of my twenty-year-old brother, who, I feared, had left this world without ever knowing love or romance.

READ MORE…

Nocturnal Tonguejests: Susan Bernofsky on translating Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel

August 22, 2024  |  in Book Club, Interviews  |  by Xiao Yue Shan

Great writers use language in really weird ways, but if it’s a great writer, the work absorbs the linguistic strangeness. . .

Yoko Tawada’s Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel is an absorbing, daring novel about collaboration, friendship, and trans-continental interpretations. Originating in the author’s own discourse with the titular German poet, the story tells of the engagement between two Celan readers, unfolding an exploration of literary texts as they traverse oceans and cultures—a phantasmagorical, radical exploration of words and their potential for transformation. Translated with great finesse by Susan Bernofsky, who has worked with the author on many of her German-language works, the novel takes further steps in English to multiply even more fascinating tangents along our globalized era, drawing on the miraculous nature of conversation. In this following interview, we speak with Bernofsky on her process and ideas of multiplicity in authorship, how the translator lives in and writes the worlds of their favorite texts.

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 USD20 per book; once you’re a member, join our Facebook group for exclusive book club discussions and receive invitations to our members-only Zoom interviews with the author or the translator of each title. 

Xiao Yue Shan (XYS): Given how richly textured Tawada’s novel is with literary and cultural references, not only to Celan’s poetry but also to other arenas of knowledge, could you speak a little to the kinds of research that you undertook in preparation for translating this text?

Susan Bernofsky (SB): Yoko Tawada wrote the book during the pandemic, and I also translated it during the pandemic, during the active period of shutdowns in the US. I had a lot of time to look things up, so I sat down and read a whole lot of Paul Celan, because I wanted to be able to spot the words and images that Tawada was taking from his poetry. The novel is also full of opera, and references to literary works by other writers who meant something to Celan. Some of it were things I already knew, because I’ve been translating Tawada since 1992, and I have a sense of who she likes and who’s important to her. Nelly Sachs is in there, and Ingeborg Bachmann and Franz Kafka, the usual suspects and her favorites in the world of German-language literature.

XYS: Were there any specific rabbit holes that you remember going down, or any particular segments that you had trouble with?

SB: I wound up reading a lot about acupuncture, because I wanted to be able to translate the passages that pertained to this subject. Tawada writes in this playful, slanting way, but you can still understand what’s going on. And as I’m translating, I’m trying to also write in a playful, slanting way—but I wanted somebody who understands acupuncture to not think that my descriptions were absurd. It’s a very Celan-ian thing to take scientific language and apply it to literature. Like his great poem, “Engführung,” has a lot of geological terminology, and he uses the words in a way that they sound psychological. I feel like Tawada was also playing with that possibility of taking language from one sphere and applying it to a different sphere. READ MORE…

Summer 2024: Highlights from the Team

July 29, 2024  |  in News  |  by Alex Tan, Ellen Elias-Bursac, Hilary Ilkay, Julia Maria, Marguerite Alley, Michelle Chan Schmidt, and Sofija Popovska

Find out what our very own editors have to say about our bountiful Summer issue!

Last week’s Paris 2024 Olympics Opening Ceremony featured numerous nods to literature, art, and music, calling to mind Georgi Gospodinov’s statement in his interview for our Summer 2024 issue: “Culture is a continuous conversation, a hum of different voices, and it’s actually wonderful music, a sort of polyphony. We are not only immersed in that conversation, we are also part of it.” Indeed, as our very own Mary Hillis points out, this brand-new Summer edition is a “veritable parade of nations with works from 35 countries.” Read on to discover some of the highlights, courtesy of our multicontinental crew!

My favorite in this issue is Honora Spicer’s Spitting Sutures, with its mesmerizing fluid interplay of drafting a translation, selling a house, and experiences of the body. Fluidity also defines Olivia Sears’s in-depth historical exploration of Italian Futurist Ardengo Soffici in a conversation with Eugene Ostashevsky. Krzysztof Umiński’s Three Translators (tr. Soren Gauger) is also a wonderfully detailed dip into translation history, this time Polish. Two other texts I really enjoyed were Farah Ahamed’s The Day You Ate our Deliveroo Delivery and the dramatic excerpt Trinity by Hamid Ismailov (tr. Shelley Fairweather-Vega), the first for its many-faceted examination of an ethical confrontation, the second for its gorgeously translated insults and imprecations.

 —Ellen Elias-Bursać, Contributing Editor

I love the compact, compressed nature of Adelheid Duvanel’s The Poet (tr. Tyler Schroeder). It’s got an amazing opening line that hooked me right away. The journey of the story that goes from childhood vignette to the awareness of the narrator as poet is really striking, showing how transformative and creative language can be, how altering a shift in perspective can be.

Micaela Brinsley’s Nothing to Be Owed is such a unique piece of writing, hybridic in its tone and structure, lyrical and poetic prose. The reflections on care in italics intersperse beautifully what’s going on in the almost journal-like entries. The line “I’m trapped by the transactional” will stick with me for a while.

Sarah Gear’s conversation with Georgi Gospodinov (tr. Angela Rodel) is a huge interview for Asymptote and it was a privilege to get such intimate access to the Booker International Prize-winning author’s mind.

—Hilary Ilkay, Assistant Managing Editor READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: June 2024

June 10, 2024  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Christina Chatzitheodorou and Mary Hillis

New publications from France and Japan!

Exciting destinations are in your future with these selections from some of the most delightful new publications in world literature. Futaro Yamada takes us back to nineteenth century Japan with a scintillating mystery of imperial intrigue and murderous plots; and Eric Hazan takes us along the streets and districts of a Paris as seen by one of its most vital figures: Honoré de Balzac. Read on to find out more, and bonne journée!

yamada

The Meiji Guillotine Murders by Futaro Yamada, translated from the Japanese by Bryan Karetnyk, Pushkin Vertigo, 2024

Review by Mary Hillis, Educational Arm Assistant

A driverless rickshaw, a bizarre sighting through binoculars, a corpse holding its own head—these are a just few of the perplexing scenarios that Chief Inspectors Toshiyoshi Kawaji and Keishirō Kazuki investigate in The Meiji Guillotine Murders by Futaro Yamada (pen name of Seiya Yamada).

The story begins in Japan after the Boshin War, in which the several domains fought against the Tokugawa Shogunate to restore imperial rule. During the Meiji period, strides to modernize the country continued, resulting in tumultuous changes to the economy, politics, and society. As officers of the Imperial Prosecuting Office, Kawaji and Kazuki are concerned with these developments, especially the role of justice within the new government. Both men are dedicated to their convictions, and early in the novel, Kazuki contends:

Corruption is, after all, the muddying of the distinction between the public and the private, between right and wrong. That’s why the public lost faith in the shogunate. Truly, it’s a good thing that it fell. And yet, the newly formed government is already showing signs of corruption. You ought to know this better than anyone. Otherwise, what was the point of our revolution? Or will there be another, and then another? Would it not be absurd to go on repeating it for all eternity? The government doesn’t exist merely to protect the people. Its aim must be the embodiment of justice.

One way Yamada renders this transformation and the accompanying influx of imported ideas and innovations is through the characters. Kawaji is based off of a real-life figure, the eponymous man who traveled as part of the Iwakura Mission to study systems in Western countries, and who is recognized as the founder of the modern police force in Japan. Kazuki, meanwhile, is a fictional character who returns to Japan from France to introduce the guillotine, and as the book’s title suggests, its chilling presence looms over the novel. There is a great deal of curiosity surrounding the new execution device, and when it is demonstrated at the prison, he addresses the doomed inmate:

“You are to be put to death, but in this enlightened age you shall be beheaded in the French fashion,” Kazuki boomed, as he clutched the hanging rope. “At least you shall have the honour of being the first in Japan to be subject to an experiment of this kind.”

In addition to Kawaji and Kazuki, another recurring character is Esmeralda Sanson, a French woman with an interesting family background. She is in the country working on translation projects; nevertheless, local residents are surprised to hear her speaking Japanese or singing ancient kagura songs. Often dressed as a shrine maiden, her features are captivating and give her an aura of mystique.

To Kawaji, her wide blue eyes seemed like a pair of mysterious jewels. Though he had seen them before, he could not help feeling mystified that such a beautiful creature could exist upon this earth.

After the introductory chapters, Kawaji and Kazuki investigate a confounding series of murders which juxtapose the old and the new: “A Strange Incident at the Tsukiji Hotel”; “From America with Love”; “The Hanged Man at the Eitai Bridge”; “Eyes and Legs”; and “The Corpse that Cradled its own Head.” Each begins with an excerpt from their reports filed with the Imperial Prosecuting Office, and finishes with a dramatic appearance by Esmeralda. These five baffling cases drive the narrative forward until they are ultimately connected and resolved in the final chapter. READ MORE…