It’s been a busy October in world literature! Join us to find out more about literary happenings from around the world, in Taiwan, China, the United Kingdom, and Albania.
Vivian Chih, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Taiwan:
The “Double Tenth Day” on the 10th of October has been commemorated as the “birthday” of the Republic of China, the official name of Taiwan. On this day in 2018, the Li Mei-shu Memorial Gallery in Sanxia District, New Taipei City, held an opening ceremony for a series of exhibitions featuring the works by two important Taiwanese cultural figures, Li Mei-shu (李梅樹, 1902-1983) and Zhong Lihe (鍾理和, 1915-1960), respectively a painter and a novelist. Both were influential to the development of Taiwan’s art and literary scenes, and having lived through the martial law period, Li and Zhong grounded their paintings and novels in depicting the homelands that had nourished them. Both are considered to be among a group of Taiwanese nativist artists, who composed works to express their concerns and affections about the local people and places in Taiwan. The exhibition is open to the public until the 18th of November, featuring many precious manuscripts by Zhong, paintings by Li, as well as artworks of the other two younger Taiwanese artists.
2018 also marks the 20th anniversary of the Taiwanese puppet master, Li Tien-lu’s (李天祿) death. The Puppetry Art Center of Taipei has been featuring a special collection of Li Tien-lu’s hand puppets and the puppeteer’s related historiographical documents. The exhibition also presents a recently filmed documentary, regarding Li’s far-reaching and cross-cultural influence in France, with his French friends and puppetry students being the interviewees in the documentary. On the other hand, the newly-released documentary in Taiwan, Father (《紅盒子》, 2018), directed by the Taiwanese documentary director Yang Li-chou (楊力州), presents the life story and puppetry career of Chen His-huang (陳錫煌), the eldest son of Li Tien-lu. The documentary is the first of its kind among Taiwan’s documentaries to feature the topic of Taiwanese puppetry art.
The 55th annual Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival kicked start with the announcement of the shortlisted films on October, 1st. The nominated films this year include both Chinese and Taiwanese films, with camera assistant, Liu San-Lang (劉三郎) being awarded the Outstanding Taiwanese Filmmaker of the Year, while the experienced film editor, Liao Ching-Song (廖慶松), received the Special Contribution Award. The award ceremony in 2018 will be held on November, 17th.
Jiaoyang Li, Editor-at-Large, reporting from China:
In September 2018, the Blancpain x Imaginist Literature Award judged by Yan Lianke and others was announced after a year’s selections.
Young fiction writer Wang Zhanhei, with her debut short story collection “Empty Guns”, became the winner of this prestigious literary award in China. Zhanhei was praised by the jury as “continuing the realism of Chekhov and Shen Congwen”.
In these short story collections, the protagonists are mostly marginal people, Zhanhei gives us clear, sympathetic details of their life stories. Her language is essayistic, frequently uses the Wu dialect, and is both natural and accurate.
This award is 30000 yuan in total, sponsored by the well-known Swiss watch brand Blancpain, to celebrate the young writers with constant creativity.
Then on October 8th, Hong Kong poet Xi Xi won this year’s Newman prize, which is sponsored by the University of Oklahoma’s Institute for U.S.-China Issues. Xi Xi was nominated by professor Tammy Lai-Ming Ho (Hong Kong Baptist University).
According to Tammy, Xi Xi’s poetry, at times whimsical and at times serious, speaks to the character of the city and its people, reminding us that Hong Kong poetry should never be ignored.
Also this week, poet Jenny Xie’s wonderful debut poetry collection, Eye Level, was shortlisted for this year’s National Book Award. According to the judges, her poems meditate on the itinerant body and identity, examining shifting and rarely solidifying experiences of solitude, estrangement, and belonging.
Marina Sofia, Marketing Manager, reporting from the United Kingdom:
October is the busiest time in terms of literary festivals in the UK, perhaps in an effort to capture the audience’s imagination when it comes to Christmas presents. Dundee, Birmingham, and Manchester are just a few of the major cities to host well-established annual events this month. All three of them have been making an effort to provide a more diverse and inclusive programme, featuring previously marginalised voices such as working class local writers (Birmingham), world literature and BAME writers (Manchester), as well as future—or should that be futuristic?— arts and sciences (Dundee). Liverpool is one of the newest and shortest festivals on the circuit, only in its second incarnation, while Cheltenham Literature Festival is the UK’s oldest literary festival, established in 1949. Both feature a mix of literature, biographies, journalists and political celebrities, designed to appeal to all age groups. Meanwhile, other festivals emphasise their purely literary credentials. The Winchester Poetry Festival specialises in poetry readings, workshops and close reading, including poetry in translation, while the London Literature Festival boasts Salman Rushdie, Olga Tokarczuk, Marilynne Robinson among its headliners and will also feature the Man Booker Prize shortlistees reading from their works.
If you live in the UK, you’ll know that literary prizes are not only subject to wild speculation in the media, but also give rise to betting fever, although being on the shortlist does not necessarily imply a fantastic increase in sales. The Man Booker shortlist this year contained two Brits (Daisy Johnson, Robin Robertson), one from Northern Ireland (Anna Burns), two Americans (Rachel Kushner, Richard Powers) and a Canadian (Esi Edugyan). There have been the obligatory murmurs about the prize having lost its originality and previous promotion of lesser-known Commonwealth writers since opening up to ‘the Americans’, who won for the last two years in a row. Sure enough, this year also, American author Richard Powers’ The Overstory was the bookies’ favourite to win, although Canadian Esi Edugyan was beginning to catch up. Both of them are weighty novels, addressing universal and timely concerns. So, when the winner was announced on 16th October, 2018, in the late evening, it came as a complete surprise to most people. The winner, Anna Burns’ Milkman is a novel steeped in the claustrophobic, suspicion-filled atmosphere of Belfast during the Troubles. Described as an extremely original and somewhat creepy voice, she is the first writer from Northern Ireland to win the prize. One cannot help wondering how much the current fears over the reinstatement of a border in Ireland and the rise of tribalism in politics all over the world might have contributed to the judges’ decision.
Barbara Halla, Editor-at-Large for Albania, reporting from Albania:
Writers can go through their entire careers garnering little attention from the public, never mind their country’s government. And yet, at the age of thirty-five, Fatos Arapi’s poetry was cited and critiqued by the leadership of the Labour Party of Albania at its fifteenth plenary session. During this meeting, Fatos Arapi was accused of hiding nefarious and revolutionary intentions (ostensibly against the Albanian government itself) behind lines of poetry too modern and opaque for the simple reader to grasp. Fatos Arapi, part of a triumvirate representing the best of twentieth-century Albanian poetry (Dritëro Agolli and Ismail Kadare being the other two members), passed away on October 11. In the 1960s, he was at the forefront of an artistic movement that would push Albanian poetry toward more experimental forms of writing. It was his desire to modernize Albanian literature that brought him trouble with the highest instances of the country’s dictatorship. It was only the support of his fellow authors, like fellow modernist Agolli, that kept him from internment camps and potential oblivion.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Fatos Arapi refused to create his best art under duress: unable to truly express himself through poetry during Communism, he opted instead for a career split between teaching History and Economics, writing love songs for national festivals and even conducting research on the musical traditions of Northern Albania. It was this epic musical tradition, kept alive through centuries with the aid of local songs rather than written, that inspired Arapi’s own distinctive style. It was only in the nineties that Arapi was able to dedicate himself, or at least to freely publish, the poetry that made him famous across Southern Europe. Although he is little known or translated beyond the region. In honor of his 50-year legacy, the National Library of Albania curated an exhibit highlighting his entire body of work.
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