Weekly Updates from the Front Lines of World Literature

August 7, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Andrew Adair, Clémence Lucchini, and Eva Wissting

This week's literary news from the United States, Sweden, and Mexico!

This week our editors bring you the latest news from Sweden, where a new edition of Nobel Prize-winner Nelly Sachs’s Swedish translations has been published; Mexico, where cultural centre Casa Tomada has continued its remarkable response to the coronavirus situation with a series of author events; and from Boston in the United States, which has lined up exciting programming this summer. Read on to find out more! 

Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden

This summer, Swedish publishing company Faethon released a new collection with the poetry of German-Swedish Nelly Sachs. For the first time, all of the most prominent Swedish translations of her poetry are presented together in one book. The collection includes classical translations by poets such as Gunnar Ekelöf and Erik Lindegren, as well as new interpretations by Margaretha Holmqvist, who also was a friend of Sachs. The book also presents thorough commentaries by Daniel Pedersen, professor in comparative literature, and an afterword by poet and translator Eva Ström.

The Jewish poet and playwright Nelly Sachs was born in 1891 in Berlin and fled together with her mother to Sweden in 1940 where she lived until her death in 1970. Sachs had a long friendship with Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf, who used her contacts with the Swedish royal family to enable Sachs and her mother to escape Nazi Germany. In Sweden, Sachs lived with her mother in Stockholm and it was at this time that she became a poet of note. She remained active as a writer and a translator for the most part of her life. In 1966, Nelly Sachs was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for her outstanding lyrical and dramatic writing, which interprets Israel’s destiny with touching strength.”

READ MORE…

What’s New with the Crew? (August 2020)

August 6, 2020  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Find out what the Asymptote staff have been up to this quarter!

Contributing Editor Adrian Nathan West recently reviewed Darius James’s Negrophobia: An Urban Parable for Review31. His translation of Rainald Goetz’s Rave was also released by Fitzcarraldo Editions last month.

Contributing Editor Ellen Elias-Bursać and past contributor Paula Gordon recently translated Olja Knežević’s Catherine the Great and the Small (out with Istros Books). To find out more, read Matt Janney’s review of the first novel from Montenegrin by a female writer to come out in English translation.

Assistant Director of the Educational Arm Kent Kosack has a new craft essay on Lauren Groff’s short story “Ghosts and Empties” up at Fiction Writers Review and a short story, “Kulshi Bekhir,” out at Hobart.

After presenting a hypermedia performance at DHSI 2020, MARGENTO, editor-at-large for Romania and Moldova, collaborated with Diana Inkpen, Vaibhav Kesarwani, and Prasadith Kirinde Gamaarachchige on an article in Digital Humanities Benelux Journal entitled “A poetic Technology. #GraphPoem and the Social Function of Computational Performance.”

Co-editor-at-large for Argentina Sarah Moses recently published her translation of Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender is the Flesh, distributed by Scribner in the U.S. and Canada.

Want to join our team? Apply to our recruitment drive by August 10!

Something Like Delight: An Interview with So J. Lee

August 5, 2020  |  in Interviews  |  by Sarah Timmer Harvey

The lines I love most in Korean are often the hardest to translate into English. Frankly, it’s a ridiculous language pairing.

For So J. Lee, 2020 has been a year of growth. Just two years after their first translations were published, the Seoul-based writer and translator became Modern Poetry in Translation’s current Writer-in-Residence, recently released the fourth issue of chogwa (their quarterly e-zine showcasing multiple translations of a single poem), and will publish their full-length translation of Lee Hyemi’s Unexpected Vanilla next month, followed by Choi Jin-young’s To the Warm Horizon and Lee Soho’s Catcalling in 2021.

For an emerging translator working in the midst of a global pandemic, Lee’s list of publications is undeniably impressive. But one of the many things that 2020 seems intent on teaching us is that growth can no longer be measured solely in terms of productivity and output. In correspondence and conversation, it’s clear that So J. Lee has already embraced a new kind of metric, acknowledging growing pains and citing introspections, laughter, and everyday pleasures as equally significant indicators of their progression. This was especially evident when I contacted Lee in June, keen to learn more about their forthcoming books, zine, bilingual events, and drag performance. I wanted to begin our interview with a discussion around the imminent publication of Unexpected Vanilla, but instead, Lee asked if we could start the conversation with an unusual announcement . . .

—Sarah Timmer Harvey, July 2020

So J. Lee (SJL): Can I start this interview by announcing my hibernation this winter?

Sarah Timmer Harvey (STH): Of course! Can I ask why you intend to hibernate?

SJL: When Kim Tae-ri was asked about her plans after shooting a film and a TV series back-to-back in 2018, she said, “I plan to enter hibernation. I grew ten cm over the winter break prior starting high school. Let’s see what happens this time.” I love her casual re-articulation of rest as an opportunity for growth. I mean, rest is also rest. I don’t want to glamorize busyness, in the slim chance anyone sees me as a glamorous being. My vibe is more Pizza Rat anyway.

STH: Apart from the obvious pressures facing the world at the moment, what has kept you from resting over the past few months?

SJL: Grief. Ineffable grief and rage. Somehow we have to rest and allow for joy amidst it all. I’m still practicing. 

I’m animated by my three forthcoming books, Lee Hyemi’s Unexpected Vanilla, Choi Jin-young’s To the Warm Horizon (Honford Star, 2021), and Lee Soho’s Catcalling (Open Letter Books, 2021), all of which I reflect on in my recent essay, “Not Exactly a Sister.” I translate women writers who write about women for women, so the word Unni became an organic through-line for introducing their works all at once.

As Modern Poetry in Translation’s Writer-in-Residence, I’m also hosting a virtual workshop on Lee Jenny’s concrete poem “Space Boy Wearing a Skirt.” After that will be my interview with Lee Soho and the fifth issue of chogwa!

STH: Wow, you have been busy! Can we talk about your translation of Lee Hyemi’s Unexpected Vanilla, which is set to be published by Tilted Axis next month?  In 2019, Asymptote published several poems from the collection, including my favourite, “Erasable Seeds.” The poem describes a connection between two people as “a newly thickening forest” grown from “small seeds.” I think about that poem a lot. Like most of Lee Hyemi’s work, it is incredibly sensual and also reminds me of that moment when you first read a poem or line in someone’s poetry or fiction that’s so striking, you know that you just have to translate it. Do you remember which line of Unexpected Vanilla did that for you?

SJL: I was assigned in a translation workshop to translate a poet I’d never read before, and I wanted to try someone younger than Heo Su-gyeong, whose poems I’d tried translating as an undergrad. Then a title caught my eye: Unexpected Vanilla. I read the poem “Femdom” in the final section and realized that this young Korean woman was writing surrealistically about kink! I wanted to tell all my friends about it, which remains my biggest motivation to translate.

I’ve written about the Unni line in “Cupboard with Strawberry Jam” so many times already, but it’s simply iconic. Plus, Lee Hyemi wrote a variation of that line in my copy of the book: “We must be one person, cunningly divergent. Sharing an intimate language.” I’ll always remember the way she pulled out a stamp shaped like a fish and blended multiple colors before pressing it to the page. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Night, wife, detergent” by Kaori Ekuni

August 4, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Sharni Wilson

I love my wife . . . But if she's asking for something that they don't sell at the convenience store, I don't know what to do.

For this week’s Translation Tuesday, a husband construes his stubbornness as miscommunication in Kaori Ekuni’s “Night, wife, detergent.” Ekuni’s trademark wit guides us through this unreliable narrative: a self-assured husband thinks he’s tried everything to understand his wife—everything, that is, except actually listen to her. This messy “misunderstanding” reveals an even more unsettling truth about our narrator: he sees his relationship as a contest for dominance. A probingly comic take on gender dynamics and dysfunctional relationships.

My wife said she wanted to leave me. “We have to talk,” she said.

It was after 10:00 p.m. I was tired. We’ve been married five years, no kids.

“You can get along by pretending not to notice,” my wife said. “But pretending not to notice won’t make it go away.”

When I didn’t reply and kept looking at the TV, she turned it off. I had no idea what I was supposed to be pretending not to notice, or what wouldn’t go away. As always.

As she stood over me, glaring at me, I noticed that her pedicure was chipped. “Do you need nail polish remover?” I blurted out, with hope and relief mingled in my voice. You can’t remove nail polish without nail polish remover. Is that why she’s upset?

My wife shook her head.

“Well, then it must be those square cotton wipes. The ones you said you couldn’t do without, when I told you to use tissues instead—you’ve run out of those wipes.”

My wife sighed. “No. I don’t mean anything like that. I have nail polish remover and cotton wipes. The only reason my nail polish is chipped is that I’m so busy I haven’t had time to do my nails.” READ MORE…

Our Enduring Fascination: On Patrik Svensson’s The Book of Eels

August 3, 2020  |  in Reviews  |  by Eva Wissting

Turning eels into an interesting read may seem challenging to some, but it’s exactly what Svensson accomplishes.

The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson, translated from the Swedish by Agnes Broomé, HarperCollins, 2020

The full English title of Swedish arts and culture journalist Patrik Svensson’s debut book is spot on: The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World. The original Swedish subtitle lacks “Our Enduring Fascination” and simply states “The Story of the Most Mysterious Creature in the World.” I like the English title better, because it’s that detail, the fact that the book is not just about eels, but also about us humans, our interest in the eels, and why they should matter to us, that makes this book about a slimy, snake-like water-creature relevant. 

Maybe you don’t think that you could be interested in a full-length book about every conceivable fact about eels. I certainly didn’t know I could be that interested until the buzz hit the Swedish literary scene last fall. It wasn’t just the book reviews, the author interviews, or the literary podcasts that kept turning their attention to The Book of Eels—Svensson was also awarded the August Prize, Sweden’s most prestigious literary award. And it didn’t stop there; even before the year ended, The Book of Eels had been sold to over thirty other countries. When I first heard about The Book of Eels, I could see why it stirred interest, because the subject matter is unconventional. So, what is the buzz all about? Well, for being a book about scientific, historic, and philosophical facts, it’s put together and presented in a prose that is easy to follow, even if you don’t typically read about the science of the bottom of the ocean or the ancient Greek origin of the scientific method. This is how Svensson depicts the Sargasso Sea:

The water is deep blue and clear, in places very nearly 23,000 feet deep, and the surface is carpeted with vast fields of sticky brown algae called Sargassum, which give the sea its name. Drifts of seaweed many thousands of feet across blanket the surface, providing nourishment and shelter for myriad creatures: tiny invertebrates, fish and jellyfish, turtles, shrimp, and crabs. Farther down in the deep, other kinds of seaweed and plants thrive. Life teems in the dark, like a nocturnal forest.

And so, with that nocturnal forest, Svensson establishes the centre stage for the Anguilla anguilla, the European eel, while simultaneously teaching us about the natural world and drawing us into his narrative. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

July 31, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Filip Noubel, Julia Sherwood, and Nestor Gomez

This week's latest news from Czech Republic, Moldova, and El Salvador!

The engines of global literature churn on amidst a summer full of suspensions, and our editors on the ground are here to bring you the latest in their developments. Though the Czech Republic and El Salvador mourn the losses of two literary heroes, their legacies are apparent in the multiple peregrinations of their works, continuing. Furthermore: an exciting new Moldovan translation and a resurfaced scandal implicating the widely-lauded Milan Kundera.

Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Czech Republic

Poet and essayist Petr Král, who died on June 17 at the age of seventy-eight, was not only an original poet continuing the surrealist tradition, but also a distinguished translator who moved freely between his native Czech and French, the language he adopted after emigrating to Paris in 1968, following the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. Král’s translations introduced key poets of the French avant-garde to Czech readers, and the three anthologies he translated and published also helped to put Czech poetry on the map in France. After 1989, he moved back to Prague, and in 2016 was honoured with the Czech State Prize for Literature, while in 2019 he was awarded the Grand Prix de la Francophonie by the Académie française. His loss is mourned equally in Prague and in Paris.

Just over ten years ago, another great Czech-born writer who has made Paris his home, Milan Kundera, was embroiled in a huge controversy after an article in the Czech weekly Respekt alleged that, as a student and an ardent communist, the future writer had denounced another young man to the secret police, resulting in the latter’s arrest and years spent in labour camps. These allegations, which Kundera has always strenuously denied, reared their ugly head again last month, when Czech-American writer Jan Novák published Kundera’s unauthorized biography. As the title suggests, Kundera. Český život a doba (Kundera. His Czech Life and Times) concentrates on the writer’s early life and career before his emigration to France and purports to lift the veil further on “the moral relativist’s” infatuation with communism. The book has caused quite a stir, with some critics hailing it as well-researched and highly readable, while others, including journalist Petr Fischer and author and former Asymptote contributor Radka Denemarková, regard it as little more than a hatchet job, questioning Novák’s use of secret police files as a reliable source of information. Milan Kundera has maintained silence.

On the other hand, underground writer and philosopher Egon Bondy (1930–2007), the enfant terrible of Czech literature and lyricist for the punk band Plastic People of the Universe, never denounced his left-wing beliefs and took revelations of his collaboration with the secret police on the chin. In protest against the splitting of Czechoslovakia, Bondy moved to the Slovak capital, Bratislava, where he devoted himself to the study and translation of Chinese philosophy. In 1997 he wrote his final book, inspired by the life of Lao Tzu. Dlouhé ucho (The Long Ear), which had long been considered lost, was finally published this May, thirteen years after Bondy’s death in a fire that broke out in his flat when he fell asleep with a burning cigarette. READ MORE…

Announcing our July Book Club Selection: A Musical Offering by Luis Sagasti

July 30, 2020  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Josefina Massot

If silence and solitude go hand in hand, so do music and communion.

After Fireflies’s acclaimed release in 2018, we are thrilled to present our July Book Club selection: Luis Sagasti’s A Musical Offering, the Argentine author’s second translation into English by Charco Press. Out this month in the UK alone, it is an early gift to our subscribers overseas. And what a gift it is: adding plenty of heart to the author’s signature heady humor, this exquisitely lyrical, genre-bending work explores music’s ties to everything from sand paintings to stars—and above all, perhaps, its ability to ward off death and loneliness.

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 USD15 per book; once you’re a member, you can join the online discussion on our Facebook page! 

A Musical Offering by Luis Sagasti, translated from the Spanish by Fionn Petch, Charco Press, 2020

In his classic Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter waxes lyrical about the German composer’s BWV 1079. The Musical Offering is, he claims, J.S. Bach’s “supreme accomplishment in counterpoint”: “one large intellectual fugue” rife with forms and ideas, hidden references, and cheeky innuendos. The same could be said of Luis Sagasti’s near-eponymous book (the author humbly drops the “the” for an “a”), out now from Charco Press in Fionn Petch’s seamless rendition.

Anchored in music itself, this magpie suite of literary bites spans centuries, geographies, and disciplines. It opens with an allegedly nonfictional one-pager on the birth of the Goldberg Variations, another Bachian staple: in the retelling, Count Keyserling requests a musical sleep aid, to be executed nightly by the young virtuoso after whom it’ll be later named (a fetching origin story, no doubt, though I must side with those who think it apocryphal; as a seasoned insomniac, I can’t fathom sleeping through the shift from mellow aria to zesty first variatio, let alone the jump to outright fervid fifth).

Whatever its epistemic status—much of the book waltzes gracefully from fact to fiction—the narrative soon leads to something like a micro-essay packing a Borgesian punch: is Goldberg an inverted Scheherezade, Sagasti wonders, his endless performance meant to usher in sleep’s “little death” rather than stall it? These musings, in turn, link to a personal anecdote—the author humming his favorite lullaby—echoed in what can only be described as aphorism: “When a child first learns to hum a melody, the child stops being music and (…) becomes [its] receptacle” (or, ditching poetry for pop, “No child could fall asleep to [the Beatles’s] ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’”). This is just a sample; a thousand and one ties can be drawn among snippets on music and sleep, silence, space, or war, not just within the book’s broadly themed sections but across them—a veritable fugue of insights and literary forms. READ MORE…

A Linguistic Emigration: Chinese Women Writers on Their Translation Practices

July 29, 2020  |  in Interviews  |  by Jiaoyang Li

You want to learn a language not only to fit in, but to create something new in it, like any native speaker would do.

Recently, I came across an interesting comment, that despite the fact that more POC writers are being published, the English publishing world will not actually become more diverse, as the editors and gatekeepers who select them for publication continue to be predominantly white.

Asian writers have perhaps heard similar feedback from their editors: “Your story is not Asian enough,” or: “Why don’t you write more about your family’s immigration stories?” Sometimes the endeavors of white editors to market POC writers may in fact reinforce stereotypes. The same could be said for translations: if the translators of foreign literature continue to be exclusively white, native English speakers, then English readers would likely continue to receive material that reinforces their expectations, rather than that which may broaden their perspectives.

The word translation is rooted in the Latin translātus (to carry over); it’s always about appropriation and transition, but that doesn’t mean we should stop thinking about how we can strive for a more inclusive and dynamic future in publishing—trusting and bringing in more POC translators to deliver English translations may be one solution.

Jianan Qian, Na Zhong, and Liuyu Ivy Chen are all millennial Chinese female writers who have received higher education in both China and the US. They write bilingually and translate between their two languages, having already introduced several talented contemporary Chinese experimental writers and young female authors to the English world. Their work has been tremendous thus far, and one expects their futures to be even greater.

                                                                                          —Jiaoyang Li, July 2020

Jiaoyang Li (JL): All of you were writers before becoming translators. What is the relationship between writing and translation for you? Is translation a kind of creative writing?

Jianan Qian (JQ): For me, the purpose of literary translation is twofold. First, the work pushes me to do intensive reading. Usually I choose my own translation projects, so I can take the time to appreciate the author’s writing on a granular level. I also consider translation to be a writing practice—it might be a sort of creative writing, but for me, it is more like an opportunity to see how beauty comes into being differently in the two languages. I work with a wonderful co-translator, Alyssa Asquith, and I always learn a lot about linguistic, aesthetic, and cultural differences from our exchanges.

Na Zhong (NZ): A great translator should think like a writer, and to be a great writer you have to be a great reader. Translation provides the reliable gymnastic exercise for me to maintain, stretch, and become aware of my linguistic muscles. A rich text demands that I pay maximum attention to its diction, syntax, voice, and many other elements of writing. And a carefully chosen word can lead me into the depths of the story that would be impossible to reach if I were only engaging with it as a casual reader.

And yes, translating is a kind of creative writing, as imitation lies at the heart of all art forms. In the most literal sense, translating is rewriting the story in another language. It allows me, the translator, to adopt a voice and way of storytelling that I have never embodied before. The writer creates the characters imaginatively; the translator recreates the implied writer imaginatively.

Liuyu Ivy Chen (LC): For me, writing in my second language is an act of translation; living in a foreign country is a daily work of translation. Reading a new book, meeting strangers, falling in love, visiting an old place, or forgetting about the past are all translations to be enacted or retracted. This distance to cross and reduce is not so much between two languages, but between me and the world. There is so much I don’t understand, and translation is one way to cope with the unknown, to stay open-minded, and to bring seemingly unattainable beauty closer to touch. I read, write, and translate to touch the world. Translation is not only a kind of creative writing; it is a way of living. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Death of the Doll” by Viktor Dyk

July 28, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Frances Jackson

. . . she asked the doll whether she loved her and the doll very clearly said yes

This week’s Translation Tuesday brings you a modern moral fable from the nationalist Czech writer and politician Viktor Dyk. In “The Death of the Doll,” a child copes with loneliness and perpetual familial strife by finding kinship and love in a cherished doll; in the child’s imagination, the doll even becomes a voiced character. Dyk’s prose is deceptively sparse, mimicking the naïve and heartbreaking simplicity of the child’s worldview, which is brilliantly contrasted with the vitriolic dialogue of the parents. Translator Frances Jackson writes: “In another writer’s hands this could have all too easily descended into melodrama, but instead there is something satisfyingly understated about the text.”

The doll was very beautiful, all slender and white in a little pink dress. Her name was Edda and she could move both her head and her eyes. She could be seen in the window from the street and often made passing children envious because of her great size and beauty. Otilka sat with her by the window for that very reason; it pleased her to know that, in spite of everything, someone could be envious of something of that belonged to her.

If it were not for the doll, Otilka would have been sad most of the time. The room was dim and gloomy; she did not like to be in here. The sun did not shine this way: there was a tall building directly opposite. And the street outside was straight and inhospitable. Really, Edda was all that she had.

Twice a day, of course, she had to take the dismal stairs to get to school. And it was always torture to Otilka. People frightened her and so did school. There was nobody there to play with, nobody who might comfort her; the other children did play games, but she didn’t like it when they did. The games were unpleasant and rough, and the children unpleasant and spiteful. It gave them pleasure to hurt her; Otilka often found herself crying. It was probably all down to the malice of a bad wizard who had cast her among bad people.

And lately, in particular, it was no different with her mother. She used to play with her sometimes, tell her fairy tales and would even laugh every now and again, but now it was as if she did not have any time or just a smile for Otilka. And yet it was just the three of them there. READ MORE…

Section Editors’ Highlights: Summer 2020

July 27, 2020  |  in News  |  by Eva Heisler, Garrett Phelps, Lee Yew Leong, Sam Carter, Sarah Timmer Harvey, and Varun Nayar

From Misty poetry to texts both visual and conceptual, our latest issue is bright with offerings.

As testament both to our times and to Asymptote’s ongoing commitment to accentuating the richness and value of global literature, our Summer 2020 issue is replete with texts that vary in their gifts but are unified in their resonance. To help you navigate this selection, our section editors are here with their top picks.

From Lee Yew Leong, Fiction Editor and “Vignettes” Special Feature Editor:

Less diverse than a typical Asymptote lineup, I’m nevertheless proud of the five pieces I curated for the regular Fiction section: Each one wrestles with despair—even if it’s a different timber of dread than the one we’re currently in. In Italian author Christian Raimo’s “No More Cult of the Dead for Twentieth-Century Italy,” two men, haunted by dreams of dead bodies, set out to find and bury one. It’s an exhilarating tale of redemption set against the backdrop of a financial crisis—rendered in Brian Robert Moore’s tonally perfect translation. Don’t miss Czech novelist Daniela Hodrová’s Puppets (Living Pictures); cotranslators Elena Sokol and Véronique Firkusny took home a 2020 PEN Translates Award for their masterful work. In the hypnotic excerpt that we were lucky to present, the reader is whisked across time via a jump-rope. Featuring translations from the Arabic, Chinese, Macedonian, Portuguese, Russian, and Telugu, our more diverse wildcard Special Feature shines a spotlight on the humble vignette. From conventional shorts to metafictional haikus, there’s truly something for everyone. My favorite is perhaps Marianna Geide’s People and Other Beings. Via translator (and past contributor) Fiona Bell, Geide conjures up bizarre creatures—insects shaped like bird droppings, predators shaped like human ears, uselessly decorative bugs, mushroom people—and examines each of her specimens with the precision of a jeweler.

From Garrett Phelps, Poetry Editor:

“Dead Sea” by Yang Lian feels about as close as a piece of writing can get to its subject. Even more impressive is that he does this in two hundred and seventy words, and that the subject is a country gripped by a modern plague. It’s a vision of hell illustrated with “a dense tessellation of images, often hard for the translator to disentangle, which build and build to powerfully symphonic effect,” in the words of translator Brian Holton. Despite the obscurity, however, it’s oddly tangible and even familiar at times, probably because this same hell has become global.

dead fishies drift with the tide     with no high hopes of escaping underwater
there is no underwater in your world

From Sam Carter, Criticism Editor:

In a review of Dmitri Prigov‘s Soviet Texts, Dan Shurley makes the Russian conceptualist writer’s work come alive by grounding an analysis of his work in broader trends both inside and outside the former Soviet Union. Prigov was, as Shurley explains, “a shape-shifter and a master of appropriating the lofty rhetoric of Soviet authority in whatever form it took,” and Shurley carefully guides us through the many offerings and intricacies of the collection that was published by Ugly Duckling Presse and translated by Simon Schuchat with Ainsley Morse.

Another collection, this time of work from multiple writers, is discussed in Ysabelle Cheung‘s review of That We May Live, which contains seven stories of Chinese speculative fiction that delve into alternate realities not entirely separate from our own. Cheung walks us through examinations of particular concerns that, taken together, allow this anthology to “reference global philosophical quandaries and anxieties.” READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

July 24, 2020  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Charlie Ng, Daniel Persia, and José García Escobar

This week's latest news from Brazil, Hong Kong, and Central America!

This week, our writers bring you news of what’s happening around the world. In Brazil, a newly published collection draws together international voices discussing their experience during quarantine; in Hong Kong, tightened lockdown measures have meant book fairs and events moving online; and in Central America, the Autores en cuarentena event series is taking place online, whilst Carlos Wyld Espina’s essential political essay El Autócrata has been reissued. 

Daniel Persia, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Brazil

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has no doubt weighed heavily on writers, altering not only their physical workspaces and subject matter, but also their orientation to the art itself. In Brazil, the Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS) has invited 126 individuals and collectives to reflect on their experiences during quarantine, featuring multimedia work from writers, visual artists, and musicians, among others. Meanwhile, reflections have gone global with Para além da quarentena: reflexões sobre crise e pandemia, which showcases critical discussions from Brazil, Italy, France, Portugal, the United States, and Uruguay. The collection, released in June, is available in free pdf and e-book formats through mórula editorial.

Another new release, Pandemônio: nove narrativas entre São Paulo—Berlim [Pandemonium: Nine Narratives Bridging São Paulo—Berlin], takes a more in-depth look from two of the world’s major literary hubs: São Paulo and Berlin. Organized by Cristina Judar and Fred Di Giacomo, Pandemônio touches on the pandemic, the ongoing economic crisis, and the advance of authoritarianism, highlighting similarities and differences between São Paulo and Berlin. Featured authors include Aline Bei, Cristina Judar, Jorge Ialanji Filholini and Raimundo Neto (representing São Paulo) and Carola Saavedra, Fred Di Giacomo, Alexandre Ribeiro, Karin Hueck, and Carsten Regel (representing Berlin). Pandemônio illustrates the strength of collective testimony, highlighting how stories have the power to bridge experiences from distant corners of the globe. The book is available for free online at www.pandemonioantologia.com, and through Amazon. A full English translation will be released in August. READ MORE…

The Beauty of the Original: Sam Taylor on Translating Jean-Baptiste Andrea’s A Hundred Million Years and a Day

July 23, 2020  |  in Book Club, Interviews  |  by Barbara Halla

. . . it’s always a special pleasure to translate someone who writes perfect sentences, which I think is the case with Jean-Baptiste.

The questions and ideas that Jean-Baptiste Andrea tackles in his lauded novel, A Hundred Million Years and a Day, beautifully inform the wisdom that all searches for truth are equally intrinsic as they are extrinsic. As our Book Club selection for the month of June, the work delves into psychological complexities with erudition and poetry. A Hundred Million Years and a Day is translated into English by the award-winning author and translator, Sam Taylor, who graciously spoke to our assistant editor, Barbara Halla, about his process and methods.

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 USD15 per book; once you’re a member, you can join the online discussion on our Facebook page! 

Barbara Halla (BH): While reading A Hundred Million Years and a Day, I was reminded of another recent translation of yours: Hubert Mingarelli’s Four Soldiers. In both books, unlikely friendships develop under strenuous circumstances, and there is a certain reverence for the small interactions that make human connection possible. To the extent that you are able to pick which books you translate, do you find yourself drawn to specific themes?

Sam Taylor (ST): I hadn’t thought about that connection, but you’re right: there are similarities there. Both authors also share a very simple, controlled, vivid prose style that makes you feel as though you’re inside the minds and bodies of the characters. More generally, I’ve also translated quite a few books set in or referencing World War Two. However, this isn’t down to a conscious choice on my part. In fact, it probably has more to do with publishers ‘typecasting’ me to some extent. Thankfully, I’ve translated enough very different authors and books that it’s not really a problem. What I enjoy is the variety that comes with translation, rather than constantly being drawn to the same themes. On the other hand, it’s always a special pleasure to translate someone who writes perfect sentences, which I think is the case with Jean-Baptiste.

BH: How different is it to translate a book like this one from, say, Laurent Binet’s The 7th Function of Language? Do you conduct any substantial research before translating texts that rely heavily on a specific type of knowledge, be it palaeontology or semiotics?

ST: No, I think that kind of in-depth research is the author’s prerogative. When I wrote a novel set in Renaissance Italy, I spent a whole year researching it (including a two-week trip around Italy), but I don’t have that kind of luxury—in terms of time or money—when it comes to translations because I regularly translate between six and twelve books/screenplays every year. Some ‘research’ is needed for books with specialist vocabulary (as with this novel) and/or lots of quotes and references (e.g. for The 7th Function), but I do it online as I’m translating the book; I don’t read through lots of reference works beforehand. READ MORE…

Where Sunsets & Anguish Collide: Isolation in Lebanese Literature

July 22, 2020  |  in Essays  |  by MK Harb

Despite their preoccupations, be they literary or ideological, they both pause and capture love during calamity.

In the past few months, we’ve been forced to dwell on our place in the world in the light of extraordinary circumstances. As most of us experience a certain degree of forced isolation, we predictably turn to literature, in hopes that its wisdoms will enable us to regard our realities with increased awareness, understanding, and presence. In this following essay, writer MK Harb takes us through the various manifestations of isolation as seen in Lebanese literature, and more specifically via two extraordinary texts by two Lebanese-American authors, Rabih Alameddine’s An Unnecessary Woman and Etel Adnan’s Sitt Marie Rose.

“During these unprecedented times . . .”

I have heard and read this line over a thousand times since the pandemic began. In a fortnight, we have entered an echo chamber in which a voice is constantly screaming “unprecedented times” at us. Sometimes this voice comes in the form of an email, other times a news clipping, but mostly, it speaks to us as a marketing gimmick. Countless products remind us that these times are in fact unprecedented as they encourage us to buy sanitization stations, virtual university booths, luxury hazmat suits, and other products that commercialize placebo. Maybe the academic part of myself hates the word unprecedented; I have found that the cynicism of academia manifests in teaching that every time is precedent. From pandemics to famine to injustice, it has all been here before.

What is unprecedented in our current cataclysm is our collective online grief; from Zoom calls to Skype sessions, it has never been more ravenous and visible. However, after a while, one realizes that this excessive online engagement numbs the mind more than reassures it. Instead, resorting to literature has been one of the few escapes out of the confines of my living room to more alluring worlds. From Yasmine Seale’s new translation of Aladdin, to Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and Garth Greenwell’s Cleanness, I feel the intimacy of reading and caressing a text much more deeply than that of a video call. During these literary excursions, I discovered the omnipresence of isolation as a theme in contemporary Lebanese literature. The irony of this discovery was not lost on me; the isolation of a pandemic led me to isolation in fiction.

As I drew out these conceptual maps of society’s outcasts, I noticed their versatility. Sometimes it manifests in the trials and trepidations of a gay man in Hoda Barakat’s The Stone of Laughter, in which the character navigates a war-torn and derelict Beirut from his lonely apartment. Other times this isolation results from the acts of resistance and radicalism, as in Emily Nasrallah’s The Oleander Tree, which takes place during an epoch when the protagonist Rayya resists the feudal and patriarchal roles set for the women of her village. However, two authors in particular were naturally and strongly united in this theme: Rabih Alameddine and Etel Adnan.

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Translation Tuesday: “What I see” by Beatrice Cristalli

July 21, 2020  |  in Translations  |  by Julia Pelosi-Thorpe

You see, even if I don’t see you / I know you’re breathing inside of us.

Love in the time of lockdown is given voice in Beatrice Cristalli’s “What I see,” this week’s Translation Tuesday selection. Written in response to the COVID-19 crisis in Italy, the poem’s speaker prefaces the piece with a philosophical declaration about fate—through subtle and clever enjambment (the power of the poem’s one punctuated line: “Right?”), this musing becomes the speaker’s guiding question. The poem flows through possibilities and memories, to and from that one pivotal inquiry. Seemingly mundane objects—a toothbrush, a comb, a jumper—are charged with new emotive meaning as they evoke the processes brought about by the lockdown: leaving. Absence. And remembering. The speaker, trapped in the moment when these objects were fixed in place by circumstance, longs for the safety of a missing love.

What I see 

They say all’s subjective
But things play parts in fate
Right?
READ MORE…