Language: French

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

April 26, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa, Kathryn Raver, and Wambua Muindi

The latest in literary updates from Kenya, France, and the United States!

This week, our Editors-at-Large take us around the world for book launches, book fairs, and literary prizes! From a former Police Commandant’s memoir in Kenya, to a “harrowing” new release in France, to a mobile poetry reading in New York City, read on to learn more!

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

On Saturday, April 6, Qwani launched Qwani 02 at Alliance Française Nairobi. Qwani, founded by Keith Ang’ana, is a youth initiative meant to promote literature among young writers and readers, and whose main annual event is the book launch. The launch also featured music performances and selected readings from the works that made the second project. The one-of-a-kind anthology is multilingual and features 72 stories from some 60 enthusiastic Kenyan young writers. Ranging from short stories to essays to poetry, the included pieces demonstrated some innovative skills in storytelling and writing. The event culminated in book signings, a cake cutting, and a speech cameo by Lexa Lubanga who highlighted the recent kickoff to the fifth edition of the Kenyan Readathon.

In other news, Omar Abdi Shurie, former Commandant of Administration Police Training College in Kenya, launched his memoir Beyond the Call of Duty at the Embakasi AP Training Centre on Thursday, April 18. His book continues a Kenyan tradition of men in uniform documenting their lives and bequeathing literary history with an archive of service in the disciplined forces. With a 45-year stint in Kenya’s law enforcement, Shurie offers a rare view into matters of security for a police unit that is—to the public mind—known for its corruption and brutality. The former Commandant documents a life that exemplifies the Kenyan dream; hailing from Mandera in marginal North Eastern Kenya, Shurie ultimately rose to head the police service, working to maintain law and order by providing leadership for law enforcement. This is what Shurie’s life story personified, and what his book represents—a Kenya that is still becoming.

Kathryn Raver, Assistant Managing Editor, reporting from France

Two weeks ago, over 100,000 people flocked to Paris for the third annual Festival du Livre de Paris. The festival hosted these crowds alongside hundreds of authors from around the world for three days of industry discussion and literary celebration. In the spirit of the upcoming Summer Olympics, there was even a “Grande Dictée des Jeux,” where over 2700 “spelling athletes” competed to transcribe a series of spoken texts in exchange for a medal and free entry to the festival. 

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Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

March 29, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Matthew Redman, René Esaú Sánchez, and Wambua Muindi

Literary news from Kenya, Mexico, and the UK!

This week, our editors bring news of literary realms colliding, collaborating, and interchanging in future- and truth-seeking dialogues. In Kenya, a titan in publishing is commemorated, and a Nobel Laureate establishes presence in a Swahili translation. In Mexico, World Poetry Day is celebrated wit aplomb. And in the UK, the London Book Fair brings vital interrogations pertaining to literary translation in the age of AI. Read on to find out more!

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

To paraphrase V.S. Naipaul, the world is what it is, and men who allow themselves to become something have a place in it. Such men, when death waylays them, come to define particular eras. Henry Chakava, a pioneer African publisher, is such a man.

On Sunday, March 24, Chakava was laid to rest. For a man who, from a young age and until his untimely demise, redefined publishing in Africa in many ways: publishing in Swahili and promoting publishing in African languages, focusing on educational publishing to promote literacy, diversifying traditional publishing to incorporate new literary thought besides the infamous African Writers Series. With this legacy, his death attracted reverential eulogies from across the book and knowledge industry. He had become the face of African book publishing when he became the managing director of Heinemann Educational Books, which he would eventually steer to a new dispensation under the banner of East African Educational Publishers, and his work endeared him to many in Africa and beyond, attracting global assignments including being named the chairman of Global Book Alliance in 2021. An ode to Chakava, surely, cannot be captured by a word-bound dispatch. All in all, go well, Chakava. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

March 22, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Christina Chatzitheodorou and Kathryn Raver

The latest literary news from Greece and France!

This week, our editors take us to Greece and France, where they find exciting projects at the National Library, urgent new poetry in translation, and theater adaptations. From the Afro Greek experience to new takes on the work of Annie Ernaux, read on to find out more!

Christina Chatzitheodorou, Editor-at-Large, reporting on Greece

The National Library of Greece (NLG) is currently displaying the fruits of their project “We, the Afro-Greeks: black literature as a cultural bridge.” Until the end of April, the Library will be displaying new books by authors of African origin that focus on themes of immigration and racism—additions enabled by this project. This comes after a few initiatives by and for Afro-Greeks that engage with the lived experience of Black people in Greece. The term “Afro-Greek” itself, as Adéọlá Naomi Adérè̩mí explains, is relatively new: “We started using it around 2015 to 2017 as a term to express the experience of being Black and raised or born in Greece, of having our formative years in Greece and identifying as Greek citizens legally and culturally. We are Greek and African.” READ MORE…

European Literature Days 2023: Literature for a Better World

March 13, 2024  |  in Dispatches  |  by MARGENTO

From the famed literary festival in Krems an der Donau!

Since 2009, acclaimed writers, artists, readers, and friends of literature have gathered in a small Austrian town for four days to attend the European Literature Days festival. With each edition addressing a vital, timely theme of contemporary European writing, the packed program features some of the most brilliant minds across the continent. In the following dispatch, Editor-at-Large MARGENTO reports from this singular event.

The town of Krems an der Donau in Austria is a unique place in Europe, conducive to genuinely special literary and arts events such as the annual European Literature Days. Off the trodden path of regular tourist destinations, it is both compellingly picturesque as well as conveniently distant from the hustle and bustle of the capital, but nevertheless retaining the latter’s intransigence for excellence in higher education and the arts. 

The city’s tortuously narrow medieval streets wind between old churches and traditional pubs, and every now and then, they open upon wide panoramas of the Danube and the terraced vineyards surrounding it, resulting in a landscape both mysterious and inspirational. Ancient, blurred guild symbols and still-colorful frescos of winemaking deities and feasts are punctured by modern glass-and-concrete design and dernier-cri technology logos and landmarks. The stately Minorite Church in the heart of the old town is one such hub that combines rich cultural and architectural traditions with widely relevant contemporary interests and activities; the church is nowadays a generous cultural event and concert hall of excellent acoustics and high-tech video and audio equipment. It was the venue of most of European Literature Days’ 2023 events, while the former monastery’s annexes host a museum, art galleries, and multiple multi-purpose spaces—some of which also played an important role in the logistics of the festival.

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Riveting Banality: On Rebecca Gisler’s About Uncle

March 6, 2024  |  in Reviews  |  by Sharon Beriro

It’s the pungency of this story—the characters, the house, Uncle’s habits—that keeps us locked in tight.

About Uncle by Rebecca Gisler, translated from the French by Jordan Stump,  Two Lines Press, 2024

About Uncle is Swiss writer Rebecca Gisler’s debut novel, translated by Jordan Stump—a dazzling and intoxicating story that takes a microscopic view at the banal and unnerving details of family dynamics. A love letter to the oft hidden odd and grotesque mannerisms of our family members, About Uncle boils over with emotional distress, set just on the verge of the first COVID lockdown in spring of 2020. But, it’s not COVID that sets the tone, it’s everything else: family at its most banal, at its most crude, with an emotional tinge humming with tenderness.

At the center of the story is the unnamed narrator’s uncle, a 52 year-old recluse who seems to thrive among the squalor and filth built up over 30 years of hygienic apathy. In an unkempt house in the Brittany region of France, Uncle lives with his niece and nephew as “a congregation of do-nothings.” The siblings struggle to balance their personal struggles with their shared concern for Uncle’s health and lifestyle, and the “involuntary flatshare” is the centerpiece of a claustrophobic world that quite literally reeks of death and decay. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

March 1, 2024  |  in Dispatches, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa, José García Escobar, and Kathryn Raver

The latest literary news from Central America, France, and the United States!

This week, our team brings you literary news from around the world, including an experimental poetry reading and a festival celebrating comics! From cross-continental prize to a new exhibit at the Centre Pompidou, read on to find out more.

Alan Mendoza Sosa, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the United States

On February 7, I watched as the internationally-renowned Mexican poet and recent Asymptote contributor, Rocío Cerón presented a spellbinding performance at New York University’s KJC Center. Through sound, voice, and moving images, the performance expands on Cerón’s 2022 book Divisible corpóreo, a poetry collection that thematizes the relationship between language, poetry, and the body.

While Cerón read from the book, the screen behind her projected images featuring her bedroom and herself. These visuals were not static. Rather, they transformed in rhythmic syncopation along with Cerón’s voice. In addition, Cerón not only read the book out loud. She also brought her poems to a further experiential dimension through several resources grounded in her voice: she raised and lowered her pitch and volume, repeated words and phrases with different speeds, and sometimes elongated vowels and stuttered consonants. The effect was dreamlike. I was immediately thrown into a trance, a characteristic effect of Cerón’s awe-inspiring transmedia readings.

After the audience’s applause, Cerón was interviewed by Irma Gallo, a student in NYU’s Spanish MFA program. During this Q&A, Cerón reflected on her creative process and approach to live readings, noting that her performances often include improvisation, which makes each one of them a unique, ephemeral experience. She also talked about the feminist elements in her poetry, such as references to lineages of women writers and reflections on the mitochondrial DNA, only transmissible from mother to child. To conclude, she specified that the book Divisible corpóreo is the second installment of a trilogy that explores the connection between poetry and different senses. The other two books are Spectio (2019) and Simultáneo sucesivo (2023). Paraphrasing Cerón’s own words, these collections explore the interrelation between what we can observe and what we can hear. Each text establishes an intertextual dialogue with the other two “creating,” in Cerón’s words, “a network of signifiers and symbolic fields that touch and traverse one another.” READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

February 16, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Andriana Hamas, and Thuy Dinh

Dispatches from the Philippines, Bulgaria, and the Vietnamese Diaspora!

This week, our editors report on (attempts) at elucidation in the humanities and the cruelties of historic expatriation; the instating of Living National Treasures in the form of indigenous practitioners and their singular crafts; and a word that is meant to sum up a year. 

Thuy Dinh, Editor-at-Large, reporting on the Vietnamese Diaspora

The National Museum of Immigration History in Paris, France is currently offering a sobering exhibition on the history of Indochinese workers-soldiers, called les lính thợ or les công binh. As colonized subjects, twenty thousand men from Indochina—i.e., Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia—were brought to France at the onset of World War II to help with the war effort. Aside from a small percentage of educated volunteers who wished to escape the colony’s lack of social advancement, the majority, ranging from ages 18 to 30, was forcibly recruited from the poor peasantry to work in France’s defense industry.

Besides the exhibit, recollections by surviving workers have been compiled in recent years by various sources, such as the photographic essay “The Forced Oblivion” by Alejandra Arévalo, the graphic memoir “Les Lính Thợ: Immigrés de force, les travailleurs indochinois en France 1939-1952” (2017) by Pierre Daum and Clément Baloup, the film Công Binh, la longue nuit indochinoise (2013) by Lê Lâm, and the Vietnamese-French monograph, Những người lính thợ – Les travailleurs indochinois requis by Liêm Khê Luguern (2010).

When Germany invaded France in June 1940, the Indochinese workers were evacuated to the free zone in Southern France, where they worked in forestry and pioneered the rice-growing industry in the Camargue region. Both state-run and private companies employed these workers, but salaries were either paid to the French government, or distributed to the workers at rates significantly below those paid to locals. When Germany invaded the free zone in 1942, the workers were conscripted by German occupation troops to work in weapon factories. Besides harrowing working conditions, the men suffered physical and mental trauma due to prolonged exile and mistreatment by their superiors. READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: February 2024

February 12, 2024  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Areeb Ahmad, Christina Chatzitheodorou, and René Esaú Sánchez

New writing from Etel Adnan, Satish Alekar, and Djamila Morani!

This month, our selected titles of new publications carry wisdom, mystery, and humour. Below, find reviews of plays by one of India’s most accomplished and innovative playwrights; a compilation of interview with the inimitable Etel Adnan, conducted by Laure Adler; and a PEN Translates Award-winning novel of revenge and self-discovery, set in the Abbasid period.

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Two Plays: The Grand Exit and A Conversation with Dolly by Satish Alekar, translated from the Marathi by Shanta Gokhale, Seagull Books, 2024

 Review by Areeb Ahmad, Editor-at-Large for India

This nifty volume of plays collects two of Alekar’s works, “Mahanirvan” and “Thakishi Samvad”, written forty-six years apart—Born in 1949, Satish Vasant Alekar is a Marathi playwright, actor, theatre director. He was a founding member of the Theatre Academy of Pune and is well-known plays such as for Mahapoor, Begum Barve, Atirekee, and Pidhijat. He is considered among the most significant playwrights in modern Marathi and Indian theatre, along with Mahesh Elkunchwar and Vijay Tendulkar, and lately, he has come to be recognised for his acting in Marathi and Hindi feature films.

“Mahanirvan” or “The Grand Exit” was first performed in 1974, and is a play where a dead man has more dialogue than any living character. The description on the cover is not wrong to equate the character with Sophocles’ Antigone, for he also strongly insists on the method of his last rites; Bhaurao wants to be traditionally cremated at the shamshan ghat, but the cremation ground is in the process of being privatised. Thus, the dead—or rather their relatives—are now being redirected to a new facility which uses electrical incineration.

So Bhaurao lingers around as his body malingers, rotting and fly-infested, while his wife Ramaa grieves intensely, coming to terms with the sudden loss, and his son, Nana, tries to convince him to just go ahead with the cremation, and pass on. While working on the play, Alekar had realised that a dead man cannot speak prose, so Bhau’s dialogues instead take the poetic form—one resembling keertans (religious recitations). READ MORE…

The Intricacies of Human Experience: Natasha Lehrer on Translating On the Isle of Antioch

January 25, 2024  |  in Book Club, Interviews  |  by Ruwa Alhayek

There's a collective responsibility in engaging with these stories, reflecting on our own roles, and finding meaning in the midst of uncertainty.

On the Isle of Antioch is lauded Lebanese-French author Amin Maalouf’s philosophically rich take on the end-of-days novel. Told through the journals of Alexander, an artist living out his days on an island he shares with only one other person, this solitary existence is suddenly upended by a total communications blackout and power failure, followed by growing threats of global nuclear warfare. Through this narrative that builds on our contemporary forebodings, Maalouf weaves in the grand resonances of history and delicate moments of human connection to gather the touchpoints between consciousness and civilization, reality and belief. Skillfully taken into English by award-winning translator Natasha Lehrer, this modern myth was our final Book Club selection for 2023, and in the interview below, we speak to Lehrer about On the Isle of Antioch’s massive range, the novelist’s role, and the importance of ambiguity.

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.  

Ruwa Alhayek (RA): On the Isle of Antioch resonates strongly with contemporary events like the COVID pandemic or current geopolitical tensions; it’s intriguing how the novel captures such fears, then deviates from initial impressions. Did ongoing events have an impact on your process of translation?

Natasha Lehrer (NL): The narrative absolutely echoes real-world concerns like the Ukrainian invasion and geopolitical tensions between the U.S., Iran, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Sardar Sardarov initially appears as a Central Asian warlord, a nod to figures from the former Soviet Union. The theme of missing nuclear warheads also aligns with post-Soviet anxieties, cleverly naming and then subverting those fears.

But personally, translation is more of an intellectual exercise for me. I focus on achieving the right tone and voice for characters, especially when translating philosophical dialogues. For instance, translating an American character from French back into English is quite interesting, and Maalouf’s characters often speak in a philosophical manner rather than realistic dialogue. Reading the novel again after a year, I’m struck by the atmosphere of dread, fear, and eroticism. It’s exciting to realize that it works well, even though I wasn’t consciously conjuring specific atmospheres during translation. It’s more about accurately conveying Maalouf’s ideas. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

January 19, 2024  |  in Dispatches, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alan Mendoza Sosa, Andriana Hamas, and René Esaú Sánchez

The latest literary news from Mexico and Bulgaria!

This week, our Editors-at-Large take us to bi-national experimental poetry festivals and a community for children’s literature. From prize-winning novels to poetry that spans genres and mediums, read on to find out more!

Alan Mendoza Sosa, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Mexico

On Monday, January 15, Mexican poet Rocío Cerón launched the online series of panels “Diálogos Bifrontes” (Bifrontal Dialogues), alongside digital artist and poet Carlos Ramírez Kobra. Their conversation was the first of several upcoming chats about experimental, transmedial, and expanded poetry, a genre of literature that combines sounds, performance, and visual elements with poetic writing. They talked about how the transformation of poetry into different artistic and sonic registers entails a process of thinking, reflection, and attention that dissolves traditional boundaries between genre, media, and performance. They also reflected on their creative processes, highlighting how their works consist of — paraphrasing Cerón — an infinite codifying and re-codifying of language and symbols.

These Dialogues complement last year’s special, celebratory 13th anniversary edition of Enclave, an annual festival of expanded poetry founded by Cerón, which ran between November 23 and 25. As a bi-national event, Enclave 2023 was co-sponsored by several Mexican cultural institutions and the Goldsmiths University of London, and co-curated by Cerón and the German-British sound artist Iris Garrelfs. It invited collaborations between Mexican and British artists and poets exploring intersections between poetry, sound, music, and visual art.

Diálogos Bifrontes builds on Enclave’s mission of bringing together poets, artists, and musicians. Like the festival itself, the series will feature conversations by cutting-edge poets from Mexico and the U.K. who are redefining what poetry can mean. READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: January 2024

January 15, 2024  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Bridget Peak, Iona Tait, and Rubén López

New titles from Japan, France, and Mexico!

The new year is all dressed up with a powerful display of voices in translation: a Japanese epic, a tri-lingual edition of Mexican poetry, and the latest collection of prose from one of France’s most spiny and entertaining voices. Read on to find out more!

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Marshland by Otohiko Kaga, translated from the Japanese by Albert Novick, Dalkey Archive Press, 2024

 Review by Iona Tait, Copy Editor

In a 1986 article published in Japan Quarterly, the Japanese psychiatrist-turned-novelist Otohiko Kaga wrote about his captivation with the Japanese marshes, describing them as “a wasteland, totally resistant to human attempts at exploitation.” These same untouched regions make up the setting of his novel Marshland, originally published in 1985 and translated now into English by Albert Novick. In this sprawling epic, the marshes, as a virgin land, act as a counterpart to the oppressive state structures of the metropolis. They—being of no use—allow Kaga to explore his central theme: space, and the reclamation of space for freedom and freedom of thought.

Hailing from the marshes, the protagonist, Atsuo Yukimori, is a middle-aged former convict whose job as an auto-mechanic in Tokyo keeps his life together—but only barely. Spending the majority of his life “as a slave to the state,” he lives in fear of the army and the police, and his job security depends on the whims of his boss, to whom the former speaks “like a puppy dog.” All the while, Atsuo’s criminal past lingers in close quarters, with a burn on his finger (punishment for stealing as a child) standing as a reminder. The delicate order of this life—his tidy bedroom, his punctuality—soon begins to unravel, however, when he meets a young student called Wakako Ikéhata at an ice rink. The pair develop an intense relationship, and eventually find themselves entangled in the violent student protests of 1968. Falsely accused of placing a bomb on a train, Atsuo and Wakako are detained by police and imprisoned, spending ten years in prison waiting for a judicial appeal.

Spanning over eight hundred pages, Marshland details governmental abuses of power in post-war Japan through various narrative perspectives, various institutions, and across a vast period of time. Kaga masterfully demonstrates the grueling legal process that kept Atsuo and Wakako in prison, including their detention before being forced to give a confession (detaining individuals before they were sentenced was a feature of Japanese criminal law until it was overturned in 2023). Repeating the details of the trial throughout the majority of the novel, Kaga shows the mentally and physically taxing effects, ranging from psychosis to suicide, of institutionalization and detention on every victim involved—which include Atsuo’s nephew, Yukichi Jinnai, and Wakako’s former lover, the radical student Makihiko Moroya. Whilst this technique does result in a few tedious episodes in which legal particularities are rehashed at length, the approach heightens the all-consuming nature of the trial for the convicts, and succeeds in conveying the lengthy passage of time; the novel alternates between the day-to-day pace of scenes in Tokyo, visits to the marshes, long periods in prison, and swift logs or diary entries which reveal the laboring process of the trial and work done by Atsuo’s lawyers.

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Announcing our December Book Club Selection: On the Isle of Antioch by Amin Maalouf

December 29, 2023  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Ruwa Alhayek

[Maalouf] offers us a human way to experience cataclysm without masking the confusion and desperation that takes hold. . .

For our final title of 2023, we are proud to present the latest novel by acclaimed French-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf, whose extraordinary work weaves fantasy and history with a powerful reckoning of contemporary issues. In On the Isle of Antioch, Maalouf turns to dystopian narrative to explore the frailties and failures of human empires, drawing a surreal evolution of events that escalate from the very real threat of total global destruction. With a philosophical richness that finds footholds in Maalouf’s elegant, nebulous depictions of desire and connection, the novel is a beautiful, necessary rumination on what survival means on the precipices of so much devastation.

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.  

On the Isle of Antioch by Amin Maalouf, translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer, World Editions, 2023

There is something eerie about reading Amin Maalouf’s On The Isle of Antioch during the same days described by its narrator’s journal entries. In four sections, or “notebooks”, that date from November 9 to December 9, Maalouf’s surreal, thrilling novel is told through the experiences of Alexander, an artist and one of two inhabitants on the titular island of Antioch, as he travels in this brief window of time through isolation, doom, communion, and the unexpected orders and disorders of a dying world.

Having inherited the land from his father, who had refused to sell the deed despite financial difficulties, Alexander decides, in the wake of his parents’ death, to change his life. He begins drawing, releasing work under the pseudonym Alec Zander, and moves to Antioch in a reprieve of his childhood fantasies, calling it his “ancestral island.” Believing himself to be the only inhabitant and sole owner, he’s surprised to find, while waiting for his house to be built, that a woman and writer by the name of Ève had long ago purchased the remaining portion of the island that he did not own, and, being “eager for solitude”, she too has made it her home. Ève’s been in a rut, having published one masterpiece—a novel titled The Future Doesn’t Live Here Anymore—before losing her job and retiring to Antioch, where she sleeps all day and is awake all night, trying to work.

What drives these two loners together, after months of avoiding each other’s company, is a sudden blackout. When all the lights and appliances in Alexander’s house turn off, and even the radio plays only an ominous whistling on every station, he goes to see Ève, suddenly overwhelmed by a solitude that now weighs more heavily on him than ever, and feeling “for the first time in twelve years, [that he] slightly regret[s] not living in a town or a village like an ordinary mortal.” Having previously thought of Ève only as a “silent, ghostly, almost nonexistent” presence, it is only after this incident—which turns out to be a full blackout of all communication systems—that Alexander and Ève are able to find themselves in one another’s company. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Fly” by Linda Lê

December 5, 2023  |  in Translations  |  by Alex Nelson

Cervantes, Panizza, Soseki, and Hoffmann had all talked of dogs and cats; why shouldn’t I make a fly my muse?

A writer is stuck, buzzing with contempt for his departed wife. Suddenly, he is liberated by an uncommon muse. Words fly! stories swarm! This Translation Tuesday, we present an at once deeply sympathetic and totally absurd short story by Linda Lê. Hear from translator Alex Nelson on the influence of diaspora on the author’s repertoire, including The Fly:

“Within the ranks of other diasporic writers, Lê recontextualizes her postcolonial exile in her work by considering the blurred lines between language, representation, and form. Lê addresses themes such as the figure of the double, of the relationship between hosts and guests, of the danger of strangers through unexpectedly light-hearted prose, resulting at once in an entertaining story for the reader and a glimmer of the profound. This quality of Lê’s writing was both my priority to translate with fidelity and my greatest challenge when translating.” READ MORE…

Seas Otherwise Too Treacherous To Navigate: Mario Aquilina on the European Essay and Its Planetary Histories

December 4, 2023  |  in Interviews  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas

. . . the essay sustains a tension between experience and the attempt . . . to derive ideas or abstractions from experience . . .

In The Essay at the Limits: Poetics, Politics and Form (2021), Mario Aquilina, a Maltese literary historian and scholar, probes through the philosophies and ethos of the genre’s figureheads—from Montaigne and Francis Bacon to Samuel Johnson and Ralph Waldo Emerson—and considers the “paradox at the heart” of the essay: “the more resistant to genre an essay is, the more properly an essay it is.” The foundations of the ever-expansive, proliferating possibilities of the essay as a genre, form, and mode can be found in its pre-Montaignean roots from Azwinaki Tshipala of 315 CE South Africa, al-Jahiz of 8th-century southeastern Iraq, and Heian Japan’s Nikki bungaku (diary literature) comprising of court ladies Sei Shōnagon, Izumi Shikibu, Lady Sarashina, and others, to the Graeco-Roman philosophers Plutarch, Seneca the Younger, St Augustine of Hippo, and Marcus Aurelius.

In the contemporary era, this obscured historico-aesthetic timeline courses through the genre, from the New Journalism movement of the 60s (Gay Talese, Joan Didion, Truman Capote, Annie Dillard, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe) to ‘memoir craze’ of the 90s (David Sedaris, Mary Karr, Frank McCourt), from the British life-writing movement and its American counterpart, creative nonfiction, to its present-day extra-textual permutations: essay films, graphic memoir, the imagessay, and video essays. But what of this “memoirization of the essay” and “essayification of the memoir”—to quote from David Lazar? “If we think of the ‘I’ of the essayist as collaborative, then we understand that the essay does not have to be as narcissistic a genre as it has sometimes been presented. Its value—literary or communicative—not simply expressive,” writes Aquilina for The Edinburgh Companion to the Essay (2022). 

In this interview, I spoke with Prof. Aquilina on, among other topics, the histories of the essay within and beyond the Western literary imaginary, his thoughts on Montaigne and Montaigne’s Euro-American stalwarts Georg Lukács, Theodor W. Adorno, Phillip Lopate, and John D’Agata, and the genre’s recalcitrant relationship with categorisation, alterity, and selfhoods. 

Alton Melvar M Dapanas (AMMD): I would like to begin this interview with your opinion on John D’Agata’s The Lost Origins of the Essay (2009) which was part of his trailblazing yet contentious trilogy. D’Agata follows the essay to its genesis in ancient cultures of Sumer, Greece, Babylonia, South Africa, and China: miscellanies of Ziusudra, dialogues of Ennatum, self-interviews of Azwinaki Tshipala, and biographies of T’ao Ch’ien. 

Mario Aquilina (MA): Editing an anthology is always a contentious act. Literary anthologies are political in the sense that they organise a body of knowledge in specific ways, bringing to our attention that which we might otherwise not see or something hiding from us that we should see. Anthologies establish or disrupt hierarchies of value and relevance, and they influence in decisive ways what is preserved and circulated as well as what is lost. Anthologising is inseparable from canonisation, archivisation, but also representation and social relations as shown in the well-known debate between Rita Dove and Helen Vendler in The New York Review of Books around The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry (2011). 

John D’Agata’s The Lost Origins of the Essay (2009) is provocative in the sense that, unlike some other accounts of the history of the essay, it does not begin with Michel de Montaigne. It also casts its net beyond the Western Canon. It thus stretches both the temporality and geographical positioning of the story of the essay that we often tell ourselves. It forces us to consider the possibility that the essay is not necessarily a fundamentally modern form (Jacques Rancière calls Montaigne the ‘first modern man’) and not necessarily tied to the rise of humanism and a human-centred perception of the world. However, what is perhaps even more contentious for some is that, through this alternative history of the essay, D’Agata also makes an intervention in the present by shifting the parameters within which one might think of the essay as a genre. D’Agata’s instinct in this anthology is to open the genre, to find it in places and times in which we did not see it before. The consequence of this is that as readers we are fascinated by the extent of the potential of the essay but also possibly confused by being presented with a form that is so stretched that it almost starts to incorporate everything. I personally think that D’Agata’s book does important work and I consider it to be a valuable contribution to not only studies of the history of the essay but also to its theory. 

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