This week, our Editors-at-Large take us around the globe for updates on the world’s literary scenes. From Shanghai’s lively summer book fair and three exciting new titles from the Chinese; to literacy- and readership-boosting campaigns in Sweden and Denmark; the longlist for the best North Macedonian translation prize; and this year’s Struga Poetry Evening Festival, read on to learn more.
Hongyu Jasmine Zhu, Editor-at-Large, Reporting for China
From August 13–19, the Shanghai Book Fair welcomed over 382,000 readers with citywide events celebrating libraries and independent bookstores. Though I wasn’t in the country, WeChat livestreams—now second nature to Chinese publishers—allowed me to tune in and discover three books I’m eager to pick up.
First, Dong Li’s Chinese translation of Victoria Chang’s poetry collection 记逝录, Obit, was launched by China Normal University Press. “My Father’s Frontal Lobe—died unpeacefully of a stroke…” reads the opening line; Chang said that it foregrounds both disintegration and the possibilities of body and language. A stroke strips the body of movement and speech, pulmonary fibrosis hardens the lung until no air enters, language strains against enormous sorrow; yet Chang writes toward that very inadequacy, seeking new articulations. Li reflected that translation is a liminal language (折中的语言). While writing strives toward the far shore, translation stands midstream, crafting a new language attuned to currents not entirely one’s own.
Then, Yao Emei—author of middle grade novel 倾斜的天空 (Titled Sky, translated by Kelly Zhang, Levine Querido) and stories from 家庭生活 (The Unfilial, translated by Honey Watson, Martin Ward, Olivia Milburn, Will Spence, Sinoist Books)—discussed her new novel 海燕 (Hai Yan) with People’s Literature Publishing House’s editor Hua Cheng. The female protagonist Hai Yan grows up in a small county town where education is the only way out. Her brother’s admission to Peking University marks him destined to “soar,” while she is expected to keep her head down. After vocational college and entering a local bank, everyone assumes her life has settled, but no one asks what she wants, how she feels, or why she persists in making “abnormal” choices as a “normal” person.
In Chinese, 海燕 (Hǎi Yàn) also means “petrel,” which brought Maxim Gorky’s poem “The Song of the Stormy Petrel” into the conversation—a text familiar to many from middle school literature textbooks: How might Yao’s Hai Yan be read with and against Gorky’s petrel, who beats its wings proudly against the storm? Originally titled 不会飞的海燕 (Hai Yan / The Petrel That Cannot Fly), Yao later renamed it simply to Hai Yan—or, simply, Petrel—for people in modest circumstances who’ve never given up trying to take flight, who keep attempting until they no longer can. That too, Yao suggested, is a kind of success.
Finally, Lu Min—whose novel Dinner for Six (translated by Nicky Harman and Helen Wang, Balestier Press) has been published English—discussed her new short story collection 不可能死去的人 (People Who Will Not Die) with editor Wang Xiaowang, writer Lu Nei, and writer and scholar Mao Jian. Lu Nei noted that the work addresses the enduring question of what it means to be Chinese, while Mao observed it inhabits everyday lyricism and pulls back just before the climax to create beauty from structural restraint.
An attention to interior lives in Lu’s newest title echoes her larger preoccupations: 不可能死去的人 (People Who Will Not Die) is not about literal immortality but about a question sharpened in the age of AI—if the body perishes while technology offers endless survival, what constitutes genuine human existence? The fictionality of “people who will not die,” whether portraying masked performers or imagining mortality’s abstract limits, is precisely what accentuates its truth.
Linnea Gradin, Editor-at-Large, Reporting from Sweden and Denmark
Denmark recently announced they are removing the value added tax on book sales in a bid to promote reading. This comes after intense campaigning by the Danish publishing industry, which has seen diminishing profits in recent years—and most recently after an OECD report flagged that 24% of Danish fifteen-year-olds struggle to understand simple texts.
Denmark currently has the highest VAT-rate on books in the world, at 25%. This stands in contrast to countries like Norway and the United Kingdom where books already enjoy a 0% VAT-rate.
In Sweden, meanwhile, the VAT on books was lowered from 25% to 6% in 2001 and book sales are increasing—with physical book stores seeing the biggest increase in the second quarter of 2025. However, analyses show that the tax reduction in 2001 didn’t draw in a new crowd; instead, it simply increased book purchases among already established readers. Like Denmark, decreasing reading comprehension skills among students has long been a concern in Sweden, not least since a 2022 PISA report revealed that a quarter of Swedish ninth graders display insufficient reading abilities for their age. As close neighbors, Sweden will thus be paying close attention to how this tax adjustment will affect literacy among young Danes and stimulate the publishing industry.
In other news, one of Sweden’s most successful authors, Fredrik Backman, released his latest novel, My Friends, in Swedish on August 28. What’s unique about this release is that the novel has already been available in English for some months. This situation arose as Backman has been without a Swedish publisher, but his American, British, and Canadian counterparts didn’t want to wait, considering his popularity amongst English-speaking readers. In the end, Backman published with Norstedts, though sales are expected to be lower than normal, as many Swedish readers have already ordered and read the book in English.
Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large, Reporting from North Macedonia
The judges of “Dragi,” an annual contest for the best Macedonian translation, recently announced the finalists of the second selection for the 2025 prize. The contest was inaugurated in 2022 to celebrate the legacy of the author, translator, and professor Dragi Mihajlovski (b. 1951), who left an indelible trace on Macedonian culture by translating, for the first time, the works of Milton, Blake, Eliot, Toni Morrison, and Kenzaburo Oe, among others. Mihajlovski earned his nickname, “the Macedonian Shakespeare,” for having translated thirty-seven plays and one hundred fifty-four sonnets by Shakespeare. Continuing the tradition initiated by Mihajlovski, the twenty-two translations that passed the second round introduce a wide range of fascinating works to the Macedonian-speaking public, including those of Annie Ernaux, Witold Gombrowicz, Olga Tokarczuk, Liu Zhenyun, Jon Fosse, and H.P. Lovecraft.
In other news, the Struga Poetry Evening Festival (SPE), which took place from August 21 to August 25, hosted over seventy poets, critics, and translators this year. Among its many highlights were a press conference with this year’s Golden Wreath recipient, the Slovak poet Ivan Štrpka, and a presentation of Katica Kulavkova’s poetry collection entitled Neboto Mi E Doma (At Home, in the Sky), which I had the honor of recasting into English. Featuring guests from Poland, France, Turkey, China, Spain, Ireland, Lithuania, and other countries, SPE once again celebrated the community fostered by poetry and literature in general. Štrpka acknowledged the connective power of events such as SPE in his recent statement that “[Macedonians and Slovaks] are on the same ship and sailing on the same deck together.” In the same vein, the central symbol of this year’s SPE proceedings was the Glagolitic script, as a “bridge” between different centuries and peoples. Festival director Nikola Kukunesh also emphasized both the Glagolitic script and the relationship between Macedonian and Slovakian culture as a continuation of a tradition established in the time of St Cyril and Methodius, one which “exceeds 1,160 years and connects literature, language and poetry from their early beginnings to the present day.”
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