Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

July 22, 2022 | in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup | by Josefina Massot, Kristina Tatarian, and Rubén López

Literary news from Argentina, Armenia, and Guatemala!

In this week’s round-up of global literary goings-on, our editors report on efforts to highlight queer Armenian literature, plurilingual Argentine writing, and a Guatemalan festival that seeks to redress fragmented memories through art and literature. Read on to find out more!

Josefina Massot, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Argentina

Last Thursday, New York-based writer and critic Sylvia Molloy passed away at the age of eighty-three. She was, among other things, a pioneer—the first woman to gain tenure at Princeton University back in the seventies, the first person to found a U.S. writing program in Spanish, and, perhaps most notably, the first Argentine author to really tackle LGBTTIQ+ culture in her work; her debut novel “En breve cárcel” (1981), an icon of queer literature, was written during the Argentine dictatorship and first published in Spain to avoid persecution.

Molloy established a fruitful link between queer themes and translation: “queer means twisted, weird, out of place, and if people think my texts deviate from the norm, so much the better,” she once said. “I’m interested in texts that take unusual turns, including those that go from one language to another. I’ve always had that sort of linguistic conflict, because I write in Spanish but will often explore phrases in other languages.”

Translation at large was central to Molloy, who grew up speaking Spanish, English, and French. Her short essay collection Vivir entre lenguas (Living Between Languages) is an attempt to portray this plurilingual experience. While her own English version of the work hasn’t been published in full, an excerpt did run in Asymptote’s Fall 2019 issue; meanwhile, her brilliant Desarticulaciones will be released by Charco Press in both Spanish and English.

As we bid adieu to one of our greats, we also welcome a newcomer—the latest press to sprout up in Argentina’s bustling indie ecosystem. Sergio Criscolo’s Híbrida has just published its first four titles, all by South American authors: Aspas by Belén Zavallo, El placer de abandonar by Schoë Blintsjia, El corazón adelante by press co-editor Humphrey Inzillo (all three of them, Argentines), and Elis Regina, una biografía musical by the Brazilian Arthur de Faria. The first is a book of poetry; the second, a debut novel; the third, a collection of journalistic columns; the fourth, a translation into rioplatense (rather than neutral) Spanish. READ MORE…

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A Burning Poet
Centroamérica Cuenta
Charco Press
International Armenian Literary Alliance
PEN Armenia
PoLitPEN
The Hy-Phen Mag

Death, Hope, and Humor: David Unger on Translating Miguel Ángel Asturias’s Mr. President

July 14, 2022 | in Interviews | by José García Escobar

Translation is often an act of revelation—of revealing what is hidden.

In 1946, Nobel Prize laureate and Guatemalan author Miguel Ángel Asturias published his magnum opus, El señor presidente, which would become one of the boldest and most inventive works of Latin American literature, an important predecessor for literary giants including Gabriel García Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Isabel Allende, and Roberto Bolaño. However, the text remains relatively unknown in the English-speaking world. In this intimate and revelatory interview, Editor-at-Large José Garcia Escobar speaks with Guatemalan American author and translator David Unger on the complexities of translating Asturias’s great work into English, balancing authenticity and readability, and its political and artistic legacy.

In 2015, I was living in New York and often got together with the Guatemalan-American writer David Unger. A year prior, he had won the Miguel Ángel Asturias National Prize (Guatemala’s highest literary honor), and his novel The Mastermind (Akashic Books) had just come out.

We met every other month, more or less.

We would go to Home Sweet Harlem, on the corner of Amsterdam and 136th, or Chinelos, a Mexican restaurant just around the corner, and talk about books, translation, and life.

He told me he was flattered that Cristina García had agreed to blurb The Mastermind. He told me of the time he met and had a strong disagreement with Nicanor Parra. When Parra died in 2018, David wrote a piece for The Paris Review. He told me to go see Andrés Neuman at McNally Jackson and read more of his work. Then one day, as we walked back to his office at City College, he said, “I’m translating El señor presidente.”

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

February 9, 2018 | in News, Weekly Roundup | by Jessie Stoolman and Sarug Sarano

Global literary news for global readers.

We’re back this week with important news and exciting new developments from the world of literature. Our Editors-at-Large in Mexico and Tunisia share the latest prizes, events and details relating to writers based within these regions. Tune in for more global updates next week!

Sergio Sarano, Spanish Social Media Manager, reporting from Mexico:

Jorge Volpi, one of Mexico’s most well-known authors, has won the very prestigious Alfagura Novel Prize for 2018. Alfagura is one of the most renowned publishing houses in the Spanish-speaking world, and the prize has previously gone to writers such as Elena Poniatowska (also the recipient of a Cervantes Prize), Laura Restrepo, and Andrés Neuman. The award consists of the publication of the novel and a very hefty sum of money: US$175,000, making it one of the richest prizes for fiction in the world. Una novela criminal (A Criminal Novel) is a non-fiction novel in the vein of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood; it takes up the notorious case of Israel Vallarta and Florence Cassez, a Mexican man and French woman accused of belonging to a kidnapping gang. The media eagerly covered the case, and it strained Mexican-French relations. Everyone in Mexico knows how the trial ended, but I’m sure the novel will be quickly translated into English—readers will be able to dig into this sordid story that weaves corruption, scandal, and diplomacy.

The Mexican literary community deeply mourned the death of Nicanor Parra, the Chilean antipoet. Numerous writers and poets voiced their debt to Parra and remembered his visits to Mexico in several media outlets. Honestly, very few Latin American writers can claim to have read his 1954 classic Poems and Antipoems and not wanting to become an antipoet. One of them was especially legendary: the time he went to Guadalajara to receive the first Juan Rulfo Prize (now called FIL Prize) back in 1991. There, Parra delivered his famous “Mai Mai Peñi” speech, in which he honored Juan Rulfo but at the same time ridiculed literary awards. One of its famous stanzas says: “The ideal speech / Is the one that doesn’t say a thing / Even though it seems like it says it all.” You can find “Mai Mai Peñi” and other classic mock-speeches in After-Dinner Declarations, translated by Dave Oliphant.