It’s a tale of two Amazons. The Internet behemoth takes consistent steps in the right direction for literature’s longevity: the Kindle is an admittedly practical e-reader, and Kindle Direct Publishing makes it stupidly easy for emerging writers to make things happen. Even at Asymptote, we begrudgingly accept Amazon’s eminence as its imprint AmazonCrossing published the most literature in translation in 2012, thereby besting many publishing houses we’d feel far more comfortable endorsing. However, the mega-corporation’s ubiquity makes independent bibliophiles (understandably) uneasy. This week’s developments underline the lit community’s love-hate sentiment: on one hand, Amazon Publishing has launched Day One, a digital literary magazine showcasing emerging authors and poets. Given its gargantuan scope (and an annual subscription cost of just $9.99!) the corporation’s foray into literary journalism might just rekindle the tradition in a digital age (pun intended). In France, however, the government staunchly defends its independent bookstores by restricting Amazon’s discount pricing.
News
Weekly News Round-Up, 3rd November 2013: Amazon, Neustadt, and PEN Myanmar
International literary news
October 28–November 3, 2013
Paris / worldwide. One exciting piece of news this week is the publication of a new installment of a diminutive Gaulish adventurer’s globe-trotting escapades. Published last Thursday in France, Astérix chez les Pictes also appeared on the very same day in twenty-five languages, which in itself is cause for celebration. Along with the usual suspects (English, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch) it’s good to see a fair slew of minority languages too. Readers on the Iberian peninsula have been particularly lucky, with no fewer than six editions catering to the various language communities there—Portuguese and Castilian, of course, but also Asturian, Basque, Catalan, and Galician. READ MORE…
This Monday, UNESCO unveiled Krakow as its newest City of Literature, after Edinburgh, Melbourne, Iowa City, Dublin, Reykjavík, and Norwich. The announcement comes after a three-year wait; in its 2010 application (all 68 pages available for download here), Krakow is recommended as “a city of Nobel Prize winners.”
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It was thanks to a phenomenon lying somewhere between chance and merit that I ended up attending the Frankfurt Book Fair. In mid-June I signed a contract for the publication of my translation of Josef Winkler’s When the Time Comes (this is a plug, but not a shameless one). Shortly thereafter I came to Berlin. Among other things, I had hoped to meet Dr. Petra Hardt, the foreign rights directress from Suhrkamp, who had been far more encouraging than one would expect from a person of her stature when I wrote her spontaneously two years back asking to translate a Büchner Prize-winning house author from one of the world’s most redoubtable publishing houses. At the lunch, attended as well by her charming colleague Nora Mercurio and Rainer J. Hanshe from Contra Mundum Press, I was asked whether I would be going to Frankfurt. Luckily the facial expression corresponding to the thought I’m still deciding is not very different from the one for I wonder what I’m supposed to say. “I’m not sure yet,” I said, playing it cool, and Petra said that if I decided to, I should come to Suhrkamp’s party. READ MORE…
Weekly news round-up, 20th October 2013: Nobel Prize and awards-season special
The first of our weekly columns on literary news from around the world.
The big news of the week (naturally) was the launch of Asymptote‘s new Fall 2013 issue, and, alongside it, that of a new blog, which we very much hope you’re enjoying. For those of the Asymptote team who’ve worked on the quarterly journal, one of the more exciting things about the blog is the new-found ability to comment on events almost straight away. You’re reading the first of our weekly news round-ups, and the idea is to bring together (and perhaps even hold forth on) the most interesting literary news of the past week.
Stockholm. The problem with launching just over a week after the major literary news of the year – the announcement of the Nobel Prize for Literature – is that we feel compelled to report on it, even though, given the internet’s voracious 24-hour-news appetite, it’s really all a bit old-hat by now. Oh well. We hope your own appetites will stretch to a more international view on proceedings than you might have seen elsewhere. READ MORE…
DISPATCH: International Translation Day, London, 30th September 2013
Asymptote Editor-at-Large Nashwa Gowanlock reports from ITD 2013
If there’s any sure sign of dedication to a cause, then it’s a group of UK-based translators voluntarily heading towards a day-long symposium indoors on an unseasonably warm late-September day in London. As I exited the labyrinth that is Kings Cross station to be blinded by the unexpected sunshine and made my way to the British Library, I noticed the clock on the tower of the St Pancras station. I was running late. The lack of tell-tale signs of a nearby conference about to start—no small clusters of strangers wearing identical badges, cradling coffees or cigarettes while studiously ignoring each other—confirmed it: I was late for the opening session. READ MORE…
Welcome one and all to Asymptote Blog, a brand-new resource on translation, literature, film, music, and the arts from around the world. We’re delighted to be launching on the very same day Asymptote Journal launches its October 2013 issue—the twelfth instalment of what is becoming a venerable institution. Featuring the best of international writing and translation, Asymptote is the fruit of a globe-spanning collaboration between a team of literature lovers stretching from Taipei to Buenos Aires, London to Sydney, Los Angeles to (really!) Kathmandu—you get the picture. With every quarterly issue of the magazine, Asymptote’s team of brilliant editors and contributors helps bring a fresh set of voices into the world.
This blog will be a place for even more voices to be heard. We’ll be bringing you several doses a week of book, film, and music criticism, original translations, interviews with writers and translators, and literary news and opinion from around the world. Over the next few days you can look forward to a new translation by Damion Searls of a Louis Aragon story, a review of Hella Haasse’s The Black Lake, and an introduction to Hindi disco music … in short, Asymptote Blog will be the place to come for original writing unconstrained by form, content, or geographical boundaries. Happy reading!
Zack & Nick
Blog Editors, Asymptote
If you are interested in writing for us, please don’t hesitate to submit your writing or pitch your ideas—we’d love to hear from you. You can reach us at blog [*at*] asymptotejournal [*dot*] com