As countries around the world are grappling around the walls of our new reality, their literatures respond in turn to the urgency of contemporary matters and the necessity of recognizing history. In this week’s dispatches, our editors report on publishers in Sweden taking on climate change and the world welcomes new translations of a canonical Brazilian author, among other noteworthy news. Read on to keep up!
Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden
Publisher Natur & Kultur announced in their most recent sustainability report that they aim to become Sweden’s first climate neutral book publisher. The goal is to become climate neutral within 2020, which means that firstly, they will do what they can to minimize climate changing emissions, and secondly, they will compensate for any emissions from their activities or production. Their printing house, located in Estonia, will switch to ecofriendly electricity and they are investigating how to minimize transportation within the publisher’s business. Authors published by Natur & Kultur include historian and former Swedish Academy Permanent Secretary Peter Englund (The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War) and writer, columnist and August Prize winner Lena Andersson (Wilful Disregard and Acts of Infidelity).
Another reminder of the importance of action on climate change arrived recently with the fall edition of the triennial book catalogue from the Swedish book industry organization Svensk Bokhandel. This fall, Sweden’s most prominent environmental activist, and possibly most well-known person overall right now, Greta Thunberg, is having another book published by Polaris Publishing. Last year, photographer Roger Turesson and journalist Alexandra Urisman Otto travelled with Thunberg through Europe and the United States and the book is their depiction of the young environmentalist. Previously published works by Thunberg includes Our House is on Fire, written together with her parents and sister, and No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, which is a collection of her speeches.
Daniel Persia, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Brazil
As Brazil continues to grapple with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, its literary community perseveres. With the recent cancelation of the 26th International Book Fair of São Paulo, originally slated for October 30 to November 8, 2020, publishers, writers, and reviewers have carried the conversation to online platforms such as YouTube, Facebook Live, and Instagram. Despite current flight restrictions and limitations on travel, Brazilian literature continues to cross new frontiers, garnering new readers across the globe.
June alone has seen the release of not one, but two new translations of a canonical work into English: The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. The two editions, translated by Flora Thomson-DeVeaux (Penguin Classics) and Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson (Liveright), offer distinct versions of a classic text. In the forward to the former, republished in The New Yorker, Dave Eggers calls it “one of the wittiest, most playful, and therefore most alive and ageless books ever written.” First published in 1881, Posthumous Memoirs is narrated by the deceased Brás Cubas, who reflects on a failed life from beyond the grave—in a philosophical and humorous way. This isn’t the first time the work has been translated into English; it was first released in 1952 as Epitaph of a Small Winner (translated by William L. Grossman), then in 1955 as Posthumous Reminiscences of Braz Cubas (translated by E. Percy Ellis), and again in 1997 as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (translated by Gregory Rabassa). An extensive collection of notes by Thomson-DeVeaux provides a new, carefully researched lens through which to read this timeless classic.
For a more contemporary work to read alongside Machado de Assis, consider Amora, by Natalia Borges Polesso, translated by Julia Sanches, released last month by Amazon Crossing. Winner of the Jabuti Prize in 2016, this collection of thirty-three short stories and poems explores what it means for two women to be in love, with remarkable candor and complexity. A book ultimately about the resiliency of the human (and female) spirit, Amora couldn’t be more relevant than it is today.
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