This week, our editors-at-large give us a window into discussions about the importance of literature in translation across cultures—as something that connects people, responds to disaster, and creates community. Read on to find out more about a conference in India, one in the Balkans, new poems and essay collections, and more!
MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Spain and Belgium
Asymptote contributor Felix Nicolau translated a selection of poems by the Spanish poet Fulgencio Martinez for the latest issue of the Romanian journal Apostrof. Martinez visited the Romanian Language and Culture Centre (led by Nicolau) at University of Granada back in June which triggered a fruitful international conversation. Nicolau’s exquisite renditions bring witness to the Spanish poet’s vision of the lyric as both a haven from and a look into the world’s (and “any world’s”) political turmoil and injustice. Serendipitously, these translations speak to another groundbreaking event in the other literature I follow closely; the Belgian one.
The most remarkable recent event in Belgian Francophone letters is the release of Myriam Watthee-Delmotte’s collection of essays La littérature, une réponse au désastre (Literature, Response to Disaster) from Royal Academy of Belgium’s press. The internationally-awarded academic, writer, and essayist’s book has already received impressive coverage in Belgium and beyond. Watthee-Delmotte has also recently launched a novel, Indemne. Où va Moby-Dick? (Safe and Sound: Where’s Moby-Dick Headed?) with Actes Sud) and the two books are the subject of a two-episode interview podcast on Radio France Culture and also a streaming broadcast on for two weeks in a row (September 10th through the 25th).
Past Asymptote contributor Véronique Bergen did a remarkably thoughtful review of Watthee-Delmotte’s essays on literature versus disaster in Belgium’s leading Francophone literary news venue, Le Carnet et les Instants. The collection of essays presents a world-literature tour de force ranging from Moby Dick to Blaise Cendrars to Yannick Haenel to Henry Bauchau and is a passionate and lucid argument for the resourcefulness and even effectiveness of literature in opposing disaster. A timely argument to make, and one that Bergen (herself an outstanding poet-philosopher-essayist) rigorously analyzes, revealing the ways in which literature can tackle disaster and even (re)shape reality by re-symbolizing the inconceivable and using language as play.
I personally found the Henry Bauchau references among the most compelling ones in the book, particularly since Watthee-Delmotte’s focus is on Bauchau’s autobiographical novel Le boulevard périphérique. Bauchau worked on the novel for almost thirty years and the resulting fresco is an overwhelming illustration (and as the essayist argues, testimony) of his own adage regarding the mission of writers and poets to bring about “un plus de vie dans un plus de sens” (an added life to an added meaning). Watthee-Delmotte is a true connoisseur of the legendary Begian writer’s life and work; she has curated a dedicated collection—le Fonds Henry Bauchau—at UCLouvain and co-organized many relevant events over the years (also previously covered in Asymptote).
Her own output as a writer has been garnering ever-increasing recognition: the news that Watthee-Delmotte is being awarded the prestigious French literary award Malesherbes, le Libraire du roi arrived as I was completing this dispatch.
Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large, reporting from North Macedonia
For the 13th time, the international literary festival PRO-ZA Balkan took place in late September in North Macedonia’s National Gallery in Skopje. Six authors from the Balkan region were present at the opening; among them was this year’s recipient of the Prozart Prize, the Slovenian writer Evald Flisar.
Striking a balance between the local and international, this year’s roster of panelists included authors who are both widely translated and thoroughly embedded in their own cultures. Alongside Flisar, guests included the Serbian writer/poet Nebojša Lapčević, the Bulgarian writer Elena Aleksieva, well-known children’s/young-adult writer Jana Bauer, as well as two Macedonian authors—the poet/novelist/translator Lidija Dimkovska and the writer/editor Hana Korneti. The guests spoke about “the meaning of writing, the limits of human experience, and the role of literature in today’s world.”
Dimkovska discussed growing up in a working-class family and not having had many opportunities to travel and explore the world, and what this meant to her development of her perspective as a writer. She recalled a mantra that helped her, and her peers, reframe this potential limitation: “Madžari is in Skopje, Skopje is in Macedonia, Macedonia is in the world.” This allowed her to “transcend the boundaries of her own life and open up to the broader human experience.” Still, Dimkovska admitted that she is drawn “to boundless spaces and what she could not have or experience.”
Bauer, for her part, reminisced about the recent past, when oral storytelling furnished “closeness, imagination, and an escape into fantasy worlds.” “It’s different now,” she said, “we work late, there’s no more storytelling from the elders. . . . I write more for myself, to try to capture that magical moment.” Bauer also touched on the value of intercultural exchange, translations from ‘smaller’ languages, and the role of European programs aimed at affirming literatures from the periphery (among the festival’s founders is TRADUKI, a project which funds translations from Southeast European languages into German and vice-versa).
As the host of this rich dialogue among authors from countries which are often politically at odds with each other, PRO-ZA Balkan serves as a reminder of the role that literature plays in transcendence, visibility, and being human.
Zohra Salih, Editor-at-Large, reporting from India
The second edition of Bhaashavaad (literally: language talk), organised by the Ashoka Centre for Translation in association with the New India Foundation, was held at the India International Centre in New Delhi on August 30th and 31st. The conference was specifically conceived to seriously consider the way “texts, ideas and publics move across languages and institutions today” and to “approach translation’s central role in shaping Indian public life.”
The two-day event was attended by renowned writers and translators, including Jerry Pinto, Arunava Sinha, Ashuthosh Poddar, Rana Safvi, Rita Kothari, and Urvashi Bhutalia, as well as Deepa Bhasthi, whose translation of Banu Mushtaq’s Kannada-language short story collection Heart Lamp won the International Booker Prize in 2025. Author and linguist Peggy Mohan delivered the keynote address, stressing that the present moment was especially exciting in that “translation is being demanded, not thrust upon people”, as more people in the country are expressing a desire to read and participate in ongoing national discourses in their own regional languages, rather than feeling excluded for not learning English.
Another interesting point was brought up by eminent author Vivek Shanbhag, who drew attention to the fact that the Kannada language has had a long history of writers who spoke a different language but chose to write in Kannada, something that he beautifully referred to as the ‘imagined collective’—which reflects the multilingual ethos of the country itself. Renowned writer, publisher and activist Urvashi Bhutalia also emphasised the need to take translation as a craft seriously, and to acknowledge the question of money, as there is a very real need for adequate funding to support translators to compensate for the labour and skill that goes into the process.
To that point, the third edition of the New India Foundation’s Translation Fellowship opened on August 1st, inviting applicants to send in their proposed translations of non-fiction texts across ten Indian languages: Assamese, Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, Odia, Tamil, and Urdu. Eligible texts include publications from 1850 onwards. What makes this initiative unique is the emphasis on non-fiction in translation, with the aim to share the insights and knowledge embedded in historical Indian texts with a wider audience. The grant will award each fellow a total of INR 6 lakhs. Previous winners include Vilasini Ramani, to translate Swaraj to Whom? by Malayapuram Singaravelar from Tamil; Hemang Ashwinkumar, to translate The Dawn of Life by Prabhudas Gandhi from Gujarati; Matthew Reeck, to translate A Portrait of the West by Qazi Abdul Ghaffar from Urdu and Achyut Chetan, to translate Sanskriti Ke Chaar Adhyaya by Ramdhari Singh Dinkar from Hindi. Applications are due by December 31st.
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