Posts filed under 'And Other Stories'

By Way of Dreams: Annie McDermott on Translating Mario Levrero

November 21, 2024  |  in Book Club, Interviews  |  by Georgina Fooks

One of Levrero’s first publishers described him as a realist writer who lives on another planet.

The world is strange, and we make it stranger by living here. Uruguayan author Mario Levrero knew that better than most, and in his debut collection of short stories, The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine, one is guided by extraordinary vision and delightful humour along the writer’s gallery of fantasies and absurdities, impossible events and otherworldly journeys, all of which are made real and cemented into reality by thought and emotion. In this interview, translator Annie McDermott speaks about being drawn into Levrero’s singular voice, working with co-translator Kit Schluter, and distinguishing imagination from invention.

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.   

Georgina Fooks (GF): How did you first encounter Mario Levrero’s work, and what drew you to his writing?

Annie McDermott (AD): It was through a series of strange coincidences—which seems fitting. I was living in Brazil at the time, and I happened to go for lunch with a Mexican writer called Juan Pablo Villalobos, who was also living in Brazil at the time, and he is a great fan of Levrero. He wrote a great piece for Granta about how he became a fan before he’d even had the chance to get his hands on any of Levrero’s books—because they used to be so hard to get hold of—and he became a fan based on the titles alone.

He recommended him to me, and I happened to be going to Uruguay on the way home from Brazil, and I picked up a copy of one of Levrero’s novels. I remember that as soon as I started reading it, I realised that I’ve never read anything else like it. He has this amazing voice, this kind of strange, absurd, quite deadpan voice that is like nothing else. It’s also very warm, and also really engaging, and also very companionable and a really pleasant narrator to spend time with.

At the same time, Juan Pablo Villalobos had also been enthusiastically recommending Levrero to Stefan [Tobler] from And Other Stories, so it all happened in parallel in a very pleasing way, and that was how I came to end up doing some samples and eventually translating Levrero’s books. READ MORE…

Announcing Our October Book Club Selection: The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine by Mario Levrero

October 31, 2024  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Georgina Fooks

Life, as Levrero’s literature evidences, is richer and more beautiful when we follow our whims.

In The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine, the idiosyncratic wonderments of Mario Levrero are exhibited in a dazzling array. This first collection was, as the author tells it, ‘turned back into pulp’ in its first print run, but has since grown with tremendous repute, leading into a dedicated following in both its native Uruguay and neighbouring Argentina. It’s easy to see how these tales enthrall; each sees Levrero pushing the narrative form ever further into the enigmatic and the expansive, and any subject, object, and space is rendered as capable of endless transformations, creating portals at the seams of experience for the reader’s own marvelling journey. On live the bizarre, the mysteries, growing and multiplying at the non-existent borders of imagination.

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.   

The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine by Mario Levrero, translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott and Kit Schluter, And Other Stories, 2024

What does reality look like? Might it in fact be more dreamlike than we assume? Does true madness lie in the acceptance of daily routine? All these questions ricochet throughout the stories of The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine, a dazzling array of imaginative exercises from the eclectic Uruguayan writer Mario Levrero. The simplest beginnings—the daily rounds of a bedtime ritual, the anxieties of being late for work—take unexpected turns, leading us to places we never could have imagined. Along the way, chance is revealed to be the dominant factor in reality, rather than routine. Levrero is a dizzying stylist and he is matched with aplomb by translators Annie McDermott and Kit Schluter, who evidently share the author’s passion for imaginative play.

The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine is both a product of the imagination and a book that mirrors it; just like the human psyche, the diverse stories of the collection record both our meanderings and our obsessions. Often, our narrator is a Levrero-like figure: a good-natured, comedic man (prone to yearning for women, as the title attests) who follows his flights of fancy to their utmost ends. He is a charming narrator, skilled with wry turns of phrase, and his inability to leave any stone unturned takes him down curious paths. Whether it’s the miniature world hidden within a lighter in ‘Beggar Street’, or the young boy who grows old searching for a key in ‘The Basement’, Levrero plays with absurd economies of scale by stretching out both space and time. Reality and matter are his playthings, but the ensuing absurdity leads to some profound truths. Life, as Levrero’s literature evidences, is richer and more beautiful when we follow our whims. READ MORE…

Michele Mari’s “Obscene Excess” of the Literary

September 11, 2024  |  in Essays  |  by Francesca Mancino

For [Mari's characters], collecting signifies a dependency on nostalgia and memory, all of which coexist with each individual object.

We all love our books, but at what point does that love become reductive—or even dangerous? Italian writer Michele Mari weaves elements of materialist obsession into his fictions, describing how one’s attachment to literature can create falsifications, egomaniacal delusions, and objectifications of the people around us. In this following essay, Francesca Mancino takes a close look at Mari’s You, Bleeding Childhood and the recently published Verdigris, tracing their narratives in their manifestations of literary greed.

In the threaded lines that clutter all but the gutters of his works, Michele Mari comes close to Becca Rothfeld’s fantasy of excess, as detailed in her essay, “More Is More.” There, she writes, “I dream of a house stuffed floor to ceiling; rooms so overfull they prevent entry; too many books for the shelves; fictions brimming with facts but, more importantly, flush with form; long tomes in too many volumes; sentences that swerve on for pages; clauses like jewels strung onto necklaces. . .” In both the collection You, Bleeding Childhood (2023) and the novel Verdigris (2024), translated into English by Brian Robert Moore, there is a feeling that the text cannot contain the objects described. It is as if the words command a vaster space than a page can allow for.

Mari’s work toes the line between the wonder and the obscenity of excess; in both You, Bleeding Childhood and Verdigris, the author presses his readers to think about its many forms and their respective limits. Reflected in his writing style, one could almost say that there is too much in Mari’s books—too many literary objects, household items, convoluted adjectives, coveted authors, and blended dialects. In Verdigris, the walls of a home have almost no free space because “everywhere has gradually been overrun by objects and signs drawn on paper, when not by symbols traced directly onto the plaster. Anyone walking into that room would have the impression of a random and compulsive clutter, as though owing to a kind of horror vacui.” The narrator, Michelino, reminds the reader that the objects are not arbitrary, since he and Felice, the house’s owner, share an intimate knowledge of “every single element” tacked onto its surfaces. READ MORE…

Announcing Our August Book Club Selection: Mammoth by Eva Baltasar

August 29, 2024  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Hilary Ilkay

The spirit of the zoo has entered her bedroom: sex without pleasure, purely for the sake of regeneration, a blind but demanding impulse.

In the latest from lauded Catalan author Eva Baltasar, an animal desire is on the rise. Tired of the city, her studies, and the vacuity of contemporary life, the young protagonist of Mammoth seeks out a supposedly simpler provincial existence, and is willing to do anything to get there. Through both physical and psychological extremes, Baltasar’s heightened portrait is both shocking and absorbing, reflecting the chaos of an ego that vibrates with desire and spirals against expectation. The prose shivers with sensuality as this journey inward and outward carves its remarkable procession—the rampage of an unencumbered self, raging against the presumptions of civilised life.

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. 

Mammoth by Eva Baltasar, translated from the Catalan by Julia Sanches, And Other Stories, 2024

Following on the heels of the 2023 Booker-shortlisted Boulder, Eva Baltasar’s latest novel, Mammoth, seizes the reader in a vice grip from the opening page and doesn’t relent even after its final words; the ending, in fact, delivers the sharpest blow of all. The narrative is a raw and visceral exploration of a young woman who shatters the routine of her daily life, learning to dwell among the shards of a new form of existence. Using a rich vocabulary of metaphors and similes, Baltasar creates a fictional space that is confrontational, explosive, and evocative, demonstrating her masterful ability to delve into the psyches of queer women who find themselves on the fringes, and Julia Sanches’s translation from the Catalan deftly captures the novel’s unique tone and voice.

Through its title, Baltasar thematically links Mammoth to her other two novels translated into English, Permafrost and Boulder: all three suggest weight, immovability. The unnamed protagonist in Mammoth is twenty-four years old and dissatisfied with her life, especially her research job at a university, which involves interviewing residents in nursing homes. “I hated my tool,” she reflects, “the specialist axe I used to cut up emotions and memories, the experience and suffering of those people.” This threat of dehumanization threads its way through the prose, hovering beneath the surface of every encounter. It’s telling that on the first page, the narrator reveals that her bedroom window faces a zoo, establishing a proximity to an animalistic wildness that has been broken and contained, on display for public consumption and enjoyment—a metaphor for her perception of her own existence. Returning to the zoo later, she thinks, “The animals didn’t live there, they rotted there—just like the visitors and no more nor less than the zookeepers.” READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

August 9, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Carol Khoury and Christina Chatzitheodorou

The latest in literary news from Palestine and Greece!

This week, our Editors-at-Large take us around the world for updates on recent publications and annual book fairs! From a discussion on ‘cancelling’ and its real-world parallels to the genocide of Palestinians, to the passing of a beloved Greek poet, read on to learn more.

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

Has ‘cancelling’ subsided lately? Surely not for the Palestinians. Sadly, these times might even be the worst for them, to the extent that the ICJ is considering whether they are being subjected to genocide, i.e., literally a cancelling, an erasure! But when it comes to literature, this concept of cancelling, of erasing, often serves as a lens to examine social dynamics, power structures, and questions of identity.

This is the case of The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem. Originally published in North America by Syracuse University Press some five years ago, a revised and updated English translation (by the original translator Sinan Antoon) is appearing this month by And Other Stories.

Using magical realism to shed light on real-world tensions and human experiences in Israel and Palestine, this book is a thought-provoking novel that explores those complexities through a unique premise. The story imagines a scenario where all Palestinians suddenly vanish overnight. Azem skillfully uses this surreal concept to examine issues of identity, memory, and power dynamics in the region. The narrative alternates between the perspective of Alaa, a young Palestinian man, and the reactions of Israeli society to the mysterious disappearance.

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Keeping the Mystery Alive: On Translating Michele Mari’s Verdigris

November 30, 2023  |  in Essays  |  by Brian Robert Moore

[A]ll books, especially the really good ones, seem impossible to translate until you sit down and somehow translate them. . .

Italy’s lauded Michele Mari was first introduced to the English language via a collection of thirteen short stories, published as You, Bleeding Childhood; through translator Brian Robert Moore’s rendering of Mari’s singular voice, readers were able to enter a vertiginous realm of obsessions, hidden psyches, childhood revelations, and wondrous horrors. Now, Mari and Moore are returning with Verdigris, a novel that further displays Mari’s masterful construction of mystery and fantasy with the story of a young boy, Michelino, and his developing friendship with a strange groundskeeper, Felice. The translation earned Moore a PEN Translates Prize earlier this year, and in the following essay, he gives us some insight into his process, and tells us why Mari is deservedly recognized as one of the most important Italian writers today.

When I first encountered Michele Mari’s Verdigris (or Verderame in the original Italian), I experienced something rare, wonderful, and a little bit eerie that I’m sure most avid readers can relate to: the sensation that a book was somehow made for me. Its sense of otherworldly mystery, its dark humor, and its beautiful, inventive style all came together to form the exact kind of novel that I could gladly get lost in for ages. It likely would have been the first book I’d have tried to translate, had it not seemed beyond my capabilities at the time. But all books, especially the really good ones, seem impossible to translate until you sit down and somehow translate them, and so I eventually decided to make an attempt. It was too captivating a novel and too glaring an absence in the Anglosphere, and I hoped my own enthusiasm and love for Mari’s work might carry me through.

The first major difficulty in translating Verdigris is Mari’s use of wordplay, which, rather than appearing decorative, often plays a very direct role in the novel’s plot—a plot that is as intricate as it is engrossing. I realized there was no way around being particularly visible as a translator in order for this novel to reach anglophone readers: one could either rely heavily on the original Italian wordplay and speak directly to the reader through explanatory footnotes, or assume an even more active role and try to recreate Mari’s fluid inventiveness in English. Hoping the book could remain as immersive in English as it is in Italian, I opted for the latter approach throughout. To do this, it was essential to keep in mind not only the novel as a coherent whole, but also Mari’s broader autobiographical and autofictional body of work. Any literal changes had to remain consistent with his personality both as writer and as character, and I was fortunate to be able to run all of my solutions by him. Finding English equivalents for puns, word associations, and, most of all, anagrams takes a great deal of thought but also an incredible amount of luck—or, in the case of this book, maybe there was something else at work, and the fact that almost uncannily fitting solutions could be found in a completely different language had to do with the mysterious and occult forces invoked within the novel. For me, living day by day, for an extended period of time, in the world of Verdigris meant partially believing such things. READ MORE…

Translating at the Limits of Language: Lisa Dillman on Yuri Herrera

March 23, 2023  |  in Book Club, Interviews  |  by Georgina Fooks

[Herrera's] writing is for everyone on an individual level, regardless of education, regardless of language, regardless of national histories.

In Ten Planets, our February Book Club selection, the acclaimed Yuri Herrera made his short fiction debut in the Anglophone, featuring a myriad of worlds and inventions as seen through the author’s signature wit, playfulness, and fierce intelligence. Through the inspired language of his longtime translator, Lisa Dillman, Herrera elucidates the workings of humanity through a series of sci-fi miniatures, engaging with the philosophical queries of contemporary existence as only the writer can—through imagination. In this following interview, Georgina Fooks speaks with Dillman about the narrative-political, how she navigated Herrera’s neologisms and idiosyncratic style, and how such writing continues to push limits.

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.   

Georgina Fooks (GF): Could you tell us about your relationship with the Spanish language and what brought you to translating it?

Lisa Dillman (LD): I’m sort of the poster child for study abroad programs. I was an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego when I went to Barcelona for a year and fell in love with Spanish, and also with Catalan—with the creativity and the ludic qualities I found in these languages. I don’t want to essentialize and say that Spanish is a particularly ludic language, but I found the possibilities for play really enticing.

Honestly, I think my entrance into translation was just the result of returning from studying abroad and having very stereotypical experiences of talking to friends who had not gone—telling a joke or something, and them not finding it funny. And that was frustrating: why is this funny in Spanish and you don’t think it’s funny in English? That kind of challenge was something I found infuriating to begin with, and then fruitful afterwards to try to deal with.

I then ended up going to the UK to study translation at Middlesex, under Peter Bush. I had been in a Spanish literature doctoral program, but the US is really bad with translation programs and courses. There are more now, but none that I knew of at the time. In the UK and most other countries, translation is a proper field which you can study—so that’s what I did. I moved to the UK, I did my masters there, then spent subsequent years, you know, translating a short story, sending it to a journal by snail mail, waiting for five or six months to get a rejection letter, sending it out again, and eventually, finally I got somewhere.

GF: When did you first encounter Herrera’s work? And what motivated you to translate him? As you’ve translated all of his novels into English so far.

LD: I have. And I’m actually working right now on the one that came after Ten Planets. I had a friend who was asked to translate an excerpt for Symposia Way, which is the literary magazine of City of Asylum in Pittsburgh. The City of Asylum has writers in residence who are in exile from their home countries, and they were doing a series in which they asked the writers and residents to select one writer they thought deserved attention. Horacio Castellanos Moya selected Herrera.

At the time, it was just a short excerpt of  Kingdom Cons, which they published in their magazine, and I was thrilled to do it because it was immediately apparent that Yuri’s style is just so rich and nuanced and does so many different things at the same time. It struck me as incredibly poignant and beautiful, and very different from anything I had read. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

February 5, 2021  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Charlie Ng, Clémence Lucchini, and José García Escobar

The latest news from Central America, Hong Kong, and France!

This week our writers bring you news from Central America, Hong Kong, and France. In Central America, renowned Guatemalan writer Eduardo Haldon has released his latest novel, Cancón, and Savladoran writer Claudia Hernández’s book Slash and Burn has been released in English translation by & Other Stories. In Hong Kong, literary journal the Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine has pertinently published a special feature about “Distance,” while in France, Italian writer Sandro Veronesi has won the Foreign Book Prize for Le Colibri, to be published in English translation in spring. Read on to find out more! 

José García Escobar, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Central America

Guatemalan poet Carmen Lucía Alvarado was recently nominated for the Rhysling Award for her poem El vacío se conjuga entre tus manos (The void blends in your hands), translated by Toshiya Kamei. Read the poem in English and Spanish here. Famed Guatemalan writer Eduardo Halfon released his new novel called Canción (Song). Published by Libros del Asteroide, his latest book tells a new chapter of the history of Halfon’s family, centering on his maternal grandfather and his kidnap during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996). You can read an excerpt of Canción in English at The New York Review of Books site.

Also in Guatemala, the veteran poet and journalist Ana María Rodas released a new collection of short stories entitled Antigua para principiantes (Antigua for beginners). This new book includes several of Ana María’s most renowned short stories, plus other unpublished stories. This marks Ediciones del Pensativo’s first book of the year.

Additionally, in early January, & Other Stories published Slash and Burn, by the Salvadoran short story writer Claudia Hernández. The book was translated into English by Julia Sanches, who has translated the work of writers such as Daniel Galera (Brazil) and Noemi Jaffe (Brazil). READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: August 2018

August 9, 2018  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Ilker Hepkaner, Jacob Silkstone, Lara Norgaard, and Nestor Gomez

Find respite from the heat with these new reads.

From Icelandic landscapes to art history, August brings with it an exciting new selection of books. Whether you’re looking for a book to pass the hot summer days, or are in the market for inspired poetry, the Asymptote team has something for you in this new edition of What’s New in Translation. And if that’s not enough, head over to the Asymptote Book Club for fresh reads, delivered to your doorstep every month!

oraefi_600x600

Öræfi: The Wastelands by Ófeigur Sigurðsson, translated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith, Deep Vellum, 2018

Reviewed by Jacob Silkstone, Assistant Managing Editor

One of the many epic stories retold in Ófeigur Sigurðsson’s Öræfi: The Wastelands (“that punctuation mark… both pushes words (and worlds) away from one another and means they’re roped together,” according to translator Lytton Smith) is the story of Öræfi itself. Formerly known as Hérað, the Province, a place in which “butter drips from every blade of grass,” it was devastated by the most destructive volcanic eruption in Iceland’s recorded history:

The chronicles record that one morning in 1362 Knappafjells glacier exploded and spewed over the Lómagnúpur sands and carried everything off into the sea, thirty fathoms deep… The Province was destroyed, all its people and creatures annihilated; no sheep or cattle survived, no creatures left alive anywhere… the corpses of people and animals washed up on beaches far and wide… the bodies were cooked and tender and the flesh so loose on the bones it fell apart.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

June 1, 2018  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Kelsey Woodburn, Norman Erikson, Paul Worley, and Sarah Moses

Our weekly roundup of literary news brings us to Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, and Indonesia.

June is upon us and we are settling in for some summer reading. Join us as we catch up with our international correspondents about the literary happenings around the world. This week brings us the latest on indigenous literature from Colombia and Mexico, book fairs in Argentina, and new artistic endeavors in Indonesia!

Paul Worley and Kelsey Woodburn, Editors at Large, reporting from Colombia and Mexico:

From April 25 to 29 in Bogotá, Colombia, indigenous writers and scholars and critics of indigenous literatures from throughout the Américas came together in the 5th Continental Intercultural Encounter of Amerindian Literatures (EILA). The theme for this iteration of the bi-annual conference was “Indigenous Writing, Extractivism, and Bird Songs.” The centering of these concerns reflects a turn in the field of Indigenous literatures towards recognizing indigenous ways of writing that take place beyond Latin script, as well as ongoing ecological concerns that are at the heart of a good deal of indigenous literatures and Indigenous activism. In addition to literary readings and panels held at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, writers and critics presented to the general public at Bogotá’s International Book Festival (FILBO), and indigenous poets gave a reading in the town of Guatavita, home to a lake sacred to the Muisca people. Among the writers in attendance were (K’iche’) Humberto Ak’abal, (Yucatec) Jorge Cocom Pech, (Wayuu) Vito Apüshana, (Wayuu) Estercilla Simanca, (Wayuu) Vicenta Siosi, and (Yanakuna) Fredy Chicangana.

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What’s New with the Crew? A Monthly Update

May 9, 2018  |  in News  |  by Sasha Burik

What is our literary powerhouse of a crew up to this May? Read on to find out!

We have such an amazing group of creative people over here at Asymptote. Check out some of our recent news and stay tuned for more of the international literature you love!

Poetry Editor Aditi Machado‘s poem “Epistle” appeared in Boston Review, and another poem of hers, “Archaic”, was reprinted by the Poetry Society of America.

From May 1 – 5, Romania and Moldova Editor-at-Large Chris Tanasescu aka MARGENTO organized DHSITE, a bilingual event introducing new computing technologies and their uses in education and research, at the University of Ottawa. Later this month, he will present a paper at the Kanada Koncrete poetry conference in the same school.

Both Assistant Editor Lizzie Buehler and Blog Editor David Smith have accepted offers to attend the University of Iowa’s Literary Translation MFA this coming fall. David also wrote a review of an early Jon Fosse novel, Boathouse, for Reading in Translation.

Indonesia Editor-at-Large Norman Erikson Pasaribu spoke with Indonesian writer Eka Kurniawan about his conception of horror, the diversity of Indonesian literature, and the rebirth of the New Order in Mekong Review.

Assistant Managing Editor Sam Carter published an essay at Music & Literature on Jorge Barón Biza’s The Desert and Its Seed.

Blog Editor Sarah Booker‘s translation of Cristina Rivera Garza’s The Iliac Crest (Feminist Press and And Other Stories) was included on the long list for the Best Translated Book Award.

Singapore Editor-at-Large Theophilus Kwek contributed work to Carcanet Press’s latest New Poetries anthology. He also published a piece in The Straits Times comparing citizenship opportunities in the UK (where he was able to vote in the European Union referendum as a Commonwealth citizen) and Singapore.

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For more news from the Asymptote blog:

Announcing our April Book Club selection: Brother in Ice by Alicia Kopf

May 3, 2018  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Georgia Nasseh

"Kopf’s profound awareness of the undeniably visual nature of the printed word..."

“There’s a whole universe of stories out there that we, in the English-speaking world, have yet to discover. Let the Asymptote Book Club take you there.” ~ Yann Martel

Over its first four months, the Asymptote Book Club has taken readers to a small village in northern Norway during the frozen depths of the Arctic winter, a sunlit plaza in an Argentina overshadowed by the Perón regime, the dense forests of Bihar, and a Naples apartment filled with haunting memories of the past.

With our fifth title, Alicia Kopf’s Brother in Ice, we’re setting off on a new journey: a genre-bending tale of Polar exploration. Translated into English by Mara Faye Lethem and published by And Other Stories, Brother in Ice has received widespread critical acclaim, winning the prestigious Premi Documenta award in Barcelona. “In another country,” writes Enrique Vila-Matas, “this book would have changed the course of its history.”

As always, head to our Book Club page for more information and the opportunity to become a subscriber. If you’re already part of the Book Club, don’t forget to join our online discussion group. As a starting point for the latest discussion, here’s Asymptote Assistant Editor Georgia Nasseh’s review of Brother in Ice: READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: April 2018

April 9, 2018  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Catherine Belshaw, Diána Vonnák, Josefina Massot, and Norman Erikson

Looking for your next read? You're in the right place.

It’s spring, the days are (hopefully) sunny, and this month we’re back to shine a light on some of the most exciting books to come in April, including works in translation spanning Colombia, Lithuania, Martinique, and Spain (Catalonia). 

tundra

Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė, translated from the Lithuanian by Delija Valiukenas, Peirene Press

Reviewed by Josefina Massot, Assistant Editor

In his Afterword to Shadows on the Tundra, Lithuanian writer Tomas Venclova draws a parallel by way of praise: Dalia Grinkevičiūtė’s account of the Gulag ranks with Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s and Varlam Shalamov’s. Those acquainted with Gulag survivor literature know that’s high praise indeed: Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago and Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales are paragons of the genre. And yet, I venture, Shadows on the Tundra transcends them both.

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Asymptote Book Club: An Interview with Chris Andrews, Translator of The Lime Tree

January 11, 2018  |  in Book Club, Interviews  |  by Lizzie Buehler

Style seems to give Aira direct access to a past that hasn’t passed.

We begin a new series of monthly interviews for the Asymptote Book Club with a conversation between Asymptote Assistant Editor Lizzie Buehler and Chris Andrews, translator of César Aira’s The Lime Tree. For more about this sparkling novel, check out Emma Holland’s December review.

Josh Honn, reviewing an earlier Aira novel, suggested that Aira moves forward in straight lines only in “an attempt to make the line come back upon itself.” In the interview that follows, Chris Andrews discusses Aira’s “sinuous” writing technique, The Lime Tree’s links with Proust, and the way the novel depicts everyday racism in Perón-era Argentina.

Lizzie Buehler (LB): Tell us a little bit about how you came to translate The Lime Tree. How did the novel’s intensely self-reflective nature affect your process of translation?

Chris Andrews (CA): I read The Lime Tree (or The Linden Tree as it will be in the US edition) when it first came out in Spanish in 2003, and it has been one of my favourite Aira books since then. So I was very pleased to get the chance to translate it.

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