In this week of updates on world literature, our Editors-at-Large bring news on an upcoming film adaptation of Władysław Reymont’s The Peasants, a monthly calendar highlighting African writers and literatures, and the most recent winner of the esteemed Golden Wreath in North Macedonia! From Asymptote contributors’ recent accolades to a brief look into Vlada Urošević’s poetry, read on to learn more!
Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting on Poland
A film version of the modern Polish classic, The Peasants by Nobel-prize winning author Władysław Reymont, will hopefully hit the screens later this year, following a lengthy delay caused by COVID and the war in Ukraine. Those familiar with the Gdańsk-based filmmakers Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman will know that this won’t be your run-of-the-mill costume drama; the film uses the same painstaking hand-painted technique that the team pioneered in their earlier acclaimed short film Loving Vincent. Originally scheduled for release in 2022, the production of The Peasants came to a standstill, as twenty-three of the artists working on the film were Ukrainian and based in a studio in Kyiv. Interestingly, it is the film that we have to thank for the new English edition of The Peasants; since the existing translation published in 1924 was rather outdated, Welchman commissioned Anna Zaranko, winner of the 2020 Found in Translation Prize, to translate a couple of chapters for him and subsequently managed to persuade Penguin Classics to publish the complete novel, which is nearly 1000 pages long.
In 2021, one year after Zaranko won it, the Found In Translation Award went to Ewa Małachowska-Pasek and Megan Thomas for their new English version of Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz’s 1932 satirical novel The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma. They discuss the novel with Daniel Goldfarb in the first episode of his series of Encounters with Polish Literature. Now in its third year, this consistently illuminating series of monthly videos that Goldfarb has been producing for the Polish Institute in New York has clocked up twenty-six episodes so far. In Episode 2, which focuses on Andrzej Sapkowski, Goldfarb is joined by David French, who has translated six out of the fantasy writer’s eight novels in the Witcher series into English, as well as all three parts of his Hussite Trilogy. In the most recent Episode 3, Goldfarb and the scholar and translator Benjamin Paloff introduce Leopold Tyrmand, author of one of the great Warsaw novels and popularizer of jazz in mid-twentieth-century Poland, a transformative figure in Polish culture between the death of Joseph Stalin and the post-Stalin thaw.
There have been nominations and prizes galore for Asymptote contributors: Marta Dziurosz has won the First Translation Prize of the UK Society of Authors 2022 for her ‘truly astounding translation’ from the Polish of Marcin Wicha’s Things I didn’t Throw Out, sharing the prize with editors Željka Marošević and Sophie Missing. Mikołaj Grynberg’s heartbreaking collection of short stories, I’d Like To Say Sorry But There’s No One To Say Sorry To, translated by Sean Gasper Bye, has been named a finalist of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish literature (the winner to be announced on September 12). Olga Tokarczuk’s monumental The Books of Jacob in Jennifer Croft’s translation finds itself on the shortlist of the 2023 European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Literary Prize alongside fellow Polish author Maciej Hen and Anna Blasiak, translator of his book According to Her (see interview).
And finally, if you are a writer or translator with at least one published book, are currently working on a writing project, are interested in learning more about the Polish literary community, and have a connection with any UNESCO City of Literature outside of Poland, don’t miss the opportunity to apply for a two-month literary residency in Kraków (July 1 to August 31, 2023). The deadline for applications is April 23.
Wambua Muindi, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Kenya
On March 18, 2023, at Cheche Bookstore, the Monthly Celebration of African Writers Calendar was launched. This calendar comes from a partnership of four literary collectives, each engaged in diverse cultural productions in Nairobi, including Comrades Books House, Going Down River Road, Books of Kenya, and Ukombozi Library. This is just one activity that will be running throughout the year to encourage readers to think about the influences of African authors and to reflect on their lives while keeping tabs on their literary legacies. The initiative was pioneered by Njuki Githethwa, who envisions it serving an active role in dealing with what he sees as an under-appreciation of African writers and literature beyond academic pursuits. It will also acknowledge the politics of language, a common topic in translation discourses lately, and as such the calendar will feature writings in various languages.
On the calendar for April 22, 2023, is a celebration of Ken Walibora, author of seminal Swahili novel Siku Njema, who met his untimely death in April 2020. His writings, mainly in Swahili, demonstrated the pursuit of life’s pleasures, human nature, and folly in equal measure. A believer in translation, a number of his titles have been translated—most notably, the translation of Siku Njema, A Good Day by Dorothy Kweyu and Fortunatus Kawegere. This celebration coincides with the third anniversary of his death. In choosing to remember Walibora, by dedicating a whole day for him—whereas the norm is celebrating a group of writers per event—the Monthly Celebration of African Writers Calendar bears testament to the veneration of Walibora, as well as Kiswahili as a language with proven utility, with efficacy, for literary purposes in East Africa, more than any other African language.
Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large, reporting from North Macedonia
To celebrate World Poetry Day, a reading took place at the National University Library “St. Clement of Ohrid,” held by members of the Macedonian PEN Center and the Macedonian Writers’ Association. Its beginning was marked with the announcement of the laureates of the Struga Poetry Evenings (SPE), the indisputable highlight of North Macedonian literary events. SPE is an annual poetry festival that started as a national event in 1961 and branched out to include international entries in 1966. Some notable recipients of its most prestigious award—the Golden Wreath—include: Mahmoud Darwish, Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan Agyey, W. H. Auden, Joseph Brodsky, Allen Ginsberg, Pablo Neruda, and Ted Hughes, among many others. This year, the Golden Wreath was awarded to Vlada Urošević.
Urošević (b. October 17, 1934) is a North Macedonian writer, poet, and essayist. His oeuvre includes a wide array of literary genres—prose, poetry, essays, travelogs, literary and art criticism, and translations. He is a member of the Académie Mallarmé, the Macedonian PEN Center, and has been awarded the grade of Knight in the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters). He is a full-time professor of comparative literature at the University of St Cyril and Methodius in Skopje, where he teaches nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature. His area of expertise has visibly inspired the stylistic aspects of his writing.
Urošević’s lyrical style is both abstract and captivating, blending modernist European influences with his own unmistakable cadence. Using places and objects to communicate feelings, his poems double as visual artworks that invade the imagination and remind us of the expressive potential of materiality. In one of his better-known poems, Planeta na Vojnata (Planet of War), “continents are proclaimed canceled spaces,” having become “islands whence no news come anymore,” where “poems are read in concrete hallways underground.” Here, Urošević manages to traverse a global scale in three minimal lines, punctuating the cultural and physical devastation of war via a progression of grim visuals. The uniqueness and intensity of his work has been appreciated by many—his writing has been translated internationally, into English, German, French, Bulgarian, Russian, and Danish, to name a few.
*****
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