Dispatches

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

July 28, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Eva Wissting, MARGENTO, and Sofija Popovska

Dispatches from Romania, Sweden, and North Macedonia!

In this week’s dispatches, our editors report on the continual remembrance of iconic poets, interdisciplinary festivals, and writing that draws attention to the climate crisis. Read on to find out more!

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

Sixty years after the tragic passing of Danica Ručigaj, iconic poet and pioneer of écriture féminine in North Macedonia, an anniversary edition containing the entirety of her oeuvre was published this month. The collection, entitled Srebreni nokjni igri i zarobenici na vetrot (Silver Nighttime Games and Prisoners of the Wind) was prepared by two prominent publicists and journalists working at Radio Skopje, Sveto Stamenov and Iskra Cholovikj, who have dedicated over two decades to researching Ručigaj’s reception and sustaining the vivacity of her legacy.

Ručigaj (1934–1963), sometimes referred to as the Sylvia Plath of North Macedonia for the unabashed vulnerability of her writing, studied ancient Greek, Latin, and Southern Slavic literature, and also worked for the Cultural Ministry of North Macedonia. She passed away at the age of twenty-nine in the 1963 Skopje earthquake—a devastating event that resulted in numerous casualties and left the entire city in ruins. Two poems famously discovered in the ruins of Ručigaj’s home—“Circles” and “Untitled”—will be featured in the anthology, along with essays about her work by prominent scholars and a complete bibliography of publications containing Ručigaj’s writing.

Ručigaj’s poetry, informed by her academic background and nonconformist, taboo-defying artistic attitude, occupies a prominent position in Macedonian literary history. Her refusal to comply with patriarchal norms continues to retain its relevance, as anti-equality sentiments are rising amidst the public. In one of her best-known poems, “No, Do Not Speak to Me” (“Ne, Ne Zboruvaj Mi”), a feminine voice laments the death of a bird who lived “within eyes that have now dried up”, simultaneously noting that its death might be a relief to some: “Come hither, do not fear / Those eyes no longer shine / And so, come hither.” As the poem progresses, we begin to realize that the owner of the eyes is the feminine speaker herself; without the bird—their inner songsmith—they no longer pose a threat to the Other that the poem is directed to. This poem remains an accurate image of gender relations in Macedonian society, where equality is still considered a threat to the “sanctity of the family”. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

July 21, 2023  |  in Dispatches  |  by Andriana Hamas, Jiaoyang Li, and Michal Zechariah

The latest from Germany, Bulgaria, and China!

This week, our team members report on poetry and performance art, multilingual panel discussions, and inventive book events. From a cinematic book launch in Bulgaria to a night of diasporic literature in Berlin and a poetry installation in Shanghai read on to find out more!

Michal Zechariah, Assistant Managing Editor, reporting from Berlin

I have moved countries twice—once when I moved from Tel Aviv to Chicago for my graduate studies in English literature, and the second time when I moved from Chicago to Berlin for a postdoctoral fellowship. One thing I hadn’t anticipated about that second move was how it would affect my relationship not with my first language, Hebrew, but with English, my second. I started questioning the place of the language that has become so important to me, even though it wasn’t my mother tongue, in my new life.

For this reason, I was immediately drawn to an event titled Literature in Diaspora hosted by the Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora at the Katholische Akademie Berlin last week (the choice of location is interesting; perhaps for those of us who look forward to the afterlife, the earthly world presents a diasporic experience of sorts). READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

July 14, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas and MARGENTO

The latest in letters from Ireland and the Philippines!

This week, our editors-at-large bring us the latest in arts festivals, awards, and innovative adaptations across the literary landscape! From new spins on James Joyce’s Ulysses for its hundredth anniversary to a thriving theatre festival in the Philippines, read on to learn more!

MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large, Reporting from Ireland 

It is festival time across Europe, and Galway, Ireland’s West Coast pearl, is gearing up for its International Arts Festival (GIAF), to kick off in 3 days and go on through July 30. The “balmy, bohemian” city (as ireland.com poetically describes it) is already buzzing with the vibe as events ranging from special-effect-rich theatrical, musical, and circus performances to public conversations with awarded war-covering journalists and writers are boisterously advertised on seafront billboards, dedicated websites, local TV and radio stations, and even on announcement screens on greyhounds across the country. 

On the literary front, James Joyce’s spirit looms as large as ever—and particularly so on the hundredth anniversary of Ireland’s most notorious book ever, Ulysses—only now in more playful and cross-artform shades. Ulysses 2.2, a collaborative project between ANU, Landmark Productions, and Museum of Literature Ireland, will be featured with two independent acts. The first one will be You’ll See, an obvious word-play on, and homophone of, Joyce’s title, produced by Branar, one of Ireland’s leading theatre companies for children. You’ll See has been announced as a mix of “live performance, intricate paper design, an original score, and Joyce’s odyssey” that will enchant prior fans as well as all those who haven’t read the book yet.

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

July 7, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Carol Khoury, Charlie Ng, and Wambua Muindi

The latest in letters from Hong Kong, Palestine, and Kenya.

This week, our editors are reporting on the intersection between literature and social movements. In Hong Kong, writers reflect on the June 4 protests at Tiananmen Square, in light of  the continual tensions between China and the island. In Palestine, a new podcast features writers orienting their own work within the \ body of Palestinian literature. And in Kenya, the country mourns the loss of revolutionary playwright Micere Mugo. 

Charlie Ng, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong

Since the National Security Law in Hong Kong came into effect in June 2020, the annual candlelight vigil for commemorating the June Fourth Tiananmen Square protests have not been organized for four years; the event’s host, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, was also dissolved in September 2021. Additionally, the event’s traditional venue, the Victoria Park in Causeway Bay, was under renovation and not available to be booked this year.

Although public commemoration was forbidden, remembrance could still be possible through writing; Cha: An Asian Literary Journal called for short submissions of reflections written about June 4, 2023—which could be directly, indirectly, or even not related to the event. The project, “Just Another Day”, also welcomed written works accompanied with photos or artwork. Fifty-four submissions were published on Cha’s blog, presenting a wide range of reflections from local and overseas writers. Translator Lucas Klein contemplates on the protest culture in Hong Kong and what he witnessed outside of the Victoria Park in his post, while Hong Kong poet Jennifer Wong contributed a prose poem on the importance of memory. Asymptote’s assistant editor of fiction Michelle Suen interweaves childhood nostalgia and postcolonial politics in her reflection, and I also tell a brief story of my personal experience of June Fourth over the years. Varied as they are, the texts testify to the unstoppable impact of the historical event, in both people’s mind and reality.

Meanwhile, as issue 72 of local bilingual poetry magazine, Voice & Verse, was just published, the magazine is organizing a reading session in collaboration with Cha, a crossover that echoes the issue’s English section theme: “Crossings”. The reading session will take place on July 12, hosted by Tammy Ho and Matthew Cheng. Local and international contributors to both journals have been invited to read their works. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

June 30, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Eva Wissting, Michal Zechariah, and Xiao Yue Shan

The latest literary news from Sweden, Japan, and Israel!

In this week’s news, our editors report on the various matters occupying readers around the world. From the power of literary awards throughout Japan’s modern history, a survey on contemporary literary habits, and the growing Hebrew Book Fair—read on to find out more!

Xiao Yue Shan, Blog Editor, reporting for Japan

On June 16, the nominees for the 169th Akutagawa Prize and the Naoki Prize were announced to the public. Long recognised as the most important literary awards in Japan, the two accolades are given to emerging authors for a work of “pure literature” (junbungaku) and “popular literature” (taishū bengei) respectively, a fascinating distinction that has shifted tenuously throughout the awards’ long history, reflecting the evolving perspectives on what constitutes literary excellence, the separation between author and work, as well as how taste and zeitgeist can be reflected in the awardees. While the difference between what constitutes a literary text and a popular text can be seen as elitist, there have been, in the past, a great many other factors that have gone into the consideration of awardees—perhaps best exemplified by the awarding of the 1937 Naoki Prize (considered the less prestigious of the two) to Masuji Ibuse, whose profound literary output has insured him a spot in the modern Japanese canon. Throughout their time, the separate realms that the Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes were intended to occupy have opened up significant inquiries as to what, exactly, is valued in writing, consulting the multiple planes engaged by the literary arts: the aesthetic, the political, the dialogic, and the compassionate.

This year, the nominees for the Akutagawa Prize are Sao Ichikawa, Ameko Kodama, Masaya Chiba, Yusuke Norishiro, and Kaho Ishida. The subject matter of the narratives veer from the life of a professional welder; the changing intimacies and relations between four high school students over a single day; the introduction of the Internet in the 90s and its reverberations in a young man’s life; the potentials of anonymity as discovered by a teenage pop star; and the sexual life of a physically disabled woman.

The nominees for the Naoki Prize are Tow Ubukata, Ryosuke Kakine, Kazuaki Takano, Ryoe Tsukimura, and Nagai Sayako. Their nominated works include a historical novel on Ashikaga Takauji, the first shogun of the Ashikaga shogunate; a psychological story centred around the spectral presence at a railroad crossing; a crime novel set between Hong Kong and Japan; a tale of a young samurai who avenges his father; and a work of horror that paints a violent world under Tokyo’s polished metropolis.

What becomes evident in looking at these two groupings, even just by the superficial delineations of their bylines, is that this year, there is indeed a conspicuous demarcation between their preoccupations. Whereas the texts up for the Akutagawa can be all considered as realist storylines, recognisably using the prism of an individual’s life to refract truths and insights into the society in which they—and we—live, the nominees for the Naoki are being publicised along the engaging capacities of thrill and mystery. It is reflective of the same bilaterality that has always troubled the book as an object of consumption: that seeming incompatibility between the educational and the entertaining. Such is undoubtedly a judgement we all make independently when selecting what we’re interested in reading—or what we think we should be reading—and it’s somewhat unsettling to see this consideration fortified in the institutional fixedness of an award, which is by definition a statement of authority, a mandate of a higher power. In this way, the very essence of the Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes presents a conundrum that expounds on the act of reading, not only within Japanese literature and its apparatus, but in regards to the invisible schematic that books themselves exist on—all of these gossamer compartments and classifications that aim to instruct us not only on our own literary predilections, but what the books and their authors should be pursuing. It reveals both the impossibility and the necessity of judgment within the literary industry, about how unruly we know the whole process to be, yet how implicitly we trust it still. The freedom of the writing-act and the imagination of the reading-act has so many binds to negotiate, so many contracts to overcome. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

June 23, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa, José García Escobar, and MARGENTO

The latest from Spain and Central America!

In this week of literary news, we hear from our Editors-at-Large on Spanish-speaking countries around the world! From Spanish-Romanian literary intermingling in Spain, to recent award winners across Central America, to medium-bending poetry across sound and space in Mexico, read on to learn more!

MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large, reporting on Spain

As the summer season is kicking in and tourists are about to take over Spain—as is the usual for this time of the year—certain portions of the literary world are seeming to gain fresh momentum. That goes particularly for the transnational and translational endeavors. 

The latest issue of the Madrid-based literary journal Ágora – Papeles de Arte Gramático offers a rich overview of contemporary Spanish poetry while including a generous Catalan special feature. A substantive section on Romanian literature is also featured, with reviews of Encarnación García León’s recent anthology of Romanian fiction in Spanish translation and articles on Spanish translations of the legendary writer and internationally revered religion phenomenologist Mircea Eliade and the symbolist Ion Minulescu. 

Moreover, the issue opens with poems by past Asymptote contributor Felix Nicolau in Elisabeta Boțan’s Spanish translation and some of Fernando Pessoa’s celebrated poems in Dinu Flămând’s Romanian rendering. The journal has had a long-standing interest in Romanian-Spanish literary cross-pollinations, as a previous issue featured a sizeable section dedicated to the Romanian inter-war writer Max Blecher, who passed away at the age of 28 after spending a decade ill, confined to his bed, and writing literature that would later be widely translated. Blecher’s collected poems in Spanish translation, edited by Joaquín Garrigós, was a highlight of the issue. Ágora’s Editor-in-Chief Fulgencio Martínez warmly recommends to his readers the summer issue of another Madrid-based journal, Littera Nova, profuse with Romanian writing. 

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

June 16, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Jiaoyang Li, Marina García Pardavila, and Sofija Popovska

The latest from North Macedonia, China, and Spain!

In this week of news in world literature, we hear from our Editors-at-Large on recent literary awards, revolutionary bookstores, and book fairs around the globe! From North Macedonia’s Novel of the Year to prizes for works across genres and languages in Spain, read on to learn more!

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

At the end of May, the 24th “Novel of the Year” award, given by the Slavko Janevski foundation, was presented to the author Vlada Urošević for his novel “Вистината но не многу веројатна историја за семејството Пустополски за куќата покрај Вардар и за четирите прстени” (The true, yet not very likely tale of the Pustopolski family, of the house by Vardar river, and the four rings). 

Urošević (b. October 17, 1934), who received the most prestigious Macedonian poetry award earlier this spring, is a writer, poet, and essayist. His oeuvre includes a wide array of literary genres—prose, poetry, essays, travelogs, literary and art criticism, and translations. His work as a full-time professor of comparative literature at the University of St Cyril and Methodius in Skopje is present not only in his lyrical oeuvre—his novel, too, blends different cultures together to create a thrilling, artful narrative.

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

June 9, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Bridget Peak, Wambua Muindi, and Xiao Yue Shan

The latest from Kenya, Canada, and Oman!

In this week of literary news, our editors on the ground are bringing stories of triumph, mourning, and commemoration. In Kenya and Ghana, readers mourn the loss of pioneering feminist author Ama Ata Aidoo; in Canada, a Quebec initiative supports readers in finding more books by Indigenous writers; and in Oman, a lauded author brings home the prestigious International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Read on to find out more!

Wambua Muindi, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Kenya

The end of May seemed to position itself as a direct communication to geo-literary production history; on May 27, a bilingual anthology of East African short stories, The Heart is A Bastard, launched at the Goethe Institut Library, Nairobi. Edited by Elias Mutani and Zukiswa Wanner, the collection is a result from the Kenyan writing workshop under the auspices of the Univerity of East Anglia International Chair in Creative Writing. The inaugural chair for Africa, Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangaremba, expressed her delight over the launch, which includes stories in English and Swahili translations. Some of the emerging writers featured in the anthology include Gladwell Pamba—from whose story the anthology’s title is taken, Fatma Shafii, Nyasili Atwetwe of Writers Space Africa Kenya, Charlie Muhumuza, Noella Moshi, and Sia Chami. The anthology not only holds space for these writers but also represents the creative breadth of the region, while simultaneously embedding a language politics given its bilingual character.

However, this joy was dislodged by the unfortunate news of a writer’s death. On May 31, Ama Ata Aidoo, the Ghanaian author of Our Sister Killjoy (1977), a pioneering feminist novel, died at the age of 81. As such, Africa is mourning; Ghana is mourning and Kenya, too, is mourning the novelist, playwright, short story writer, and committed radical feminist, who wrote to assert the agency of African women within literary history. As reverential eulogies have been paraded across the world, the Kenyan literary community joined in the outpouring of grief in a country where her influence not only transcends her writing, but is also compounded by a teaching stint she had at the then named Kenyatta College, now Kenyatta University, as well as the literary contributions of her Kenyan-born daughter, Kinna Likimani. Where Austin Bukenya, a leading East African scholar of English and literature, for instance, dubbed her “Queen of African literature”, Mukoma wa Ngugi, the author of Nairobi Heat and son to Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, sees her as a “pillar” without which “the African literary tradition wobbles”. While Joyce Nyairo, an academic and a cultural analyst, references the short story “Something To Talk About On The Way To The Funeral” as praise of her storytelling genius, Yvonne Owuor lamented, in proper proverbial fashion: “A great, and giant tree that sheltered many beings has fallen”. Moreover, her writings, which among others, include The Dilemma of a Ghost (1965), No Sweetness Here (1969), Anowa (1970), and Changes (1991) cut across the genres to show the depth of her imaginative oeuvre and demonstrate the commitment—in different but related ways—to the African woman’s cause, through literature and in society. Rest in Power Mama. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

June 2, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Andriana Hamas, and Carol Khoury

Literary news from Palestine, Bulgaria, and the Philippines!

This week, our editors bring you the latest news from Bulgaria, Palestine, and the Philippines! From a major award win to exciting literary festivals, read on to find out more!

Andriana Hamas, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Bulgaria

On Wednesday, May 24, most Bulgarians woke up later than usual. After all, the country was commemorating its Alphabet, Enlightenment, and Culture Day, and the festivities would not begin before noon. The night owls, however, had already started celebrating much earlier as media outlets from all over the globe notified them that, at a ceremony in Central London, writer Georgi Gospodinov and translator Angela Rodel had been awarded the 2023 International Booker Prize for the novel Time Shelter (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2022) whose primary focus is the “weaponization of nostalgia.” The duo, whom Asymptote has previously highlighted, gave a heartfelt speech about the stories that keep us alive and resist evil.

Later the same day, Gospodinov posted on his official Facebook page: “Blessed holiday! Blessed miracle of language! I was lucky enough to say these words in Bulgarian last night at the Booker Prize ceremony in the heart of London! On the eve of the most beautiful holiday! I wrote this book with the thirty letters of the Cyrillic alphabet. I am grateful to everyone who believed in it! To my readers with whom we have been together for years. It was and still is a long road. To the writers before me from whom I have learned! To the Bulgarian writers for all they have suffered and written. I am grateful for the joy I saw in Bulgaria after the announcement of the award last night. Joy because of a book is pure joy. Thank you! It is possible! May it open the door to Bulgarian culture and give us courage.”

Courage, if I may add, to remain sensitive to life’s delicate intricacies. Courage to be mindful of the past in our eternal battle for the future. Courage to translate even the “unspoken speeches for all unreceived awards.”

And the rest is history. READ MORE…

Salone del Libro 2023: Diversity through the Looking Glass

June 1, 2023  |  in Dispatches  |  by Catherine Xin Xin Yu

The theme for this year’s Salone was “Through the Looking Glass”, featuring over 1,500 kaleidoscopic encounters between storytelling and reality.

The Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino, or the Turin International Book Fair, was established in 1988 to connect every single participant in the wide-ranging world of literature—from publishers to librarians and, of course, readers. Throughout a large catalogue of readings, performances, conferences, and workshops, the Salone brings in guests from all over the country and abroad to share in the joy of the written world, discuss the current prospects and themes of the industry, and showcase both Italian-language literature and promoting international writing within Italy. This year, Catherine Xin Xin Yu attended the fair on behalf of Asymptote to find out what it has on offer, from migrant literature to eco-writing.

From May 18 to 22, the 35th Salone Internazionale del Libro—the largest annual book fair in Italy—attracted over 200,000 visitors to the Lingotto Fiere exhibition centre in Turin. Over five days of panels, lectures, publisher exhibitions, and literary initatives, perhaps the biggest news story to emerge from the event is an ecofeminist protest led by Non una di meno (Not One Woman Less) and four other Turin-based activist groups against Eugenia Maria Roccella, the anti-abortionist and queerphobic Minister for Family, Natality and Equal Opportunities. Protestors, along with members of the audience who spontaneously joined them, prevented the politician from presenting her newly released memoir in order to demonstrate what it is like to be silenced by the state institutions she represented—which tampers with women’s rights to abortion and surrogate maternity while muddying the water with media misrepresentation and cracking down on protests using police forces. While this peaceful protest was labelled as “anti-democratic” and “unacceptable” by the Meloni government, the Director of the Salone, Nicola Lagioia, defended the contestation as a legitimate democratic act. This is one way in which the Salone provided an urgently needed platform for repressed voices, while opening up a pathway to diversity.

Indeed, the theme for this year’s Salone was “Through the Looking Glass,” featuring over 1,500 kaleidoscopic encounters between storytelling and reality, with notable attempts to bring forward new, alternative perspectives. One such novelty was the focus on colonial legacies and decoloniality. A panel featuring the Somali-Italian author Igiaba Scego, Turin-based Albanian visual artist Driant Zeneli, and Italian crime fiction author Carlo Lucarelli looked at the removal of Italian colonial history from collective memory—drawing attention to the lack of guilt and the myth of “Italiani brava gente” (“Italians, good people”). Many place names in Italy still bear witness its colonial past: visitors in Turin might notice that the final stop of Metro Line 1 is called Bengasi (like the city in Libya); I myself have rented a flat on Via Tripoli and regularly run errands on Via Addis Abeba (like the capital of Ethiopia) and Via Macallè. But these quotidian reminders often go unnoticed, and colonial history is not systematically taught in schools.

salone del turino 1

At the heart of the discussions on how this silence can be broken are words that “tear apart, resist, and restore,” to quote Jhumpa Lahiri’s preface to Scego’s latest novel, Cassandra a Mogadiscio (Cassandra in Mogadishu). Another panel on decolonisation, featuring the Italo-Somali author Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, the Iraqi author and intellectual Sinan Antoon, and the Filipino trauma journalist Patricia Evangelista, insisted on the importance of reconstructing the lived experiences of victims from a non-Western point of view, and restoring names and humanity to these individuals. Italian, the language of formal education in ex-colonies like Somalia and Ethiopia, is both a line of coloured division and the language of cultural exchange. Recognising the plurality of Italian and using it to foreground individual experiences are both ways to decolonise while writing in the language of the colonisers. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

May 26, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Areeb Ahmad, Eva Wissting, and MARGENTO

Literary news from India, Sweden, France, and Belgium!

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. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

May 19, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa and Sofija Popovska

Literary news from North Macedonia and the United States!

In this week of literary news, we hear from our editors-at-large reporting from North Macedonia and the United States! From the recent poetry collection of a prominant North Macedonian poet to a dazzling few days of multilingual poetry and revelry, read on to learn more!

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

In the last days of April, a new poetry collection by the prominent poet Katica Kulavkova, Na Vrv Na Jazikot (On the Tip of the Tongue), was published by Ars Lamina Press. The collection leans into an interrogation of the concepts of home and identity in the current day, a question that, in the Macedonian cultural context, is fraught with challenges and debates.

Katica Kulavkova (born December 21, 1951), whose work was featured in the Winter 2020 issue of Asymptote, is a poet, writer, and academic. She is a member of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, and a professor of theory and methodology of literature, hermeneutics, and creative writing. Her writing is deeply rooted in the interplay of the personal and collective; Kulavkova’s lyrical voice is informed by the negotiations between various aspects of being, as Macedonian, woman, mother, academic, artist, activist . . .

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

May 12, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Charlie Ng, José García Escobar, and Wambua Muindi

Literary news from Hong Kong, Central America, Kenya, and Nairobi!

In this week’s dispatches on world literature our editors-at-large bring news of secondhand book sales, prize winners, and self-published writers. From a conversations on freedom and creativity in Nairobi to a date with a book store in Hong Kong, read on to find out more!

Charlie Ng, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong

The closing of UK-based online bookstore Book Depository in April was shocking news to book lovers across the world, including regular customers from Hong Kong. Despite the convenient availability of digital books, many readers still prefer print books for both practical reasons and tactile feelings. Besides the satisfaction of turning real pages, the circulation of books is also part of the cultural scene of a city. The annual charity secondhand book sale “Books for Love @ $10” campaign was held in late April at Taikoo Place this year. A wide range of books, from arts and literature to bestsellers and manga, were on sale for HKD$10 each. The House of Hong Kong Literature also organised a secondhand book bazaar from 2 to 5 May as a way of fundraising to promote Hong Kong literature. The secondhand books were donated by local writers and scholars, covering subject areas of literature, philosophy, history, arts, and social sciences.

But in the digital age, brick-and-mortar bookstores struggle to sustain themselves, especially in a city like Hong Kong that constantly faces high rent and inflation. For three consecutive weekends beginning 29 April, independent local bookshop Hong Kong Book Era is hosting the event “A Date with Bookstores”, in which representatives from different independent bookstores are invited to set up their tables in Hong Kong Book Era to introduce their styles and thematic recommendations to readers. Participants include local bookstores such as HKReaders, Humming Publishing, and Little Little Books, as well as independent publisher Typesetter Publishing. Meanwhile, two talks—one on independent publishing and one on the history of Hong Kong independent bookstores—were also held, on 6 May and 7 May respectively, in connection with the event. The speakers discussed the mutual reliance between independent publishing and bookstores, as well as the vicissitudes of the struggles of Hong Kong’s bookstores. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

May 5, 2023  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Andriana Hamas, and Xiao Yue Shan

The latest in literary news from China, the Philippines, and Bulgaria!

This week, our editors are rounding up some exciting new developments in the word of language, from the annual edition of one of China’s most noteworthy literary awards, to cinematic adaptations of Filipino writing, to an urban festival digging into the intersections of literature and science in Bulgaria. Read on to find out more!

Xiao Yue Shan, Blog Editor, reporting for China

In one of the stories from her collection, Ba bu ban (Eight-and-a-Half), Huang Yuning writes about the private, sometimes-sacred communion that a sharing of language initiates, as with two tourists sitting together in a Frankfurt subway: “There’s at least one good thing about two Chinese people riding the subway together in a foreign country: the walls are ready-made, and language is the thing that builds a transparent cubicle all around you.”

Huang’s stories won the Blancpain-Imaginist Literary Prize in 2019, and this year, the prestigious award is again taking in submissions to find the next powerful young writer of Chinese-language fiction. Held jointly by the Beijing publishing house Imaginist and the Swiss brand Blancpain, the annual competition is known for seeking out original voices with an intricate attention to language, profoundly developed themes, and an outstanding voice and style that embodies the unique adventure of Chinese writing. Open to writers under the age of forty-five who have published a book between April 2022 and 2023, the winner receives a cash prize of 300,000 yuan to help develop their work. The theme of this years prize is “The Necessity of Complexity”, and in the submissions call, the prize committee asserted the essentiality of literature that addresses the present moment with a fine eye on the past and a rejection of overloaded media narratives. As they state, there is a role in writing that aims always towards truth and its complexity: “. . . because complexity is the point of origin of everything new and the commencement of everything we call the future.” Literature has the role of paying close attention to the strange, the unspoken, and the vast depths of internality; the jury aims to find a work of Chinese fiction that speaks to this task. Since the prize’s inauguration in 2018, I’ve found its selections well deserving of accolade, celebrating work from some of the most bold and talented writers working today, and like many readers of the Chinese language, I am greatly looking forward to see which titles will be spotlit this year.

The jury includes lauded Chinese writer Yiyun Li, who interestingly has gone the way of Nabokov to “renounce [her] mother tongue”, writing and publishing only in English. The writers who have chosen to taken such a path usually speak of a feeling of entrapment within their native language, and Li explained her choice by stating that English is her “private language”—she has to actively think her way towards every word. Now that she has become a crucial element in deciding who is to be awarded this esteemed award of Chinese-language literature, it’s tempting to note that reading fiction is not only a way to explore the world through narratives and characters, but through the innate imaginations and freedoms that exist when words are put together in new and regenerative configurations. That is the liberation that style—evidence of that actively thinking mind behind the page—gifts to us: an encouragement to think again about tired words, those beleaguered little artifacts of human history. I think often about the writers of China, all the individuals that are constantly reaching out to embroider, reweave, and patch the fabric of that wonderful, ancient, fraught language, and I remember that words are alive. That they are always in the process of making something new, and that they are protectors and safeboxes for our wildnesses, our freedoms, and all the things that one dreams might be spoken, one day. READ MORE…