Hey, happy Friday, Asymptote! This week marks two extra-special, European four-hundred-year anniversaries: it’s the week of Spanish literary icon Miguel de Cervantes’ death, and there’s all sorts of commemoration: Spain celebrated the Don Quixote author with national celebrations and literary awards, but if you’re unable to make it in person, take a virtual trip to La Mancha. And English poet/thespian/legend William Shakespeare, too, died four hundred years ago (1616 was a killer year, huh?), so the commemorations are similarly virtual and literal (in case you’re curious, here’s a Proust Questionnaire with the Bard). And lest you forget (as much of Shakespeare and Cervantes can be found in the open domain) April 23 was also the UNESCO’s world book copyright day.
News
Weekly News Roundup, 29th April 2016: 400 Years Without Cervantespeare
This week's literary highlights from across the world
Weekly News Roundup, 22 April 2016: NEWruda, Pulitzer,
This week's literary highlights from across the world
Happy Friday, Asymptote friends! Our new issue is all of a week old, but if you haven’t dived in yet, be sure to start with the blog’s issue highlights—which features the Close Approximations Prize-winning piece by translator-poets Kelsi Vanada and Marie Silkeberg, who are also featured this week in an interview on the blog.
We’ve been promised more work from Chilean poet-diplomat Pablo Neruda for longer than I can remember, but it looks like new work of his might finally see the light of (published) day. Also from Chile: artist Cecilia Viduña is featured on the Poetry Foundation’s “Harriet” blog. READ MORE…
Weekly News Roundup, 15th April 2015: So. Many. Shortlists.
This week's highlights from across the world
Happy Friday, Asymptoters! This Friday’s an especially good one, because if we’ve timed the post correctly, because it means a new issue is totally live! There are so, so many gems in this issue, (as per usual). But this one also features the winners of our Close Approximations contest—be sure to check out the fiction, nonfiction, and poetry winners (and runners-up)!
This week, our very own Megan Bradshaw reported from the (frightening) field at the 2016 London Book Fair. Other notes from the (not-so) Fair: translators champion books in underrepresented languages and literatures. And the Book Fair announces its International Excellence Award winners: Words Without Borders is this year’s winner of the Publishers Weekly Literary Translation Initiative Award—the very same prize we won last year!—big congrats, WWB!
Speaking of prizes: the Man Booker International Prize has announced its shortlist, which includes Italian anonymon Elena Ferrante, South Korean trendsetter Han Kang (for The Vegetarian, translated by Deborah Smith), among others. The Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction has similarly announced its shortlist. And yet another shortlist, this time for the 100,000-pound International Dublin Literary Award: featuring Jenny Erpenbeck, Marilynne Robinson, and many others. And shortly after the American PEN awarded its prizes this week, English PEN reflects on the notion of “reputation” with regard to non-Anglophone writers.
Also, at the Rumpus, a look behind-the-scenes: here’s an interview with writer and translator (from the Korean) Minsoo Kang, translator most recently of The Story of Hong Gildong. If you’re interested in what goes on in one of the biggest (or perhaps *the* biggest, full stop) powerhouse publications, read this interview with the editor of the New York Times Book Review, Pamela Paul. And if you’re still thinking about the Close Approximations prizewinners—don’t worry, we won’t judge you—read about our poetry judge, Michael Hofmann, here portrayed as a kind of literary daredevil of sorts.
Happy Friday, Asymptote pals! This week, something different: you might be used to reading reports about book prizes, but the Guardian spectacularly announced the end of its First Book Prize. Womp. And we often report on vanishing languages (ones we often represent—through translation!—in our journal’s digital pages), but we hardly try to preserve them through song.
We know books are important—in Afghanistan, new libraries across the country nourish hungry minds with books. Meanwhile, in the United States, we have the self-loathing book critic.
What’s New with the Asymptote team
This month, catch Asymptote's editor-in-chief at the London Book Fair and at SUTD's Translation Symposium!
Senior Editor (Chinese) Chenxin Jiang spoke on the panel “I’m Not Dead Yet: Translating Living Authors” with Jason Grunebaum, Anna Rosenwong, and Cole Swensen, at AWP in Los Angeles. An excerpt of her translation of Ji Xianlin’s The Cowshed: Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution was featured in The Atlantic.
Assistant Editor K. T. Billey‘s translations of Icelandic poet Bragi Ólafsson have been published in Circumference. Her poetry collection “Vulgar Mechanics” is a finalist for Lincoln Center Fordham’s Poets Out Loud publication prize. Her poem “Self-Portrait, Skull & Ornament” has been shortlisted for Arc Magazine‘s Poem of the Year—vote on the Reader’s Choice Awards here! Her poetry will also be featured in the inaugural Brooklyn Poet’s Anthology forthcoming from Brooklyn Arts Press in 2017.
From 30 December to 4 April, Editor-at-Large for Slovakia Julia Sherwood accompanied Polish writer Hubert Klimko-Dobrzaniecki on a US reading tour with his novella Lullaby for a Hanged Man (translated by Julia and Peter Sherwood and published by Calypso Editions in December 2015). The tour included events at the Word bookstore in Brooklyn, Boston University and UNC Chapel Hill. Next week, on April 12, Julia will be speaking at the London Book Fair on a panel entitled “Non-native Translation: Is It Time to Rethink Where Good Translations Come From?”
Also participating in a London Book Fair panel is Editor-in-Chief Lee Yew Leong, who will talk about “Discovering Stories in Turkey, Asia and Africa” on April 13, and then about “The Politics of Translation” at Singapore University of Technology and Design’s Translation Symposium on April 21.
Romania & Moldova Editor-at-Large MARGENTO saw to the publication in Romanian translation of Ryan Mihaly’s interview with Richard Zenith from our October 2015 issue in Asymptote’s new Romanian partner journal, Observator Cultural. Also in Romania, after an informal interview with MARGENTO, poet and editor Violeta Savu published in the literary magazine Ateneu a presentation of Asymptote covering the Romanian writers featured so far in our journal and also reviewing our latest issue, a contribution also made available online on the writer’s blog.
New Executive Assistant Theophilus Kwek’s third collection of poetry, Giving Ground, was launched in Singapore by Ethos Books. His review of Seamus Heaney’s new translation of Aeneid VI was published in the Oxford Culture Review, and three of his poems were featured in Coldnoon, the international journal of travel writing.
Last month, Indonesia Editor-at-Large Tiffany Tsao published an essay on Eka Kurniawan’s novels Man Tiger and Beauty is a Wound in the Sydney Review of Books .
Weekly News Roundup, 1st April 2016: Not April Fool’s Day
This week's literary highlights from across the world
Happy Friday, Asymptote! It’s April Fool’s (Fools’?) Day today, but I promise I won’t prank you—this roundup-writer is far too pooped from the last week of March to even think about the kinds of deep-cut literary jokes you’d find funny. Plus, too many serious (and big) things happening this week to distract you: AWP is going on right as we speak in Los Angeles, and a number of you are likely checking out all the translation offerings via the famous, tempting ALTA Bookfair Bingo—right? READ MORE…
Weekly News Roundup, 25th March 2016: Another Darkness and Another Noon
This week's literary highlights from across the world
Happy Friday, Asymptote friends! Can you believe we’ve already sprung forward (in the United States, at least)? This means we’re already a quarter-way through the year. Luckily, time flies slowly when digging through the archives: on finding German writer Arthuer Koester’s Darkness at Noon—a masterpiece known to the world only through translation—in its original, maybe. And speaking of the archive: with only black-and-white photos, what color were Franz Kafka’s eyes? This—and 99 other “finds”—in Reiner Stauch’s fascinating curation of Kafkanalia.
Speaking of daylight savings, we sure saved daylight—and lost sleep—on UNESCO’s World Poetry Day this past March 21. Here’s everything you needed to know so you can plan in advance next time. READ MORE…
Weekly News Roundup, 18th March 2016: We Verb Hard
This week's literary highlights from across the world
Happy Friday, Asymptote! Did you miss the roundup last week? The podcast went up instead, and if you missed it, take a listen (especially recommended for traffic jams and spring cleaning sessions). This episode features highlights from our fifth-anniversary New York event—FOMO, begone. READ MORE…
Weekly News Roundup, 4th March 2016: PEN my Heart
This week's literary highlights from across the world
Happy Friday, Asymptote readers! This week’s a doozy. It’s Women’s History Month in the United States, and to celebrate, here’s an article on translating women from the Middle East—why does it matter? (Do we even need to ask?). Sort of related: seven badass women you didn’t learn about in history class, including my favorites, Maria Sibylla Merian and Yaa Asentewaa. READ MORE…
For his collection of short stories, 37 Bridges, contributing editor Aamer Hussein won the KLF/Embassy of France prize for Best Fiction at the Karachi Literature Festival.
Contributing editor Adrian West’s translation of Pere Gimferrer’s Fortuny (of which the first chapter appeared in Asymptote in January 2013) has just been published by David R. Godine. Read Adrian’s Q&A with Scott Esposito and his interview with Pere Gimferrer himself for World Literature Today.
For his translation of Viola Di Grado’s Hollow Heart, contributing editor Antony Shugaar was shortlisted for the 2016 PEN Translation Prize.
Brazil editor-at-large Bruna Lubato wrote an essay about the literary significance of postcards for the Ploughshares blog and also contributed to a feature, “Reading the World,” for the book review supplement of China’s Economic Observer.
Drama Editor Caridad Svich had the world premiere of her play Agua de Luna (psalms for the rouge) at Matrix Theatre in Detroit under Sherrine Azab’s direction. Find out more here.
Contributing editor Ellen Elias-Bursac recently published two reviews: one of Miljenko Jergović’s The Walnut Mansion, and the other one of Julian Borger’s The Butcher’s Trail: The Secret History of the Balkan Manhunt for Europe’s Most-Wanted War Criminals. READ MORE…
Weekly News Roundup, 26th February 2016: Digi-Musee
This week's literary highlights from around the world
Happy Friday, Asymptote. We missed it last week, but here it is: friend of the blog (and source of a great deal of the roundup’s news), Michael A. Orthofer (of the Complete Review) is finally recognized as the meticulous literary heavyweight he is.
Is the future now (or never)? Here’s what robots might learn from literature, according to the Guardian (harumph). And in Paris, France, the City of Light (and Egregious Museums) is set to open a “museum of digital reading” (harumph, indeed).
In Iran, forty different media outlets have (allegedly) pooled money for British author Salman Rushdie’s fatwa, adding over six hundred thousand (!) pounds to the already-hefty sum. Meanwhile, here’s Rushdie on literature and politics—in his own words. The “Free the Word!” event at PEN International might be worth a gander for all this censorship. (Meanwhile, at the Eurovision song contest: is the Ukraine‘s submission an attack on Russia?).
Every once in a while, the non-translation media makes a revelation we knew all along. This time, it’s what we can learn by comparing translations of the Bible (via an interview with Aviya Kushner, author of the absolutely awesome translation memoir, The Grammar of God). Speaking of non-translation (but translation-friendly) texts: Lispector translator Idra Novey’s first novel, Ways to Disappear, features a “disappearing translation superhero.” And the Armenian Weekly emphasizes the point: here’s why it’s important to translate (and re-translate!) the country’s most foundational texts.
In India, there are so, so many literary festivals—about 100! The New York Times argues that these fests are more than strictly literary affairs, but occasions in which “India talks to itself.”
You may have caught the blog’s recent graphic novel in translation—here’s another kind of translation, namely that of culture shock and pictograms, by Chinese visual artist Yang Liu living in Berlin, Germany.
Happy Friday, Asymptote! This week feels like a doozy, and it was. If you’re Berlin-based (Hi, Florian!), you likely saw Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei’s impressive refugee-commemorating installation at the city’s Konzerthaus, furnished with lifejackets provided by the mayor of Lesbos. In that same city, in this same week (!), Berlinale, the city’s famed film festival, raises the question: why aren’t German films as good as they used to be? READ MORE…
Weekly News Roundup, 12th February 2016: Circonflexing Muscles
This week's literary highlights from across the globe
Happy Friday, Asymptote people! Use the weekend to study for an up-to-date spelling test. This week witnessed a tragic end to that inexplicable squiggly line above (certain) vowels: the circonflexe mark (as in “î” or “û”) is going to be removed from official French orthography. And other weird French spellings (“oignon”) are going to be changed in the interest of logic (becoming “ognon”). Unsurprisingly, this #ReformeOrthographe has sparked quite the lively conversation… READ MORE…
Is Italian Literature Having Its Moment?
"...it’s worth noting that Ferrante’s translator, Ann Goldstein, a writer for the New Yorker, has become a household name among literary types."
Last year, a hashtag became wildly popular in the American literary scene for an author no one has seen and who writes in a foreign language.
This year, a different author—one whom everyone knows because she’s won a Pulitzer Prize, among other honors—is taking the nearly unprecedented step of publishing a memoir called In Other Words in dual language format. And—wait for it—the part of the book that contains her original manuscript isn’t in English.
The two authors have something in common: they both write in Italian. That, and they could be presiding over a renaissance in Italian literature (Well, they may be, if publishers, cultural organizations and/or the Italian government exploit this convergence. More on this later).
The first writer is the mysterious Italian novelist Elena Ferrante, celebrated on Twitter by the slogan #ferrantefever, and the second is Jhumpa Lahiri, a British-born, American citizen who decamped to Rome in 2012, with the unusual project of ceasing to read and write in English. (The two have something else in common: Ann Goldstein is their Italian-English translator).
One author shooting to prominence, and shining a spotlight on Italian literature from the inside, the other already enjoying almost unparalleled prominence in American letters, choosing to embark on a courageous path—one which will almost certain provoke curiosity about Italian among non-Italian readers.
Is Italian literature, both in translation and in original form, having its moment? Oh gosh I hope so.