Happy Friday, Asymptote pals! Unless your habitation is rock-like, you’ve probably heard this week’s biggest, most high-stakes literary news: the Nobel Prize in Literature has been announced, and this year’s honors go to Belarusian Svetlana Alexievich, journalist and prose writer recognized for her meticulous, “polyphonic literature of witness.” Alexievich was at the top of the betting pools, but for those not in-the-know, the Nobel Prize is again an excellent opportunity to discover another author (often through translation!). Voices from Chernobyl, translated by Keith Gessen, is of particular interest. But much of her work—which voices the unvoiced—remains as-of-yet untranslated. Here’s a helpful primer to her work.
This Thursday wasn’t just Nobel Thursday, but a big day for other reasons, too: in the United Kingdom, it was the biggest day of the year for book publishers as they gear up for the Christmas literary rush. And one of Canada‘s most prestigious literary prizes, the 100,000-dollar Giller Prize, has announced its shortlist, which includes a work of translation, Samuel Archibald’s Biblioasis, translated from the French by David Winkler. And in Poland, the country’s most prestigious literary prize, the Nike, has been announced: Księgi Jakubowe by Olga Tokarczuk (no word on English-language translation just yet).
Looking for a good read? The Poetry Foundation recommends three newly-translated poems by Costa Rican poet Luis Chaves, which you can read at our friendly translation poetry friends, Circumference. Nigeria‘s literature is on the up-and-up, too: keep your eyes peeled for these bright stars in the country’s contemporary literature.
What is translation worth if it only propels the hyper-destructive modus of a Global English? Public Books reviews Japanese author Minae Mizumura’s The Fall of Language in the Age of English (reviewed on the blog by Elisa Taber here). And we’re glad the most recent Nobel laureate is female, because even literary translation—a field that prides itself on purported social justice—faces grave gender inequities.