This week, our Editors-at-Large offer a fond remembrance of a recently-departed literary icon, and report on book fairs and BTS. From books on boats and boy bands to the changing texture of Ramallah mornings, read on to find out more.
Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine
Early mornings in Ramallah are varied, except for one scene: an older man, back almost fully straight, all-white head lowered, walking slowly towards one specific coffee house in the old city. A serene smile below a deep gaze, the man would sit in his friends’ company, not for long—just enough to empty his coffee cup, and his head from the thoughts that weighed him down on his way.
Since last week, the beloved older man has not appeared in the streets. Zakaria Mohammed, a celebrated poet and a Palestinian literary icon, now resides in his admirers’ hearts. At the age of seventy-three, Zakaria’s body was lowered to rest, but his soul will continue to visit Ramallah, reminding everyone that:
There is no death
There is only a tiny cloud that passes and covers your eyes
Like a friend who comes from behind and blindfolds you with his hands
There is no death
There is a black goat and a tattooed hand milking an udder
White milk fills your mouth and flows in your eyes
Again, there is no death
There is a Raspberry tree
It holds your shoulder and hurts you
because it wants to open the way for turtles
There is no death
There isn’t
at all
Read more of Zakaria’s poems, translated here by Sinan Anton.
Wambua Muindi, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Kenya
August 1-5 saw Soma Nami Books, an award-winning Pan-African bookstore, host its first African Book Fair in the McMillan Library, Nairobi. The five-day book extravaganza was coupled with over ten thousand books from over fifty African countries, and accompanied by half-off book discounts. The overwhelming shopping experience was made easier by the regional cartography of the stocked books and a diaspora section serving to illustrate the breadth and depth of African imagination and its subsequent cultural production. It featured book signing events, a book launch, panel discussions, book donations, kids’ activities, storytelling, and a library tour, among other events. The fair can be seen as replicating the recent growth of book fairs populating the literary scene in Nairobi starting with Nuria Bookstore Nairobi International Book Fair, and by extension the East Africa region with the just concluded Mogadishu Book Fair and Hargeysa Book Fair, demonstrating the extent of the burgeoning book market and expanding cultural space.
In the same vein, Logos Hope is coming to Mombasa later this month. From August 23 to October 3, the Logos Hope Ship, an international ship sharing knowledge, help, and hope to people around the world—and home to the world’s largest floating book fair—will be in Mombasa. This one-of-a-kind experience will be provided to the Kenyan public, and by extension the East African community, for only the second time since the turn of the century—the first time being in 2005. The ship is scheduled to dock at the Mbaraki Wharf, Near Likoni Ferry, Mombasa. Book enthusiasts will not only experience the ship’s return to the coastal city but also a copious amount of world literature and will be able to interact with the diverse team of around 350 volunteers from over 65 different countries onboard.
Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Philippines
The celebrity memoir by Korean pop sensation BTS launched globally on July 9 in celebration of their tenth anniversary. Titled Beyond the Story: 10-Year Record of BTS, the memoir is written in the Hangul by South Korean pop culture critic and journalist Kang Myeongseok and co-written by the boy band’s members Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V, and Jungkook, furnishing a deep dive into their experiences on the road to superstardom since their debut a decade ago.
One of the 23 languages the memoir was translated into is Filipino. For the Philippine edition, BTS’ management Big Hit Music tapped Adarna Publishing House imprint Apop Books, a Manila-based publisher which specialises in translating Korean bestsellers for Anglophone readership. This Filipino translation of Beyond the Story, Apop Books’ first Filipino title, is a collaboration between a team of Filipino translators working directly from the Hangul original—Oliver John Quintana, Ronel Ortil Laranjo, Ma. Kristina Carla Rico, Maria Concepcion Loren Chua, and Jay-Ar Igno—and consultants including Kyungmin Bae, acting director of the University of the Philippines (UP) Korea Research Centre. Rico, one of the translators, holds an MA in Korean Language and Literature from Kangwon National University in Chuncheon and is co-translator of screenwriter-novelist Kim Soo-hyun’s self-help books, I Decided to Live as Me and Being Comfortable Without Effort, both released in 2020. Chua and Igno are with the UP Department of Linguistics. Laranjo, on the other hand, translated So Yoon’s bestselling collection of inspirational essays, A Little Star Still Shines Brightly (2022), into English.
In an interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Quintana, who headed the Ateneo de Manila University’s Korean Studies Programme and studied at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, said, “The process of translating at first was very challenging. Because even if we [Filipinos] have a lot of similarities with Korean culture, there are certain ways that Koreans say something or they have certain idiomatic expressions which might be quite difficult to translate into Filipino.” The people behind the memoir’s rendering into the Filipino language particularly had the Filipino ARMYs—the BTS fandom—in mind. “So, the challenge was not just to translate it but also to contextualize it in the Filipino setting. We imagined how the members would say a specific phrase or express themselves, as if they were Filipinos,” Quintana stated further.
Beyond the Story: 10-Year Record of BTS, both its English (translated by International Booker Prize longlistee Anton Hur with Clare Richards and Slin Jung) and Filipino translations, is available in bookstores nationwide.
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