Experience the world anew through non-human eyes in “Vivarium,” our Spring 2023 issue! From macaques to marmots, muntjacs to mosshoppers and microscopic prokaryotes, a superabundance of literary life overflows from 30 different countries. In this thriving biosphere, you’ll find work from Estonia and Oman flowering in the same soil as Alaa Abu Asad’s Wild Plants and our first entry from Bolivia via Pulitzer Prizewinner Forrest Gander. The same Pangaean ecosystem sustains our animal-themed special feature headlined by Yolanda González, recipient of the 2001 Premio Café Gijón Prize, and 2018 Booker International longlistee Wu Ming-Yi. Alongside these, there are the always thought-provoking words of Italian poet Franca Mancinelli, which bloom in both the Interview and Poetry section—the latter also shelters Fernando Pessoa, whose brilliant co-translators Margaret Jull Costa and Patricio Ferrari have rendered him in one of his most mordant heteronyms, Álvaro de Campos.
Language: Chinese
Our Spring 2023 Edition Is Here!
Featuring Fernando Pessoa, Franca Mancinelli, Wu Ming-Yi, and Yolanda González in our animal-themed special feature
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…
Principle of Decision: Translation from Chinese
This column is an exercise in transparency, an effort to lift the curtain and show the undercurrents of the translator’s mind.
The second edition of Principle of Decision—our column that highlights the decision-making processes of translators by asking several contributors to offer their own versions of the same passage—demonstrates translation’s capacity to reveal shades of meaning in the source text. Here, Xiao Yue Shan poses to the translators a passage from Chinese writer 林棹 Lin Zhao.
轻而又轻的一天。时隔多年，那轻而又轻的一天生机犹在。如果你推却一切责任，对他人的痛苦视而不见，去拥抱巨大的明亮、明亮的寂静、寂静的自我，你就能短暂地占有那种轻而又轻。
qīng ér yòu qīng de yī tiān
轻而又轻 的一天。
A light and light day.shí gé duō nián
时隔多年
After many years,nà qīng ér yòu qīng de yī tiān
那轻而又轻的一天
that light and light dayshēng jī yóu zài
生机犹在。
still exists.rú guǒ nǐ tuī què
如果你推却
If you push asideyī qiē zé rèn
一切责任，
all responsibilities,duì tā rén de tòng kǔ
对他人的痛苦
to the pain of othersshì ér bù jiàn
视而不见，
turn a blind eye,qù yōng bào
去拥抱
go to embracejù dà de míng liàng, míng liàng de jì jìng
巨大的明亮、明亮的寂静、
the enormous and bright, bright silence,jì jìng de zì wǒ
寂静的自我，
the self of silencenǐ jiù néng duǎn zàn dì zhān yǒu
你就能短暂地占有
you can also briefly possessnà zhǒng qīng ér yòu qīng
那种轻而又轻。
that kind of light and light.
This passage is taken from the Chinese writer 林棹 Lin Zhao’s debut novel, 流溪 Liu xi, published in 2020. Its narrative takes place throughout Lingnan, a region on China’s southeast coast, weaving through dense urbanities and viridescent ruralities, the subtropical heat and myriad languages, to tell the story of a young woman whose daily life, from its very earliest days, is inextricable from violence, metamorphosis, and fantasy. A tribute to high Nabokovian style, Liu xi is a stunning, inimitable example of what is possible in the Chinese language—the music it pronounces, the visions it conjures, the delicacy and intricacy that can be excavated from its logograms.
Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature
The latest from China, Sweden, and Kenya!
This week, our editors-at-large report on recent science fiction adaptations in China, the Sámi National Day in Sweden, and the passing of literary icons in both East Africa and China. From a revived book festival to the runner-up of the Safal-Cornell Kiswahili Prize, read on to learn more!
Jiaoyang Li, Editor-at-Large, reporting for China
Liu Cixin’s Hugo Award-winning novel Three Bodies was recently adapted into a TV series and streamed more than 3 million times in a week on Tencent Video, making it the most popular TV series in China. In addition to the live action, Bilibili, the largest animation website in China, also launched an animated series of the novel.
Although we must recognize it as a milestone in Chinese science fiction literature for IP adaptation, there is one thing to question: Why is it always Three Bodies? There are plenty of other wonderful sci-fi collections written by female Chinese writers needing our attention. For example, New York-based bilingual sci-fi writer Mu Ming’s fiction collection 宛转环 (The Serpentine Band), an excerpt of which was published by Clarkesworld Magazine in 2021, will be fully released in Chinese by One Way Books in 2023.
Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature
The latest from Hong Kong, Guatemala, and the Czech Republic!
In this week’s roundup of literary news, we are paying tribute to the legacy of monumental writers. As Hong Kong mourns the recent loss of one of the country’s emblematic authors, Xi Xi, the Czech Republic commemorates the 100th anniversary of Jaroslav Hašek’s passing. In Guatemala, beloved writer of personal and continent-spanning histories, Eduardo Halfon, takes a new step into global recognition. Read on to find out more!
Charlie Ng, editor-at-large, reporting from Hong Kong
Renowned Hong Kong writer Cheung Yin, more commonly known by her pen name Xi Xi, passed away on December 18, 2022 from heart failure. Originally born in Shanghai, Cheung came to Hong Kong in 1950 at the age of twelve. She was educated at Heep Yunn School and the Grantham College of Education, and became a primary school teacher after graduation. Among her most prominent works are My City and Flying Carpet, both urban novels that reflect everyday lives and the transformation of Hong Kong. Another acclaimed novel, Mourning a Breast, is a semi-autobiographical work based on Cheung’s own experience of fighting breast cancer. Cheung also wrote poems and was prolific in essays, often published as articles for newspaper columns. Her most recent publications include the historical novel The Imperial Astronomer and the poetry collection Carnival of the Animals.
Loved by all generations of readers, Cheung is known for her playfulness, imagination, and experimental techniques. Blending real and fantastic elements, some of her works are described as embodying a style of “fairy-tale realism.” The Chinese characters of her pen name, Xi Xi 西西, represents the image of a little girl in skirt playing hopscotch. Cheung was awarded the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature and the Cikada Prize in 2019, and the Life Achievement Award of the 16th Hong Kong Arts Development Awards in 2022. A memorial service was held at Cheung’s alma mater, Heep Yunn School, on January 8 to commemorate her literary achievements, and on January 14, another memorial meeting was organised in Taipei, in which Hong Kong and Taiwan writers gathered to recite her works. Her translator, Jennifer Feeley, who translated Not Written Words and Mourning a Breast, also wrote a memorial, “A Translator Like Me” (available in both English and Chinese) to honour the lauded writer.
Tunnel of Forking Paths: On Can Xue’s Dystopian Moral Fable, Mystery Train
For the author, the deconstruction of language allows her to explore themes close to her oeuvre, but also to her personal experience.
Mystery Train by Can Xue, translated from the Chinese by Natascha Bruce, Sublunary Editions, 2022
To board Can Xue’s novella, Mystery Train, the reader must surrender entirely to a world plunged into eternal night, where characters give themselves up to be devoured by wolves and execute perfect needlework in pitch-black darkness, where fear and worship surround a power figure known only as the conductor, and where many are unable to make any sense of the cruelties perpetrated upon them. Can’s Matrix-style text offers little answers, opening up instead a multitude of unsettling questions about the body, induced guilt, and the illusion of choice.
In her introduction, Can (the pseudonym of Deng Xiaohua), is generous enough to provide a warning to the unsuspecting reader: “We might decide that the life the artist is describing belongs to someone else, and has nothing to do with us. But it does have to do with us—because, for us, the people of the new millennium, the body-soul contradiction is vitally important.” Indeed, Mystery Train can be read as a fable on the struggle between the presence and demands of the body—down to its most basic instincts such as sex or bowel movements—and the incessant inquiries of the soul, which demand explanation yet continually fail to culminate in satisfying answers. The author goes on to explicates the purpose of this work in the short introduction: “Mystery Train characters suffer, but never in vain. Hardship forces each one to grow, and mature, and to become tougher than they were before. Gradually, they form themselves into responsible, creative individuals. The veiled yet nevertheless intense longing for death that pervades the story is in fact a longing for performance—for a death-defying stunt played out on a clifftop.”
As promised, Can is not tender with her characters. The protagonist, Scratch, has been working on a poultry farm; the train is taking him on a business trip to a remote city in the north of China, bordering Russia. He soon discovers after boarding his train, however, that he has most likely been fired—but nothing is clear. He recalls a strange send-off by the farm’s boss: “At the bus stop, the manager grasped Scratch’s hand in his own callused one and said, with strange formality, ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t taken good enough care of you. Please forgive me.’ Not yet sixty and already going senile, thought Scratch. It made no sense. Why all the emotion? He was hardly being sent to his death.“ In such short, sharp sentences, Can builds an atmosphere of oppression—a sense of imminent danger in a forest of undecipherable symbols and signs.
Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature
Literary news from Macedonia, Palestine, and China!
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…
Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature
The latest in literature from Poland, Hong Kong, and Puerto Rico!
This week on Asymptote, we’re your eyes and ears for updates on award seasons, special national literature features, and postcolonial discourse and strategy. Polish literature is soaring at a high after celebrated adaptations and translations are introducing new readers to long-loved works. From Hong Kong, the national security law once again catalyses questions in its suppression of writing, even as local writers are seeing much love abroad. in Puerto Rico, writers are questioning US-backed funding and its entrapments. Read on to find out more.
Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting for Poland
Autumn is Poland’s award season, and this year saw the prizes go to a variety of genres. For the first time since 2009, NIKE, Poland’s most prestigious literary prize, went to a book of poetry: Jerzy Jarniewicz’s “erotically daring” collection Mondo Cane. Edward Pasewicz, whose novel Pulverkopf was also shortlisted, took home the coveted Angelus Prize for literature from Central Europe—only the second Polish book to win the accolade in the award’s twelve-year history. The Readers’ Angelus Prize went to Czech writer Jaroslav Rudiš for his novel Winterbergs letzte Reise, written in German and translated into Polish by Małgorzata Gralińska, and his publisher Książkowe klimaty scored another success with Bartosz Sadulski’s “literary fable and anti-historical reportage” Rzeszot, garnering the Kościelskich Prize.
Polish literature has enjoyed something of a boom in English, placing second in a recent survey conducted by The Bookseller, which is based on Nielsen BookScan data for the fifty-two weeks since April 16, 2022. The results show that in this period, translated fiction accounted for 11.4% of total fiction revenue, proving that we have moved even further from the proverbial 3%. Broken down into languages, 60% of the translations were from Japanese—unsurprising given that 99.7% of the total revenue was generated by manga. The next language, French, trailed at 6.1%, and Polish came in at third with 4.6%, beating translations from Italian, German, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, and Norwegian. Much of this success appears to be linked to Andrzej Sapkowski’s blockbuster fantasy The Witcher, which has filled the Game of Thrones-shaped hole on Netflix; the first two volumes of the eight-part saga were translated by Danusia Stok and the remainder by David French, who went on to translate his Hussite Trilogy. Olga Tokarczuk’s Nobel Prize has also contributed to this success, as has the fact that Polish literature was the market focus at the 2017 London Book Fair.
Here’s hoping that this interest will extend to a slew of recent translations from the Polish. According to Her, “a book-length interview with the Mother of God” by Maciej Hen (recently interviewed on the Asymptote blog by fellow writer Wioletta Greg), was published by Holland House in Anna Blasiak’s translation on November 3. On the same day, Penguin Books released Anna Zaranko’s long-awaited translation of The Peasants, one of Poland’s most famous twentieth-century epics by the 1924 Nobel Prize winner Władysław Reymont. In What We Leave Behind: A Birdwatcher’s Dispatches from the Waste Catastrophe, translated by Zosia Krasodomska-Jones and published by MacLehose Press on October 13, ornithologist and writer Stanisław Łubieński shows how consumer society has spun out of control, leading to the point of environmental catastrophe. Finally, Vine Editions, a new non-profit publisher based in Detroit with a focus on world literature, is about to bring out its first title, Piotr Paziński’s Bird Streets (Ptasie ulice) translated by Ursula Phillips. READ MORE…
In this month’s of newly released translations, we are featuring works that traverse across landscapes of psychology, politics, perspectives, and coastal enclaves. From a travelogue that corporealizes a vision into reality, a fragmented ghost story that equally interrogates readership with writership, and a psychically dense political fiction that follows the twists of truths into fictions, these works are full of metamorphoses, imaginations, and materializations—all that possible within the realm of the text.
A Line in the World, A Year on the North Sea Coast by Dorthe Nors, translated from the Danish by Caroline Waight, Graywolf Press, 2022
Review by Samantha Siefert, Marketing Manager
A line extends from Skagen, Denmark to Den Helder, Holland—a complex, jagged, six hundred mile stretch of coast. On a map, it is a fixed mark, something definite and present, representing a real place that exists today: the division between land and sea, a place of dunes and marshes, sweeping tides, surging storms, wind farms, gulls, and people. In A Line in the World, A Year on the North Sea Coast, celebrated Danish author Dorthe Nors asserts her dream for this line to be less static and more flexible, persistently animated, always moving, ever changing, evolving with its points marked in time just as much in time as they are in space. Her line reverberates heritage and memory, holidays, tragedy, Vikings, shipwrecks, disco ferries, and local gossip. In this first work of nonfiction, Nors brings Denmark’s western coast to life in fourteen essays, now available in a beautiful translation by Caroline Waight.
Each essay offers an exquisite, layered exploration of a different stretch of that wild North Sea coast, and the first one begins at the top. Nors is from west Jutland, but she has found herself living in Copenhagen, with a noisy neighbor next door and a hash dealer below, and she comforts herself there with sounds of the sea played through an app on her phone. She did not plan to write a book of essays (she was supposed to be working on a novel), but her publisher was insistent. They asked, and then they asked again.
I said, ‘I’ll have to think it over,’ and I did. Or I dreamt. In the dream, I was setting off across the landscape in my little Toyota. I saw myself escaping several years of pressure from the media by driving up and down the coast. Me, my notebook and my love of the wild and desolate. I wanted to do the opposite of what was expected of me. It’s a recurring pattern in my life. An instinct.
Fall 2022: Highlights from the Team
Where to start with our glorious Fall 2022 issue? Here are some entry points, courtesy of our global team!
Emma Ramadan’s work as a translator has been so important to me and my literary journey—not least because of the attentiveness she lends to the writers she translates from Francophone North Africa, such as Ahmed Bouanani. I also really admire the way she speaks about her process with Claire Mullen in her interview, the passion and commitment and genuineness that shine through, for instance, in how she discusses her feelings at finally finding a copy of Molinard’s Panics. It reminded me a little of Alice Guthrie’s work with Malika Moustadraf’s Blood Feast, which was also out of print and circulated online as low quality scans.
I really love the slow, meditative writing of Dejan Atanacković’s absent narrator in Lusitania (tr. Rachael Daum). When it ranges with a kind of radical exteriority over the ephemera that remains of Teofilović, and the marginal annotations of Stojimirović that accompany his journals, it reads almost like the prose of Sebald—with the enigma of Teofilović as one such central, inaccessible figure around which the story endlessly circles, never losing sight of the larger political and social context.
Laksmi Pamuntjak’s “The Tale of Mukaburung” could easily have been written and translated to pander to a white gaze, and it’s really to the credit of both Pamuntjak and her translator Annie Tucker that there is a pervasive self-sufficiency to the story and its world, a refusal to explain itself, a matter-of-fact revelling in the ordinariness of its own magic and ritual. This seems especially commendable when a dominant affect in the story is puzzlement and defensiveness, in confrontation with foreigners whose presence and purpose are unknown, even to the reader, until much later in the story when it is revealed that many among them are political prisoners.
—Alex Tan, Senior Assistant Editor (Fiction)
Olavo Amaral’s “Steppe” (tr. Isobel Foxford) is exquisite in every way: the writing of the translation, the unusual subject matter, the relationship and emerging love between the two main characters and how it is described, the mood created by the atmosphere of snow and remoteness.
I have been following closely the horrors of Putin’s war in Ukraine and though still angry and frustrated by its continuation, I thought I was fairly hardened to the extent of Russian atrocities. But I broke down towards the end of Galina Itskovich’s War Diary (tr. Maria Bloshteyn), where the unspeakable rape and violence against children is put into words.
—Janet Phillips, Assistant Managing Editor
Kudos to Jonathan Chan for beautifully translating such ancient poems of Choe Chi-won, whose characteristic loneliness metaphorized in natural images is successfully rendered in translation.
I think one of the most important missions of Asymptote is to sustain languages under oppression, be that a national language that is close to extinction or the voice of a people amid a political process of erasure. Lauren Bo’s review of The Backstreets by Perhat Tursun undertakes this mission in remarkable earnest and rigor, by not only posing the biopolitical question of survival faced by the Uyghurs but also diligently analyzing the text via a close reading, and ultimately marrying the two to derive a conclusion that engages readers with the enduring challenge of humanity that surpasses the violence that is immediately palpable: “The Backstreets is an account of survival and a reminder that even the cruelest elements of humanity are fabricated out of absurdity and fear of the uncertain.”
The elusive language of Krikor Beledian’s “Unpeopled Language” (tr. Taline Voskeritchian and Christopher Millis) is delicate yet piercing, and while the history of the Armenian genocide cannot be separated from the poetics of Beledian, its implementation of “the tool against the game of expression“ speaks to the broader context of the survival of a people and their language in and after the era of mass murder.
—Megan Sungyoon, Assistant Editor (Poetry)
“To Hear Your Fellow Man But See No One”: Yao Yao on Her Latest Essay Collection
The universe can be infinitely large, yet at the same time infinitely small—it all depends on where you happen to stand.
From the writings of San Mao to Jia Pingwa, the sanwen or essay is easily one of the most beloved genres in Chinese literature. Monika Gaenssbauer’s survey essay in our Spring 2013 edition spotlighted just four of the most prominent practictioners of this art and explored why Chinese essays are only rarely translated into English. On the occasion of Yao Yao’s delightful essay “Colourful Fruit Trees” in Samuel Liangxing Luo’s translation appearing in this week’s Translation Tuesday showcase, our editor-in-chief sat down with the author to discuss her latest collection and the outsized influence of Fujian writers in this particular genre within contemporary Chinese letters.
Why did you go with As Mentioned, No Names Are Mentioned as the title?
Tang poet Wang Wei once wrote a poem, beloved through the ages, which contains the line: “Even in a deserted mountain, one yet hears the whispers of man.” To hear your fellow man but see no one—the implications behind this conceit are endless. I based this collection of essays on the stories of my Chinese art circle friends, ascribing anecdotes to made-up names like Yi yi or Yi er. Even without proper attribution, the stories are one-hundred percent taken from real life. Not only does the title befit my mode of storytelling, it also hints at the playfulness inherent in the anthology.
Creative nonfiction in the Western tradition typically centers the author, but in these essays, it’s your friends who take centerstage; you, on the other hand, mostly stay in the wings. What would you say to the readers who might have come to this essay collection hoping to read about you, only to be denied this familiarity?
This may be a book that takes as its subject the lives of my friends, but, as author, I am in fact everywhere. What I have expressed is entirely what I have chosen to express; what my readers encounter is what I have chosen for them to encounter. Though I may be offstage, I am like a director, staging tableau after tableau, mapping thought after thought, carrying the reader through space-time, perspective, and logic. Should the reader derive pleasure from the work, it will be my pleasure too. I’m at the scene with the reader.
Within your text, you intersperse other writings by authors and artists alike. In addition, after each essay—and this is a novel idea that I haven’t encountered elsewhere—you also add readers’ online comments that the articles attracted when they were first published on a website. How did you go about selecting these comments? And do you treat these comments as equal to the other texts?
Adding readers’ comments is a new thing for me as well. Inevitably, different readers will react differently to the same text. No matter what point of view is being expressed, if there is substance to their opinion, I’ll be happy to use it as a kind of annotation or a finishing touch, if you will. As for quoted text lifted wholesale from other writers or artists, these serve as elaboration or counterpoint; this way, there’s something for everybody. That’s also one of the aims of this essay collection. READ MORE…
Translation Tuesday: “Colourful Fruit Trees” by Yao Yao
Those memories bathed in the bright sunlight reappear on quiet days from time to time.
Just in time for fall in the northern hemisphere, we have a special treat for nature lovers this Translation Tuesday: Yao Yao’s “Colourful Fruit Trees“ is in essence a paean to a wonder of nature and the conduit through which the warmth of the sun reaches into the sometime troubled lives of its myriad characters—some friends of the author in real life, others fictional. This is a living, breathing tapestry that is more than the sum of its parts. Thanks to translator Samuel Liangxing Luo, this marvel of a creative nonfiction that uses the list so well is now accessible to English readers.
University teacher Frances Mayes, who had left San Francisco for a vacation in Tuscany, discovered a fascinating old house named “Yearning For The Sun.” There were hazel trees in front of the steps, fig trees by the well, and, on the surrounding hillside, 20 plum trees, 117 olive trees, along with countless other apricot, apple, and pear trees. These fruit trees were strikingly colourful and the scenery magnificent. Enchanted, she dug deep into her savings and put everything on the line to buy the house. Flooded with sunshine, her days there were brilliant and happy.
Cao Jie, who came to the city of Fuzhou to teach animation, connected frame-by-frame the images of the sky above the university city and the trees along the Minjiang River to create a Fuzhou version of Laputa: Castle in the Sky. The farm-style lychee and longan trees planted in the past were kept at the new campus. Every time she proctored for final examinations and looked out of the windows, she would see fresh lychee fruits shining in red on the branches, where two or three boys would be climbing and passing the fruits on to beautiful girls.
Cao Jie climbed all kinds of trees in her hometown of Chuandong. As a child, she fell from a red pomelo tree and pierced her eyelid on coal debris on the ground. There was a big yellow fig tree near the dormitory building at her middle school campus. Sometimes, she climbed up the tree and stayed alone quietly or had a nap there. Other times, she and three or four other classmates would sit and chat on branches more than ten metres high, just like the aliens living in the Hometree in Avatar. Cao Jie painted the best gouache for many trees. She was familiar with painting the details of the yellow fig tree, the winding branches, the tender yellow bud tips, and the little red fleshy fruits. There was also a big yellow fig tree at the university campus. Disguised by the fig tree, students turned over the wall, merged into the night, and played outside. READ MORE…
Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature
Literary dispatches from Croatia, Hong Kong, and India!
This week, our editors on the ground report on literary festivals, award winners, and exhibitions inspired by pivotal writings. From awardees of the Lu Xun Literature Prize to wide-ranging international programs, find out the latest news from the world of global letters below.
Katarina Gadze, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Croatia
The beginning of literary September in Croatia marked the tenth World Literature Festival, which ran from September 4 to 9 in Zagreb. The festival, a tradition for world literature aficionados throughout the region, has grown into an immersive experience for readers to see the best new works of world literature, meet novelists themselves, and listen to discussions regarding their works. This year, the festival brought forth a star-studded line-up of extraordinary international guests and talented authors—such as British writer Bernardine Evaristo, author of one of the most influential books of the decade, Girl, Woman, Other. 2020 Costa Book of the Year winner, Monique Roffey, also joined to share insight into their latest literary masterpiece, The Mermaid of Black Conch. On the local side of things, a talk on the heartbreaking novel/poem Djeca (Children) with its author, the Serbian writer Milena Marković, is also worth mentioning. Other foreign writers who took part in the festival’s fruitful discussions include Israeli writer Dror Mishani, Austrian novelist Karl-Markus Gauss, and German author Katharina Volckmer.
In Rijeka, the Croatian harbour city’s own literary festival, vRIsak, is also back for its fifteenth edition, in which both foreign and local literary voices flocked to the city’s new cultural center, the “Benčić” art district, to discuss contemporary writing and art. This year’s edition promised to be the most ambitious yet, with a lively program celebrating stories of emigrants, contemporary European poetry, and the city Mostar’s literary boom. On the topic of the latter, Mostar author Senka Marić, whose Kintsugi tijela (Body Kintsugi) will soon be published in English translation, spoke about the creative ambitions behind her latest novel Gravitacije (Gravitations). Another theme of this year’s festival was climate fiction, an ode to the healing potential of words in context to the rapid environmental changes of our time.
Last but not least, on September 22, Croatian Writers’ Association (Društvo hrvatskih književnika) organised a panel discussion on a hot topic in today’s literary scene, entitled “Literary Translation Today: Art or Transmission from Language to Language?” On the panel, numerous experts discussed what literary translators are up against in today’s competitive market, as well as the general lack of respect for such a demanding artistic process. READ MORE…
Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature
Literary news from India, Hong Kong, and Sweden!
In India, the country mourns the loss of Kerala’s groundbreaking tribal novelist. In Hong Kong, a genre-bending poet is being celebrated across the nation. And in Sweden, two talented writers have won the prestigious Klas de Vylder’s Grant Fund for Immigrant Writers. Read on to find out more!
Suhasini Patni, Editor-at-Large, reporting from India
On August 16, India’s first tribal novelist Narayan passed away in Kochi. Born in the Mala Araya tribe in Kerala, Narayan gained nationwide recognition for his book Kocharethi (1998), which won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi award. The book was a way to counter the misrepresentations of his community from outsiders, and Narayan struggled for ten years to find a publisher willing to release it; despite critical acclaim, many complained his work lacked literary merit. Translator Catherine Thankamma, who translated the text into English—winning the Crossword Book Award for it—wrote a tribute to him for Scroll.in. Her tribute honors the struggles and biases he faced in the literary world.
August has seen many new releases in translation. A significant one is Satya Vyas’s Banaras Talkies, translated from Hindi by Himadri Agarwal. A campus novel, the book is centered around three law students from Banaras Hindu University. The translation was facilitated by Ashoka Centre for Translation from Ashoka University, where Agarwal graduated from. According to Mohini Gupta’s review, “The Hindi novel seamlessly accesses Bhojpuri and English words and phrases and the translation captures these linguistic variations beautifully.”
Many translators in India are also turning to writing fiction. Aruna Chakravarti, winner of the Sahitya Akademi award for her translation of Sarat Chandra’s Srikanta, is known for her dedication to Bengali literature. Her first translation, Tagore: Songs Rendered into English, came out in 1984, and her critically acclaimed novels explore the lives of women in the household of Rabindranath Tagore. Her latest book, The Mendicant Prince, explores the Bhawal case—an extended court case from 1920-46 about a man claiming to be the prince of Bhawal. An excerpt of the book can be read here. READ MORE…