Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

The latest news from the Czech Republic and Mexico!

This week, our editors from around the globe report on new translations of Czech poetry, as well as books fairs and celebrations of acclaimed writers in Mexico. Read on to find out more!

Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting on the Czech Republic

On 19 May, Bianca Bellová launched the English translation of her award-winning novel The Lake at the Czech Centre in London. “Whether The Lake is better described as dystopian or realistic depends, I suppose, on one’s opinion about the state of the world and what can be done about it,” said the book’s translator Alex Zucker. For him, the book “stands out for the incisiveness of its style and the evocativeness of its setting,” he told Alexandra Büchler in an interview published as part of Parthian Books’ Talking Translation series.

Meanwhile, Büchler’s own translation of the poetry collection Dream of a Journey by Kateřina Rudčenková has been longlisted for the coveted Oxford Weidenfeld Prize. You can read a tribute to Büchler, a tireless advocate for the translation of literature from Wales in both English and Welsh into languages across Europe through her role at Literature Across Frontiers. Those in the UK can catch Rudčenková and her fellow Czech poet Milan Děžinský at the Kendal Poetry Festival on 25 June, while poets Stephan Delbos and Tereza Riedlbauchová will be reading translations of each other’s poetry in Prague on 26 May.

There is more Czech poetry just out from Karolinum Press as part of its Modern Czech Classics series: The Lesser Histories by Jan Zábrana (1931-1984). In the words of its translator Justin Quinn, the collection “at times resembles a loose, shifting congregation of voices, some talking clearly, others muttering indistinctly, on occasion shifting from one language to another.” Quinn’s foreword, excerpted in LARB, provides a great introduction for Anglophone readers to Zábrana, a towering figure in Czech literature who, in addition to being a poet, was an outstanding translator from Russian and English, as well as a diarist whose “thousand pages or so of selected diaries bear witness to a splendid, if bitter, solitude.”

A year after the novel Gerta (translated by Veronique Firkušný) appeared, its author Kateřina Tučková’s bestselling debut The Last Goddess (Žítkovské bohyně, 2012) is now also out in Andrew Oakland’s English translation. Based on extensive historical research, the book is set among a community of female healers who lived in the White Carpathians until the 1950s and were rumored to be endowed with magical powers.

Alan Mendoza Sosa, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Mexico

This month was full of literary activity. Book fairs, presentations, and celebrations brought joy to the literary community.

From May 20 to 29, the Feria Iberoamericana del Libro de Orizaba took place, a book fair with writers from all over the Hispanic world. One of the most interesting talks featured Ana Clara Muro, co-editor-in-chief and co-founder of Palíndroma, an independent publisher founded during the global pandemic. The press has quickly become a leading champion of contemporary Mexican literature, publishing celebrated authors such as Yolanda Segura, Belén López Peiró, and Luis Alberto Arellano. Muro talked about her prologue to a new edition of Guadalupe Marín’s novel La única (1938), recently published in the collection Vindictas, an effort by the National Autonomous University of Mexico to recover the voices of women writers who were silenced and marginalized during their lifetimes. Muro discussed how she found out about the author in a master’s course in literary history, during which she became intrigued by all the misogynistic accusations against Marín’s writing. She pointed out that the unfavorable comments about the author reflected the prejudiced views of the male-controlled literary elite of the time, a context particularly apposite to Marín’s novel. The text features a woman who challenges the corrupted and patriarchal intellectual elite to pursue her calling in the arts and literature. Muro highlighted the originality of Marín’s representation of women, praising it for running against the mainstream tide of contemporary portrayals of female characters.

A bit further south, in Mexico City, another celebration took place. On May 19, Elena Poniatowska, one of Mexico’s most acclaimed writers, turned ninety. She welcomed her new year with the cheery tunes of traditional mariachi music and the warm company of several friends, among whom was Marta Lamas, one of the most outspoken and controversial feminist public intellectuals in Mexico. Poniatowska’s birthday made it into national news, featuring in the culture sections of several newspapers, which overwhelmingly praised her unflinching critical voice against state violence but also her graceful and kind demeanor. The writer’s birthday celebrations were nothing short of spectacular, taking place in the National Fine Arts Palace, where Poniatowska was joined by Mexico City’s governor and accompanied by the National Philharmonic Orchestra. Poniatowska’s cultural status is such that even the Mexican president congratulated her, joining others in acknowledging her as “the best Mexican writer.”

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