Our team of editors across the world is back with the latest literary news as summer winds down. In India, the recently released longlist for a major literary prize has put translations center stage. In El Salvador, a newly published book of poetry interrogates the concept of terrorism in Central America and the United States. In Guatemala, the city of Mazatenango played host to an international book festival. Read on to find out more!
Areeb Ahmad, Editor-at-Large, reporting on India
First awarded in 2018, the JCB Prize for Literature is India’s biggest literary prize and is given every year to “a distinguished work of fiction by an Indian author.” It is one of those rare prizes that gives equal attention to books originally written in English and translations from other languages, without putting them into separate categories as the Booker does. In a first for the prize, there are six translated titles out of the ten that comprise the 2022 longlist, which came out on September 3. This far exceeds the previous record of three longlisted translations. Two of this year’s longlisted books were translated from Urdu, and the rest were translated from Hindi, Malayalam, Bengali, and Nepali. One notable exclusion is Nireeswaran by V.J. James, whose novel Anti-Clock (translated from Malayalam by Ministhy S., who also translated Nireeswaran) was shortlisted last year.
Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, needs no introduction. After winning the International Booker Prize earlier this year, its chances of taking home the JCB Prize are high. Another promising title is Sheela Tomy’s Valli, a work of eco-fiction translated from Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil. Kalathil’s translation of S. Hareesh’s magical realist novel, Moustache, won in 2020 , meaning three of the prize’s four past winners were originally written in Malayalam.
This year marks the first time translations from Urdu have appeared on the JCB Prize’s longlist. Rahman Abbas’s Rohzin, translated by Sabika Abbas Naqvi, is “a love story as much about two lovers as it is about Mumbai,” according to the jury, while Khalid Jawed’s The Paradise of Food, translated by Baran Farooqi, is described on the prize’s website as “a bildungsroman…where food triggers memory and tragedy.” Manoranjan Byapari, whose novel There’s Gunpowder in the Air was shortlisted in 2019, is once again listed for Imaan. Arunava Sinha, who translated both from Bengali, is making his third appearance on the JCB Prize’s longlist (the last in the trio of honors being his translation of Ashok Mukhobadhay’s A Ballad of Remittent Fever, which was longlisted in 2020). It is heartening to see a Nepali book like Chuden Kabimo’s The Song of the Soil, translated by Ajit Baral, receive recognition from the jury for the first time. The shortlist comes out in October.
Nestor Gomez, Editor-at-Large, reporting on El Salvador
On August 20, Christopher Soto debuted their first book of poetry, Diaries of a Terrorist, in El Salvador. “The main focus of the book is my experience with the Los Angeles police, but it also extends its scope towards global issues of surveillance and incarceration,” said Soto, who identifies as queer and is an abolitionist advocating on behalf of people with diverse sexual orientations imprisoned in “democratic” countries around the world. Soto went on to say that there are poems in the book that talk about surveillance in El Salvador and that these poems shine a light on the people who remain imprisoned. The poems were likened to the work of Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour, who released a video poem called “Resist my people. Resist them!” via YouTube and Facebook highlighting images of Palestinians in violent confrontations with Israeli troops. Tatour was subsequently arrested on charges of inciting violence and supporting a terrorist organization. “So, in part of this book, what I wanted to do was to imagine what a world without surveillance and without prisons would look like,” revealed Soto. “And to do that, I first had to mention what surveillance and prisons mean for people living under such conditions.”
During their presentation, Soto pointed out that the word “terrorist” has different connotations depending on where it’s used and in what language. “In El Salvador, people here relate the word “terrorist” with gangs. In English, that connotation is not given,” they stressed. “In the United States, after the acts of 9/11, you had many Muslims and Middle Eastern communities that were called terrorists.” But the meaning and use of the word have evolved to reflect different, more recent social contexts. “Going into the Black Lives Matter movement, you had a lot of their activists who were called terrorists. And if you look at the Mexican and Latino communities in Los Angeles with all the deportations that are going on and all the mistreatment and incarcerations of migrants, all of those communities, likewise, with all the contexts in the United States, are called terrorists.”
Diaries of a Terrorist took Soto ten years to complete; it opens at the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement and ends with the presidency of Donald Trump. Explaining the title of the book, Soto said, “By using the term ‘terrorist’ in the title, I meant that to be ‘non-white’ in the United States right now is to be perceived as a terrorist or to be perceived as a threat. I am not making a defense of terrorism, but I am using poetry to comment on the ways in which normal people are treated in the United States.”
José García Escobar, Editor-at-Large reporting on Central America
In early September, Mazatenango, Guatemala, hosted its first book fair. The Feria Internacional del Libro de Mazatenango showcased some of Guatemala’s most prominent publishing houses like F&G Editores (who have worked with authors like Denise Phé-Funchal, David Unger, and Arnoldo Gálvez Suárez), Catafixia Editorial (representing Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Vania Vargas, and Yolanda Colom), and Sión Editorial (representing Josseline Pinto, Lenina García, and Luis Morales). Famed Maya Kaqchickel singer Sara Curruchich also performed at the festival.
Additionally, Central America’s most important literary festival, Centroamérica Cuenta, is days away from kicking off its latest installment in Madrid. Authors like Luis Chávez (Costa Rica), Gioconda Belli (Nicaragua), William González (Nicaragua), Jorge Volpi (Mexico), Carlos Fonseca (Costa Rica/Puerto Rico), and others will head the festival.
Arts and culture magazine Azacuán (Guatemala) recently published a fascinating interview with author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Francisco Goldman about his writing process, his latest novel Monkey Boy, and his Guatemalan roots. The interview is available here. On September 8, the Before Columbus Foundation announced that they had awarded Monkey Boy the American Book Award and called Goldman’s novel “a Proustian trip through one man’s life and memory, as well as the violent history of colonization that binds the Americas.”
Finally, on September 6, Salvadoran poet Javier Zamora released his latest book, a memoir entitled Solito (Hogarth Books) about his solo journey to the United States as an undocumented minor. Zamora is also the author of a book of poems called Unaccompanied (Copper Canyon) and was a 2018-9 Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University. He is the recipient of a 2017 Lannan Literary Fellowship and the 2017 Narrative Prize. Since its release, Solito and Javier have been featured on The Today Show and in Publishers Weekly. Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, writing for The New York Times, wrote: “Solito is an important, beautiful work. Zamora treks through his own memories and nightmares, revisiting a childhood that was lost. His account reads like a reporter’s notebook; everything is described meticulously so that it can be remembered. Zamora writes like someone who cannot afford to forget.”
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