To Keep the Shimmer Alive: A Review of The Gallows Songs by Christian Morgenstern

August 18, 2025  |  in Reviews  |  by Jordan Silversmith

To read The Gallows Songs now is to reclaim vision from algorithmic sameness, to practice freedom . . . as an event within language.

The Gallows Songs by Christian Morgenstern, translated from the German by Max Knight, introduction by Samuel Titan, New York Review Books, 2025

Christian Morgenstern’s name itself opens a door. The significance of his first name is clear enough, but it is his last—German for “morning star”—that bears the promise of light before knowledge, of awareness before the world hardens into habit. In The Gallows Songs, newly reissued by NYRB Poets in Max Knight’s classic 1963 translation, Morgenstern uses that dawn brightness to keep language—and thus perception—from calcifying, with a celebrated nonsense that is less escapist whimsy than a disciplined refusal of routine. At the heart of The Gallows Songs lies a paradox: it is the crimson thread holding the hanged man to the gallows pole, at once constraining and liberating, that gave Morgenstern permission to see the world as a new thing, with the freshness of something that will not be seen again. Laughing on the edge of death, Morgenstern turns the gallows itself into a perch to witness the world anew. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

August 15, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Mary Noorlander, and Wambua Muindi

The latest in literary updates from the Philippines, the United States, and Kenya!

This week, our Editors-at-Large bring us around the world for updates on the world’s literary scenes. From a celebration of Philippine literature in South Korea, to a night of poetry reading in the United States and the first Kenyan author to sit on the panel of judges for the International Booker Prize, read on to learn more!

Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Editor-at-Large, Reporting from the Philippines

For years, the depth of Philippine literature remained an unchartered territory for Korean readership. Now, a devoted cultural undertaking is bridging that gap, bringing the works of two celebrated Filipino writers­—National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin and award-winning novelist Mica De Leon—to bookshelves across South Korea.

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Bringing Contemporary Turkish Poetry into English: A Conversation with Buğra Giritlioğlu and Daniel Scher

August 14, 2025  |  in Interviews  |  by Ibrahim Fawzy

Even when poetry is read silently, we tend to subvocalize. Rhythm—and even a kind of melody shaped by stress patterns—still resonates.

Curated and translated by Buğra Giritlioğlu, with the collaboration of Daniel Scher, The Pulse of Contemporary Turkish: Poems from the New Millennium (Syracuse University Press, 2025) seeks to dismantle the “Orient of the anthologies,” as Laurent Mignon calls it in his incisive foreword, offering instead a mosaic of voices that refuses reduction to cliché or cultural shorthand. The volume spans 172 poems by 61 poets, weaving canonical figures alongside bold experimenters who push the boundaries of form and language. Familiar names, such as Lâle Müldür and Murathan Mungan, converse with emerging poets whose works might otherwise remain inaccessible to English-language readers. The effect is an anthology that is not merely representative but dialogic.

Turkish, with its null-subject syntax and layered ambiguities, resists a one-to-one mapping into English. Rather than smoothing these difficulties, the translators lean into them. “If any of the translations seem obscure,” Giritlioğlu writes, “the reader can rest assured the originals are equally so.” This refusal to domesticate feels radical in an era of over-sanitized translations. Scher’s role balances this fidelity with readability, bringing a native ear attuned to English idiom

In this interview, I speak with Buğra Giritlioğlu, whose background straddles materials science, ethnomusicology, and literary translation, and Daniel Scher, whose editorial eye and native English fluency helped shape the anthology’s final voice. We discuss the puzzles and pleasures of translating experimental Turkish poetry, the ethics of collaboration, and the aesthetic fault lines that define this vibrant literary moment. From negotiating null-subject ambiguities to preserving sonic textures across languages, their reflections offer a rare glimpse into the labor behind making a national literature audible in another tongue.

Ibrahim Fawzy (IF): Buğra, given your background in materials science and ethnomusicology, how do these fields inform your work as a translator of poetry?

Buğra Giritlioğlu (BG): Both materials science and ethnomusicology have shaped how I think, in ways that carry over into translation. All three require an inquisitive, analytical mindset. Translation often involves a kind of optimization, much like materials science: you’re constantly weighing trade-offs, making fine-tuned adjustments, and aiming for the best possible version under specific constraints.

READ MORE…

Transgressive, Phantasmagorical Banquet: A Review of The Minotaur’s Daughter by Eva Luka

August 13, 2025  |  in Reviews  |  by Sayani Sarkar

. . . Luka's rendering moves beyond the Rilkean dream realm into a world of flesh and blood . . .

The Minotaur’s Daughter by Eva Luka, translated from the Slovakian by James Sutherland-Smith, Seagull Books, 2025

The Minotaur’s Daughter, the English-language debut of Slovakian poet Eva Luka, unfurls a tapestry of phantasmagoria, animism, resistance, and transgression. Born in 1965 in the town of Trnava, Eva Lukáčová’s career in verse began with the collection Divosestra (Wildsister), published in 1999, which was followed by Diabloň (Deviltree) in 2005 (upon which she began using the shortened version of her name), Havranjel (Ravenangel) in 2011, and Jazver (I-Beast) in 2019. The Minotaur’s Daughter contains work from the first three publications, compiling them in a immersive, wildly populated series that plunges their readers into a universe of vivid imagery and sensation.

From Divosestra, the title of a particular poem, ‘Diabloň’, became the title of Luka’s second collection; samely, ‘Havranje’ from Diabloň became the title poem of her third collection, from which the poem ‘Jazver’ (I-Beast) became the title of her fourth collection. This interconnectedness between the poet’s body of work reflects her continuity of themes and imagery—an ever-deepening quest to go into more complex levels of introspection. Prominently featuring various creatures and their biological transformations, Luka preserves throughout a distinct focus on water and the moist elements of body and nature. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “My Shadow Will Comfort You” by ariel rosé

August 12, 2025  |  in Translations  |  by Frank L. Vigoda

in the fog I heard your / steps retracing the past / we spoke our mother tongues

For this week’s Translation Tuesday, we bring you a nostalgic and impressionistic poem from Polish-Norwegian poet ariel rosé, translated from the Polish by Frank L. Vigoda. In “My Shadow Will Comfort You,” the speaker reaches across time to address a loved one, now lost to the past. Wandering through the valley of memory, they search for a connection that once defined their world. The ever-present fog impedes their vision, solidifying the elusiveness of what has slipped away. This lost bond transcends the individual, rooted in shared family history, language, and identity—a private world of meaning that bridged two souls. But the speaker remains suspended between past and present, longing to inhabit both at once, looking for a space between remembrance and the irrevocable passage of time.

 

After Beckett

You see, I’m a dream
collector, you’re a water
carrier and the fog is dense
in the valley I hear someone
knocking
knock
knock
no
it is just a memory
I want to be in many nows at once
I heard the unspoken words
I looked for the dear face

READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: August 2025

August 11, 2025  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Eric Bies, Justin Goodman, Mathilde Hjertholm Nielsen, and Xiao Yue Shan

The latest from Palestine, France, Germany, Brazil, Italy, Bulgaria, Japan, Canada, Cuba, Argentina, Slovakia, and China!

This month’s round-up of newly released titles spans twelve titles across twelve countries. We’ve got a profound and lucid collection compiled of diaries from the genocide in Gaza; a readdressing of womanly sacrifice in the domestic realm; an Argentinian novel reinventing the history of Italy’s famed “Park of the Monsters”; the long-awaited esoteric and experimental tome from German writer Michael Lentz; essays and textual riches from the father of surrealism; and much, much more. . .

9781917093064

Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide by Nahil Mohana, Sondos Sabra, Ala’a Obaid, and Batool Abu Akleen, translated from the Arabic by Basma Ghalayini and Ayah Najadat, Comma Press, 2025

Review by Justin Goodman

Similar to the intimate testimonies of Atef Abu Said’s Don’t Look Left and Plestia Alaqad’s The Eyes of Gaza, Voices of Resistance compiles the diaries of four Gazan women, tracing their thoughts as they mourn their martyred, fear their decimation, celebrate the Palestinian people, and sacrifice meals for the sake of birthday pastries. Together, Batool Abu Akleen, Sondos Sabra, Nahil Mohana, and Ala’a Obaid highlight what Gillian Slovo describes in her introduction as both a beauty “in [their] honesty and spirit” and a horror as they gain “a whole new vocabulary for describing the sounds of different bombs.” This latter is compiled by Mohana in a list running half a page long, as she distinguishes the subtleties between “Bouf” (aerial bombing) and “Dddof” (artillery shelling). Most importantly, however, she adds: “. . . we have begun to lose our hearing.”

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

August 8, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Carol Khoury, Christina Chatzitheodorou, and Sofija Popovska

The latest from Palestine, North Macedonia, and Greece!

This week, our editors bring news of new publications continuing long-running literary genealogies, notable awardees of the PEN Translates grants, and the process of turning a lauded Greek writer’s home into an exhibition space. 

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

Going back to one’s roots can be an exercise of remembering what moves us. In her novel Tri Marii (The Three Marias), published recently by Ars Lamina Press, Macedonian author Olivera Kjorveziroska examines multiple iterations of the origin concept: as literary influence, as folk practice, and as the force from and towards which all human life is drawn—love.

Originally from Kumanovo, Kjorveziroska (b. 1965) now lives and works in Skopje. Her writing has been translated into many languages, including English, French, Hungarian, and Albanian, among others, and she also works as an editor and literary critic. Being someone who reads for a living is a crucial aspect of Kjorveziroska’s life; in her own words: “If . . . I had to choose between doing something else and writing a lot more, or working in publishing and not writing at all, I would probably choose the latter, because this is the only industry I feel at home in.” This love of and proficiency in reading finds its embodiment in her writing, including in Tri Marii, which is intertextual and allusive both literarily and culturally. READ MORE…

The Dust of Her Bones: An Interview with Inés Bellina, Alejandra C. Quintana Arocho, and Anne Freeland on Gabriela Mistral’s Queerness

August 7, 2025  |  in Interviews  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas

[Mistral's] overlooked queerness speaks to the question: Who has access to the archive and who has the power to shape it?

In 1945, Gabriela Mistral shattered the Euro-American stronghold of the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Latin American laureate and the second from the Global Majority world since Rabindranath Tagore’s landmark win in 1913. Her award marked a cultural shift, amplifying voices beyond the confines of the North Atlantic canon—yet today, Mistral’s legacy remains an unresolved enigma: Was she a modernist, as her French translator Mathilde Pomès suggested, standing shoulder to shoulder with Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío? Or was she a postmodernist like Delmira Agustini and Juana de Ibarbourou of Uruguay? Politically, too: was she an anarchist, Christian socialist democrat, or antifascist?

One aspect of Mistral’s life that remains clear, however, is her queerness. She spent her later years in New York with her partner, Doris Dana, an American children’s book author who translated some of her works and, after Mistral’s death, supervised her literary estate. Her sexuality is also affirmed by her contemporaries such as Alejandra Pizarnik and Pablo Neruda, and she even sometimes self-identified as a man in her own poetry. These complexities are further illuminated by a new centennial bilingual edition of Mistral’s Desolación (Sundial House, 2024), featuring translations by Inés Bellina, Alejandra C. Quintana Arocho, and Dr. Anne Freeland, along with thirty-seven poems translated by Langston Hughes, originally published in the 1957 collection, Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral. 

In this interview, I spoke with Bellina, Quintana, and Dr. Freeland about Desolación, and the enduring queer legacy of Latin America’s first Nobel laureate.

Alton Melvar M Dapanas (AMMD): Congratulations to the three of you on the publication on Desolación! Could you share how this book came to be? Also, while working intimately with Mistral’s first poetry collection, how did the experience of translating her transform your appreciation of her as a poet, an educator, a thinker, and a woman of her time?

Alejandra C. Quintana Arocho (AQA): Thank you so much. It’s honestly still quite a surreal thing to process for me—the publication of this edition. Not just because of how incredible of an opportunity it is to have co-translated and become so acquainted with the work of the great poet that is Mistral, but also because of how much reading, editing, and sharing her words with others feels more like an ongoing process than the end result of our collaboration. This volume marks the first full English-language of her debut poetry collection Desolación in its 1922 edition, originally published at Columbia University’s Hispanic Institute and edited by its then-director Federico de Onís—but the rest of her full-length works (despite appearing excerpted in translations of select poems, such as in Ursula K. Le Guin’s and Randall Couch’s editions) remain unpublished in English. Translator and literary critic Anna Deeney Morales is at work on a translation of Tala (1938) and Anne Freeland is working on Mistral’s last book, Poema de Chile (published posthumously in 1967), but there is much work to be done in creating and sustaining new readerships for Mistral among Anglophone, Spanish-speaking, and bilingual audiences alike. In considering the potential for Mistral to be rigorously and lovingly (re)read a hundred years after Desolación’s publication, our editor Eunice Rodríguez Ferguson was the one who came up with the idea of collaborating with a group of translators on an English rendering of the book. READ MORE…

Ruritanian Realism: A Review of This Room is Impossible to Eat by Nicol Hochholczerová

August 6, 2025  |  in Uncategorized  |  by Michael Tate

[Hochholczerová] creates an enthralling and curious sense of the banal in the sheer atypicality of the narrative. . .

This Room Is Impossible to Eat by Nicol Hochholczerová, translated from the Slovak by Julia and Peter Sherwood, Parthian Books, 2025

When Nicol Hochholczerová’s novella This Room is Impossible to Eat was first published in her native Slovakia in 2022, it caused a cultural and political storm, generating both praise and scorn for its intimate but ambiguous semi-autobiographical narrative that describes the grooming and subsequent relationship between a teenage student and her art teacher. The praise came from readers, literary critics, and jurors of literary prizes; the initial scorn came from parents worried about the impact of the book’s inclusion on the reading lists of selected Slovak high schools. Their concerns were then picked up by ever-vigilant, always campaigning politicians seeking to originate new fronts in the online Slovak culture wars. A new narrative was created for the novel, which was then ‘amplified’ (or more accurately, manipulated) into a furious national debate that almost destroyed the credibility of one of Slovakia’s literary awards, the René Prize. With the benefit of hindsight, this response can be seen as an application of divisive tropes, mirroring the social media manipulation practised by Slovakia’s eastern neighbours and offering a portent to the future direction of Slovak politics.

Regardless of the surrounding furore, the newly published English text—beautifully translated by Julia and Peter Sherwood—introduces a compelling, engaging, and forceful masterpiece of minimalism. The narrative is set out in linear but short chapters that identify the teacher and the student in a compelling, asymmetric conversation between inner dialogues, then quickly becomes a compact and sometimes austere statement of facts and emotions as both protagonists grow older. Their entanglement ‘begins,’ ‘matures,’ and then ‘ends’—though how it ends is best left for the reader to decide. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: An Excerpt from West Farragut Avenue by Agnieszka Jelonek

August 5, 2025  |  in Translations  |  by Nasim Luczaj

This may have meant: Don’t cry, there’s no need, it’s already happened.

From Chicago to Warsaw is 7,559 km—a long way to travel for the dead. But that is what the protagonist of this Polish novel by Agnieszka Jelonek must do: her boyfriend, Shrimp, has just fallen to his death. To the tragicomic circumstances of his demise—the indefatigable Shrimp accidentally fallen from an open window trying to smoke a cigarette—are now added the bizarre indignities of life as an unwilling and unwelcome traveller, from an odious Polish couple who have assimilated into American life to the hostile bureaucracies of the hospital and the crematorium, capped off by the unexpected appearance of Shrimp’s “other” girlfriend. Translator Nasim Luczaj writes: “Jelonek’s style is a tequila shot. There’s salt, there’s lime, there’s at once delicious and painful heat. The main challenge was to preserve the simplicity of the writing and not succumb to the temptation to ‘clean up’ the frequent repetition or enforce any of the cold elegance often associated with reminiscence—this grief is messy and hot.” Read on!

There’s no difference between a November afternoon and a November night. The car journey lasted six hours. No one said a word, no one cried. Shrimp’s Dad held on to the steering wheel, while his other son kept himself glued to the window. We looked out at the A7, and no one wanted to be in that car, everyone would have preferred somewhere else, anywhere but here. None of us accepted what we’d been told. The information rode with us as a separate passenger, and it, too, stared quietly into the dark.

We parked in front of the tenement and waited in silence for some time. A woman’s shadow passed across the building. Women in Shrimp’s family are slight, girlishly built, and always look younger than they actually are. A hunched, frail aunt wrapped up in her coat got in the car and turned towards us as if to speak but seemed unable to come up with anything.

READ MORE…

Summer 2025: Highlights from the Team

August 4, 2025  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Our bountiful Summer 2025 edition is filled with gems—as these highlights from our team show!

I have complicated feelings about Carolina Brown’s “Anthropocene” (tr. Jessica Powell). The brevity it accords its narrator’s transness is alternately touching and maddening, the fatphobia is at once completely spot-on for such a self-loathing narrator and at the same time it is pretty dehumanizing‚ but, ultimately, all that falls away in the ravaged face of a one-armed zombie jogging across the post climate-change Antarctic wasteland. A wonderful sci-fi tale.

I’d love Syaman Rapongan’s Eyes of an Ocean (tr. Darryl Sterk) for the title alone, but fortunately, Rapongan seems like a strong contender for the title of the actual most-interesting-man-in-the-world. His play with words, his treatment of colonization and indigeneity, the kindness with which he talks about younger generations. I really needed to read something like this, after all the ugliness that’s been going on in my own country.

I love the gender-bender secret agent in Valentinas Klimašauskas’s Polygon (tr. Erika Lastovskytė) so freaking much. The concluding discussion of airplane spotters is a particular stand-out for its treatment of how individuals become conscious of their political power.

Refugees are human beings. Where Rodrigo Urquiola Flores’ “La Venezolana” (tr. Shaina Brassard) shines is in its steadfast refusal either to vilify or idealize them, to present them in all their messy humanity, and in its willingness to show how shameful the narrator’s behavior towards them.

—Julia Maria, Digital Editor

Emmanuelle Sapin’s story “A Child Is Stolen” (tr. Michelle Kiefer) starts off with a swift, telling punch to the gut and builds from there.

Ahmad Shamlou’s poems in Niloufar Talebi’s lilting translation hover in waves of emotion and radiance: “Give me mirrors and eager moths, / light and wine…”

With playfulness and insight, Katia Grubisic sharpens the discussion about AI and translation by focusing on error in her piece “The Authority of Error”: “My argument is that AI makes the wrong kind of mistakes.  Mistakes breed resilience, and, most importantly, humility.”

Fawwaz Taboulsi, in Yasmine Zohdi’s translation, steers us directly into the sadness of Lebanon, 1982, and the time of the Siege of Beirut. His grief speaks with lucidity: “And, ever so slowly, the departing fighters peel away from the grasping, waving hands and from the embracing arms. Like skin peeling off its own flesh. They peel away from the farewells. From the prayers. From the promises.”

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how writers build characters. Jana Putrle Srdić’s poem “End of the world, beginning” in Katia Zakrajšek’s translation, does this in striking ways: ” Sitting on a warm rock, scratching in the wind, / you are a monkey, a branch with ants filing along it, debris in the air, / spots of flickering light”

—Ellen Elias-Bursać, Contributing Editor READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

August 1, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News  |  by Charlie Ng, Linnea Gradin, and René Esaú Sánchez

The latest literary news from Hong Kong, Sweden, and Mexico!

This week, our Editors-at-Large bring us updates on book fairs, industry trends, and tk. From the impact of censorship on book fairs in Hong Kong, to the domination of Scandi-noir in Sweden, to a celebration of a beloved publishing house in Mexico, read on to find out more!

Charlie Ng, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong

The 35th Hong Kong Book Fair took place from July 16 to July 22, at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai. This year’s theme, “Food Culture.Future Living,” aimed to explore culinary traditions and histories, connecting food cultures and lifestyles. As part of the event, the “Theme of the Year Seminar Series” featured a variety of sessions with authors and speakers dedicated to discussing food cultures from various perspectives. Topics included the historical significance of culinary traditions, the link between nutrition and health, and future trends in food consumption. Despite its rich programming, the fair experienced a notable decline in visitor numbers, with attendance dropping approximately 10% from the previous year. Organizers from the Hong Kong Trade Development Council reported that around 890,000 visitors participated, down from 990,000 in 2024. This decline followed the disruption caused by Typhoon Wipha, which forced the fair to suspend activities for an entire day. Some exhibitors expressed dissatisfaction with the situation as there was a significant drop in sales attributed to the typhoon’s impact on the peak business day.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong literary group the House of Hong Kong Literature announced the cancellation of its own book fair, originally scheduled for July 18-27. The non-profit organization expressed regret for the abrupt decision, which stemmed from unspecified reasons that were beyond the organizer’s control. Co-founder Tang Siu-wa mentioned that the cancellation affected their fundraising efforts, especially as profits were intended to support their relocation. In recent years, independent publishers and bookstores in Hong Kong have increasingly organized alternative book fairs to counter perceived censorship by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. The HKTDC had explicitly rejected applications to join Hong Kong Book Fair from publishers that published books on pro-democracy movements or asked exhibitors to remove sensitive titles from their shelves. Moreover, the “Reading Everywhere” independent book fair co-hosted at Hunter Bookstore, located in Sham Shui Po, faced scrutiny from the pro-Beijing newspaper Wen Wei Po, which alleged that the event fostered “soft resistance” against the government. The bookstore’s director, Leticia Wong, defended the fair, stating that the selection of books focused on local authors and was not intended to conceal any titles. Some other businesses in the same district were also accused of “soft resistance,” including a pen shop that sold ballpoint pens featuring local-concept designs, which won an award in 2019, and a café with graffiti of a frog on the wall, interpreted as Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character that gained symbolic meaning as a pro-democracy icon during the 2019 protests. READ MORE…

Announcing Our July Book Club Selection: A Father is Born by Andrés Neuman

July 31, 2025  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Maddy Robinson

[Neuman] exposes this version of love for what it is, an ecstatic and embarrassing dissolution of the self.

In his latest and perhaps most personal work, Argentine writer Andrés Neuman probes his newfound role as a father, reckoning with the masculine and the paternal with trepidation, honesty, and most of all, wonder. The arrival of a child is here fortified with the poetry of discoveries—developing ultrasounds, the first tentative words—and the sublime language of an expanded self, as both father and son come to find their new places in the world. At once a universal and a deeply private story, A Father is Born is a testament to where the mind goes when it is led by love.

The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers around the world. You can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website for as little as USD20 per book; once you’re a member, join our Facebook group for exclusive book club discussions and receive invitations to our members-only Zoom interviews with the author or the translator of each title. 

A Father is Born by Andrés Neuman, translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers, Open Letter, 2025

Andrés Neuman’s bios often begin by describing him as a son—specifically, that of Argentinian musicians who emigrated to Spain in the early 1990s. This intimate history has previously been explored in his writing, including in a collection of poetry about his dying mother, as well as a novel based on the dictatorship suffered by his family in Argentina. Now, continuing this occupation with lineage is a book that sees him wrested into a different position within the family: as a father to his newborn baby. A Father is Born was originally two separate texts, but arrives in English as a happy side effect of their translation by Robin Myers. The first, Umbilical, is a patient and forensic study of his and, to a lesser extent, his partner’s experience of expecting and then raising their child, Telmo, while the second, Small Speaker, explores the boy’s first forays into language and the mysterious assembly of a lexicon.

‘Little by little, I’m birthed as I speak to you.’ Each page of A Father is Born is akin to a poetic diary entry, ranging from the descriptive to the self-reflective. In the first section of Umbilical, titled ‘The Imagination’, Neuman explores the psychic nature of the fatherly bond pre-partum, detailing the subconscious effort of conjuring a loving connection to his future child. These opening chapters hum with the low frequency worries of a figure who knows about the precarity of life and miraculous ‘overlapping fates’ of ancestry: ‘. . . hands over hands over hands.’ In his wanderings around an expectant house, he realises how such fragility applies to the story he is building,

“More than their creator, I feel like their host,” your mother confesses.
Now I imagine us in concentric circles: you travel within a reality within our reality, which exists within ceaseless curves. What am I, then, in this home where your mother’s womb rocks and sways? Who do I inhabit?

READ MORE…

Today would only be back tomorrow: An Interview with Geovani Martins on Via Ápia

July 30, 2025  |  in Interviews  |  by Tiffany Troy

Via Ápia tells the stories of people who lived in the middle of this conflict, but who didn’t belong to either side.

Geovani Martins’s Via Ápia is a novel set in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro’s largest favela, and takes place from July 27, 2011 to October 26, 2013. During this time, the lives of the neighborhood’s residents were profoundly altered by a military occupation and “pacification” in anticipation of the upcoming World Cup; in exploring the fall out, Via Ápia describes what happens when the vitality of carpe diem meets the fate of broken young men—those who had “been born poor, [were] still poor, and would die poor.”

In this interview, I spoke with Martins about setting narrative expectations, telling the collective stories of residents in occupied Rocinha, and collaborating with his translator, Julia Sanches, in bringing this epic novel into English.

Tiffany Troy (TT): The first sentence of Via Ápia is: “They aren’t singing ‘Happy Birthday’ for another hour.” How does this set up the novel that follows?

Geovani Martins (GM): My intention with that opening was to prepare the reader in following the many expectations that the characters will face throughout the story. Early in the book, we learn that the police are planning to occupy Rocinha, and the entire first part is structured around this anticipation that surrounds the characters. Since it’s an official operation, there’s even a set date for the arrival of the police, which creates something like a countdown to this transformative event. So that reference to the clock right at the beginning helps, in an interesting way, to place the reader in this race against time.

TT: Can you speak about the overarching structure of this novel? How did you come to having three parts, and why repeat “RIO” in each of the chapter titles?

GM: When I was thinking about structure, the first major decision was to work with five characters. I initially considered a simpler structure, focused only on two brothers, but I soon realized that my intention with Via Ápia was to tell a collective story. I wanted to speak more broadly about a generation that was deeply affected by this moment of police repression. In trying to paint that wider picture, I defined each character around the main themes I wanted to explore in the book, so that each one would allow me to deepen a different perspective on the situation. I wasn’t interested in just one character’s view; what mattered to me was the intersection of their experiences. READ MORE…