Posts filed under 'roundup'

Weekly News Roundup, 27th June 2014: Bilingual immorality, soccer on the brain

June 27, 2014  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Remember the “trolley problem?” (Should you kill one person in order to save five?). If it seems like your moral compass is irrefutable, you’re wrong: the ethical judgement you make depends on the language in which you are called to make it.

Shadowy truths: the origin of Yiddish is nebulous, and it may remain so indefinitely. At Tablet, the latest in an ongoing series examining how the academic field is destroying its own attempt to map an etymology. More verboten things: the Moscow Times takes a peek in a Soviet Union-era erotica collection.

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Weekly News Roundup, 19th June 2014: World Cup in Books, New Neruda

June 20, 2014  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world

(Re)discovering familiar authors. Those familiar with Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (that is to say: everybody) might be happy to discover that more than twenty previously unknown poems have been uncovered and are slated for publication later this year in Latin America (no word on translations quite yet).

Big, big news in letters across the globe (especially for us Asymptote-fans): the shortlists for the PEN Literary Awards have been announced, and the translation categories are peppered with our very own past contributors. In the prose category, Vasily Grossman’s An Armenian Sketchbook sports a nomination. You can read an excerpt from the novel, translated by Elizabeth and Robert Chandler, in our January 2013 issue! And Asymptote alum and professor Michael Hoffman is up in the same category for his translation of The Emperor’s Tomb by Joseph Roth (read his essay on Wolfgang Koeppen in our January 2014 issue here). We like to see our past contributors doing big things: Reif Larsen, frequent contributor and goofy Asymptote friend, writes in The Guardian on the trials of seeing his first novel receive the Hollywood treatment.

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Weekly Roundup, 31st May 2014: Franz Kafka Prize, Amazon’s mean, Schadenfreude in America

May 30, 2014  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Translation-happy readers often consider self-publishing, and its funny half-brother, digital publishing, the saviors of independent literature, but not all would agree. At The Guardian, Alan Skinner muses if the so-called “revolution” is a reactionary phenomenon, after all.

In terms of changing reading habits, there’s no bigger word than Amazon. The Seattle behemoth sure gets a lot of (well-deserved) flack in the lit world, and this week reminded us why. Literary nonprofits grapple with the ethics of accepting financial support from the business giant, and publisher Hachette stands to lose in its anti-Amazon scuffle—here’s a close reading of Amazon’s anti-publisher statement.  Meanwhile, decidedly non-indie bestselling author James Patterson donates a hefty sum to independent bookstores all across the United States. READ MORE…

Weekly News Roundup, 2nd May 2014:

May 2, 2014  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Big, big news in translation-land this week: the 2014 winners of Three Percent’s Best Translated Book Award were announced! Asymptote-rs abound: the winner in the fiction category is Seiobo There Below, written by Hungarian author, Asymptote alum, and last year’s winner László Krasznahorkai, translated by Asymptote’s very own (past blog contributor!) Ottilie Mulzet. In the poetry category, Italian poet Elisa Biagini snagged top honors for A Guest in the Wood, team-translated by Diana Thow, Sarah Stickney, and Eugene Ostashevsky: check out Asymptote’s feature here! READ MORE…

Weekly News Roundup, 25th April 2014: Gabo and Shakira, Books and Roses

April 25, 2014  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Strong voices in poetry and protest, remembered: this week marked the unfortunate loss of two poetic voices in protest. Romanian poet Nina Cassian sought exile in the United States after her poems satirizing the Romanian regime stepped on too many toes. Doris Pilkington Garimara exposed systematic injustice toward the Aborigines in Australia most famously through her book, Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence. It may have happened last week, but the literary world is still reeling from the death of Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez. In the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani remembers García Márquez’s memory while Salman Rushdie asserts that Gabo was “the greatest of us all.” We might see more from him, still: an unpublished excerpt, En Agosto nos Vemos. Or step back in time and read the magical realist’s profile on fellow Colombian pop sensation, Shakira. READ MORE…

Asymptote Editor and Contributor News, April Edition

April 23, 2014  |  in News  |  by Eva Richter

Productive as ever, Asymptote's phenomenal editors and contributors continue to shake up the literary world

Contributor News

Dolan Morgan’s short story collection, That’s When the Knives Come Down, is now available for presale. Eric Nelson writes in Electric Literature that the “unparalleled voice of this debut is surely one that will be copied, but not replicated by future writers,” and other critics have called the work “devlishly clever” and “wry, seductive, and breathtaking.” Read the work’s synopsis, and watch its trailer for a preview of the work’s humor and surrealism.

Contributors to our very first issue Efe Murad and Sidney Wade have won the first annual Meral Divitci Award for their translation of The Selected Poems of Melih Cevdet Anday. Stay tuned: we hear that the book will be released next year.

Bitter Oleander Press also has a new release from Asymptote contributors John Taylor and José-Flore Tappy. Sheds/Hangars is a bilingual volume that collects all of José-Flore Tappy’s poetry to date for the first time in English translation. We can’t wait to read this work, which translator Taylor previously discussed in Asymptote’s January 2012 issue (as it turns out, Taylor’s essay became a substantial part of his introduction).

Italy’s MART (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto) presents the work of Sherman Ong, guest artist for Asymptote’s July 2011 issue, in a new exhibition called “Lost in Landscape,” dedicated to contemporary landscape and its many meanings. Ong is shown alongside Marina Abramović, Agnès Varda, and Michael Wolf in this important show—so don’t miss out!

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Weekly News Roundup, 11th April 2014: Sade goes home, Prizes everywhere

April 11, 2014  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Good news always seems to come in threes—or fours, or fives… News of this week’s literary accolades struck with some seriously heavy hitters. The Dublin IMPAC Award has announced its finalists, which include five books in translation and a novel by Asymptote interviewee Tan Twan Eng. For this prize, especially, the stakes are quite high: the winning author receives a 100,000-Euro prize, or in the case of a translation, a 75,000-25,000-Euro writer-translator split! Karl Ove Knausgaard, contentious memoirist and nominated for the IMPAC, has been graced with double honors this week: he’s also been shortlisted for the International Foreign Fiction Prize, which historically includes two female Japanese writers as well (a first!): Yoko Ogawa and Hiromi Kawakami. It’s a good week for female writers in general: the prize formerly known as the Orange Prize the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction has announced its shortlist. READ MORE…

Weekly News Roundup, 4th April 2014: Wiki-Dictionaries, Muhammed: the Opera, Translating Kafka and Joyce

April 4, 2014  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Happy April! It’s too late for April Fool’s trickery at the roundup, but the announcement of German publisher PediaPress’ proposal to print out all of Wikipedia—yes, all four million articles, amounting to one thousand volumes and a bookcase eight feet long and 32 feet high—certainly seems like a prank of Rushdie-selfie proportions. READ MORE…

Weekly News Roundup, 28th March 2014: Pretty literary pennies, Prison reading

March 28, 2014  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Writing is a notoriously penny-pinching métier, unless you’re Canadian Nobel winner Alice Munro—whom the Canadian government has graced with a $5 commemorative coin of her very own. Don’t count on making literary purchases with the coin any time soon, though: the coin costs $69.95, which—granted, we aren’t mathematicians here at Asymptote—seems like a not-so-smart investment. READ MORE…

Weekly News Roundup, 14th March 2014: BTBA (yay!), Illustrated texts

March 14, 2014  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

A look at some of the most important literary news of the past week

We report on book prize-awarding every week here at the Roundup, but it isn’t often that we’re so giddy to see some nominations: our friends at Three Percent have announced the longlist for the 2014 Best Translated Book Award, awarded in categories of both fiction and poetry. We’re especially happy to see the remarkably diverse longlist include several Asymptote alums, past and present: our very own Howard Goldblatt, Asymptote contributing editor, is up for his translation of Mo Yan’s Sandalwood Death (read Goldblatt’s recent essay about his relationship with author Huang Chunming here!), Mircea Cărtărescu, longlisted for Blinding (excerpted in our October 2013 issue), Arnon Grunberg for Tirza (Grunberg’s piece on J.M. Coetzee here), last year’s winner Lászlo Krasznahorkai for Seibobo Here Below (read his remarkable short prose in our July 2013 issue, translated by blog contributor Ottilie Mulzet), Javier Marías’ The Infatuations, translated by the venerable Margaret Jull Costa (interviewed here), Stig Sætterbakken’s Through the Night (don’t miss our review from our January issue), and many, many more—phew! One thing’s for sure: we don’t envy the difficult decisions those judges have got to make in the coming weeks.

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Weekly News Roundup, 7th March 2014: March madness, Big lit bullies, Lit whizzing

March 7, 2014  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

A look at some of the most important literary news of the past week

It’s the first Friday of March, and the month’s madness is already underfoot. If you think we’re referring to the sort of lunacy of hoops, athleticism, and bouncing orange balls, don’t be fooled: in the wake of the madness that is AWP in Seattle, this March portends quite a bit for literary lunatics, as the finalists for several big-name prizes are announced… READ MORE…

Asymptote Never Sleeps: Editor News Roundup

March 5, 2014  |  in News  |  by Eva Richter

The latest from Asymptote's team of international editors

Hard at work on Asymptote’s upcoming issue, our editors still have time to write, publish, translate, and organize conferences and plays. Read the thrilling and bizarre ruminations of Forrest Gump’s Slovakian evil twin, an essay on why loss in translation is inevitable and okay, and find out what to do in Seattle now that AWP has ended!

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Weekly Roundup, 28th February 2014: Asymptote in Seattle, Anti-Anachronism-Bot, Socrates or Seacrest?

February 28, 2014  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

A look at some of the most important literary news of the past week

If you are anywhere near the Pacific Northwest, head on over to Asymptote’s booth at the AWP, or the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference in Seattle, Washington. Good news is that after widespread outcry, the conference is open to the bookish riffraff public, which means you should absolutely come check out the literati—including our managing editor Tara FitzGerald and Central Asia editor-at-large Alex Cigale! They’ll be answering your questions and raffling away translated goodies. READ MORE…

Asymptote Contributors Making Waves

February 19, 2014  |  in News  |  by Eva Richter

The latest from Asymptote's writers and translators

Our past contributors have been busy! Publishing new work, organizing translation contests, accepting prizes and writing poetry and articles (read it all today, right this instant!)—the only thing they haven’t done is procrastinate.

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