This week, our editors are bringing news of exciting readings, groundbreaking publications, and community events. From Palestine, a new poetry publication brings translations to the forefront, and in China, a renowned playwright debuts work and honors her community. Read on to find out more!

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large for Palestine and the Palestinians, reporting from Palestine

In the month of Ramadan, life in Palestine is relatively quiet, with reduced working hours， afternoons devoted to preparing iftar food, and evenings reserved for prayer or social/familial activities. However, the Ramallah Municipality is making the most of this time; from mid-March to mid-October, the library is holding bi-weekly talks with authors and creative writers to explore and discuss their achievements, enriching the social dialogue on various issues related to the worlds of writers and creators they interact with. The program, titled “The Meaning”, will host sixteen renowned and beloved Palestinian poets and novelists in person. All guests will be speaking in Arabic, though Ramallah Library is considering posting recordings with English subtitles. Keep an eye out for these exciting events!

Just across on the side of the Jordan River, the Palestinian/Jordanian poet Tahseen al-Khateeb surprised everybody this week with publishing the first notebook (daftar) of Dafaater al-Shi‘er (poetry notebooks). Described as “an electronic magazine specialized in poetry and the surrounding arts,” the whole project is the sole effort of al-Khateeb’s. On its Facebook page, he introduces the publication as follows: “Poetic notebooks, made according to the mood of Tahseen al-Khateeb, who translates the notebooks’ pages.” READ MORE…

This week, our Editors-at-Large bring us updates on prestigious awards and literary festivals from Palestine and Mexico! From the 2023 winners of the Mahmoud Darwish Award for Creativity to multisensorial poetry from the UANLeer book fair, read on to learn more!

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large for Palestine and the Palestinians, reporting from Palestine

The 2023 edition of the Mahmoud Darwish Award for Creativity has been announced, with three winners selected from different categories. In the Palestinian Creative category, Palestinian poet and academic Dr. Salma al-Khadra al-Jayyusi won for her significant contributions to contemporary Arabic poetry, including leading a translation project that brought several notable works to English readers.

Lebanese composer, singer, and musician Marcel Khalife won the Arab Creative category for the remarkable additions he has brought to Arab musical heritage. Khalife is known for his devotion to Palestinian poetry, particularly that of Mahmoud Darwish, and has left an indelible mark on the Arab audience’s consciousness.

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This week, our editors-at-large report on a celebration of a beloved poets, a controversial change to a major literary award, the last chance to see a powerful museum show, and more. Read on to learn more about current events in world literature!

Rubén López, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Guatemala

On January 26, the Ministry of Sports and Culture of Guatemala announced several changes regarding the National Literature Award. The award, given yearly since 1988, honors the exceptional careers of writers like Augusto Monterroso, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Carmen Matute, Gloria Hernández, Eduardo Halfon, among others. However, the Ministry has now announced that the award will be presented every three years. Christian Calderón, Vice Minister of Culture, said that the decision is part of a “strategy to give an opportunity to develop young writers.” Gloria Hernández, who was granted the award in 2022, expressed criticism of this new policy in a local newspaper. She argues that the Ministry’s motivation for the change is only saving the monetary grant for three years and that this will not benefit local writers. She added that Guatemala should emulate Mexico’s National Literature Award, which grants a lifetime pension so that the creator can devote to writing. In her opinion, this would be more valuable to Guatemalan literature. In the same interview, Gerardo Guinea, who received the award in 2009, said that it is absurd to grant the award every three years and argues that the only effect of this change is to limit the number of laureates.

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Join us this week with a new batch of literary dispatches covering a new Palestinian literary and culture magazine, the 2023 PEN Open Book Award longlist, and more. From a Palestinian literary festival to the birthday celebration for the “national poet” of Romania, read on to learn more!

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine

A first is always exciting, always an event; in fact, it’s called “a first” even if a second never comes. And when there is a second time, it’s an opportunity to celebrate and to remember the first.

This week the Palestinian literary community is anticipating both a first and a second.

The Palestinian literary scene is witnessing the birth of Fikra Magazine, an online Palestinian cultural and literary magazine – writing and art by and for Palestinians. According to partners and co-founders Aisha and Kevin, Fikra is dedicated to “high-quality content that doesn’t conform to stereotypes and old-fashioned ideas about Palestine. It’s original, it’s inspiring, it’s bold.” What is exciting about this new publication is that every piece is professionally translated from Arabic to English—or vice versa. Since “Palestinians in the Diaspora often don’t read Arabic as their mother tongue,” the creators say in their promotional materials, “we want our writers to become part and parcel of the international writing-guild as well.” In Fikra, the creators promise, “you’ll find Palestinian writers and artists from all corners of the word – from Gaza, the West-Bank, East-Jerusalem, 48, and the diaspora.”

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In our December Book Club selection, Does Snow Turn a Person White Inside?, Swiss writer Max Lobe paints a vivid psychic landscape of migration, queerness, and class. Centred around an incredibly intimate mother-son relationship that crosses from Cameroon to Switzerland, Lobe addresses the politics of a contemporary, itinerant existence with humour, wisdom, and frankness. In this following interview, Laurel Taylor speaks to Lobe and translator Ros Schwartz about the concept of a “national literature,” textual musicality, and what it means to belong somewhere, nowhere—or everywhere. 

The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers around the world. You can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website for as little as USD20 per book; once you’re a member, join our Facebook group for exclusive book club discussions and receive invitations to our members-only Zoom interviews with the author or the translator of each title.  

Laurel Taylor (LT): Does Snow Turn a Person White Inside? is a novel with an immigrant at its center, and the book has been described as a contemporary story of alienation, that feeling of belonging nowhere catalysed by migrancy. Max and Ros, how do you think the concept of belonging fits in this book? Where does the nature of belonging fit overall in books that speak of migration?

Max Lobe (ML): The fact of belonging nowhere is something that really speaks to me. I was born in Douala, [Cameroon,] and then I moved from Douala to Lugano, which is in the Italian part of Switzerland. Today, I live in Geneva, and most of the time I’m always travelling, travelling, travelling, to preach the gospel of literature, of my literature, of my voice.

In Cameroon, back in the day, I couldn’t feel at home because I didn’t fulfill the criteria of being a man. I was very girlish. And you see me with the red lipstick now because I’ve come to terms with who I am. Then, when I moved to Switzerland, there was another problem, because I discovered that I was black in our classroom at Università della Svizzera italiana, the Lugano university.

In those three years, I thought to myself: “Where is my place?” I think that we, or I, can make anywhere our own place, but you need to want it. You need a willingness if you want to belong to a place—with courage, with humour, with lots of passion. Today, I think, “Everywhere I go can be my place.” That is what I wanted to communicate in this book.

Ros Schwartz (RS): I think this idea of belonging both in this book and in other books written by migrants, is that being granted citizenship does not automatically create a sense of belonging. Mwana, the narrator, is constantly reminded that he’s an outsider—through the Black Sheep anti-immigrant campaign. At first, he doesn’t even realize it’s directed against him, and then his lover—Ruedi—goes with his family to the famous Grütli Meadow, which the book describes as: “the very one where the Swiss Oath had been signed at the end of the thirteenth century, while we Bantus were still walking barefoot in the forest among the animals.” So, there is this continual reminder of being other.

I think in books that speak of migration, it’s a thread that runs through generations. The children of migrants are continually looking at both countries through a lens of otherness; they don’t feel completely at home in their parents’ country of origin, or they don’t feel completely at home in the adoptive country. People are expected to come down on one side or the other.

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This week, our editors report on controversial novels from the Macedonian, testaments from Palestine, and a pop-star-turned-writer from China. From a subversive eroticism to details on the lives of migrant workers, these writers are defying standarisations to illuminate the truth of their realities. Read on to find out more!

Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Macedonia

The last days of 2022 saw a controversial sensation return to the Macedonian literary scene; the publishing house Mi-An released an anniversary edition of Jovan Pavlovski’s provocative novel, Sok od Prostata (Prostate Juice).

As an author of almost fifty works, a member of the Macedonian Writers’ Association and PEN Center Macedonia, an editor of the prominent Macedonian newspaper Nova Makedonija, and the editor and publisher of the first Macedonian encyclopedia, Pavlovski (born in 1937 in Tetovo) has contributed a diverse body of work to Macedonian culture. Reaching beyond its confines, his work has been translated into more than twenty languages. Politically dissident and candidly sexual, Sok od Prostata, originally published in 1991, is one of Pavlovski’s best known oeuvres, and has received the title of Most Read Book in Serbia.

Telling the story of a young man desperate for love, Sok od Prostata is described by Mi-An as “not only an erotic novel, but also a deep lyrical story about loneliness and culture shock, passion and love…” Despite its lyricism, rebellion and irreverence remain at the core of the work: “(Sok od Prostata) strives to break through elitist, hardened attitudes about the decent/indecent, and to deconstruct the hypocrisy of ‘high literature’”. READ MORE…

In this batch of literary dispatches from around the world at Asymptote, we cover literary conferences, recent publications, and rankings of writers in translation! From a gathering dedicated to the late iconic Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, a new Disney+ series revolving around the life of a boy in Scandinavia, and a collection of contemporary women’s poetry in Macedonia, read on to learn more!

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large for Palestine and the Palestinians, reporting from Palestine

Last weekend, the A. M. Qattan Foundation and its partners revived the memory of the late iconic Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish with more fervor than anyone has done since his death and burial in 2008. In collaboration with Chaire Mahmoud Darwich, Bozar, and Mahmoud Darwish Foundation, a three-day conference titled “Mahmoud Darwish: The Narrative of the Past and the Present,” was held in Ramallah and on Zoom, with twenty speakers discussing nearly as many topics related to the poet’s works and life. 

It was indeed a very interactive conference, as many of the speakers and a majority of the audience knew Darwish personally. With lots of biographical anecdotes shared by panellists and attendants alike, Darwish’s designation as iconic was undoubtedly attested. It felt as if every single person knew every single detail of Darwish’s works and life. I wondered how long Darwish’s ‘response’ would have been if he were to attend the conference! He probably would have needed another three days to dot the i’s and cross the t’s! But, that wouldn’t have been too troublesome for Darwish; the relationship between him and his audience had always been one of tension. People loved him, his poems, and particularly his orations and readings. But it was such an overwhelming and imposing love that he himself had to write in 1969, “Save Us from this Cruel Love!”

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Our October Book Club selection, Senka Marić’s Body Kintsugi, is a profound documentation of the author’s fight with cancer, and as such it is also an interrogation of time, of physicality, and of transformations. In writing of illness’ warping effect on reality, Marić broadens the claustrophobically private experience of disease and recovery to address universal themes of loss and survival. In this following interview, Carol Khoury talks to Marić and her translator, Celia Hawkesworth, about the immediacy of the text, the mirror image, and how powerful emotions can be distilled into text.

The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers around the world. You can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website for as little as USD15 per book; once you’re a member, join our Facebook group for exclusive book club discussions and receive invitations to our members-only Zoom interviews with the author or the translator of each title. 

Carol Khoury (CK): Despite the narrative of Body Kintsugi not being contemporaneous, it’s ‎written with such an engaging power that it feels as though it is happening in ‎real time. ‎So my first question to you, Senka, is about your relationship with time. Is it really ‎as you say in the book—that it has no meaning?

Senka Marić (SM): In a sense, I have told the story of a distinct experience—that of suffering from breast cancer—in a relatable way. Within those moments dictated by illness, time becomes really relative; it doesn’t flow as it normally would, as it is directed or determined by check-ups and operations and chemotherapies. All other matters really cease to exist in the reality of the person who is sick, and as such, time becomes relative, because everything that life normally contains is no longer present. For me, personally, that was the case.

CK: Celia, how did you experience time while you ‎were translating this?

Celia Hawkesworth (CH): Because I had to spend a lot of my own time physically putting myself in the place someone who was going through such hell, I was always quite relieved to get to the passages where the protagonist was remembering her childhood, or other parts that took us a bit away from that continuous, strange world where time didn’t have the same meaning. It’s a bit like in Shakespeare, when you have high drama and high tragedy, and then occasional moments of release. I thought that aspect was very important for keeping one’s attention, but also giving one a bit of a break from the real horror of the suffering.

CK: Senka, one other element in the book that caught my attention is mirrors. ‎There’s something like fifteen mentions—all of which refer to physical mirrors. ‎Yet, the whole narrative is about another mirror. Might I say there was ‎some sort of a mental mirror, one that you used not only to see and show ‎the “you” and the “I”, but also to negate other existences.‎

SM: Frankly, I was trying to play with the idea of reality in its most basic sense: how we take things for granted, and how a sense of reality can be distorted when catastrophe occurs. That’s the background for the whole story—not being able to believe what reality is, and how we then perceive it. When everything is slipping out of our hands, time and space and mirrors in general are our checkpoints. We can be spiritual, we can be this and that, but in the most basic sense, we are physical beings, and we identify with the image of ourselves. We need the acknowledgment from the mirror that we are who we are. That’s why I wrote the moment in which the main character loses her hair, and she starts to cry. That’s the only time she actually really cries. READ MORE…

This week, our editors report on the rebirth of theatre in Palestine, the best Swedish crime novels, and the Kenyan Readathon Challenge from September. From the Palestine National Theatre Festival to the Nairobi International Book Fair, read on to learn more!

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large for Palestine and the Palestinians, reporting from Palestine

In Palestine, there is a generation of people who don’t really know what a theatre is! This might sound like an exaggeration, but sadly, that’s reality—or at least, that’s how it looks on the surface. 

When the first Intifada broke out in late 1987, all theatres and cinemas were closed and most did not reopen or regain momentum until the late nineties. With simple arithmetic, we can see that the chances are low today of finding high-caliber theatre actors or actresses, let alone directors, aged in their thirties and forties. 

With that in mind, I must admit I wasn’t too enthusiastic to attend the third Palestine National Theatre Festival running in the last week of October. Little did I know! All that was needed to get fully hooked was one play. 

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This week, our editors are introducing the most exciting literary voices with prize winners, debut novels, and familiar favourites. From El Salvador, a millennial writer wins the prestigious Mario Monteforte Toledo Award for a short story critical of the Salvadoran regime; from the Francophone, the latest winner of the unconventional Sade Prize is announced; and from Palestine, a lament as beloved poet Mahmoud Darwish is missed for the Nobel.

Katarina Gadze, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Belgium

This week, we’re taking a look at some of the eagerly awaited literary events that have been making waves in Belgium. Brussels has recently come across a number of interesting literary events: the closing event of Poetik Bozar, with an evening of reading and performances of Warsan Shire and her translators Radna Fabias (Dutch) and Sika Fakambi (French); the upcoming The wonders of multilingualism #3: to translate or not to translate?; as well as the Writers & Thinkers stage at the Bozar centre, a richly filled series of talks and debates welcoming some of the greatest contemporary voices such as Orhan Pamuk, Rachel Cusk, and Ian Kershaw.

A handy digest of the week’s Belgian literary news would also not be complete without mentioning some well-deserved prize winners. After an initial selection of forty books, the Hors Concours prize has revealed its shortlist with only five novels remaining in the running. As a “prize for publishing without a price,” the Hors Concours honors French-language books of fiction published by independent publishers—giving the rarely awarded authors a chance to access a larger audience in the competitive Francophone publishing landscape. Among the five books still in the running for the prize is Belgian writer Veronika Mabardi’s story Sauvage est celui qui se sauve, published this January by Esperluète. Other titles include: Le bord du monde est vertical by Simon Parcot (Le mot et le reste), L’arbre de colère by Guillaume Aubin (La contre-allée), Histoire navrante de la mission Mouc-Marc by Frédéric Sounac (Anacharsis), and Il n’y a pas d’arc-en-ciel au paradis by Nétonon Noël Ndjékéry (Hélice Hélas). The announcement of the winning novel, as well as the honorable mention, will be made on November 28. READ MORE…

This week, our editors on the ground report on the loss of a pivotal figure in the indigenous literature of the Philippines, the Palestinian Book Fair held amidst the politics of occupation, and the Autumn Salon of the Arts in Plovdiv. Read on to find out more.

Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the Philippines

The Philippine literary community mourns the passing of Higaonon Manobo novelist, poet, and translator Telesforo S ‘T.S.’ Sungkit, Jr. Sir Jun, as we fondly call him, also wrote as Anijun Mudan Udan, and his work represented the voice of the Higaonon, one of the eighteen ethnolinguistic indigenous peoples groups collectively known as Lumad, original inhabitants of the southern Philippine supraregional island Mindanao.

Writing in and translating from four languages, Higaonon (sometimes referred to as Binukid), Cebuano Binisayâ, (Tagalog-based) Filipino, and English, Sir Jun received fellowships from the 2005 IYAS National Writers Workshop (De La Salle University—Bienvenido N Santos Creative Writing Centre) and the 12th Iligan National Writers Workshop (Mindanao State University-IIT and Mindanao Creative Writers Group). His first novel, Batbat hi Udan [Story of Udan], came out in 2009 and was considered as the first epic novel from Bukidnon, his home province. In 2007, he won the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) Writers Prize for another novel Mga Gapnod sa Kamad-an [Driftwood on Dry Land] first serialised in Bisaya Magasin and later, self-translated into the English under the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House in 2013. Just this year, a translation of this novel from the Binisayâ into the Filipino secured the Rolando Tinio Translators Prize for the novel category.

Sir Jun’s third novel Ang Agalon sa mga Balod [The Lord of the Waves] bagged another NCCA Writers Prize in 2013, and is forthcoming from the University of the Philippines Press as Panginoon ng mga Alon—self-translated into the Filipino. (An excerpt is available from Likhaan: The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature.) In 2014, another novel Mga Tigmo sa Balagbatbat [Balagbatbat’s Riddles] received a National Book Development Board grant. In most of his short stories and novels, the structure veers away from the generic Western plot, being instead influenced by the nanangen oral storytelling ingrained to the Higaonon people and other Lumad. Other works of his can be read in Kabisdak: Cebuano Literary Lighthouse and BukidnonNews.net, where he once served as literary editor. (You can read his well-anthologised poem “I, Higaonon” from Australia-based Cordite Poetry Review here.) READ MORE…

This week, our editors from around the world report on a new poetry anthology promoting peaceful coexistence in El Salvador, new translations of Arab women authors, and discussions of magical realism and the Isaan dialect surrounding the Thai winner of a grant from English PEN. Read on to find out more!  

Nestor Gomez, Editor-at-Large, reporting from El Salvador

On August 5, Otoniel Guevara presented a new anthology titled Peace Isn’t Achieved Just With Desire at the Casa Morazán in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. In the anthology’s prologue, Guevara describes the project as a compilation of poems in defense of human rights, peaceful coexistence, and respect for life on the planet. He also characterized the anthology as a criticism of regimes that promote fanaticism, hatred, lies, totalitarianism, and disrespect for life in all its manifestations.

Inspiration for this project began several years ago when, in Guevara’s words, “a new religion was maturing in El Salvador, encouraged by a surge in journalism for sensationalism and blatant fake news in support of political projects empty of content, but rich in images and superficial concessions, especially to the youth. This populism, packaged to preserve and strengthen ignorance and ahistoricism, was rapidly coating a layer of corrosive mold: fanaticism.” Publication of the anthology was delayed because of the pandemic and the love affair that many Salvadorans established with the current ruler of El Salvador. However, supporters of the project continued to grow among friends and cohorts.

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In Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles’ startling and tender work of speculative fiction, The Lisbon Syndrome, a comet has demolished the city of Lisbon to nothing, leaving people on the other side of the globe—in Caracas—to reconstitute the erupted world with only a strictly regulated stream of news, an overarching cloak of localized violence, and an unshakable faith in the potentials of storytelling. Translated expertly by Paul Filev, The Lisbon syndrome presents a powerful, telling perspective on the Venezuelan struggle against a repressive regime. In the following interview, Book Club manager Carol Khoury speaks to Sánchez Rugeles and Filev on the unique journey of this text, the learned method of its translation, and the courage and necessity of literature.  

The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers around the world. You can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website for as little as USD15 per book; once you’re a member, join our Facebook group for exclusive book club discussions and receive invitations to our members-only Zoom interviews with the author or the translator of each title.

Carol Khoury (CK): Eduardo, how was the novel received when it came out in Spanish—in Venezuela and elsewhere?

Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles (ESR): It’s strange—the novel wasn’t published in the usual way because the English translation came out before the Spanish edition. The Spanish edition will come out later this year, in October, with the independent publisher Suburbano.

I began writing the novel in 2019 and finished it in 2020, and I showed it to a few publishers here in Madrid. It was during the middle of the pandemic, things were really intense at the time, and they told me, “Well, we like the book, but we can’t publish it until 2025, or at the earliest in summer 2024 maybe. If we take it on, you’ll have to wait in line.”

And I was very impatient to have this book published, because the novel was very emotional for me, given that the events in the novel mirrored what was actually happening in Venezuela at the time. I can usually be more patient with my work, but I felt a little anxious to get this book out. A friend read the manuscript—a movie director—and he told me, “I want to turn this into a movie. What do you say—do you want to work on a script with me?”

And I said to him, “Yeah, we can write a script and turn it into a movie, but let me publish the novel first.” But with the pandemic going on, the whole process of getting the book published was very slow. I felt a little sad about having to wait so long to find a publisher, so I started talking with the director, Rodrigo Michelangeli, and one day I said to him, “You know what? I’ll self-publish the book with Amazon. Forget the traditional publishing route. Let’s make this happen.” READ MORE…

This week, our editors from around the world report on an international poetry volume in support of human rights, an author talk between two Salvadoran poets, and an online exploration of the history of Jerusalem that includes a wealth of Palestinian literature. Read on to find out more!

Peera Songkünnatham, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Thailand

Five Thai poems got a chance to shine in the company of poems in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Swahili. On June 15, the Human Rights Defenders Poetry Challenge, organized by Protection International together with its partners from ProtectDefenders.eu and the University of York, concluded with an awards ceremony and a booklet launch. As part of the #StayWithDefenders campaign, the challenge called on “all creatives, activists and advocates for human rights” to submit poems honoring those who “have suffered, succeeded, fought and fallen.” The top three winners were announced from a pool of thirty finalists, five from each of the languages. You can read the booklet here; every poem not originally in English is accompanied by an English translation. How nice it is for poets to slip through the political and poetical confines of their countries into an ad-hoc international space, at least virtually on Zoom and in translation.

“To be a poet in this country is like being in a cage,” stated Mek Krueng Fah about Thailand upon winning third place overall. His poem “Remember, we’re all by your side” (โปรดจำไว้.. เราต่างอยู่ข้างเธอ) manages to console even as it stares into an unrelenting bleakness: “On the road of fighters that will know no end, / The ones who came before lie dead, uncovered; / Their bodies caution ‘watch your step, my friend,’ / And nightly, to protect, their spirits hover.”

First place went to “The Full Truth” (Ukweli Kamili) by Martin Mwangi from Kenya. The poem deftly impersonates the flippant attitudes of shrewd politicians who speak in half-truths: “Welcome, it is here that we will give you vegetable rice while we eat pilau rice / then if you complain we’ll say be thankful at least you ate. / However, for how long shall you live with these half-truths of at least? / I don’t know, answer that yourself.” Second place was awarded to María del Campo from Uruguay, whose “To Those Afraid of Windmills” (A quienes les temen los molinos) will make human rights defenders—“those who slip through the cracks and pose a threat to the wall as bridge, brick, step, door”—feel seen and touched. READ MORE…