Posts filed under 'News'

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

The latest in literary news from North Macedonia, Spain, and Kenya!

In this round of weekly updates from our Editors-at-Large, we hear about literary festivals, awards, and the latest translations from North Macedonia, Spain, and Kenya! From a festival themed “Air. Wind. Breathing.” to a recently completed translation of the Bible, read on to learn more!

Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large, reporting from North Macedonia

The first weeks of autumn in North Macedonia brought exciting developments to the literary scene: the third installment of the Skopje Poetry Festival took place from September 24–28. The event spanned several venues, including the historic movie theater “Frosina”, the Skopje city library, and the bookshop-cafe “Bukva”. The festival opened with a performance entitled “Air. Wind. Breathing.”—a theme that was maintained throughout, as some of the readings were accompanied by musical improvisations with wind instruments. 

Represented at the Skopje Poetry Festival was a diverse range of cultures; Danish, Serbian, French-Syrian, Maltese, and Croatian poets gave readings alongside local authors. Aside from readings, there were screenings of several movies based on the poetry of Aco Šopov. One of the adapted poems was Horrordeath, which was featured in the Winter 2023 issue of Asymptote Journal in Rawley Grau and Christina E. Kramer’s translation. The screenings were followed by a musical concert, a creative writing workshop headed by Immanuel Mifsud (a Maltese author and recipient of the European Union Prize for Literature), a panel discussion on increasing the visibility of Macedonian literature abroad, and a yoga session in nature. Young Macedonian poets also had a chance to make their voices heard, during the “Springboard” event on September 24 dedicated to poets between the ages of 16 and 25.

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

The latest news from Palestine, Hong Kong, and Malaysia!

This week, our writers bring you news from Palestine, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. In Palestine, the world has been remembering the renowned writer Mourid Barghouti, who passed away this month; in Hong Kong, Dorothy Tse’s first novel to appear in English, Owlish, will be released by Fitzcarraldo Editions and Graywolf Press; and in Malaysia, two new anthologies celebrate Malaysian writing. Read on to find out more! 

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine

If it weren’t for COVID-19, the narrow streets of Deir Ghassana would have been jammed with mourners on Valentine’s day. Just like many other villages around the world, Deir Ghassana—the small serene village to the north of Ramallah in the central hills of Palestine— usually celebrates Valentine’s day, but not this year: for Mourid Barghouti passed away.

Born on a hot day in July 1944 in one of the village’s old houses, Barghouti grew to become a beloved Palestinian poet, performer, public speaker, and memoirist, albeit living most of his life in exile. He wrote the popular memoir I Saw Ramallah, which chronicled his return to the West Bank in 1996 and was translated by novelist Ahdaf Soueif. He also wrote a follow-up memoir, I Was Born There, I Was Born Herewhich tells his story from 1998 to 2010, translated by Humphrey Davies. He published more than a dozen collections of poems, and a collection of his work, Midnight and Other Poemswas translated by his life partner, the great Egyptian novelist Radwa Ashour (1946–2014).

In his foreword to the English version of I Saw Ramallah, Edward Said wrote of Barghouti’s treatment of loss experienced in exile that, “it is Barghouti’s extended rebuttal and resistance against the reasons for that loss that endows his poetry with substance and gives this narrative its positive valence.” The loss of such a writer is great, but Barghouti will always be remembered. His legacy is extremely rich, not only because he was one of the most articulate defenders of the Palestinian cause, but because his writing has encapsulated the collective agony and sumoud (steadfastness) of the Palestinian people everywhere.

In his memoir, Mourid writes about the loss of his private days—his birthday and his anniversary—as author Ghassan Kanafani was assassinated on the date of the first, and cartoonist Naji al-Ali on the second. It seems life is only determined to keep the legacy alive. Sadly for Mourid and Radwa’s only son, the poet Tamim Barghouti (b. 1977), February 14 will be a different celebration from now on.

To get a taste of his writings, a collection of his translated works is published on ArabLit and a wide-ranging interview by Maya Jaggi, published in The Guardian (2008). READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

The latest news from Argentina, Sri Lanka, and Sweden!

This week, our writers bring you the latest news from Argentina, Sri Lanka, and Sweden. In Argentina, Betina González’s first novel to be translated into English, American Delirium, has been released; in Sri Lanka, renowned dramatist Asoka Handagama will premiere his new play in March; and in Sweden, the Swedish Arts Council has responded to the need for increased funding in the literary and culture sector. Read on to find out more! 

Allison Braden, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Argentina

On Tuesday, Argentine novelist Betina González made her English-language debut with the publication of American Delirium (Henry Holt and Co.). The book chronicles the chaos that ensues after a strange hallucinogen invades a fictional U.S. town, and the stories of three central characters—Beryl, Berenice, and Vik—diverge and collide in a narrative that plays with notions of utopia and dystopia. To kick off publicity events for the novel, bookstore Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., hosted a virtual conversation between González and her translator, Heather Cleary.

Moderator Idra Novey, who is herself a novelist and award-winning translator, focused in part on issues of translation. González began writing the book, which is set in the U.S., while living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. González described how English served as a “ghost structure” behind her writing in Spanish. That “special Spanish,” as she called it, was also shaped in part by the various Spanish dialects and tones she encountered while living in the U.S.; incorporating those regional differences into the fabric of the narrative contributed to its hallucinogenic, dreamlike atmosphere. “The language,” she said, “needed to collaborate” with the plot.

The translation process began, Cleary explained, with close reading and a conversation with González about the three characters’ voices. Berenice and Vik’s sections are both written in the third-person, but the narration evinces subtle differences that reflect their respective personalities. Vik hails from an invented island in the Caribbean, which experienced first Spanish, then British colonization. (González conducted extensive research to shape his origins. In total, the book took about seven years to write.) To help capture González’s careful nuance, Cleary infused Vik’s sections with Briticisms, which hint at his home’s colonial history. (Vik, Cleary pointed out, was difficult to translate in part because he’s “kind of an asshole,” who is “as resistant on the page as he is in real life.”) READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

The latest news from Lebanon, the Vietnamese diaspora, and France!

This week, our writers bring you the latest news from Lebanon, the Vietnamese diaspora, and France. In Lebanon, Jadaliyya has published an essay on the late Lebanese poet Iliya Abu Madi and Lebanese author Nasri Atallah has been included in a new anthology, Haramcy; in the Vietnamese diaspora, December 6 marks the 183th birthday of Petrus Ký, a prominent Vietnamese scholar who helped to improve the cultural understanding between French-colonized Vietnam and Europe; and in France, whilst bookshops have suffered from national lockdowns, a new translation of poems by contemporary poet Claire Malroux has been released. Read on to find out more! 

MK Harb, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Lebanon

Arab sci-fi lovers rejoice! An Arabic translation of the late American science fiction author Octavia Butler’s Kindred is coming out with Takween Publishing. Dr. Mona Kareem Kareem, a writer, literary scholar, and Arabic-English literary translator, worked on the Arabic manuscript during her residency at Princeton University. She will be holding an online talk, “To Translate Octavia Butler: Race, History, and Sci-Fi,” on December 7. Tune in as you wait for the manuscript with sci-fi jitters! In other translation news, Kevin Michael Smith, a scholar and translator of global modernist poetry, translated two poems by Saadi Youssef for Jadaliyya. Yousef is a prolific writer, poet, and political activist from Iraq and we are delighted to see more of his work profiled in English. Also on Jadaliyya is this beautiful rumination on the late Lebanese poet Iliya Abu Madi and his political imagination. Abu Madi wrote spellbinding poetry and was part of the twentieth-century Mahjar movement in the United States, which included the renowned Lebanese author, Gibran Khalil Gibran.

In publishing news, Bodour Al-Qasimi, founder and CEO of Kalimat Group, an Emirati publishing house for Arabic books, has been announced as the president of the International Publishers Association! Al-Qasimi has tirelessly worked on expanding the scope of the Arab publishing industry and we are happy to see her achieve this feat. Award-winning artist and cultural entrepreneur, Zahed Sultan, is seeking to release Haramcy, an anthology with twelve writers from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, including Lebanese author Nasri Atallah. It is set to be published with Unbound Books and the anthology addresses pertinent themes of love, invisibility, and belonging. In the spirit of the holidays, if you are feeling generous and capable of donating, then consider contributing to the Haramcy Fund.

We know the holidays are upon us and you are looking forward to cozying up with a book or two (or five in our case!). We have some new Arabic literature in translation for you to read during the holidays! The Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize shortlist has been announced! Another shortlist we are excited about is the Warwick Women in Translation Prize, which features Thirteen Months of Sunrise by Sudanese author, Rania Mamoun, translated from Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette.

Thuy Dinh, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Vietnamese Diaspora

December 6, 2020 marks the 183th birthday of Petrus Ký, also called Trương Vĩnh Ký, whose prolific achievements as scholar, translator, and publisher helped broaden the cultural understanding between French-colonized Vietnam and Europe. His vanguard efforts popularized chữ quốc ngữ, or modern Romanized script—leading to its official adoption as Vietnam’s national language in the early twentieth century. READ MORE…

Weekly Updates from the Front Lines of World Literature

The latest news from Singapore, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom!

This week, our writers bring you the latest news from Singapore, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. In Singapore, the Singapore Writers’ Festival hosted international writers, such as Liu Cixin, Teju Cole, and Sharon Olds, whilst the Cordite Poetry Review published a special feature on Singapore poetry; in Taiwan, Kishu An Forest of Literature centre has held a discussion about a new translation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; and in the UK, Carcanet Press has launched Eavan Boland’s final collection, The Historians, whilst new books about renowned poets Seamus Heaney, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton have been released. Read on to find out more! 

Shawn Hoo, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Singapore:

The beginning of November sees a deluge of new writing coming from a host of literary journals. Joshua Ip and Alvin Pang have guest edited a special feature on Singapore poetry in Cordite Poetry Review that gives us the rare pleasure of rethinking Singapore poetry through the art of transcreation. The editors commissioned thirty young poets (who write primarily in English) for the challenge of transcreating verse, not just from the official languages of Malay, Tamil, and Chinese, but also ‘minor’ languages such as Kristang, Bengali, and Tagalog that make up Singapore’s linguistic soundscape. Additionally, Mahogany Journal, a new online periodical on the scene for anglophone South Asian writers in Singapore, has just released their second issue, which is themed ‘Retellings.’ Finally, one of our longest-running online journals, the Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore, has launched its October issue. Lovers of Singapore literature have a huge array of choice.

Meanwhile, this year’s virtual Singapore Writers’ Festival (mentioned in my October dispatch) concluded last weekend. While festivalgoers did not experience the familiar ritual of queuing and squeezing into a room packed with fellow writers and readers, the online format delivered its own peculiarities. Liu Cixin, Teju Cole, and Sharon Olds were some of the international stars joining us from different time zones across our devices. Margaret Atwood, whose message to novelist Balli Kaur Jaswal was a hopeful “we will get through,” had many viewers sending questions through a live chat box asking the author of The Handmaid’s Tale what it means to write in these dystopian times. Instead of browsing the festival bookstore in between panels, I scrolled through the webstore run by Closetful of Books. Nifty videos were added to lure me to new book releases, booksellers curated a list of recommended reads, while readers craving connection left love notes to nobody in particular. The copy of Intimations I ordered arrived with a sweet touch: it came with a bookplate signed by Zadie Smith. With access to video on demand, rather than rushing from room to room, I found myself toggling between panels on Southeast Asian historical fiction and Korean horror without so much as lifting a finger. If I find myself unable to concentrate (as Zadie Smith said of our social media age: “I feel very bullied at the speed I am told to think daily”), I tune in to Poetry Bites to hear Marc Nair engage in ten-minute intimate chats with ten poets. Kudos to festival director Pooja Nansi and her team for this massively successful event. We are all already looking forward to what the next year’s edition of the festival brings. READ MORE…

Weekly Updates from the Front Lines of World Literature

The latest news from the Vietnamese diaspora, Malaysia, and France!

This week, our writers bring you the latest news from the Vietnamese diaspora, Malaysia, and France. This month celebrates children’s literature in the Vietnamese diaspora, with a host of events and literary magazine Da Màu publishing a special issue. Malaysia also anticipates an exciting month with two Malaysian-born women recently making the longlist for Warwick Prize for Women in Translation and the shortlist for the Malaysian Migrant Poetry Competition due to be announced today. A second lockdown in France has instigated an appeal by publishing and bookselling unions to keep bookshops open—and the prestigious Goncourt prize has postponed announcing its 2020 winner until this happens. Read on to find out more! 

Thuy Dinh, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Vietnamese Diaspora

October 2020 is Children’s Literature Month for the Vietnamese diaspora. The Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association (VAALA) is currently hosting its first online, month-long Viet Book Fest, which features readings by authors, followed by interactive Q&A sessions, and culminating in a Halloween celebration and book auction on October 31. About thirty families have attended each session, and Facebook live engagement has reached close to 1,000 people.

Vietnamese diasporic literature, representing “the losing side,” suffers from double marginalization since it belongs neither to the Vietnamese literary tradition inside Vietnam nor its host country’s mainstream tradition. To resist this condition, Viet Book Fest titles share an endeavor analogous to translation: how to preserve the diasporic community’s collective memory and make it resonate in a transplanted, multivalent milieu.

Tran Thi Minh Phuoc’s Vietnamese Children’s Favorite Stories teaches foundational stories—many of which are epistemological—such as how the Vietnamese came to eat bánh chưng (“offering earth cake”) during the lunar new year, and how the monsoon season originated from an ancient rivalry between the Mountain Lord and the Sea Lord. Minh Le’s Green Lantern: Legacy reconciles conflicting cultural values, where a Western-based superhero myth centering on innovation and technological prowess is rewritten to include a Vietnamese viewpoint that incorporates community legacy and compassion. The idea of non-conforming identity as a magical construction is reflected in Bao Phi’s My Footprints, where a Vietnamese-American girl learns to take pride in her two moms and her heritage, as symbolized by her embrace of the fenghuang (phoenix) from East Asian mythology and the Sharabha from Hindu mythology. Lastly, Viet Thanh Nguyen and Ellison Nguyen’s Chicken of the Sea extols peace, where the victorious King of the Dog Knights grants amnesty to the defeated chicken pirates and welcomes them with a big party. READ MORE…

Weekly Updates from the Front Lines of World Literature

This week's latest news from France, Hong Kong, and Sri Lanka!

Our writers bring you news this week from France, Hong Kong, and Sri Lanka. In France, a government official’s attempt to silence Pauline Harmange’s defence of misandry has turned her book Moi les hommes, je les déteste (I Hate Men) into an overnight bestseller; in Hong Kong, Chenxin Jiang was one of four winners of the Words Without Borders Poems in Translation Contest for her translation of poet Yau Ching; and in Sri Lanka, the Colombo International Book Fair is taking place, with the announcement of major literary awards such as the Svarna Pustaka Award. Read on to find out more! 

Barbara Halla, Assistant Editor, reporting from France

In the beginning there were only 400. That was the initial print run that the French indie publisher Monstrograph had planned for Pauline Harmange’s Moi les hommes, je les déteste (I Hate Men) when it was released in late August. As its provocative title belies, this ninety-six-page volume is essentially a defence of misandry, of women’s right not to like men. Harmange purportedly argues that in the face of thousands of years of subjugation and violence, women have not simply the right to hate men, but should also focus on building a life that decentres them. I say purportedly because I have not read the book yet. By the time I tried to get my hands on a copy, it wasn’t simply out of stock: the publisher had stopped publishing it altogether, unable to keep up with demand.

From those who have read it, I Hate Men has received mostly positive reviews, but it became a phenomenon thanks to a failed attempt to silence it. In a perfect example of situational irony, Ralph Zurmély, a French government official working, funnily enough, for the French ministry of gender equality, requested that the book be banned for inciting violence. He even threatened the publisher with legal action. Alas, thanks to him, the book has now become an overnight success, drawing plenty of international attention and depleting the original publisher’s resources. A few days ago, I Hate Men was acquired by Éditions du Seuil, a more established publishing house, whose head, Hugues Jallon, will be following the project personally. No word yet as to how long readers will have to wait for their copies. READ MORE…

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Weekly Updates from the Front Lines of World Literature

This week’s latest news from Palestine, Serbia, and the United States!

This week’s literary news comes from our writers in Palestine, Serbia, and the United States. In Palestine, the winners of the Najati Sidqi Competition have been announced; in Serbia, the annual KROKODIL festival has welcomed an array of authors, with a particular emphasis on regional female poets and prose writers; and in the United States, the University of Notre Dame’s reading series began with a reading by Paul Cunningham and Johannes Göransson, in addition to the launch of a new program focusing on “Literatures of Annihilation, Exile & Resistance.” Read on to find out more! 

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine

Out of eighty-nine applications from different parts of Palestine and the diaspora, the three winners of the Najati Sidqi Competition for Short Story by Young Writers (2020) have been announced: “al-Barzakh” (The Isthmus) by Muhammad Atef Ghuneim from Nuseirat Camp in Gaza; “al-Toot al-Faased” (Rotten Berries) by Dunya Yusef Abdullah from Salfit, which is published in Arabic here; and “al-Khalaas ka Dam’a: Seeret Bukaa’ al-Sayyed Meem” (Salvation As a Tear: Crying Biography of Mr M.) by Majd Abu Amer from Gaza. According to the jury (which consisted of three renowned Palestinian writers: Safi Safi, Ziad Khadash, and Amani Junaidi), the prize “comes in recognition of the importance of the role of youth in cultural life and building a national society capable of preserving the history and memory of place and man,” as well as to honor the legacy of Najati Sidqi.

In a new venture between Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line, Tibaq Publishing in Ramallah published Qalaaqel Jameel wa Hiyaam (Jamil and Hiyam’s Turbelences) by Hani Salloum from Nazareth. The play is about a romantic relationship, taking place between the two cities of Nazareth and Haifa, which sheds light on the social transformations that have affected Palestinian Arab communities in Israel. This is the second literary work by Salloum, after his novel al-Khuruuj min Halaqat al-Raaqisseen (Exiting the Dancers’ Circle) was published in 1997.

Five Palestinian authors have been selected for the new Arabic Stories by emerging writers, published bilingually in Arabic and English by adda. adda is an online magazine of new international writing, which supports and promotes stories and literary talent from the Middle East. Arabic Stories is part of the project Short Stories by KfW Stiftung in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut and Commonwealth Writers. The five selected stories are: Mai Kaloti’s “The Madman of Almond Hill,” translated by Basma Ghalayini; Majdal Hindi’s “Fly,” translated by Katharine Halls; Eman Sharabati’s “A Story from the South” —her first published story—also translated by Halls; Huda Armosh’s “Walking on Quicksand,” translated by Nariman Youssef; and Mira Sidawi’s “The Story of Nasr,” translated by Basma Ghalayini. READ MORE…

Weekly Updates from the Front Lines of World Literature

This week’s literary news from Singapore, Argentina, Sweden, and Malaysia!

This week, our writers bring you the latest news from Singapore, Argentina, Sweden, and Malaysia. In Singapore, the shortlist for the Singapore Literature Prize was announced; in Argentina, the Asociación Argentina de Traductores e Intérpretes has been celebrating National Translation month with a series of talks; in Sweden, the annual crime fiction festival Crimetime has begun; and in Malaysia, Erica Eng became the first Malaysian winner of the Eisner Award. Read on to find out more!

Shawn Hoo, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Singapore

Singapore’s premier literary award, the biennial Singapore Literature Prize, held a virtual awards ceremony for the first time last night, and handed out prizes across the nation’s four official languages (Malay, Tamil, Mandarin, and English). Notably, Marylyn Tan made history with her queer and transgressive poetry collection, GAZE BACK, when she became the first woman (and lesbian) writer to win the top prize for Poetry in English. Other big winners include Wong Koi Tet (published by City Book Room) and Sithuraj Ponraj, who walked away with two prizes each. Evidently, the arts have continued to feel the negative repercussions of the pandemic, as the top prize money was slashed from SGD$10,000 to SGD$3,000 this year due to a lack of funding.

Prior to the ceremony, Unggun Creative’s Jamal Ismail—who won the Merit Award for his novel Tunjuk Langit (Pointing the Sky)—had bemoaned the lesser prize money, but wondered if winners could alternatively be awarded the “translation of their works into other languages.” Literary translations across languages in Singapore remain an under-tapped potential.

Hearty congratulations to previous Asymptote contributors who made the shortlist: Hamid Roslan, for his inventive and cacophonous bilingual collection of poetry, parsetreeforestfire; and Amanda Lee Koe, for Delayed Rays of a Star, a novel that unfolds an ambitiously transnational history through the lives of cinema icons Anna May Wong, Marlene Dietrich, and Leni Riefenstahl.

In other prize-related news, the Epigram Books Fiction Prize—formerly reserved for Singaporean writers—was for the first time this year open to submissions from Southeast Asia. This year’s winning novel, How the Man in Green Saved Pahang, and Possibly the World, is written by Kuala Lumpur-born Joshua Kam and has just been released. Pre-orders are underway for the books by the other finalists who hail from across the region. With the emphasis on regional submissions continued for next year, the Singapore-based prize looks set to become an important institution shaping the regional English-language publication scene.

Finally, an online symposium held on August 12 explored the role of the anthology in Singapore’s literary ecosystem, and put the nation’s feast of anthologies into focus. In fact, the latest anthology to arrive just this month, Food Republic: A Singapore Literary Banquet (eds. Ann Ang, Daryl Lim Wei Jie, and Tse Hao Guang), describes itself as a literal feast: “a buffet, a banquet, an omakase, a smorgasbord, a nasi padang spread, a thali or a rijsttafel.”

READ MORE…

Weekly Updates from the Front Lines of World Literature

This week's literary news from the United States, Sweden, and Mexico!

This week our editors bring you the latest news from Sweden, where a new edition of Nobel Prize-winner Nelly Sachs’s Swedish translations has been published; Mexico, where cultural centre Casa Tomada has continued its remarkable response to the coronavirus situation with a series of author events; and from Boston in the United States, which has lined up exciting programming this summer. Read on to find out more! 

Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden

This summer, Swedish publishing company Faethon released a new collection with the poetry of German-Swedish Nelly Sachs. For the first time, all of the most prominent Swedish translations of her poetry are presented together in one book. The collection includes classical translations by poets such as Gunnar Ekelöf and Erik Lindegren, as well as new interpretations by Margaretha Holmqvist, who also was a friend of Sachs. The book also presents thorough commentaries by Daniel Pedersen, professor in comparative literature, and an afterword by poet and translator Eva Ström.

The Jewish poet and playwright Nelly Sachs was born in 1891 in Berlin and fled together with her mother to Sweden in 1940 where she lived until her death in 1970. Sachs had a long friendship with Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf, who used her contacts with the Swedish royal family to enable Sachs and her mother to escape Nazi Germany. In Sweden, Sachs lived with her mother in Stockholm and it was at this time that she became a poet of note. She remained active as a writer and a translator for the most part of her life. In 1966, Nelly Sachs was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for her outstanding lyrical and dramatic writing, which interprets Israel’s destiny with touching strength.”

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

This week's latest news from Brazil, Hong Kong, and Central America!

This week, our writers bring you news of what’s happening around the world. In Brazil, a newly published collection draws together international voices discussing their experience during quarantine; in Hong Kong, tightened lockdown measures have meant book fairs and events moving online; and in Central America, the Autores en cuarentena event series is taking place online, whilst Carlos Wyld Espina’s essential political essay El Autócrata has been reissued. 

Daniel Persia, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Brazil

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has no doubt weighed heavily on writers, altering not only their physical workspaces and subject matter, but also their orientation to the art itself. In Brazil, the Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS) has invited 126 individuals and collectives to reflect on their experiences during quarantine, featuring multimedia work from writers, visual artists, and musicians, among others. Meanwhile, reflections have gone global with Para além da quarentena: reflexões sobre crise e pandemia, which showcases critical discussions from Brazil, Italy, France, Portugal, the United States, and Uruguay. The collection, released in June, is available in free pdf and e-book formats through mórula editorial.

Another new release, Pandemônio: nove narrativas entre São Paulo—Berlim [Pandemonium: Nine Narratives Bridging São Paulo—Berlin], takes a more in-depth look from two of the world’s major literary hubs: São Paulo and Berlin. Organized by Cristina Judar and Fred Di Giacomo, Pandemônio touches on the pandemic, the ongoing economic crisis, and the advance of authoritarianism, highlighting similarities and differences between São Paulo and Berlin. Featured authors include Aline Bei, Cristina Judar, Jorge Ialanji Filholini and Raimundo Neto (representing São Paulo) and Carola Saavedra, Fred Di Giacomo, Alexandre Ribeiro, Karin Hueck, and Carsten Regel (representing Berlin). Pandemônio illustrates the strength of collective testimony, highlighting how stories have the power to bridge experiences from distant corners of the globe. The book is available for free online at www.pandemonioantologia.com, and through Amazon. A full English translation will be released in August. READ MORE…

Weekly Updates from the Front Lines of World Literature

This week's latest literary news from Poland, Sweden, and China!

This week, our writers bring you the latest news from Poland, Sweden, and China. In Poland, Anna Zaranko’s translation of Kornel Filipowicz was awarded the 2020 Found in Translation Award; in Sweden, an anthology will soon be released of writings on coronavirus, featuring many international writers including Olga Tokarczuk; and in China, bookshops are responding to challenging times by moving to online engagement with their reading community. Read on to find out more! 

Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Poland

Since she received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1996, Wisława Szymborska’s poetry has been appreciated around the world, while the work of her partner of twenty-three years, the master story teller Kornel Filipowicz (1913-1990) remained largely unknown outside Poland. Fortunately, this has changed with The Memoir of an Anti-hero by Kornel Filipowicz, published by Penguin Modern Classics in 2019 in a translation by Anna Zaranko. On March 31, Zaranko received the 2020 Found in Translation Award in recognition of her “quietly understated yet immensely evocative rendering of Filipowicz’s prose, which The Sunday Times’s David Mills described as ‘provocative, troubling, awkward, a proper classic.’”

On May 27, the winner of the eleventh Ryszard Kapuściński Award for Literary Reportage, awarded by the City of Warsaw, was announced online (the fourteen-minute video of the ceremony has English subtitles). The prize went to Katarzyna Kobylarczyk for Strup. Hiszpania rozdrapuje rany (The Scab. Spain Scratches its Wounds, 2019 Wydawnictwo Czarne), a book about grappling with historical memory. The jury praised it as “a fascinating story that blends the nightmarish and the grotesque, in which reality reveals its metaphorical dimension. It is proof that one can create real literature relying solely on facts.” READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Mr. Shyti Sheds Light on Some Lesser Known Aspects of National Hygiene” by Ardian Vehbiu

. . . it resembled those desk calendars with individual date sheets, on the back of which one can read a quote by Marx or some curiosity from Mars.

For this week’s Translation Tuesday, the prolific Albanian writer, Ardian Vehbiu, mixes the language of bodily intimacy with the language of the state and bureaucratic maintenance. A dry metaphor takes root, illuminating not only the persistence of pastiche but also the tendency of humans to analyze and rearrange thoughts. This tendency, what some may call the poetic or political, exists in some way at every level of human work. With humour, Vehbiu manages to, in the space of a small speech, cast light on material circumstances, personal history, and the idiosyncratic phenomena that rises from circumstance.

“There will be those, among you,” Mr. Shyti said, “who still remember the time when one could not find any toilet paper in Albania: the State of Workers and Peasants, which thought of everything, did not consider it necessary to provide for this indispensable item for the daily wellbeing of its citizens, not because it was its intention to abandon them in their efforts for keeping their private parts clean, but because it was, perhaps, rather confident that the Albanians had such adequate tradition that they would not find it difficult to overcome such a trifle. I, for a start,” Mr. Shyti continued, “did use polished river stones or, indeed, fig leaves for personal hygiene purposes; however, the truth is that, leaving aside a significant—and still unknown—number of compatriots that humbly used jugs of water to wash themselves, the Albanians of the time used the daily newspaper as toilet paper. I do remember, as a matter of fact,” he recalled, “my late Uncle Neptun, who developed a habit of saving his newspaper copies, which, later, when they were past their relevance, he would cut into equally small pieces, with the precision of a surveyor or metalworker, using his wife’s fearful sewing scissors. He used to do this on Sunday afternoons, while listening to live football coverage on his battery-powered transistor. The result of his work was a handsome pile of regular square sheets, fixed on the wall with a monstrous nail right next to the Turkish toilet; it resembled those desk calendars with individual date sheets, on the back of which one can read a quote by Marx or some curiosity from Mars. And, so, like many other guests at Uncle Neptun’s,” he went on to explain, “I, too, would happen to squat on his toilet, waiting for ‘relief,’ while perusing pieces of field news, recommended phrases, headlines as large as tank tracks, fear-instilling political invectives, accusations and counter-accusations against the superpowers and Eurocommunism, letters from common citizens and public epistles; or watching photographic fragments of leaders, terraced hills, military naval ships, milky cows, and front-runner textile workers, always out of context and randomly remixed as if in a Dadaist work of art, thanks to poor Neptun’s magician folding and precise scissors, may his soul rest in peace! Thus, a toilet was transformed into a recycler not only of the Albanians’ metabolic waste and periodical paper, but also of news and information disseminated by those newspapers, even the ideology of the times, albeit always in the form of collage, or in stark combinations. To those of you who are young and have no recollections of such times,” concluded Mr. Shyti, “I will limit myself to saying that reading slightly outdated newspapers in such minimalistic and fragmented pieces resembles, more than one would think nowadays, a news aggregator or portal, including Facebook, which people now think of as something new.” READ MORE…