This week, our editors are rounding up some exciting new developments in the word of language, from the annual edition of one of China’s most noteworthy literary awards, to cinematic adaptations of Filipino writing, to an urban festival digging into the intersections of literature and science in Bulgaria. Read on to find out more!
Xiao Yue Shan, Blog Editor, reporting for China
In one of the stories from her collection, Ba bu ban (Eight-and-a-Half), Huang Yuning writes about the private, sometimes-sacred communion that a sharing of language initiates, as with two tourists sitting together in a Frankfurt subway: “There’s at least one good thing about two Chinese people riding the subway together in a foreign country: the walls are ready-made, and language is the thing that builds a transparent cubicle all around you.”
Huang’s stories won the Blancpain-Imaginist Literary Prize in 2019, and this year, the prestigious award is again taking in submissions to find the next powerful young writer of Chinese-language fiction. Held jointly by the Beijing publishing house Imaginist and the Swiss brand Blancpain, the annual competition is known for seeking out original voices with an intricate attention to language, profoundly developed themes, and an outstanding voice and style that embodies the unique adventure of Chinese writing. Open to writers under the age of forty-five who have published a book between April 2022 and 2023, the winner receives a cash prize of 300,000 yuan to help develop their work. The theme of this years prize is “The Necessity of Complexity”, and in the submissions call, the prize committee asserted the essentiality of literature that addresses the present moment with a fine eye on the past and a rejection of overloaded media narratives. As they state, there is a role in writing that aims always towards truth and its complexity: “. . . because complexity is the point of origin of everything new and the commencement of everything we call the future.” Literature has the role of paying close attention to the strange, the unspoken, and the vast depths of internality; the jury aims to find a work of Chinese fiction that speaks to this task. Since the prize’s inauguration in 2018, I’ve found its selections well deserving of accolade, celebrating work from some of the most bold and talented writers working today, and like many readers of the Chinese language, I am greatly looking forward to see which titles will be spotlit this year.
The jury includes lauded Chinese writer Yiyun Li, who interestingly has gone the way of Nabokov to “renounce [her] mother tongue”, writing and publishing only in English. The writers who have chosen to taken such a path usually speak of a feeling of entrapment within their native language, and Li explained her choice by stating that English is her “private language”—she has to actively think her way towards every word. Now that she has become a crucial element in deciding who is to be awarded this esteemed award of Chinese-language literature, it’s tempting to note that reading fiction is not only a way to explore the world through narratives and characters, but through the innate imaginations and freedoms that exist when words are put together in new and regenerative configurations. That is the liberation that style—evidence of that actively thinking mind behind the page—gifts to us: an encouragement to think again about tired words, those beleaguered little artifacts of human history. I think often about the writers of China, all the individuals that are constantly reaching out to embroider, reweave, and patch the fabric of that wonderful, ancient, fraught language, and I remember that words are alive. That they are always in the process of making something new, and that they are protectors and safeboxes for our wildnesses, our freedoms, and all the things that one dreams might be spoken, one day.
Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Philippines
Golden Globes and BAFTA-nominated Filipino film, television, and theatre actress Dolly de Leon (known for her performance in the Ruben Östlund satire, Triangle of Sadness) will soon be seen as poet-translator Christine Alba in Salome, a Mindanaoan cinematic reimagination of “Elias at Salome” (Elias and Salome), the original 25th chapter of José Rizal’s novel Noli me tángere (1887)—famously called ‘Chapter X’ as it was never printed. Now in post-production, Salome is directed and written by Maguindanaoan filmmaker-writer Gutierrez “Teng” Mangansakan II, also known as the author of the essay collection Archipelago of Stars (Ateneo de Naga University Press, 2017), editor of Moro writers anthologies Children of the Ever-Changing Moon (Anvil Publishing, 2007) and Rays of the Invisible Light (Bidadali Press, 2015), and the country’s delegate to the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program in 2008. Also joining the film is Perry Dizon, who was previously casted in a Haruki Murakami adaptation, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car (2021).
Asymptote contributor Stefani J Alvarez has received an Akademie Schloss Solitude 2022-24 fellowship in Stuttgart, Germany. Alvarez is one of the fellows from thirty-three countries from Ukraine to India, Nigeria to Brazil, each representing the “different spheres of practice”—music, visual and performing arts, architecture, digital publishing, languages and literatures, among others. Alvarez’s flagship project “The Other Lady Gaga”—a meditation on the plight of migrant Filipino workers and the transgender body—is an intersection between the choreopoem and the video essay. Her latest book Ang Liwayway at Sandekadang Dagli (The Dawn and A Decade of Dagli) is now out from Sanctum Press
Several independent publishers led by 8Letters, Milflores Publishing, and Kawangis Publishing Co. have participated in the Mindanao Book Fair held at Metro Davao. Among titles sold were comic books by Kawangis Publishing Co., the science fiction anthology Pilipinas 2413: The Best Philippine Sci-Fi Stories (8Letters), children’s storybooks by Aklat Alamid, and prose collection How to Grieve: Stories (Everything’s Fine) by Jade Mark Capiñanes. The highlights, for me, were Pawikan Press’ offerings: Maranao food writer Assad Baunto’s My Ranaw Kitchen Lab: Food for Peace in Muslim Mindanao, which consisted of “pandemic-era musings turned into delectable recipes”; and Sūy-Sūy ni Sarena: In Paglawa Sin Hambuuk Sultaniyya, Doc Benj Bangahan’s translation into the Tausug language (or Bahasa Sūg) of Criselda Yabes’ Sarena’s Story: The Loss of a Kingdom, winner of the 2010 Gawad Likhaan, the centennial literary prize of the University of the Philippines.
To cap on the news from April, the National Month of Philippine Literature, the Antoine de Saint-Exupery classic Le Petit Prince has now been translated into the Hiligaynon as Ang Gamay nga Prinsipe by Stephen A Matti, making it the fourth Philippine language the children’s novella has been translated into—after Tagalog-based Filipino (Ang Munting Prinsipe, trans. Lilia F Antonio, 1969 & Desiderio Ching, 1991), Central Bikol or Bikol Naga (An Sadit na Prinsipe, trans. Fr Wilmer S Tria, 2011), and Chavacano de Zamboangueño (El Principe Niño, trans. Robin Atilano de los Reyes, 2018 & El Diutay Prinsipe, trans. Jerome Herrera [interviewed here at Asymptote], 2018). Ang Gamay nga Prinsipe was made possible by the generous assistance of the Fondation Jean-Marc Probst pour Le Petit Prince and will be distributed to schoolchildren in Hiligaynon-speaking cities and provinces within the country. A translation into the Ilocano—Ti Bassit a Prinsipe—is reportedly in the works from indie press Southern Voices.
Andriana Hamas, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Bulgaria
Over the past few years, the Reading Sofia Foundation has launched several initiatives meant to encourage Bulgarians to explore the wondrous world of books, including city tours called “Literary Routes,” and “Hidden Letters”—a project combining Cyrillic alphabet shapes and original poems. The spring of 2023 witnessed another public event that captured the locals’ imagination. The second edition of “Literary Talks,” organized under the theme of “Elections,” proved true to its name; drawing its inspiration from the country’s seemingly endless rounds of ballot casting, it included twenty-minute presentations by writers, artists, and theorists, who were welcome to tackle any subject as long as they could convincingly elaborate on its literary value.
The urban festival delved into the syncretic connections between literature and the other arts or between literature and science. The central discussion (“Beyond the Human”) focused on the intersection of the social sciences, the humanities, and science fiction, by diving deeper into the oeuvre of the American novelists Richard Powers and Ted Chiang. The session’s hosts, Aleksandar Popov (also known as Al Vickers) and Konstantin Georgiev, noted that “the human-induced climate crisis and the ensuing biodiversity loss are being increasingly analyzed in research circles as part of the Anthropocene conversation. In the last decade, their impact has given an impetus to the so-called Nonhuman Turn, which is essentially a reorientation of the intellectual disciplines, aimed at grasping the nonhuman perspective so that people can begin to care more wisely for Earth’s ecosystems, but also to better understand themselves.”
Increasing awareness of urgent issues has always been among literature’s main goals—a point we would be mistaken to forget, according to the meeting’s conclusions.
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