Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

August 16, 2024 | in Dispatches, Weekly Roundup | by Ibrahim Fawzy, Thuy Dinh, and Wambua Muindi

The latest literary news from Egypt, Vietnam, and Kenya!

This week, our Editors-at-Large report on beloved literary figures and emerging talents from their respective regions. From personal tributes to literary luminaries to fan meetups, read on to find out more!

Ibrahim Fawzy, Editor-at-Large reporting from Egypt

In this dispatch, I won’t be reporting on literary festivals and book fairs, as usual. But I will share some good news that personally brought me happiness and gratitude in troubled, gloomy days: Literary translator and cultural worker Nariman Youssef was named head of the Poetry Translation Center (PTC), and Nashwa Nasreldine has joined the PTC team as editor. Excitingly, two Arabic translators have taken over the PTC though they were recruited through totally separate processes. Let this lovely takeover begin and stay tuned for all the amazing work they will bring into the world alongside the PTC’s already brilliant team.

When I praise the new leadership of the PTC, I speak from experience. One day in 2021, I stumbled upon a lifeline: a pay-what-you-want online workshop at PTC. This workshop, led by the extraordinary Nariman Youssef, laid the foundational bricks for my journey as a literary translator. Translating Mustafa Ibrahim’s “Nothing of Note” under her patient, quiet, and profoundly insightful guidance was a revelation. It was as if she was born to lead, with an innate ability to listen, to nurture, and to inspire.

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

February 2, 2024 | in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup | by Carol Khoury, Ibrahim Sayed Fawzy Elsayed, and Miranda Mazariegos

Literary news from Palestine, Egypt, and Latin America!

This week, our Editors-at-Large bring us news of a “literary cartography” of Palestine, the most recent literary fairs and festivals in Egypt, and censorship of Latin American authors in Florida. Read on to learn more!

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

Despite the burgeoning array of literary endeavors in support of Gaza, this dispatch aims to shed light on a profoundly comprehensive initiative. Back in July 2023, when we unveiled our coverage of the podcast entitled “Country of Words,” conceived and orchestrated by Refqa Abu-Remaileh, little did we fathom the vastness of Refqa’s overarching vision under the same title.

“Country or Words: A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature” was inaugurated by Stanford University in the last weeks of 2023. Rooted in the constellation paradigm within literature, this digital-born project aspires to retrace and remap the global narrative of Palestinian literature throughout the twentieth century, traversing the Arab world, Europe, North America, and Latin America. Nestled at the confluence of literary history, periodical studies, and digital humanities, “Country of Words” establishes a networked locus for the data and narrative fragments of a literature in constant motion, harmonizing porous, interrupted, disconnected, and discontinuous fragments into a resilient, open-ended literary chronicle.

Dubravka Ugrešić on Asymptote: The Visa to Enter is Good Writing

August 10, 2022 | in News | by Lee Yew Leong

Check out our submission guidelines and send us your best work today!

“As a reader of Asymptote, I am overjoyed to see literary texts by friends I haven’t seen for a long time, to discover new writers and new names from all over the world. Asymptote has become a literary realm in cyber space built by enthusiasts: the visa to enter is good writing.”

—Dubravka Ugrešić, winner of the 2016 Neustadt Literature Prize

Did you know that Winter in Sokcho, last year’s US National Book Award winner for Translated Literature, made its English debut in our very pages way back in 2017, and it was on the basis of that publication that translator Aneesa Abbas Higgins was able to find a publisher for her manuscript?

Asymptote is proud to be a leading purveyor of world literature—with a truly global readership that includes luminaries such as Dubravka Ugrešić. In our twelve years, we have built one of the best archives of world literature by casting our nets as far and wide as possible—not only is our team spread out across six continents, we are also open for submissions—in all the usual genres: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, criticism, and interviews—throughout the year. And we now guarantee a one-month turnaround time for submission outcomes, and offer optional editorial feedback so that you can grow as a translator.

If you’d like to be a part of our next issue, we encourage you to send in your best work today! Worth a special mention is our “Brave New World Literature” category, under the aegis of which we invite critical or even celebratory essays from readers, critics, authors, publishers, and of course translators discussing and problematizing the ways in which non-English texts reach Anglophone readers, perhaps envisioning a “brave new world literature.” Highlights have included Gitanjali Patel and Nariman Youssef’s essay that fleshes out the very real challenges faced by non-white literary translators, as well as Eugene Ostashevsky’s whipsmart poems, from the current issue, that capture the translator’s liminality.

If you would like to publish in the blog instead, we welcome pieces on topics ranging from global cinema to the ethics of review to the literature of revolution. Apart from essays, we run dispatches from international literary events, interviews, weekly new translations, book reviews, and more. Like our journal, we are looking for creative, original, and highly engaging work that considers the role of translation in literature, the arts, and the fabric of everyday life. We welcome pitches for the blog via email.

READ OUR SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Photograph of Dubravka Ugrešić by Shevuan Williams

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Section Editors’ Highlights: Summer 2021

July 26, 2021 | in News | by Bassam Sidiki, Caridad Svich, and Lee Yew Leong

Our Section Editors pick their favorite pieces from the Summer 2021 issue!

The brand-new Summer 2021 edition of Asymptote is barely ten days old and we are still enjoying the diverse offerings from thirty-five countries gathered therein. Last week, blog editors Xiao Yue Shan, Allison Braden, and Shawn Hoo shared their favorites. Today, section editors Lee Yew Leong, Bassam Sidiki, and Caridad Svich distill their highlights for us:

From Lee Yew Leong, Fiction, Poetry, Special Features, and Interview Editor:

Why do so few men read fiction by women? lamented MA Sieghart as recently as seventeen days ago in The Guardian. With female authors taking five out of six slots, the Summer fiction lineup, published just in time for #WomeninTranslation month, offers parochial-minded readers a taste of what they are missing out on. These stories are also deeply centered on the female experience: Gabriel Payares and Maša Kolanović deliver unsettling takes on pregnancy and new motherhood, while the aging protagonists of Kathrin Schmidt’s and Can Xue’s stories go on mushroom-fueled head trips that seem to set the universe right again. A third set explores the corrosive effects of work on identity (in particular, Joanna Chen’s superb translation of mechanical engineer Tehila Hakimi’s Company recalled for me Amelie Nothomb’s masterpiece Fear and Trembling).

When you don’t go by a Judeo-Christian name, the constant bracing against mispronunciation can result in estrangement from your own identity, as Xiao Yue Shan explored in her recent essay on linguistic exile. I can relate. That’s why I found the ending of Abdushukur Muhammet’s “My Name” deeply moving. Translator Munawwar Abdulla not only does an excellent job nailing Muhammet’s melancholic voice, but also provides much needed contextualization in her translator’s note that imbues the poem with a sharp political layer. READ MORE…

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Announcing our Summer 2021 Issue Featuring Hoda Barakat, Can Xue, and Bruno Latour

July 15, 2021 | in News | by Lee Yew Leong

Did you miss us? After a hiatus, we’re back with a blockbuster Summer edition, brimming with new work from 35 countries!

It’s here! The first issue of Asymptote’s second decade, featuring Hoda Barakat, Can Xue, Bruno Latour, and Lêdo Ivo, alongside new work from 35 countries, confirming “we all live in a beautifully round world.” More than any other issue in recent memory, “Age of Division,” our Summer 2021 edition, also speaks to the current divisiveness of our times.

In Ethiopian writer Mulugeta Alebachew’s short story, childhood memories are betrayed when the narrator returns home after a long time away only to find his friends “intently drawing family trees and working out ethnic background of people as if they worked for the cartography agency, and it was their task to draw boundaries.” Meanwhile, at a “time of infinite sadness,” diasporic Palestinian poet Olivia Elias speaks to us of “a life in the eye of the hurricane” and of “a country / engulfed in a fault of history.”