Happy Friday, Asymptoters! You must be rather cozy living under a rock if you haven’t heard the most explosive news of the week: Hungarian writer (and Asymptote contributor!) László Krasznahorkai has won the prestigious International Man Booker Prize this year. He received 60,000 pounds sterling, but a 15,000-pound prize for his English-language translators is split between George Szirtes and Ottilie Mulzet (also contributors to both blog and journal). This year’s snag means things are stacked two-for-two with regard to the Man Booker and Asymptote. Two years ago, Lydia Davis earned top honors—and you can see her work in the journal, herself translating from the Dutch in 2013. Furthermore in lit prizes: at Wall Street Journal, an interview with the most recent “Arab Booker”—also known as the International Prize for Arab Fiction—prizewinner: Tunisian novelist and prizwinner Shukri Mabkhout opens up on novelizing the political crises and opening literary doors in the region.
This week marked the unfortunate passing Franz Wright, American Pulitzer-Prizewinning poet and erstwhile translator of German poet-slash-heartthrob Rainer Maria Rilke. And Anthony C. Yu, translator of the Chinese epic The Journey to the West, passed this week as well.
I’d hate to give you dire news, but PEN reports that many foreign translations arriving in China have been censored without the author’s—or the translator’s—knowledge. Now the question is: totally redact the pieces, or accept the government’s provisions? And in light of BBC’s latest audio-retelling adventure, the Guardian explores German-language Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis—and its myriad English and non-linguistic translations. Interested in translators and writers talking back? Take a look at this conversation between French author Hervé Guibert, his translator Nathanaël, and American writer Wayne Koestenbaum.
Here’s latest in weird booklists: the United States government has released the inventory of documents collected in Osama bin Laden’s hiding place, and the list’s rather interesting: bin Laden’s bookshelf included the likes of Noam Chomsky. However, given his other (random!) French-language texts, Foreign Policy posits that bin Laden was a Francophile. Perhaps you’d be more interested in The Prank, the first English-language translation of Russian humorist Anton Chekhov’s first collection, compiled as he would have it.
This week in criticism: a podcast covering Norwegian phenom Karl Ove Knausgaard’s work, and just what makes it so literary.