Spring 2024

Editor's Note

Earthquake, war, disease, unrequited love, even a man-made hell conjured through scents—what haven’t the protagonists in our Winter 2023 edition been through? Tagged #TheReturn, this issue is not only a celebration of human resilience but also of our twelve years in world literature. Helping us mark this milestone are César Aira, one of the most beloved names in the canon, and Geetanjali Shree, 2022 International Booker Prizewinner—both give us exclusive wide-ranging interviews. Amid new work from 34 countries, we also have stunning short stories from Alfred Döblin and Dalih Sembiring, powerful drama by Anna Gmeyner, a brilliant review of past contributor Johannes Göransson’s latest publication, and a Special Feature sampling the best in contemporary letters from a world literature hotspot sponsored by LTI Korea. All of this is illustrated by our talented guest artist Weims.

In Emmelie Prophète’s slow-burning fiction, “The Return” is a dramatic answering of prayers when a former Olympic athlete turns up unannounced before his mother a lifetime after his escape from Port-au-Prince. That same longed-for return is impossible for poet Fadi Azzam—“a Syrian / who had to flee his homeland / to countries that wish to flee from him.” In Juana Peñate Montejo’s poems of exile—our first work from the Mayan language of Ch’ol—on the other hand, it’s the self that requires summoning and remembering: “Bring the scent of amber, / return me to myself.” Re-membering, in the most literal sense, is foregrounded in Kim Cho Yeop’s macabre but fascinating story, one work in a sci-fi-tinged Korean Feature of startling breadth, wherein we are initiated into a community of amputees-by-choice, since “the body is hardly capacious enough to contain the human soul, which is so full of potential.” So full of potential, perhaps, that even a lover’s reincarnation on the 49th day of his death in the womb of a stranger seems possible in a transcendent story by the Mongolian writer Bayasgalan Batsuuri.

“Six months before his death in 1991, Menke Katz had a dream. In it, his long-dead mother admonished him to return to writing in his native language, Yiddish.” This dream resulted in the Oulipian poems that Jacob Romm has beautifully translated for this issue. Proving an exception to Shree’s claim that “the creative writer is instinctively drawn to her mother tongue,” Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine describes an opposite impulse in his essay: writing in French—a second language—is his deliberate choice, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Anyway, isn’t the true writer one who is “always a stranger in the language he expresses himself in”? In any case, even if the process of writing is estranging, the outcome when a piece of writing finds its intended reader can be sublime. For Lynn Xu, “the act of reading is the act of making kin . . . For example, when I read [César] Vallejo, I recognize that he is my mother . . .” By utter coincidence or divine fate, César Vallejo is also featured in these very pages, translated by another César, the intrepid César Jumpa Sánchez, who is determined to project Vallejo’s breakthrough collection, Trilce, to, in his own words, “a network of planetary outreach.”

Just as “encyclopedism has been the permanent horizon of [César Aira’s] work,“ the asymptotic impulse to realize a world literature that truly reflects the world has been our north star from the get-go, whether through our partnership with The Guardian or our trans-Atlantic Book Club, now entering its sixth year and always open to new members! We are honored to be the platform that César Jumpa Sánchez and so many other contributors like him have chosen for our network of planetary outreach (follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, in our daily blog, and via our newsletter). If there’s an author you would like to make better known, check out our submission guidelines and send in your best work (take note that the deadline for our recently announced paid animal-themed Special Feature with no submission fees is March 1); not only do we guarantee a one-month turnaround for all submissions, we also offer optional feedback to help you grow as a translator. The first phase of our recruitment drive may have recently concluded, but, encouraged by your interest, we’re announcing a second phase, with an application deadline of February 1. Finally, if our very existence has connected you with your kindred authors, help us get to our big 5 0 (in issues, not years!), just around the corner. The best way to support us is to sign up as a sustaining or masthead member—the New Year brings new perks and I’ll personally assemble a care package (rabbit theme optional) for supporters at the USD500-a-year tier and above! Thank you for being with us all these years.

—Lee Yew Leong, Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Team for Issue January 2023

Editor-in-Chief: Lee Yew Leong (Taiwan/Singapore)

Assistant Managing Editors: Daljinder Johal (UK/India), Marina Dora Martino (Italy), Janet Phillips (UK/Australia), Laurel Taylor (USA), and Michal Zechariah (USA)

Section Editors:
Lee Yew Leong (Taiwan/Singapore)
Barbara Halla (Albania)
Caridad Svich (USA/UK)
Ian Ross Singleton (USA)
Heather Green (USA)

Editor of Special Feature on Korean Literature: Lee Yew Leong (Taiwan/Singapore)

Senior Assistant Editor: Alex Tan (Singapore)

Assistant Editors: Alyea Canada (USA), Shawn Hoo (Singapore), Gabriela Lemos (USA), M.L. Martin (Canada), Matt Turner (USA), Maya Nguen (USA), Megan Sungyoon (South Korea), Meghan Racklin (USA), Rachel Landau (USA), Rachel Rankin (UK), and Lin Chia-Wei (Taiwan)

Assistant Interview Editors: Rose Bialer (USA) and Michal Zechariah (USA)

Contributing Editors: Ellen Elias-Bursac (USA), Aamer Hussein (UK), Sim Yee Chiang (Singapore), Dylan Suher (USA), and Adrian West (USA)

Translation Tuesdays Editor: Shawn Hoo (Singapore)

Art Director: Lee Yew Leong (Taiwan/Singapore)

Director, Educational Arm: Kent Kosack (USA)

Editor-at-large, Armenia: Kristina Tartarian
Editor-at-large, Bulgaria: Andriana Hamas
Editor-at-large, China: Jiaoyang Li
Editor-at-large, Croatia: Kristina Gadze
Editors-at-large, Guatemala: José García Escobar and Rubén Lopéz
Editor-at-large, Hong Kong: Charlie Ng Chak-Kwan
Editor-at-large, India: Areeb Ahmad
Editor-at-large, Kenya: Wambua Muindi
Editor-at-large, Macedonia: Sofija Popovska
Editor-at-large, Mexico: Alan Mendoza Sosa
Editor-at-large, Palestine: Carol Khoury
Editor-at-large, Philippines: Alton Melvar M. Dapanas
Editor-at-large, Puerto Rico: Cristina Perez
Editor-at-large, Romania and Moldova: MARGENTO
Editor-at-large, Slovakia: Julia Sherwood
Editor-at-large, Sweden: Eva Wissting
Editor-at-large, Uzbekistan: Filip Noubel
Editor-at-large, Vietnamese Diaspora: Thuy Dinh

Masthead for Issue January 2023

Fiction, Poetry, Brave New World Literature Feature, and Interview: Lee Yew Leong
Nonfiction: Ian Ross Singleton
Drama: Caridad Svich
Visual: Heather Green
Criticism: Barbara Halla
Korean Literature Feature: Lee Yew Leong
Illustrations and Cover: Weims

Assistant Managing Editor (supervising issue production): Janet Phillips

Assistant Managing Editors (supervising Assistant Editors): Laurel Taylor and Marina Martino

Assistant Managing Editors (supervising Editors-at-large): Daljinder Johal and Michal Zechariah

Chief Executive Assistant: Rachel Farmer

Senior Executive Assistants: Angela Bulgari, Julie Shi, and Anna Thyregod Wilcks

Executive Assistants: Chinmay Rastogi and Iona Tait

Blog Editor: Xiao Yue Shan

Assistant Blog Editor: Bella Creel

Newsletter Editor: Cody Siler

Art Director: Lee Yew Leong

Guest Artist Liaison: Berny Tan

Senior Copy Editors: Maggie Wang, Rachel Stanyon, with assistance from Janet Phillips

Copy Editors: Andrea Blatz, Bella Bosworth, Cecilia Weddell, Ellen Sprague, Iona Tait, Lily Parmar, Matilde Ribeiro, Mia Manns, and Liam Sprod, with assistance from Chinmay Rastogi

Technical Manager: József Szabó

Director of Outreach: Georgina Fooks

English Social Media: Annilee Newton, Livia Djelani, Jayasri Prasanna, Ruwa Alhayek, and Samantha Mateo

Spanish Social Media: Sergio Serrano

French Social Media: Filip Noubel

Graphic Designer: Michael Laungjessadakun

Digital Editors: Bridget Peak and Matthew Redman

Marketing Manager: Samantha Seifert

Business Developer: Daniel Naman

Director, Educational Arm: Kent Kosack

Educational Arm Assistants: Irmak Ertuna, Mary Hillis, Thirangie Jayatilake, and Anna Rumsby

Book Club Manager: Carol Khoury

Intern: Shanti Silver

Asymptote would like to acknowledge the support especially of LTI Korea.

For their generous donations this past quarter, our heartfelt thanks go too to A J Gray, Ann Goldstein, Andrea Nemeth-Newhauser, Benjamin Saff, Brother Anthony of Taizé, Chris Tanasescu, Claire Hegarty, Constanze Wehnes, Cynthia Whitehead, Daniel Hahn, Diana Senechal, Dora Zhang, Dustin Simpson, Elisabeth Brock, Ellen Elias-Bursac, Gina Caputo, Gesture Press, Heidi Holzer, Hilary Clark, Jee Leong Koh, Jeffrey Boyle, Jenna Colozza, Joachim Redner, John Graham, Judy Karasik, Katarzyna Bartoszynska, Katie Boynton, Katrine Jensen, Kent Kosack, Lawrence Flood, Liangxing Luo, Lynn O'Neal, Magda Carneci, Margaret Costa, Marguerite Feitlowitz, Marjolijn de Jager, Mark Cohen, Martin Ingebrigtsen, Matthew Mazowita, Michaela Jones, Monty Reid, Nhi Ta Huong, Nora Bojar, Phuong Anh, Reif Larsen, Sidney Wade, Siew Chinn Chin, Thomas Carroll, Velina Manolova, William Justice, Xiangxiu Meng, and Yann Martel.

We are overjoyed to welcome new sustaining members Andrea Nemeth-Newhauser, John Graham, Katie Boynton, Siew Chinn Chin and new masthead member Samuel Liangxing Luo.

Back

Fiction

Emmelie Prophète, from The Villages of God

Translated from the French by Aidan Rooney

Uncle Frédo reappeared one day out of the blue in front of the house while Grandma was cutting plantains and sweet potatoes for the evening fry.

Alfred Döblin, The Woman who Walked in her Sleep

Translated from the German by Joachim Redner

Standing stock-still, he saw the lid shake in the mirror, then slowly lift up as the doll wriggled through the crack and landed on a towel on the floor.

Kateřina Tučková, from Bílá Voda

Translated from the Czech by Véronique Firkusny

The harsh, strangely biting tone of his voice did nothing to defuse the tension.

Dalih Sembiring, Floccinaucinihilipilificatius

Translated from the Indonesian by Avram Maurits

You’re a boy born from the quiet-world, so I shall name you Floccinaucinihilipilificatius, or Flocci for short.

Bayasgalan Batsuuri, The Seed

Translated from the Mongolian by Simon Wickhamsmith

Remembering how her grandmother had said that, on the forty-ninth day, the soul would find its next rebirth, she thought, Today, you’ll find your way back to the earth.

Poetry

Linda Maria Baros, No man has defended you

Translated from the French by Emily Graham

no man has defended you and those who tried
begged you at night and wept at length
onto the ogive of your pelvis.

Nazlı Karabıyıkoğlu, There’s no cure for the dead

Translated from the Turkish by Ralph Hubbell

everyone burst forth
with their own eager accounts of how their husbands acted in bed

Menke Katz, Four Poems

Translated from the Yiddish by Jacob Romm

My first cry and
my last kiss—
Yiddish

César Vallejo, from Trilce

Translated from the Spanish by César Jumpa Sánchez

Whispered in disquiet, I traverse,
the long suit of feeling, the Mondays
of truth.

Olga Bragina, Six Poems about War

Translated from the Russian by Josephine von Zitzewitz

humans are silly creatures—when there’s a war they think about love

Juana Peñate Montejo, Seven Poems

Translated from the Ch'ol by Carol Rose Little and Charlotte Friedman

You are the butterfly passing,
one life to another.

Aco Šopov, from Reader of the Ashes

Translated from the Macedonian by Rawley Grau and Christina E. Kramer

Here all things, on their own, are born and die.
A great stone. A scar. A mumbled, muted word.

Fadi Azzam, The Calamity of the I

Translated from the Arabic by Ghada Alatrash

I am a Syrian
who had to flee his homeland
to countries that wish to flee from him.

Marosa di Giorgio, from The Moth

Translated from the Spanish by Sarah María Medina

Last night, the bats arrived.

Hélène Dorion, from My forests

Translated from the French by Susanna Lang

I let myself be embraced
by the world’s slow movement

Criticism

Johannes Göransson, Summer

A review by Jared Joseph

God punishes us with languages for our infidelity, and translation is the memento of our treachery.

Kim Hye-jin, Concerning My Daughter

Translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang

A review by Jenny Wu

Kim’s novel fleshes out a complex side of love, one that verges on possessiveness, by considering the daughter an extension of the mother’s being.

Ra'ad Abdulqadir, Except for This Unseen Thread

Translated from the Arabic by Mona Kareem

A review by Jake Goldwasser

Kareem’s essay and her translation are worth reading, especially as a pair, because together they ask the most pressing questions in translation: who is translation ultimately for?

Johanne Lykke Holm, Strega

Translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel

A review by Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou

To be in the body of a woman is already to exist in a “crime scene”; it is already to have encountered patriarchal violence and internalized the shame and blame of it.

Chiang-Sheng Kuo, The Piano Tuner

Translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin

A review by Yu-Yun Hsieh

Chiang-Sheng Kuo’s novel The Piano Tuner explores the accord and dissonance between sounds and souls through language.

Scholastique Mukasonga, Kibogo

Translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti

A review by Abby Walthausen

Lutte contre l’oubli, or a struggle against forgetting, is Mukasonga’s goal for the young audience she cherishes.

Nonfiction

Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine, Asinus, Asnous, and Ass

Translated from the French by Conor Bracken

The true writer is always a stranger in the language he expresses himself in.

Nina Kossman, How I Tried to Unite the Parts of my Soul

Translated from the Russian by Nina Kossman

Having spent so many years in the West, far from the borders of the countries where душа is endowed with recognizable depth and intensity, I, too, have considerably cooled my jets about “soul.”

Selim Özdoğan, Seven Difficulties and One Ever-Narrowing Path

Translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire

What we overlook is that writing can possess literary qualities even when written by people whose language is not standard German.

Max Czollek, from De-Integrate! A Jewish Survival Guide for the 21st Century

Translated from the German by Jon Cho-Polizzi

The rhetoric of affection stands in polar opposition to the rhetoric of austerity directed at (im)migrants, Muslims, and refugees.

Drama

Justīne Kļava, from Ladies

Translated from the Latvian by Ieva Lākute

You can’t even make a sandwich without my help. How are you going to care for anyone?

Anna Gmeyner, from Automat

Translated from the German by Neil Blackadder

There will come a time when you won’t understand how you could have been so reckless with your own life, which after all doesn’t belong to you.

Visual

Bahia Shehab, Heaven and Hell in the Anthropocene

Lynn Xu, And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight

Brave New World Literature

Yente Serdatsky, Our Literature

Translated from the Yiddish by Dalia Wolfson

What is a writer? If you ask me, he is a cantor, a prayer leader and messenger, sent by the congregation to sing and express the feelings of the public.

Interview

An Interview with César Aira

Encyclopedism has been the permanent horizon of my work.

An Interview with Geetanjali Shree

The creative writer is instinctively drawn to her mother tongue. There is no other way she can plumb, as she must, the unconscious and the forgotten of her individual and collective consciousnesses.