Weekly News Roundup, 17th April 2015: International Excellence!

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Happy Friday, Asymptote friends! We’ve announced it on the blog already, but still can’t stop celebrating at Asymptote having won the London Book Fair’s International Excellence Award for International Literary Translation Achievement. After Indiegogo campaigns, calls for submissions, and projects spanning the entire globe in words, it feels good to be honored.

The prize—and big-time book event in London—couldn’t come at a better time, especially with the slightly disheartening release of translation statistics in the United Kingdom via Literature Across Frontiers. And at the NYBlog, Tim Parks asks if there simply is too much published fiction nowadays—one thing is certain: there isn’t enough translated literature in the English-speaking biblioglobe (not in the slightest!). And if we’re going to data-analyze the literary scene, why not the literature itself? Here’s how computer-driven literary analysis is changing (and how it’s still limited).

Back to prizes: the PEN Awards’ shortlist has been announced, and the fiction category includes Baboon, written by Danish writer Naja Marie Aidt and published by Two Lines Press (we interviewed her here, and you can read an excerpt from the short story collection here!) The European Union has announced its European Union Prize for Literature, which recognizes one book from each country (quick, translators: snap them up to translate before someone else does)! And the Dublin International IMPAC award has announced its shortlist, which includes three whole novels in translation!

Shop talk. Who gets the lucky privilege to review or translate texts—thereby practically pre-determining their reception? A lot of us translators translate purely transactional texts: what’s that the potential for translation? At the Nation, an essay on “the art of the possible.” You may not be able to visit these “improbable” libraries in your lifetime, but there’s no joking that readers (especially in translation!) can travel far.

Sadly, this week witnessed the passing of two great literary giants. Legendary German writer, Nobel laureate, and author of The Tin Drum Günter Grass passed away this week at the age of 87 (read a tribute to his troubled past here). And Uruguayan anti-capitalist author Eduardo Galeano has died at the age of 74.