Happy April! It’s too late for April Fool’s trickery at the roundup, but the announcement of German publisher PediaPress’ proposal to print out all of Wikipedia—yes, all four million articles, amounting to one thousand volumes and a bookcase eight feet long and 32 feet high—certainly seems like a prank of Rushdie-selfie proportions. READ MORE…
News
Weekly News Roundup, 4th April 2014: Wiki-Dictionaries, Muhammed: the Opera, Translating Kafka and Joyce
This week's literary highlights from across the world
Weekly News Roundup, 28th March 2014: Pretty literary pennies, Prison reading
This week's literary highlights from across the world
Writing is a notoriously penny-pinching métier, unless you’re Canadian Nobel winner Alice Munro—whom the Canadian government has graced with a $5 commemorative coin of her very own. Don’t count on making literary purchases with the coin any time soon, though: the coin costs $69.95, which—granted, we aren’t mathematicians here at Asymptote—seems like a not-so-smart investment. READ MORE…
Asymptote Never Sleeps: Contributor News Roundup
From films to exhibitions, here's what Asymptote contributors have been up to lately.
Coming May 7, 2014! Moroccan writer Abdellah Taïa’s widely anticipated screen debut L’armée du salut (Salvation Army) has been making waves at film festivals. Watch an excerpt of the prize-winning movie here and find out more on Taïa’s official Facebook page. For French speakers: a French-language interview with Taïa. Revisit his open letter “Homosexuality Explained to My Mother,” translated into English and Chinese exclusively for Asymptote here.
Alexander Dickow brings Henri Droguet’s poetry to the United States for the first time with Clatters. Published by Rain Taxi imprint Ohm Editions, Droguet’s French text appears beside Dickow’s translation. In the translator’s afterword, Dickow opines: “Never, perhaps, has so pure a litany of despair, vanity, destruction and decay given rise to such vibrant language.” Lovely!
Moving away from the Francophone world… Boey Kim Cheng co-edited a crucial anthology of Asian Australian poetry–get up to speed with the project here. His own poem “Plumb blossom or Quong Tart” appears with voices “from Pakistan to Singapore to Thailand to Goa and beyond, telling diverse, richly textured and evolving stories.”
Forrest Gander is speaking tonight, March 26, at SOAS, University of London, about modern and contemporary Japanese poetry in translation and how it has influenced literature originally written in English. He will tackle the question so many readers have only wondered at: What gets translated and why? Join him and Asymptote contributing editor Sayuri Okamoto.
Weekly News Roundup, 21st March 2014: Welcome to Translationland
A look at some of the most important literary news of the past week
Spring has sprung today, but it’s more than likely the weather is still less-than-stellar, wherever you are. At the New York Review of Books, British novelist Zadie Smith eulogizes the seasons in the shadow of climate change. Elsewhere, watch a conversation between Smith and Nigerian-American author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on writing postcolonial literature, or read about Adichie’s literary Lagos.
Fellow Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole posted his essay A Piece of the Wall, on immigration, entirely on Twitter (here’s how the social media platform is changing the face of fiction, despite griping critics). Themes of diaspora and identity certainly resonate with readers: Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo has snagged the PEN/Hemingway Award for her novel We Need New Names, about a 10-year-old girl moving to the United States. But don’t make these mistakes when reading immigrant fiction: a view from Germany, via our friends at Words Without Borders.
Asymptote’s 3rd Anniversary Celebrations in March and April (Plus: our New Events Page, with Multimedia!)
Check out highlights from our past celebrations in London and New York, and don't miss our upcoming events!
We’re thrilled to announce that Asymptote’s globetrotting third anniversary party, which kicked off in London and New York in January, will continue across five continents over the next month—watch our brand-new video trailer below for a taste, and don’t forget to RSVP at our Shanghai (March 29), Philadelphia (March 29), Berlin (April 3), and Sydney (April 11) Facebook Event pages, already live.
In case you can’t make it, don’t fret: we’ve launched a new Events page, where you can find photos, podcasts, videos, and dispatches of all the events we’ve ever organized, as well as an up-to-date pulse for all upcoming events!
Weekly News Roundup, 14th March 2014: BTBA (yay!), Illustrated texts
A look at some of the most important literary news of the past week
We report on book prize-awarding every week here at the Roundup, but it isn’t often that we’re so giddy to see some nominations: our friends at Three Percent have announced the longlist for the 2014 Best Translated Book Award, awarded in categories of both fiction and poetry. We’re especially happy to see the remarkably diverse longlist include several Asymptote alums, past and present: our very own Howard Goldblatt, Asymptote contributing editor, is up for his translation of Mo Yan’s Sandalwood Death (read Goldblatt’s recent essay about his relationship with author Huang Chunming here!), Mircea Cărtărescu, longlisted for Blinding (excerpted in our October 2013 issue), Arnon Grunberg for Tirza (Grunberg’s piece on J.M. Coetzee here), last year’s winner Lászlo Krasznahorkai for Seibobo Here Below (read his remarkable short prose in our July 2013 issue, translated by blog contributor Ottilie Mulzet), Javier Marías’ The Infatuations, translated by the venerable Margaret Jull Costa (interviewed here), Stig Sætterbakken’s Through the Night (don’t miss our review from our January issue), and many, many more—phew! One thing’s for sure: we don’t envy the difficult decisions those judges have got to make in the coming weeks.
Weekly News Roundup, 7th March 2014: March madness, Big lit bullies, Lit whizzing
A look at some of the most important literary news of the past week
It’s the first Friday of March, and the month’s madness is already underfoot. If you think we’re referring to the sort of lunacy of hoops, athleticism, and bouncing orange balls, don’t be fooled: in the wake of the madness that is AWP in Seattle, this March portends quite a bit for literary lunatics, as the finalists for several big-name prizes are announced… READ MORE…
Asymptote Never Sleeps: Editor News Roundup
The latest from Asymptote's team of international editors
Hard at work on Asymptote’s upcoming issue, our editors still have time to write, publish, translate, and organize conferences and plays. Read the thrilling and bizarre ruminations of Forrest Gump’s Slovakian evil twin, an essay on why loss in translation is inevitable and okay, and find out what to do in Seattle now that AWP has ended!
Weekly Roundup, 28th February 2014: Asymptote in Seattle, Anti-Anachronism-Bot, Socrates or Seacrest?
A look at some of the most important literary news of the past week
If you are anywhere near the Pacific Northwest, head on over to Asymptote’s booth at the AWP, or the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference in Seattle, Washington. Good news is that after widespread outcry, the conference is open to the bookish riffraff public, which means you should absolutely come check out the literati—including our managing editor Tara FitzGerald and Central Asia editor-at-large Alex Cigale! They’ll be answering your questions and raffling away translated goodies. READ MORE…
An Interview with Javier Molea
"Basically, no one knows what great Latin American writers are teaching in New York."
Since beginning at McNally Jackson ten years ago, Javier Molea has stretched his title as bookseller to its absolute limits. In the process, he has positioned himself firmly at the crux of a burgeoning New York Spanish-language literary community. READ MORE…
Asymptote at AWP
If you're going to AWP, drop by and say hi. Pssst...if you are a past contributor, we've got a surprise for you!
Attention literature lovers: the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) is holding its Annual Conference and Bookfair this year in Seattle, Washington, and your favorite literature journal Asymptote will make its first AWP appearance!
I just keep on repeating his name, I call out to him, I call him on the phone, as if he would answer. I have no words. The demons of death had been hovering around Szilárd for a long time. I was afraid of them at times—he certainly was not. He lived with them, but he did not feed them. READ MORE…
Weekly News Roundup, 21st February 2014: Translation is the prize!
A look at some of the most important literary news this past week
This week in literary prizewinning witnessed what seems like yet another entry in the Good, the Bad, and the downright Strange. While we can’t really complain about the fact that the Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists include more translations than the average translation-phobic English-language book prizes, the Times omitted to mention the translators’ names—or the fact that the books were translations themselves.
Our past contributors have been busy! Publishing new work, organizing translation contests, accepting prizes and writing poetry and articles (read it all today, right this instant!)—the only thing they haven’t done is procrastinate.