Posts filed under 'urbanity'

What’s New in Translation: June 2024

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…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

News from Hong Kong, Kenya, and the International Prize for Arab Fiction!

This week, we hear of a moving Palestinian work, written from Israeli prisons and recently awarded the prestigious International Prize for Arabic Fiction; newly translated short stories exploring the psychic and physical disturbances of pre- and post-handover Hong Kong; and events bringing literature to their communities in Kenya.

Ibrahim Fawzy, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Egypt

For the first time since its launch in 2007, the announcement of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) winning novel did not bring controversy, but rather warmed the hearts of those who read Palestinian prisoner Basim Khandaqji’s A Mask, the Color of the Sky (قناع بلون السماء).

Since the announcement on April 28, during the annual award ceremony in Abu Dhabi, UAE, I’ve pondered: has Khandaqji, who is serving three consecutive life sentences in an Israeli prison, realized the profound impact of his voice? Has he realized that the light he is seeking within the confines of his cell is now illuminating countless hearts? For two decades, Khandaqji has steadfastly honed his literary voice while incarcerated, as a form of resistance and a means to combat isolation. His only solace in the absence of nature’s beauty and freedom is the limitless expanse of his imagination. Khandaqji chose to walk on the fiery coals of writing, engaging in battles of resilience. Stubborn and preserving, he began his journey with literature by writing poetry (a natural start for a prisoner, as poetry is an act of freedom and a potent resistance to captivity), believing that the occupation can imprison his body, but not his free imagination or resistant literature.

Khandaqji’s family recounts the arduous journey he has undertaken, moving from one prison to another because of the arbitrary measures taken by the administration. Yet, despite these difficult and complicated circumstances, Khandaqji and his fellow prisoners managed to smuggle their literary works beyond the towering walls of their confinement, a testament to their unwavering commitment to their craft. The owner of his Lebanon-based publishing house, Dar al-Adab, shared in an interview that the novel was recorded on a pen-like device, and his brother, who accepted the prize on his behalf, was the one who painstakingly transcribed the text. Some might think that Khandaqji’s role as a writer ends only with the act of recording, but his family insists that they are keen on sending all the manuscripts to him so he can ensure that every word is in its proper place, that the events and characters haven’t been altered. READ MORE…

The Fine Wind Between Truth and Fiction: An Interview with Yun Ko-Eun, Author of The Disaster Tourist

Dystopia is the story of the present—the same present that we’ve been experiencing for a long time.

According to FEMA, there are four phases of disaster management: prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery. But in Yun Ko-Eun’s recent novel, The Disaster Tourist (translated by Lizzie Buehler), there can also be a fifth—monetization. At the center of The Disaster Tourist is Jungle, a travel company that turns disaster sites into “disaster destinations” for tourists to explore and enjoy. Yona, the novel’s protagonist and a Jungle employee, brags that the company boasts such packages as “earthquakes, typhoons, volcanoes, avalanches, droughts, floods, fires, massacres, wars, radioactivity, desertification, serial killers, tsunamis, animal abuse, contagious diseases, water pollution, asylums, prisons and more.”

As a programming coordinator, Yona’s job requires her to assess the profitability of various packages—that is, she must figure out how to sell horrific disasters to interested interlopers. “The packages Koreans like are those with something exotic,” she says, “the spirit of adventure.” Early in the novel, Yona is sent to the island of Mui, where Jungle hosts a six-day “desert sink-hole trip,” which promotional materials promise to be “frightening and grim.” But once she arrives, she discovers Mui isn’t what it seems to be.

Though Counterpoint Press published the novel’s English translation in August 2020, The Disaster Tourist was originally released in Korea in 2013. Despite its age, the novel is prescient, to put it mildly, in its handling of issues that have gained traction on account of the MeToo movement and the current Covid-19 pandemic—questions, for instance, of workplace sexual harassment and high-risk “essential” work.  

In the past few years, Korean literature has gained international traction, with authors like Yun, Han Kang, Bae Suah, Ha Seong Nan, and Hye-Young Pyun—notably, all women!—making significant waves with the English translations of their novels. The Disaster Tourist is Yun’s first novel to be translated into English, a compact and propulsive dystopian thriller that stands out as one of 2020’s best works of translated literature. With translations by Buehler, I talked with Yun about dystopian fiction, touch starvation, and why she never makes any compromises when it comes to writing.

—Sophia Stewart, Assistant Interviews Editor

Sophia Stewart (SS): You’ve said that “translation isn’t a neutral delivery of information, it’s a new creative experience” and compared the process of translating The Disaster Tourist to “writing the book a second time.” Can you talk more about the experience of having your work translated, and what the relationship between you and translator Lizzie Buehler looked like during the translation process? (And perhaps even what it looks like now!)

Yun Ko-Eun (YK): Lizzie Buehler sent her first email to me in March 2017. She was translating three of my short stories for her senior thesis as a comparative literature major at Princeton University. I still have the files that she sent me then—they were three stories from my collection, Table For One, the English translation of which is forthcoming this year from Columbia University Press. This sparked regular email correspondence between me and Lizzie over the past several years, and finally our names came together as author and translator on the cover of The Disaster Tourist. Lizzie paved the way for the novel’s publication in English; she allowed it to reach English readers. One of my favorite books is Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s Night Flight, and in one sense it feels like Lizzie was a mail pilot blazing a trail through the dark night.

After years of communicating only through email, Lizzie and I were finally able to meet in Seoul in the summer of 2019. I remember that day well, because it was so hot and humid. There weren’t very many people downtown. As everyone else tried to conserve their strength by staying inside, Lizzie and I walked through Seoul like we were bewitched. We explored alleys, drank tea, ate noodles, ate bingsu, and visited the time capsule plaza and department store roof that were the settings to two of my short stories—all as we showered ourselves in sweat. That day, I was amazed to realize that even though Lizzie and I are different ages and from different cultural backgrounds, we have so many similar characteristics. We have similar fears, and we’re curious about many of the same things. As we stood at a sunbaked crosswalk, I asked Lizzie about the title my novel that she’d translated. “The Korean title of the book is Travelers of the Night, but the English title is The Disaster Tourist. What do you think about that?” She answered that the original title was more poetic and metaphorical, while the new title was a bit more direct. We shared a similar feeling about the title change; in the English publishing market, we thought, The Disaster Tourist would attract more attention.

One year later, when the book finally came out in the summer of 2020, we were in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. If not for the pandemic, I would have gone on a book tour in the UK and the US. Disappointed that we were still limited to exchanging messages by email, I decided to mail Lizzie a gift—Korean cosmetics and a pen engraved with her name. This went wrong, too, when the package was lost in the mail. I was all too upset about it (since then I’ve been afraid to send international mail), but Lizzie’s reaction breathed fresh air into the situation. “So I guess someone is using a pen with my name on it?” she messaged me, the day after the package was confirmed to be lost. As soon as I heard those words, a new story started to take shape into mind. I asked Lizzie if I could write about what had happened. And that was the beginning of another story. READ MORE…

The Harmony of Normalcy: Wang Anyi’s Fu Ping in Review

In the patchwork format by which this novel takes its shape, the reader is as involved and intimate with the surroundings as one of the characters.

Fu Ping by Wang Anyi, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt, Columbia University Press, 2019

First, do not create extraordinary circumstances or extraordinary characters. Second, do not use too much material. Three, do not over-stylize the language. Four, do not aspire to be singular.

These strange and somewhat alienating pillars of writing philosophy are passed on to us by Wang Anyi, one of China’s most accomplished and notorious authors. Famed for her meticulous portrayals of female tenacity, ordinary citizens, and everyday minutia, she is both stylistically audacious and devoted to her subjects. Fu Ping, her most recent novel to be translated into English, and taken into a wonderfully equal rendition by Howard Goldblatt, exemplifies the thematic and aesthetic constants prevalent in her oeuvre, while simultaneously creating an illumination of city and community that leaves remarkably deep impressions by way of its quietude. READ MORE…

Jumping Between the Urban and the Rural: An Interview with Rodrigo Fuentes

Characters can take on a life of their own as you write them, and that can hold a great amount of interest and suspense for me.

In late 2016, the Guatemalan publishing house SOPHOS put out Rodrigo Fuentes’s literary debut, entitled Trucha panza arriba. The book follows, sometimes closely and at other times tangentially, Don Henrik, a white landowner living in Guatemala, and the way his decisions and economic and emotional downfall affect those around him. The book includes intense dramas like “Dive—available in Asymptote’s Winter 2019 Issue—and “Ubaldo’s Island”; vibrating suspense stories like “Whisky”; and profound character explorations like “Henrik.” And all of them are wrapped in exquisite dialogue, like “Terrace,” my favorite story. I told Rodrigo it was my favorite.

“Really?” Rodrigo said, somehow confused.

“Sí,” I told him, and said it was a tight story. “Apretada,” I said, “elegantly condensed, effective, quick as a flash.” READ MORE…