This week, our editors are bringing some fascinating news from their respective regions: the controversy surrounding a new prize for translated literature; the newest additions to the Swedish Academy (which adds two extra voices to the future electors of the Nobel Prize for Literature); and the latest visual art exhibitions and programmes that study the intersection between image and text. Read on to find out more!
Areeb Ahmad, Editor-at-Large, reporting from India
Earlier in May, the winner of the inaugural edition of the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation was announced to be Musharraf Ali Farooqi, for his translation of Siddique Alam’s The Kettledrum and Other Stories from the Urdu. The book will be published next year by Open Letter, and an excerpt is available now on Words Without Borders. The prize, however, has had its fair share of controversy over the last few weeks regarding another author, Nandini Krishnan, who had appeared twice on the shortlist. According to her, the prize had confidentially informed her that she was chosen as the winner for her translation of Charu Nivedita’s Raasa Leela from the Tamil and then asked for more excerpts; upon receiving the text, however, they then withdrew the win, citing “reputational risk and potential liability.” Krishnan in turn withdrew both of her books from consideration after revealing the incident, and the prize eventually released a statement; the announcement of the winner was then postponed from early April to mid-May.
Zubaan, a small feminist press that only publishes women, recently released The Keepers of Knowledge: Writings from Mizoram, edited by Hmingthanzuali and Mary Vanlalthanpuii—the fourth entry in a series of anthologies that seek to highlight work from Northeastern states of India, which are often neglected from the mainstream. The project is in collaboration with the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, and the four anthologies so far have featured writing in English and in translation—poetry, prose, essays—as well as visual art. It is significant in collating various indigenous literatures and making them available to a wider audience, going far beyond the limits of an archive. The fifth entry, We Come from Mist: Writings from Meghalaya, edited by Janice Pariat, is currently in the works and expected to be out in a few months. Zubaan has also consistently championed Indian women writers in translation, and two other notable recent releases were Andhar Bil by Kalyani Thakur Charal, translated from the Bengali by Ajit Biswas, and The Stomach that Chewed Hunger and Other Stories, edited by Bama and translated from the Tamil by Ahana Lakshmi.
Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden
Earlier this month, the Swedish Academy announced its two newest members: chair number three has been taken over by David Håkansson, a professor of Swedish language and linguistics at Uppsala University, who is currently researching how fiction has contributed to making Swedish a modern language, focusing on the period between 1830 and 1930. Chair number sixteen has been taken over by the writer Anna-Karin Palm; the author debuted with her first novel in 1991 and has since published over twenty books, including short story collections, nonfiction, and children’s books—of which many have been translated. Her international breakthrough was the 1997 novel Målarens döttrar (The Painter’s Daughters), which has since been translated into eight languages, including French, German and Polish. In Sweden, Palm is perhaps most known for her biography of the monumental Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf—the first female laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1909) and the first female member of the Academy (1914).
The Swedish Academy was founded by King Gustav III in 1786, inspired by the Académie Française with a purpose to “develop the purity, vigour, and majesty of the Swedish language”—which is done, for example, by compiling one of the world’s most comprehensive dictionaries, with some 450,000 main entries. Since its establishment, the Academy has also awarded literary achievements and it is internationally probably best known for awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature. Six years ago, at the height of #metoo, the Academy underwent a tumultuous time, with many of its members stepping down. With the addition Håkansson and Palm, all vacancies have finally been filled.
Another literary organization, Swedish PEN, announced in early May that Kerstin Almegård has been given the position of chairperson. Swedish PEN was founded in 1922, the year after the foundation of PEN International; for the first couple of decades, it was mostly a discussion club, but from the end of the Second World War, its work promoting freedom of speech has become significant. Kersin Almegård is currently a nonfiction publisher at the Albert Bonnier’s publishing house, with more than twenty years’ experience in publishing, and she has been actively involved with Swedish PEN for over ten years, most recently as vice chairperson.
MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large, reporting from France and Belgium
At the crossroads of Francophone—namely French and Belgian—cultures and stemming from a cross-artform and interdisciplinary environment, Bert Mertens’s painting exhibitions have taken Paris by storm over the past six months. After a number of events in Brussels (the topic of previous Asymptote blog dispatches), Mertens had his third 2023 Parisian art opening two weeks ago at Talmart, now on through May 30. Though not explicitly related to or illustrative of literature, Merten’s art speaks to writing on multiple levels. Both his website and latest artist’s book go by the Keatsean title “A Thing of Beauty Is a Joy for ever,” and the overflowing richness of his overwhelming nature paintings also echoes Hopkins’s “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” His deserted garages, chaotic workshops, fathomless piles of messy wires, and uncannily glossy dumping sites have also been described as “hyperrealistic.” Literary authors and scholars—allured by this post-industrial Whitmanesque democracy-of-things poetics—have written generously about the art; just two days ago, an impressive and enthusiastic review of the current exhibition appeared in Charlie Hebdo by French writer and columnist Yannick Haenel. Haenel does not shy away from calling a couple of the works masterpieces while highlighting the “tragedy” of “something unspeakable at play through this clutter” of “things colonizing space.” For the vernissage of the exhibit, titled “Through the Force of the Real,” Haenel had a public interview with Myriam Watthee-Delmotte on “Painting and Unveiling” that further. . . unveiled the complex interdisciplinary connections informing Mertens’s art.
On the most personal, intellectual, and artistic levels, Watthee-Delmotte is a major hub of these meetings between visual art and textuality. A celebrated Belgian author and academic, she has done monumental and innovative work at the intersection of literature and image/imagery/the imaginary. An authority on the work of luminary Henry Bauchau (and curator of his legacy), she organized last fall a colloquium, exhibition, and international prize ceremony at Wittockiana Library in Brussels on Henry Bauchau, sous les mots, les images (under the words, the images).
The colloquium co-organizer, Anne Reverseau, was the leader of the European Union-funded project HANDLING, researching the material intermediality of pictures in(to) literature. The most recent HANDLING event took place just yesterday, and featured French electronic-literature author and photographer Philippe de Jonckheere giving an intermedia performance closing his exhibition at Maison du Livre in Brussels.
*****
Read more on the Asymptote blog: