Posts filed under 'Dutch literature'

Movement and Stagnation: On Virgula by Sasja Janssen

March 28, 2024  |  in Reviews  |  by Areeb Ahmad

The comma is . . . perpetually in motion . . . a relentless zest for life, a desire to fill the emptiness with words, to delay the inevitable.

Virgula by Sasja Janssen, translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison, Prototype, 2024

I write to you because you hover in the corner of my eye
I write to you because you never answer
I write to you because, like me, you dislike stagnation

In Wit, Margaret Edson’s 1999 Pulitzer-winning one-act play, the main character, English professor Dr Vivian Bearing, re-lives crucial moments of her life while undergoing an experimental chemotherapy treatment for late-stage ovarian cancer. In one instance, she remembers a comment made by her college professor, Dr E M Ashford, reprimanding her for taking language too lightly in an assignment on Donne’s sonnet, “Death Be Not Proud”; Ashford is quick to point out that the edition Vivian consulted contained faulty punctuation, and surmises that the simple message of the poem—“overcoming the seemingly insuperable barriers separating life, death, and eternal life”—gets sacrificed to the ‘hysterical’ punctuation of semicolons and an exclamation point. Vivian’s iteration—“And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die!”—distorts what is conveyed by a single comma: “And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.” One can clearly see the importance of one simple symbol: how it can make or break a poem.

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Translating Multiple Dimensions: Sarah Timmer Harvey on Jente Posthuma’s What I’d Rather Not Think About

August 24, 2023  |  in Book Club, Interviews  |  by Daljinder Johal

Life isn’t one-dimensional; it’s a blend of emotions, absurdity, and different tones. . .

Jente Posthuma’s striking, moving novel, What I’d Rather Not Think About, delves into the aftermath of an unthinkable loss: the death of a twin. In tracing the patchworked life of a narrator who has long thought of herself as one-half, Posthuma explores the complexities of our most intimate relationships with evocative reflection and unexpected humor. This distinct work and our July Book Club selection has been translated beautifully by Sarah Timmer Harvey, resulting in razor-sharp prose that navigates the most intricate aspects of our selfhoods—how we are with one another. In this following interview, Harvey speaks about her discovery of this novel and her translation process, as well as the intricate journey of following this book’s many thought-paths and references. 

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. 

Daljinder Johal (DJ): I’m curious about your background and your journey into translation. I read that you’re Australian-born but ended up living in the Netherlands, where you began reading and occasionally translating Dutch fiction and poetry. Was there a particular work that played a significant role in sparking this interest?

Sarah Timmer Harvey (STH): Of course. Back then, while learning Dutch, I relocated to the Netherlands at nineteen with the intention of staying for a year. That single year evolved into a fourteen-year stay. During this time, I was working at a university, which eventually led me to translation as a second career. It happened somewhat unexpectedly. I strove to read while learning Dutch, focusing on more accessible books such as Hermann Koch’s The Dinner and even Harry Mulisch’s The Discovery of Heaven—which, while not mainstream, deeply resonated with me.

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Announcing Our July Book Club Selection: What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma

July 27, 2023  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Daljinder Johal

Posthuma develops an affecting novel about grief by embracing its full complexity.

Jente Posthuma’s What I’d Rather Not Think About delves into the closeness of a relationship that many find difficult to understand: the inextricable link between twin siblings. Through a delicately woven tale of memory, shared selfhood, and grief, the author takes us into the mind that struggles to understand a world shattered by loss, when one sibling dies and another is left to reconstitute the fragments. Poetic and surprising, Posthuma shows how even in the most intimate of connections, in another person lies the great unknown.

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. 

What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma. Translated from the Dutch by Sarah Timmer Harvey, Scribe, 2023

In short, poignant vignettes, What I’d Rather Not Think About is Jente Posthuma’s story of twin siblings: a brother who commits suicide, and a sister who is left behind. True to its title, the novel grapples with the narrator’s dark, complicated feelings of loss following the death of her brother, as she ruminates on the intensity of their relationship. In reflections of the siblings’ childhood and youthful dreams, tracing how these dreams changed or were lost on the way to maturity, Posthuma develops an affecting novel about grief by embracing its full complexity.

From its opening passage, Posthuma hints to the darker turn the twins’ story will take; the first memory shared is of the two experimenting with waterboarding as children, after seeing a film about Guantanamo Bay. To this, their mother sighs, accurately guessing that: “this has to be one of your brother’s ideas”. The untraditional game cleverly introduces their relationship, with the brother being more in control of their makeshift experiment, leaving the narrator coughing and spluttering from the experience. She asks her brother: “Why didn’t you help me?”, and only receives a single “sorry” in return. This pattern of behavior continues as adults, such as when the narrator joins her brother in a diving lesson, since “my brother expected me to follow him because that’s what I always did. If I wanted to go in a different direction, he would ignore me and keep walking.” READ MORE…

Deconstructing, Reconstructing Memory: Copy by Dolores Dorantes

July 4, 2022  |  in Reviews  |  by José García Escobar

I like to think of the poems and their fractured sentences as evidences of memory and its various permutations. . .

Copy by Dolores Dorantes, translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers, Wave Books, 2022

This book is an object, a memento, a testimony, memory, road, destination, vessel, a circle.

Dolores Dorantes’ Copia first came out in the Netherlands as a bilingual (Spanish-Dutch) double-sided booklet titled Copia/Kopie (Publication Studio Rotterdam) in 2018, the result of Dolores’ residency at Poetry International. Three years later, it was released in Spanish under the Mexican press Mangos de Hacha, and in 2022, Copy made its way into English, translated by Robin Myers for Wave Books (US). I’ll start with a mundane statement: Copy’s nomadic nature is the result of opportunity and communion between its author and visionary translators and editors. But after reading it, experiencing it—after crossing its many borders, trying to hold its overwhelming weight, I can’t help but think that Copy’s many editions, shapes, colors, and mediums have also strengthened, confirmed, and laced its themes and motifs: migration, displacement, exile, the loss of one’s place, the loss of one’s address, the loss of one’s identity, movement, uprootedness.

Copy opens with the following line: “It gets fainter and fainter.” Quite the opposite happens. The work is unrelenting, fast-paced, filled with discomfort and existential dread. “You live because you removed yourself from your condition”; “To reassemble oneself. Proactivity, opportunism: an order. A tongue, leaving. A gesture, setting sail: a singular place.” They’re also subtle, violent, proliferate with grotesque imagery: “The soldiers plotted a safe shelter with your blood.” “The tower with its hook-mouth.”

All this to say—Copy is an experience. Dolores invites us to feel, to leave one’s skin. Discomfort, confusion, hurt, relief, and hope are found equally amidst her intricate wording, her syncopated and crushing sentences. Images and interactions emerge, but as flashes, not scenes. They seemed distorted as if one were to peek through a window or a camera lens (the poet, in fact, worked as a journalist in Ciudad Juárez, south of the Río Grande as a young adult). Put together, however, they form a vivid and accurate testimonial. The work is fortified with suspense. “You let the boot of structure advance over you thinking, scornfully: to not be.” It is decorated with absurdity. “Gentlemen, I’m going to ask you to rid yourselves of your sense of pity.” And with imagery that, at times, is devastatingly beautiful. “You live because the moon touched the stone jutting out of the pond to show you, copiously, its edges”; “Just like the petal that peeks a single tip out of the ashes.”

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Who Will Win the International Booker Prize?

August 19, 2020  |  in Essays, News  |  by Barbara Halla

One of my least favorite strands of Booker discourse [is that] . . . a particular book wins . . . because it ticks . . . marketing-friendly boxes.

The long-awaited announcement of the International Booker winner is finally around the corner, and with a shortlist explosive with singular talent, the gamblers amongst us are finding it difficult to place their bets. To lend a hand, Asymptote’s very own assistant editor Barbara Halla returns with her regularly scheduled take, lending her scrupulous gaze to not only the titles but the Prize itself—and the principles of literary criticism and merit.

In my previous coverage of the International Booker Prize, I mentioned that there is always an element of repetition to the discussions surrounding it; quite honestly, there are only so many ways one can frame the conversation beyond mere summarizations of the books themselves. I find myself hoping that each year’s selections will reveal some sort of larger theme looming in the background, giving me at least the pretense of a cohesive thesis statement. I think that was definitely the case with last year’s shortlist and its explicit concern with memory, but considering how English translation tends to lag behind each book’s original publication by at least a couple of years, it was probably a coincidence. I’ve had no such luck with the 2020 shortlist; most of my attempts at finding a common theme have felt like a stretch.

In an attempt to avoid making this simply a collection of bite-sized reviews, I want to talk about one of my least favorite strands of Booker discourse: the tedious—sometimes almost malicious—assertion that if a particular book wins, it does so not because of its “literary merit,” but rather because it ticks a number of marketing-friendly boxes. Maybe it has been translated from a language that rarely gets published in English, or perhaps it seems particularly relevant to our present, directly tackling racism, homophobia, or misogyny. Regardless of the source of such a statement, it has this irritating “political correctness is ruining literature” thrust to it.

Now, in the past I have relied on “non-literary” clues to try and guess the Booker winner, and to some extent, I still do. However, in my mind, whenever I try to glean the winner using such external factors, I do so based on a few assumptions. First of all, while not all shortlisted books will necessarily be my favorite or even to my liking, the judges at least believe them to be great books, and the winner might indeed be different under different (personal) circumstances. In fact, despite what some detractors of contemporary fiction might say, there is plenty to love about the books being published today, and in the presence of so much good literature, taking into account “external” factors is only natural. After all, as translator Anton Hur recently tweeted, in response to an article arguing against a translated fiction category for the Hugos, “Literary awards ARE marketing tools, they should be used to solve MARKETING PROBLEMS.” READ MORE…

Beautiful Passages: An Interview with Booker-Longlisted Translator Michele Hutchison

March 11, 2020  |  in Interviews  |  by Sarah Timmer Harvey

The thing I get complimented on the most is the rhythm and flow of my translations, never their accuracy!

Michele Hutchison recently quipped on Twitter that she posts annual reminders on social media about the correct spelling of her name because “no one ever gets it right.” Yet, for the talented Dutch to English translator, 2020 is already shaping up to be the year that this all changes. In recent weeks, Hutchison was awarded the prestigious Vondel Prize for her “sure-footed, propulsive” translation of Sander Kollaard’s Stage Four, and her translation of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s explosive debut novel, The Discomfort of Evening, was longlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize. Amsterdam-based Hutchison has translated over thirty-five books, co-written a book on the benefits of Dutch-style parenting, and is an active and generous member of the European literary translation community. Several years ago, Michele also read and thoughtfully critiqued my own translations of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s poetry. Following the announcement of the International Booker longlist, I was eager to reignite our conversation on Rijneveld’s work, and learn more about her prize-winning translation of Kollaard’s extraordinary novel.

—Sarah Timmer Harvey, March 2020

Sarah Timmer Harvey (STH): Congratulations on winning the Vondel Prize for your translation of Stage Four. What does winning the prize mean to you?

Michele Hutchison (MH): Thanks! If you look at the translators who have won in the past, it sets me in very good company and it’s a great honour. I found it very hard to believe I’d actually won the prize because I’ve always felt insecure about my translations, and I fixate on the flaws; it’s impossible to get everything right. But I suppose every translator struggles with producing an imperfect product. Mind you, I’ve noticed that the leading male translators in my field have less trouble with that, and feel they deserve prizes for all their hard work, so perhaps it’s a female thing?

I co-wrote a non-fiction book (The Happiest Kids in the World) and I actually found that less stressful. I was able to let go of some of my perfectionism because I wasn’t about to mess up someone else’s book like with a translation. What I also think about prizes is that the choice of the winner depends on the mood of the jury on the day. It’s not like the best book always wins, or that there is even objectively a “best” book or translation. To be honest, my money was on the runner-up, David Doherty. I guess my writerly touch was probably what clinched it in the end, if anything! READ MORE…