Posts featuring Patrick Chamoiseau

Section Editors’ Highlights: Winter 2022

Highlights from the Winter 2022 edition, presented by our section editors!

Gathering new work from 43 countries, the Winter 2022 edition might be overwhelming at first. But don’t let that stop you from diving right in! Whether you consume the issue from cover to cover or click on whatever catches your fancy, we just hope you enjoy reading this eleventh anniversary edition as much as our section editors have loved putting it together! Here to tell you more about their lineups are Yew Leong, Barbara, Bassam, and Caridad. If, after reading the issue, you’re inspired to submit work, don’t forget that we welcome submissions all year round; if you are a Swedish-English translator, take note that we’re currently inviting submissions to a paid Swedish Literature Feature, slated for publication in Spring 2022. For guidelines on how to submit, go here.

From Lee Yew Leong, Fiction, Poetry, Special Features, and Interview Editor:

The statistics are undeniable: With one language dying every two weeks, ninety percent of all languages will go extinct within the next one hundred years. Even as we at Asymptote celebrate another milestone with our most diverse issue yet, loss—specifically that of entire worlds indexed by languages—is never quite far from our minds. In Dear You, translated brilliantly by Samantha Farmer, Croatian author Jasna Jasna Žmak takes us on a playful thought experiment inspired by Barthes: ”What if one word was removed each time a speaker of its language died as an act of remembrance?” Intended as an enjoinder to Eliot Weinberger’s essay published in these very pages one year ago, Yeshua G. B. Tolle’s submission to this issue’s Brave New World Literature Feature examines Aaron Zeitlin’s poetry, written in a language “half of whose speakers had been wiped off the face of the earth” when Nazis invaded his native Poland. “On what world do we gaze,” he asks poignantly, ”when the poet himself believes the world is over?” Whole worlds are rendered believably before our eyes in Matt Reeck’s skillful rendering of Rachid Djaïdani’s 1999 classic of banlieue literature that smashed Parisian tropes, and in Kim Su-on’s atmospheric science fiction brought to us by talented translators Spencer Lee-Lenfield and Lizzie Buehler. My two personal highlights from the Poetry section couldn’t be more diametrically apposite: the first (the Kazakh poet Anuar Duisenbinov) is as light (and alive with defiance) as the second (Spanish poet Pepe Espaliú) is weighted (with clear-eyed acceptance of inevitable death); both are powerful and moving. Rounding up the issue’s stellar lineup, Neske Beks and Charlotte Van den Broeck (in the Flemish Literature Feature I curated) as well as Jamaican-born artist Cosmo Whyte (in the Visual section, which Eva Heisler assembled) make important contributions to the conversation on our collective racial past.

From Barbara Halla, Criticism Editor:

In many reviews, the very act of translation can feel like an afterthought; usually reviewers will include a short line or paragraph to acknowledge the deftness of the translator’s skill, but that will be the extent of their engagement. I can understand why that happens: at times, without some familiarity with the original, it can feel impossible to speak in detail about the translator’s craft—which is why Tom Abi Samra’s review of Huda J. Fakhreddine and Jayson Iwen’s translation of Salim Barakat’s poetry is such a revelation. In his review, the translation features front and center, as Abi Samra investigates how Barakat’s attempt to defamiliarize Arabic is rendered into English, doing an almost phrase-by-phrase analysis of the translation. There are some texts, however, where the reviewer does not have a choice but to engage with the translator, because the very book they are reviewing questions the porous borders between author and translator. This is the case with Catherine Fisher’s fascinating review of Tomaž where Joshua Beckman appears not merely as a translator, but as a co-writer having had a direct hand in choosing how to present Tomaž Šalamun’s poetry into English. READ MORE…

The Trouble with Prizes and Translation

Prizes may be good for publishing, but are they good for all authors and translators?

If you love reading fiction by writers from around the globe, you are used to hearing about the big prizes that put international literature in the spotlight: the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Man Booker International, the Caine Prize, the Prix Goncourt, the German Book Prize, the Cervantes Prize, the Tanazaki Prize, and many others.

In fact, you might even have trouble keeping up with the variety of United States–based awards just for literature in translation, from the Best Translated Book Award (now eleven years old) to the National Book Award’s new Translated Literature category. It’s getting to be like following the Olympics, without all the fuss over new stadium construction. For one thing, winning books, like medal-bedecked Olympians, don’t get to the podium all by themselves. Winners need a team (and a coach and money) behind them. For another, we know that lots of great contenders don’t make it to the final round.

So what should we know about book prizes as we are reading the shortlisted candidates or hoping for a win for one of our favorite writers?

READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: April 2018

Looking for your next read? You're in the right place.

It’s spring, the days are (hopefully) sunny, and this month we’re back to shine a light on some of the most exciting books to come in April, including works in translation spanning Colombia, Lithuania, Martinique, and Spain (Catalonia). 

tundra

Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė, translated from the Lithuanian by Delija Valiukenas, Peirene Press

Reviewed by Josefina Massot, Assistant Editor

In his Afterword to Shadows on the Tundra, Lithuanian writer Tomas Venclova draws a parallel by way of praise: Dalia Grinkevičiūtė’s account of the Gulag ranks with Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s and Varlam Shalamov’s. Those acquainted with Gulag survivor literature know that’s high praise indeed: Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago and Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales are paragons of the genre. And yet, I venture, Shadows on the Tundra transcends them both.

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

Never miss a world literature update again.

We are back with literary news you simply cannot miss! This week we will take you to Romania where MARGENTO will help you discover the intricate networks of performance art. Also reporting from Europe is Fiona Le Brun who discusses the eclectic list of recent French literary prize winners, while subtly underlining the theme of migration that cuts across the various literary events. Far away from Mexico, Paul Worley and Kelsey Woodburn will highlight the increasingly important role of translation in its contemporary cultural landscape. 

Editor-at-Large from Romania and Moldova, MARGENTO, provides us with an insider’s view of the exciting world of Romanian artistic experimentation:

The Bucharest International Poetry Festival featured last month an impressive line-up of international writers and performers, among whom were Christian Bök from Canada, LaTasha Nevada Diggs from the US, Steven Fowler of the worldwide prolific Enemies Project, Max Höfler (the tireless organizer of the yearly Text-World—World-Text Symposium in Graz, Austria), the multilingual performance vocalist Maja Jantar of Belgium, the Bucharest-based American poet and translator Tara Skurtu, and many more, alongside local poets such as Claudiu Komartin and Razvan Tupa.  Organized by London-based Romanian poet and curator Simona Nastac, this annual event has grown more and more visible and central in a country where the tradition of performance poetry going at least as far back as Tristan Tzara’s DADA seems to be thriving more than ever, with festivals thrown from Craiova in the south to Brasov and Sibiu in Transylvania to Cluj and Iasi up north (some of them performance-driven events, other more standard literary ones with a strong reading or performance section).

Petrila is a one-of-a-kind venue among all of the above, both in Romanian and international terms.  The derelict milltown riddled with condemned coal mines and shutdown falling-apart factories has been transformed over the last two decades by visual artist, political caricaturist, and curator Ion Barbu into a mecca of non-conformist festivals (initially thrown in his own backyard), eclectic or scandalous arts events, and improbable post-communist absurdist or faux-kitsch museums (including one that has resonantly revived the memory of once-censored outstanding dissident writer I.D. Sirbu).  A competitor—or rather concurrent event—has been the CUCA Festival organized over the past couple of years in Cartisoara, up in the mountains of Sibiu County, where cutting-edge and indie performances and installations converge with Romanian traditional architecture restoration work done by international volunteers.  A long-feature documentary titled Planet Petrila casting Ion Barbu in the lead role and portraying his eclectic personality and work against the background of the (post)communist history of his hometown has recently been widely praised and awarded at the international film festival TIFF.

READ MORE…

“Old Seams of the Ancient World”: Reading Patrick Chamoiseau’s Manifesto Against Borders

“The dream and the political vision must arise, and that is when the poetic word is as fundamental as that of experts or economists.”

In our Spring Issue this year, we ran a special feature covering literature from countries affected by President Trump’s infamous “Muslim Ban.” This was in recognition that literature is reflective of political conditions and that it is a powerful form of protest against oppression. In today’s piece, Fiona Le Brun looks at the manifesto against the Muslim Ban penned by Patrick Chamoiseau, a Prix Goncourt recipient and notable figure in Créolité literature. As France emerges from a divisive election against the backdrop of the unprecedented European refugee crisis, reading Chamoiseau reminds us that literature enables us to conceptualize cultural openness. 

This February, Martiniquais author Patrick Chamoiseau, whose previous works include the Goncourt-winning novel Texaco (1992. Translated into English by Rose-Myriam Réjouis and Val Vinokurov in 1997),  launched a call for solidarity with migrants of the world. Not only was this call a reaction to President Trump’s executive order blocking citizens of six predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States, but also a reaction against Europe’s palpable fear revealed by Brexit and the several manifestations of the rejection of migrants.

A couple of months later in May 2017—between the two rounds of the closely watched French presidential election—his essay Frères migrants: Contre la barbarie (Migrant Brothers: Against Barbarism) was released. This invitation to resist intolerance, racism, and indifference is concluded by his manifesto, Les Poètes déclarent (Declaration of Poets).

Today Chamoiseau’s manifesto is more relevant than ever, for both the United States and France. While the French are rejoicing in the victory of the youthful, moderate and well-read Emmanuel Macron over the far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, the latter still gathered over 10 million votes, mostly motivated by immigration topics. This temporary relief must not have us overlook the fact that France, whose leaders never miss an opportunity to cast the country as the nation of human rights, has welcomed only a little over 25,000 refugees last year, far less than Germany or Sweden over the same period of time. The results of this election sure bring a glimmer of hope, as the winning candidate seems interested in real change and wants to work hand in hand with fellow EU countries. He also appears to be ready to wipe the dust off our old colonial shelves: back in February, while on a trip to Algeria, Macron called France’s colonial past a “crime against humanity,” and stood firm in the face of attacks by right-wingers. But his task remains difficult. He still has to convince millions of French citizens to support his agenda. The upcoming parliamentary elections will be decisive for Macron’s mandate in a very divided country, as well as for the uncertain future of the EU.

READ MORE…