- Featuring
- Yang Lian
- Enrique Serpa
- Marianna Geide
- Gonçalo M. Tavares
- Rachel Blau DuPlessis
- André Breton and Philippe Soupault
We abide at present our peculiar circumstances, each in our way. With new work from 31 countries, Asymptote’s Summer 2020 edition reflects “This Strange Stillness”—hesitant, expectant, ominous, tragic. Alluding to both the ongoing pandemic and the #BlackLivesMatter movement, our excerpt from Gonçalo M. Tavares’s Plague Diary underscores the exceptional timeliness of one of our most unified issues ever. Alongside Christian Raimo’s bleak look at Italy during the financial crisis, a review of speculative fiction by Hong Konger Ysabelle Cheung against the backdrop of increasing Chinese encroachment, and the all-too-modern invasion of technology in Mohamed Makhzangi’s “Water Buffaloes,” past work by founders of surrealism André Breton and Philippe Soupault and our interview with enfant terrible of French literature Frédéric Beigbeder—where he discusses lockdown, life extension, and the xenophobia of some English readers—seem to resonate even more deeply with our historical moment.
This issue’s Special Feature showcases the humble vignette—i.e., compact serial work rendered poetically—from traditional shorts like those contributed by gifted Brazilian storyteller Cidinha da Silva to more metafictional offerings such as Macedonian author Sanja Mihajlovik-Kostadinovska’s brilliant “(In)finite Models of the Short Story” and up-and-coming Chinese writer Shuang Xuetao’s impressionistic “White Bird.” Throughout, anxiety lurks beneath the surface of jeweled prose accompanied by UK-based guest artist Laura Blight’s thrilling photography. In Russian poet Marianna Geide’s “People and Other Beings,” sinister predators are “waiting . . . always at the ready.” In acclaimed short story writer Tripura’s “Waiting for Bhagavantam”—marking our first piece from the Telugu—the frustration of our stood-up narrator seeps into his worldview like a contagion: “Across from me, a house that looked like pneumonia-given-form.” Everywhere, “a colossal virus whispers intimately in your ear,” writes Misty School poet Yang Lian.
Disease and endless waiting in confinement can exacerbate our distress at the state of the world. At such times, we relish especially the kind of celebratory transgression and liberation evoked in the irresistible poetry of Lolita Agamalova or Robert Rybicki, but we also share visual artist Rachel Blau Duplessis’s “unspeakable rage” about the course of the twenty-first century. Antonio Romani discusses Antonio Scurati’s novelistic depiction of Mussolini and Italian fascism, an all-too-timely subject for those living with today’s populist regimes. Journalist Tomáš Forró’s report on the 2014 conflict in Ukraine strikes a similar note of shame and fear regarding the State. Finally, in Hugo Carrillo’s Guatemalan drama, The Heart of the Scarecrow, a circus clown moonlights as a revolutionary, distributing anti-government tracts. Here as in our own reality, the police appears as an oppressive force, always on the verge of abusing its power.
Yet in spite of political upheaval and a palpable desire for change, something immobile in the moment lingers and persists. Alberto Caeiro, one of Fernando Pessoa’s most vivid and important heteronyms, describes this feeling as “a day when all day the thunder threatens / But still hasn’t arrived by nightfall . . .” Will the thunder break at last? One way or the other, art will bear witness, and Asymptote with it. You can help us remain vigilant in the face of history by joining our team (deadline: 27 July), by submitting work to our regular sections or to our Dutch Fiction Feature (deadline: 24 August), by subscribing to our Book Club (now open to readers all around the globe), by making a one-time tax-deductible donation (for those of you in our US), and, most of all, by becoming a sustaining or masthead member from as little as USD5 a month. Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter, or at our daily blog; don't forget to sign up for our free Fortnightly Airmails if you haven’t already. However you do it, it's more important than ever that we stay connected across the globe. Thank you for reading!
—Lee Yew Leong, Editor-in-Chief
Editorial Team for Issue July 2020
Editor-in-Chief: Lee Yew Leong (Taiwan/Singapore)
Assistant Managing Editors: Daljinder Johal (UK/India) and Josefina Massot (Argentina)
Section Editors:
Lee Yew Leong (Taiwan/Singapore)
Garrett Phelps (USA)
Varun Nayar (India)
Caridad Svich (USA)
Ah-reum Han (USA/South Korea)
Sam Carter (USA)
Eva Heisler (USA)
Sarah Timmer Harvey (USA/Netherlands)
Editor of Special Feature on Vignettes: Lee Yew Leong (Taiwan/Singapore)
Assistant Editors: Edwin Alanís-García (USA), Alyea Canada (USA), (Canada), Whitney DeVos (Mexico/USA), Helena Fornells (UK), Barbara Halla (France), Marina Martino (UK), Maya Nguen (USA), Erik Noonan (USA), Andreea Scridon (UK/Romania), Lindsay Semel (Portugal/USA), P. T. Smith (USA), Jay G. Ying (UK), and Lin Chia-wei (Taiwan)
Contributing Editors: Ellen Elias-Bursac (USA), Aamer Hussein (UK), Sim Yee Chiang (Singapore), Dylan Suher (USA), and Adrian West (USA)
Translation Tuesdays Editor: Edwin Alanís-García (USA)
Art Director: Lee Yew Leong (Taiwan/Singapore)
Assistant Director, Educational Arm: Kent Kosack (USA)
Editors-at-large, Argentina: Allison Braden and Sarah Moses
Editor-at-large, Brazil: Daniel Persia
Editor-at-large, El Salvador: Nestor Gomez
Editor-at-large, Guatemala: José García
Editors-at-large, Hong Kong: Jacqueline Leung and Charlie Ng Chak-Kwan
Editor-at-large, Iran: Poupeh Missaghi
Editor-at-large, Mexico: Andrew Adair
Editor-at-large, Morocco: Hodna Nuernberg
Editor-at-large, Peru: Paloma Reaño
Editor-at-large, Romania and Moldova: MARGENTO
Editor-at-large, Slovakia: Julia Sherwood
Editor-at-large, Taiwan: Vivian Chih
Editor-at-large, Uzbekistan: Filip Noubel
Editor-at-large, Vietnam: Quyen Nguyen
Masthead for Issue July 2020
Fiction: Lee Yew Leong
Poetry: Garrett Phelps
Nonfiction: Varun Nayar
Drama: Caridad Svich
Criticism: Sam Carter
WoW: Ah-reum Han
Special Feature "Vignettes": Lee Yew Leong
Visual: Eva Heisler
Interviews: Sarah Timmer Harvey
Illustrations and Cover: Laura Blight
Assistant Managing Editor (supervising Assistant Editors): Josefina Massot
Assistant Managing Editor (supervising Editors-at-Large): Daljinder Johal
Communications Director: Samuel Kahler
Director of Outreach: Alessandro Mondelli
Chief Executive Assistant: Samuel Miller
Senior Executive Assistant: Bernice Seow
Executive Assistant: Austyn Wohlers
Blog Editors: Xiao Yue Shan and Sarah Moore
Translation Tuesdays Editor: Edwin Alanís-García (USA)
Newsletter Editor: Rita Horanyi
Guest Artist Liaison: Berny Tan
Senior Copy Editors: Devarati Chakrabarti and Angela Glindemann
Copy Editors: Anna Aresi, Andrea Blatz, Allison Braden, Bella Bosworth, Whitney DeVos, Rose Green, Barbara Halla, Sophie Hoffman, and George MacBeth
Technical Manager: József Szabó
English Social Media: Scarlett Castillo, Georgina Fooks, Sarah Panfil, and Isabelle Rew
Spanish Social Media: Sergio Serrano
French Social Media: Filip Noubel
Chinese Social Media: Jiaoyang Li and Jessica Wang
Communications Managers: Alexander Dickow and Georgina Fooks
Assistant Director, Educational Arm: Kent Kosack
Educational Arm Assistants: Kasia Bartoszyńska, Lucchini Clémence, Mary Hillis, Clare Spaulding, and Ian Thompson
For their generous donations, our heartfelt thanks go too to Alexander Dickow, Anna Aresi, Cobina Gillitt, Daniel Hahn, Deewang Bhamidipati, Enrico Cioni, Jeffrey Boyle, Joseph Hutchison, Katarzyna Bartoszynska, Mallory Truckenmiller, Mark Cohen, Martin Ingebrigtsen, Martin Orwin, Matthew Mazowita, Monty Reid, Nancy Relaford, Nhi Ta Huong, MARGENTO, Ruth Diver, Siobhan Mei, Ulf Jacobsen, Velina Manolova, William Cadwallader, and Xiangxiu Meng.
This past quarter, we welcomed new masthead member Ian Chung, new sustaining member Mildred Santiago Nicotera, and new Book Club subscribers Maria Valdes-Perez, Lorna Amor, Kristina Lalas, Robert Gehret, Ludmila Mikhailova, Rosie Arscott, Giovanna Zivny, Joan Dowgin, Marcelene Isaacson, Cindy Jimenez, Rodney Brazil, Jane Miller, Ben Moon-Black, Enrico Cioni, Francesca Spedalieri, Aiman Haddad, Anne Fisher, Ana Lucia Hincapie, Alyssa Bowie, and Suzanne Carter. Thank you all for your support!
