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Weekly News Round Up, 5 August 2016: -isms, Galore!

August 5, 2016  |  in News  |  by Allegra Rosenbaum

This week's literary highlights from across the world

What a week for world literature, am I right Asymptote readers? I have a lot of good news, but also sad news, for you this week. Legendary Bengali activist and writer Mahasweta Devi, who had an unmatchable empathy and understanding for the oppressed classes, passed away last week. Her publisher Naveen Kishore and translator Gayatri Spivak remember her. Art is a gift, and Devi gave us so many gifts.

While Devi cannot be replaced, there are so many up and coming writers all over the world that are starting to make their names in world literature. Literary prizes are now being announced. Longlists and shortlists galore, and winners too! The winners of this year’s Jewish Culture prize for literature are Haim Sabato and Sarah Friedland. Friedland is a poet and Sabato channels the Sephardic traditions of Torah.

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What’s New in Translation? August 2016

August 4, 2016  |  in New in Translation, News, Reviews  |  by Claire Pershan, Nozomi Saito, and Theophilus Kwek

Fresh off the printing press, here are Asymptote's must-reads in translation this month!

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Limbo Beirut, by Hilal Chouman, tr. Anna Ziajka Stanton. Center for Middle Eastern Studies, The University of Texas at Austin. Review: Claire Pershan, Assistant Director, Educational Arm

Beirut is a city of collisions. Bad drivers, sudden friendships, graffiti in a mess of languages. And yet, when enough chaos collides, it produces its own order—the way a sprawling city looks from far away.

This is the effect of Hilal Chouman’s latest novel, Limbo Beirut, recently translated from Arabic into English by Anna Ziajka Stanton, and published by University of Texas Press. Chouman’s novel fills the space between history and memory. Six narrative chapters document the fighting that broke out in the city in May of 2008, as it was experienced by the city’s residents. These clashes, between Hezbollah and pro-Syrian militias on one side, and members of the Sunni-supported Future Movement on the other, didn’t gain much attention from western media, but for the Lebanese people, they were a frightening echo of the Civil War that devastated the country between 1975 and 1990.

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Plunge into the Multilingual Writing Feature from the July 2016 Issue

August 1, 2016  |  in News  |  by Ellen Jones

Readers must ask themselves whether they are entitled to a full understanding —or indeed if such a thing is ever possible.

The past two Mondays here at the Asymptote Blog, we’ve brought you highlights from the July 2016 issue, THE DIVE. This week we’re back with Ellen Jones, editor of the vibrant and provocative multilingual writing section.

The Asymptote July issue special feature on multilingual writing is the second of its kind. The more than two hundred pieces of original poetry and fiction received in response to last year’s call for submissions—many, many more than we were able to publish—opened our eyes to the wealth of new writers who are experimenting with language mixing, and persuaded us that it was necessary to run the feature again.

What I love most about this work is its variety. There are seven contributions, from writers as far afield as Peru, South Africa, and India that, between them, incorporate English, German, Spanish, French, Romanian, Sanskrit, Afrikaans, Italian, Nahuatl, and Arabic. But more importantly, they also make use of the spaces in between these languages: unique cross-lingual sound combinations and associations, and spoken varieties that are thriving but have yet to be documented. There is some poetry, some prose. Some written by well-established literary figures and some by poets who are only just finding their voices. Some pieces for readers of only English, others best left to the true polyglots among us.

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Weekly News Round Up, 29 July 2016: Proustian Tequila

July 29, 2016  |  in News  |  by Allegra Rosenbaum

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Linguaphiles of the world unite! Before we start out with different bits and bobs of global and literary news, don’t forget that the Summer issue of Asymptote is out now and waiting for your perusal. For those among you who are teachers,  we’ve just released the Educator’s Guide accompanying this issue. From linguistics to critical essay writing, educational material on a dizzying array of topics is collated in the form of interactive lesson plans, contextualizing resources, interactive learning tools, and follow-up assignments for high school and university students. Grab your free download now!

Now let’s get back to news in the literary world this week, starting off with a Russian award aimed at popularizing the country’s literature through translation. Translators around the world from Spain and Hungary to China and Mexico were nominated. The longlist was released this week and can be read here.

Moving west from one large land mass to another, in the preview of Quill & Quire‘s Fall 2016 issue, Steven W. Beattie muses on the up and coming French Canadian literature in translation. He also lists many of those books to be published as support.

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Dive Further Into the Summer Issue of Asymptote

July 25, 2016  |  in News, Reviews  |  by Aditi Machado, Caridad Svich, Ellen Jones, and Eva Heisler

Poetry, visual art, criticism, and drama: highlights from the July 2016 Issue

Last week, we recommended readings from Asymptote‘s summer issue, “The Dive”. If you are still uncertain about where to take that first plunge into our jam-packed issue, take guidance in this week’s recommendations from some of our Section Editors. What’s more, definitely don’t miss the coverage of the issue in “This Week in Short Fiction” at The Rumpus!

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“A Man Composing a Self-Portrait out of Objects,” from The Absolute Gravedigger, by Vítězslav Nezval, tr. Stephan Delbos and Tereza Novická. Review: Aditi Machado, Poetry Editor.

I like weird poetry. Poetry that enacts the essential weirdness of trying to figure out stuff. For instance, when language tries to work out what a thought is or what thinking feels like, that’s weird. All of this seemingly abstract, matter-less ​matter turns into an ungainly body of odd parts that keeps connecting and breaking off and turning into other, still odder, parts. That’s what Vítězslav Nezval’s poem, “A Man Composing a Self-Portrait out of Objects,” feels like to me. To paint this internal picture, the man has to handle the external world of solid, but changeable, things:

“Dismantling / A very intricate clock / Assembling from its gears / A seahorse / That could represent him before a tribunal / Where he would be tried / By five uniformed men from the funeral home / For his pathological absent-mindedness.”

Nezval’s translators have done an excellent job of embodying in English the slippery act of cobbling together what can never entirely cohere—a self. I recommend this excellent poem and eagerly await the book in which it will appear, The Absolute Gravedigger. (Twisted Spoon Press, forthcoming in 2016.)​ READ MORE…

Weekly News Round Up, 22 July 2016: Literature for Social Change

July 22, 2016  |  in News  |  by Allegra Rosenbaum

This week’s literary highlights from across the world

What a week it has been in literature! Have you spent the best part of last week submerged in our new July 2016 issue?  If you haven’t, now might be a time to take a break, take a breath, and plunge into The Dive.

Also, July 28 is being celebrated as a Day of Creativity for Ashraf Fayadh, the Palestinian poet imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for writing that allegedly spreads atheism. Artists from around the world are using blogs, videos, social media, and other creative measures to support Fayadh.

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Live Today! Ask A Translator: The Best Tips

July 20, 2016  |  in Ask a Translator, News  |  by Daniel Hahn

"...my aim is to take one superb piece of writing, and make another superb piece of writing that can stand in for it with a new set of readers."

Since we launched our ‘Ask A Translator’ column last December, award-winning writer, editor and translator Daniel Hahn has been on hand to remedy the translation woes of Asymptote readers around the globe. Given the overwhelming love that our readers show for the column and Daniel (seriously, you guys are the best), we can’t wait to welcome Asymptote fans to our very first literary salon today at Waterstones Piccadilly, London on July 20th. The event will be hosted by our Editor-at-Large, Megan Bradshaw and will see Daniel fielding questions from the audience and our readers via Twitter. You can find out more about the event and reserve your place here, or if you can’t attend the event, tweet us your translation question with #AskATranslator.

In anticipation of the event, we’ve put together a shortlist of the six most important lessons for aspiring translators:

  1. Don’t be starstruck by authors (and don’t be afraid to stand your ground)

“Imagine approaching pretty much any writer and saying, “Look, here’s the plan, we’re going to change lots of things in your book—no, I really mean lots of things, like all the words—then we’re going to publish it all over the world in your name, but you won’t get to see what it actually says… Sound OK?” They’d be within their rights to feel more than a little uneasy about it.

[…]

But just as I don’t always understand what they’re doing, they don’t always understand what I’m doing either. And their English is sometimes not quite as good as they think it is. (Or at least I hope it’s typically less good than mine, otherwise I might as well pack the whole thing in.) While I want them to be reassured, I’m the person who signs things off for the publisher, and I have to be happy with the English text—my name’s on it, too, and if something sounds funny that will end up being my fault.”

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Highlights from the July 2016 Issue and the Contest Continues!

July 18, 2016  |  in News  |  by Allegra Rosenbaum and Nina Sparling

Our blog editors recommend their favorite pieces from Asymptote’s Summer 2016 issue.

Hello, dear readers of Asymptote! First up, a reminder about our ongoing contest that could bring unbeatable literature to your doorstep and flesh out that summer reading list. There are two ways to participate:

  1. Share your favorite piece from the new issue on social media with the hashtag #ReadAsymptote and you’ll have a chance to win a book. Who doesn’t love books? Especially these ones:

The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa by Chika Sagawa (tr. Sawako Nakayasu)
Panty by Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay (tr. Arunava Sinha)
The Art of Flight by Sergio Pitol (tr. George Henson)
The Journey by Sergio Pitol (tr. George Henson)

  1. Send us your favorite piece in the new issue and the reason you love it in 400 words or less. Submit here today for another chance to win one of those precious free books! The deadline for each contest is tomorrow, the 19th of July.

And, secondly, we hope you are as excited as we are about the release of our summer issue, THE DIVE. The issue is packed full of captivating stories, poems, drama, visual art, criticism and interviews from 34 different countries. There are translations from five languages never-before presented in Asymptote (Estonian, French Creole, Kiezdeutsch, Old English, and Xitsonga) as well as our second-ever Multilingual Writing section. Here at the Asymptote Blog, we’ve picked our highlights, listed below, in no particular order.

Television: The Thousand and One Nights by Robert Merino, translated from Spanish by Neil Davidson. Recommended by Allegra Rosenbaum, Blog Editor.

Robert Merino describes the arrival of a television in his childhood home in Chile. The writing is very much a stream of life events, surrounded by this electronic piece of furniture. We watch Merino grow up and come of age throughout the essay with television. It is the center of his universe, his upbringing, his babysitter, and his cultural education.

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Weekly News Round Up: 15 July 2016: New Issue and Contests

July 15, 2016  |  in News  |  by Allegra Rosenbaum

This week’s literary highlights from across the world

A glorious and happy Friday, Asymptote readers! Our Summer 2016 issue is here, featuring the works of Pierre Joris, Sawako Nakayasu, Philippe Sollers, Pedro Novoa, and more!

Asymptote is also doing not one, but two contests with prizes! Share your favorite piece from the new issue on social media with the hashtag #ReadAsymptote and you’ll have a chance to win a book. Who doesn’t love books? Especially these ones:

The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa by Chika Sagawa (tr. Sawako Nakayasu),
Panty by Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay,
The Art of Flight by Sergio Pitol, and
The Journey by Sergio Pitol.

The second contest involves sending us your favorite piece in the new issue and why in 400 words or less. Submit here today for another chance to win one of those precious free books! The deadline for each contest is the 19th of July.  READ MORE…

Weekly News Roundup, 8 July 2016: So Many Questions

July 8, 2016  |  in News  |  by Allegra Rosenbaum

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Greetings and happy Friday, readers! This past week, Foyles’ blog ran a piece on the top five books that address the difficulties of translation. Do you agree or disagree with the choices, fair readers? While I’m asking you questions, let’s talk about the infamous Proust Questionnaire. The New Yorker ran a piece about the history behind the notorious literary interview. Its journey through time is striking and not what you would think.

In awards, South African writer Lidudumalingani won the 2016 Caine Prize for African Writing. It’s definitely an exciting time for African literature!

In deaths, the we lost the great poet Yves Bonnefoy. He was a huge part of French literature and will be sorely missed. You can read a translation of some of his poetry on the Asymptote website. We also lost Nobel Peace Prize Winner Elie Wiesel. The world is certainly in mourning for these two great souls.  READ MORE…

What’s New With the Asymptote Team

July 4, 2016  |  in News  |  by Theophilus Kwek

From reading tours to new publications, here's what Asymptote staff have been up to recently!

Contributing Editor Adrian West launched his new book, The Aesthetics of Degradation, for the occasion of which former Asymptote Section Editor Matt Jakubowski conducted this interview in Berfrois.

Contributing Editor Ellen Elias-Bursać has been interviewed about her authors in Authors and Translators.

Assistant Managing Editor Justin Maki published a review of Jon-Michael Frank’s book of poem-comics, How’s Everything Going? Not Good. (Ohio Edit and Cuneiform Press) at The Small Press Book Review.

Editor-in-Chief Lee Yew Leong’s translation of ‘Next’, a poem by Taiwanese psychiatrist-poet Jing Xianghai, was featured on the Guardian Books Network as part of Asymptote‘s ongoing Translation Tuesday collaboration with The Guardian.

Editor-at-Large for Romania & Moldova MARGENTO (Chris Tanasescu) participated in the CROWD Omnibus Reading Tour, a tour involving 100 writers from 37 countries, starting at the Arctic Circle and ending at the Mediterranean Sea. On his way back, MARGENTO stopped by Bookfest (Bucharest’s International Book Fair) where he contributed to the launch of frACTalia, a Romanian-international consortium of literary journals, publishing companies, and online intermedial archives.

Social Media Manager Sohini Basak has poems published in two anthologies: three poems in 40 Under 40: an anthology of Post-Globalisation Poetry (Mumbai, Poetrywala) edited by Nabina Das and Semeen Ali; and a poem inspired by Han Kang’s The Vegetarian in Urban Myth and Legends (Birmingham, Emma Press) edited by Rachel Piercey and Emma Wright.

Chief Executive Assistant Theophilus Kwek’s new collection of poetry, Giving Ground, was launched in Oxford, and reviewed in the Oxonian Review. He is one of four winners of this year’s inaugural New Poets’ Prize, and has an interview and a new poem about ’Brexit’ in The Missing Slate.

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Read More from the Asymptote Team:

Weekly News Roundup, 1 July 2016: Among Other Things

July 1, 2016  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Happy first-of-July Friday, Asymptote! This week, annoyingly talented polyglot Vladimir Nabokov’s letters reveal—what, exactly? Marital discord and a whole lot of influence from his wife, Véra (among other things).

And the novel may be changing, but that’s a good thing. A dystopian novel written during the  protests in the Ukraine—on Facebook, no less—will be translated into English (and published as a book). Good thing it’ll be published—and translated—by actual human beings, as computer-driven writers and translators aren’t quite up to the task just yet. And Palestinian and Israeli poets protest the house arrest of Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour, who is punished for an “inflammatory” poem. READ MORE…

Weekly News Roundup, 24 June 2016: Canon Great Once More

June 24, 2016  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Happy Friday, Asymptote. Translation lets us read to challenge our canon. And the Millions (satirically) wills us (Americans) to make the canon great again. And Taiwanese literature may be growing in its global presence, thanks to the National Museum of Taiwanese Literature’s translation initiative, which will sponsor literary translations into sixteen languages. Speaking of industry insiders wheeling-and-dealing, here’s Eida Rotor, Penguin Classics’ Filipino publisher.  READ MORE…

Weekly News Roundup, 17 June 2016: A Cloudy Complex Mirror

June 17, 2016  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Happy Friday, friends! This week witnessed the unfortunate passing of one of the best translators into English: Gregory Rabassa has passed away at age 94. He famously translated epic Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez and Argentine novelist Julio Cortázar, whose works defined what we think of as the Latin American “boom” in literature. And his mastery underlined the importance of translators in creating a “world literature.”  READ MORE…