Weekly News Roundup, 21st February 2014: Translation is the prize!

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

This week in literary prizewinning witnessed what seems like yet another entry in the Good, the Bad, and the downright Strange. While we can’t really complain about the fact that the Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists include more translations than the average translation-phobic English-language book prizes, the Times omitted to mention the translators’ names—or the fact that the books were translations themselves.

Overlooked literary works achieve redemption, fifty years later, in Bookslut blog’s Daphne Awards—showcasing award-less classics, and there are thankfully some translations in the mix, too. The 2014 Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year has announced its oddball list of nominees (we’re betting on Are Trout South African?). Winning a prize might be a mixed blessing: do we turn up our noses to heavily lauded books? Last week, we mentioned the Society of Authors’ extensive Translation Awards—here’s an overview of all the winners. Sometimes, translation is the prize: Readux Books’ New German Fiction Prize awards young German writers with an English-language translation. From the website: “translation into English, particularly of contemporary authors, is notoriously lacking—and when it does happen, then often years after the original publication.” We couldn’t agree more—here’s to reversing the phenomenon!

After a vicious back-and-forth fueled by social media, the upcoming Seattle AWP Festival decided to open its doors to the public, after all (if you’ll be there: keep an eye out for Asymptote!).  After a pagoda-related location pickle, the Irrawaddy Literary Festival in Myanmar starts this week without a hitch. Or, if the Internet is your city, be sure to check out the Digital Writer’s Festival—networking and inspiration from the comfort of your canapé.

Writers (past and present) lead noteworthy lives. We mourn the passing of short-story maven, Montreal-born and Paris-residing author Mavis Gallant, as well as that of Asymptote contributor and Hungarian wordsmith Szilárd Borbely, who passed at 50. Equatorial Guinea’s eminent author Juan Tomás Avila Laurel’s outspokenness disparaging his nation’s appalling human rights record has forced the writer to go into hiding. Meanwhile, author Chimamanda Adichie writes a heartfelt appeal against Nigeria’s anti-gay laws. Chinese poet Liu Xia, wife of Nobel Prize-winning (and housearrested dissident) author Liu Xiaobo, has been hospitalized due to heart problems, but health isn’t the only worry of Chinese literati: established author Yu Jie’s critical look at president Xi Jinping means he’s having a hard time getting published, even in Hong Kong. Luckily, censorship recedes a bit in Iran: it appears as if Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s Jan Michalski Prize-winning book The Colonel will finally be released in Dowlatabadi’s home country.

Do you know what a language is? Whatever your answer, don’t be so sure about it—the world might be turned upside down, after all.  There’s no need to feel sheepish about those Esperanto courses you took online—all languages with names are invented, after all. Especially in the rapid-fire age of Internet innovation, the language of meme-of-the-moment Doge requires linguistic explanation.  The Chinese Education Bureau commits a “monumental gaffe” by declaring Cantonese a dialect—language or not, we can all agree that a locational vernacular is something to be cherished and protected.

Finally, for the little ones: bizarre propaganda for North Korean children, fully clothed storybooks for the French.