This week, our writers bring you the latest news from Singapore, Argentina, Sweden, and Malaysia. In Singapore, the shortlist for the Singapore Literature Prize was announced; in Argentina, the Asociación Argentina de Traductores e Intérpretes has been celebrating National Translation month with a series of talks; in Sweden, the annual crime fiction festival Crimetime has begun; and in Malaysia, Erica Eng became the first Malaysian winner of the Eisner Award. Read on to find out more!
Shawn Hoo, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Singapore
Singapore’s premier literary award, the biennial Singapore Literature Prize, held a virtual awards ceremony for the first time last night, and handed out prizes across the nation’s four official languages (Malay, Tamil, Mandarin, and English). Notably, Marylyn Tan made history with her queer and transgressive poetry collection, GAZE BACK, when she became the first woman (and lesbian) writer to win the top prize for Poetry in English. Other big winners include Wong Koi Tet (published by City Book Room) and Sithuraj Ponraj, who walked away with two prizes each. Evidently, the arts have continued to feel the negative repercussions of the pandemic, as the top prize money was slashed from SGD$10,000 to SGD$3,000 this year due to a lack of funding.
Prior to the ceremony, Unggun Creative’s Jamal Ismail—who won the Merit Award for his novel Tunjuk Langit (Pointing the Sky)—had bemoaned the lesser prize money, but wondered if winners could alternatively be awarded the “translation of their works into other languages.” Literary translations across languages in Singapore remain an under-tapped potential.
Hearty congratulations to previous Asymptote contributors who made the shortlist: Hamid Roslan, for his inventive and cacophonous bilingual collection of poetry, parsetreeforestfire; and Amanda Lee Koe, for Delayed Rays of a Star, a novel that unfolds an ambitiously transnational history through the lives of cinema icons Anna May Wong, Marlene Dietrich, and Leni Riefenstahl.
In other prize-related news, the Epigram Books Fiction Prize—formerly reserved for Singaporean writers—was for the first time this year open to submissions from Southeast Asia. This year’s winning novel, How the Man in Green Saved Pahang, and Possibly the World, is written by Kuala Lumpur-born Joshua Kam and has just been released. Pre-orders are underway for the books by the other finalists who hail from across the region. With the emphasis on regional submissions continued for next year, the Singapore-based prize looks set to become an important institution shaping the regional English-language publication scene.
Finally, an online symposium held on August 12 explored the role of the anthology in Singapore’s literary ecosystem, and put the nation’s feast of anthologies into focus. In fact, the latest anthology to arrive just this month, Food Republic: A Singapore Literary Banquet (eds. Ann Ang, Daryl Lim Wei Jie, and Tse Hao Guang), describes itself as a literal feast: “a buffet, a banquet, an omakase, a smorgasbord, a nasi padang spread, a thali or a rijsttafel.”
Allison Braden, Co-Editor-at-Large, reporting from Argentina
As August gives way to National Translation Month, translator conferences are forging ahead, despite this year’s tricky circumstances. (In the US, the American Literary Translators Association’s annual conference has moved to an all-virtual format, with programming ongoing between now and October. The shift will allow translators around the world, who may not otherwise be able to attend, the chance to participate in programming this year.) To kick off translation month in Argentina, the Asociación Argentina de Traductores e Intérpretes is hosting a virtual conversation on Friday evening about the state of book translation in the country, featuring two highly regarded women translators, Estela Consigli and Lucila Cordone. The conversation will be free and open to the public via Zoom.
That two women are helming the talk is only appropriate given the group’s demographics: last year, AATI data revealed that the vast majority of members who’ve joined in the last five years have been women. The group Traductoras e intérpretes feministas de la Argentina (Feminist Translators and Interpreters of Argentina) formed in 2019 to provide solidarity and improve representation among translation events in the country. In normal times, Buenos Aires is home to a vast array of literary and translation events but, the group says, few translation events focus explicitly on gender. The group will host a free virtual meeting on September 26. The group also has plans to launch a book club “to link feminism with literature” and promote conversation on these themes.
This same spirit gave rise to the global Women in Translation Month (#WITMonth), which is wrapping up this week. Stock up on these Argentine books, translated into English by women, to make it #WITMonth all year round: Norah Lange’s People in the Room, translated by Charlotte Whittle; Sara Gallardo’s Land of Smoke, translated by Jessica Sequeira; Laura Alcoba’s The Rabbit House, translated by Polly McLean; Gabriela Cabezón Cámara’s The Adventures of China Iron, translated by Fiona Mackintosh and Iona Macintyre; and Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender Is the Flesh, translated by my co-editor-at-large, Asymptote’s very own Sarah Moses. For more recommendations from Argentina and around the world, visit @Read_WIT on Twitter.
Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden
The annual Swedish crime fiction festival Crimetime, which was founded five years ago by the publishing company Bonnier in the picturesque town of Visby, will be held digitally this year. Since 2018, the festival has moved from the tourist-filled island of Gotland to become a part of the book fair Bokmässan, held in Gothenburg in September each year. Among the crime writers to attend Crimetime this year are Camilla Läckberg (The Gilded Cage, The Ice Princess), Sofie Sarenbrant (Killer Deal), Anders de la Motte (The Silenced, Ultimatum), and Camilla Sten (The Lost Village).
Another literary event whose plans are affected by the ongoing pandemic is the annual congress of PEN International. After last year’s meeting in Manila, the organization’s eighty-sixth congress was originally set to take place in September in the Swedish city Uppsala, with the theme “The Power of Words: Ensuring Freedom of Expression in a Time of Polarization.” After already being pushed back to November, last week PEN International announced that the gathering in Uppsala is postponed until next year. This will be the first time since 1978 that the congress is hosted by Swedish PEN, which was one of the first PEN Centres when it was founded in 1922.
Also last week, representatives of the Swedish book publisher organizations met with Amanda Lind, Sweden’s Minister of Culture and Democracy, to discuss the situation of the book publishing industry during the pandemic. Financial support was discussed, as well as exemptions to the legal restriction of gatherings to a maximum of fifty people. Book sales in physical stores have been affected by the ongoing crisis with a 28% drop during the time period since mid-March compared to last year. The concern now is that this trend will continue and that it will affect the sales of December, which is normally the strongest month for book sales in Sweden. A large part of the loss in sales of printed books, however, is made up for with a 17% increase in online book sales.
Tan Kwan Ann, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Malaysia
August started off well for the Malaysian creative scene, with the news that Erica Eng won a prestigious Eisner Award for her webcomic, Fried Rice. Eng is the first Malaysian winner of the prize, and her comic touches upon life in Malaysia, studying overseas, and identity.
More recently, Joshua Kam’s book, How the Man in Green Saved Pahang, and Possibly the World was published. Kam won the Epigram Fiction Prize 2020, and the book has been eagerly anticipated as a twenty-first century Malaysian adventure, combining both mythology with the urban tapestry of Malaysian landscapes.
On the cultural commentary scene, there is also the upcoming issue of Jurnal Svara. The journal aims to be a central hub of contemporary Malay writings on culture, and this will be their third print issue. Additionally, one of Malaysia’s most prominent translators, Pauline Fan, has been recently interviewed for a feature in Mekong Review, where she talks about her experiences translating the work of German writer Paul Celan into Malay.
In more unpleasant news, the investigation into the editor of the book Rebirth: Reformasi, Resistance, And Hope in New Malaysia has dragged on into August. The book came under fire from authorities after allegedly demeaning Malaysia’s national coat of arms on the cover.
Looking ahead, Cendana, an organization looking to boost Malaysia’s cultural economy, are hosting their first arts writing masterclass and mentorship programme in an attempt to support emerging writers, artists, and critics. The government has also pledged RM 10 million to help the arts and culture sector in the aftermath of COVID-19, which has come as a relief for many who had their livelihoods stifled by the virus.
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