This week, our writers bring you the latest news from Lebanon, Singapore, and Hong Kong. In Lebanon, ArabLit Quarterly’s new issue is brimming with new writing based on the symbol of the cat, whilst the literary world in Beirut has been mourning the loss of pioneering writer and publisher Riyad Al Rayes. In Singapore, the Singapore Writers Festival is featuring workshops, discussions, and an exhibition on three notable Tamil writers. In Hong Kong, this year’s Hong Kong Literary Season has kicked off with a series of events and the International Writers’ Workshop has welcomed prize-winning author Helen Oyeyemi in discussion with PEN Hong Kong president, Tammy Ho Lai-ming. Read on to find out more!
MK Harb, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Lebanon
Purr! A furry week for Arabic literature in translation. ArabLit Quarterly released its Fall 2020 issue dedicated to the inextricable house pet, the cat! In it, the feline creature takes on an amorphous quality and takes on various meanings. In some pages, the cat is the forlorn lover of political writers; in other pages, the cat symbolizes urban misery and violence, such as in Layla Baalbaki’s story. The acclaimed Syrian author Ghada Al-Samman contributed to the issue, contextualizing the cat as an agent of patriarchy. In her short story, “Beheading the Cat,” a man must decapitate a cat in order to prove he is worthy of dominating his wife. Marcia Lynx Qualey, founder of Arablit Quarterly, who gave an interview to Asymptote in 2017, tells us that the inspiration for Al-Samman’s story comes from the Persian maxim “One should kill the cat at the nuptial chamber.” Some of the translators who worked on this issue include award-winning Lebanese journalist Zahra Hankir, who edited Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World—a highly coveted anthology.
In Beirut, the literary world grieves over the loss of Riyad Al Rayes, a formidable writer, publisher, and editor. Al Rayes, a Syrian-Lebanese vagabond, founded the first Arab newspaper in Europe, Al-Manar, which he set up in London. His eponymous publishing house, which he operated out of Beirut, has published over a thousand books and is known for representing new voices in literature and critique. One of his accolades includes publishing the late and acclaimed Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s Memory for Forgetfulness, which was translated into multiple languages from Arabic.
In more recent fiction news, Lebanese-American author Rabih Alameddine wrote a short story for the Paris Review’s fall issue, taking us on an ethnographic journey to a “quietness” that haunts a Beiruti summer. Lastly, I would like to highlight our recent essay here on the blog, “The Queer Lives of Arabic Literature.” In it, we explore the diverse and rich topic of queerness as it manifests in three novels out of Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon.
Shawn Hoo, Editor-at-Large for Singapore, reporting from Singapore
Helmed by Festival Director Pooja Nansi, this year’s Singapore Writers Festival is aptly themed “Intimacy,” as the festival’s new digital format poses questions about ways to create literary community in times of isolation. From a discussion in Malay on how physical and emotional distance affects literature, to a conversation in Mandarin on epistolary exchanges between Hong Kong and Singaporean writers, the programme offers plenty of fresh variations on a current theme. For the translation-minded, the festival features a workshop on transcreation and the role of Google Translate, and even a live translation circle where six translators working in different languages work on the spot and discuss their translations. This year’s exhibition on Singapore’s literary pioneers will feature three notable Tamil writers, namely P Krishnan, Rama Kannabiran, and Singai Ma Elangkannan—all of whom are recipients of the Cultural Medallion, Singapore’s foremost cultural award. The festival, which runs from 30 October to 8 November, is a key event in the local literary calendar. Tickets are available here.
As the fourth Biennial Singapore Literature Festival in New York City has just concluded over the weekend—this is clearly a busy season for festivals on Singapore literature. Organized by Koh Jee Leong of Singapore Unbound, the virtual festival has continuously strived to bring notable Singaporean writers (such as Nuraliah Norasid, author of The Gatekeeper) in conversation with American writers (such as Jackie Wang, author of Carceral Capitalism). This is the first digital foray for the festival and it has no doubt sparked a hopeful conversation between two faraway spaces, and a global online audience.
Finally, it’s not just festivals, but also bookstores which are going digital. BooksActually—one of my favourite bookstores in the world—has just closed its physical store in Tiong Bahru, and moved fully online. It is no exaggeration to say that the physical BooksActually has, over its fifteen years of existence, been a home unlike any other for Singapore literature: hosting poetry readings, twenty-four-hour bookstore events, and enticing readers with their tables stacked full of chicly-designed Math Paper Press titles. While the space will be missed, readers and writers can continue to support this literary gem at its web store. Without a doubt, new communities and intimacies will be born of this exciting transition.
Charlie Ng, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong
This year’s Hong Kong Literary Season, organised by the House of Hong Kong Literature, will take place from late September to December. Although the threat of Covid-19 has not been entirely eliminated, the easing of social distance measures enables more literary activities to return to real venues with face-to-face interactions. On 27 September, an online talk kicked off the fourth edition of the Hong Kong Literary Season, which is followed by a series of literary workshops, talks, community docent tours, and a visual arts exhibition that are scheduled to take place in bookshops and galleries in the city. With the theme “Walking Words,” the Season aims to subvert the stereotypical understanding that writing is static with words bound to the page; on the contrary, words move along with life. Discussions will focus on travelling experience, shifting identities, and changing history to explore how writing presents and enacts instability and freedom.
Moreover, the International Writers’ Workshop has invited PEN Open Book Award winner Helen Oyeyemi, author to eight books including prize-winning novel Mr. Fox and short story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, to participate in their 2020 Distinguished Writer Series. A literary reading will be conducted on 14 October, while on 15 October Oyeyemi will be in a conversation with the president of PEN Hong Kong, Tammy Ho Lai-ming. Both will be in the form of Zoom webinars. In addition, visual artists, Ivy Ma, Ho Sin Tung, and Man Mei To, are collaborating in an inter-disciplinary exhibition titled “The Spaces Between the Words are Almost Infinite.” The exhibition opens from 5 September to 10 October and explores how visual arts can respond to images in films and photography, as well as the textual space of words.
*****
Read more on the Asymptote blog: