Place: Brazil

Translation Tuesday: “The Competition” by Mário Araújo

September 13, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by Elton Uliana

The landscape trembled, like when a person shakes while taking a picture.

This Translation Tuesday, we bring to you a charming story of a family race on an open field by the Jabuti Prize-winning writer Mário Araújo. In that brief stretch between the starting gun and an imaginary finish line, Araújo captures the kaleidoscopic psyche of a young girl at play. In Elton Uliana’s translation, we glimpse in “The Competition” a nimble adolescent mind figuring out the language to articulate her ambition, fear, affection, in short, her complexity. 

It was their father who, imitating the sound of a gun with his voice, gave the signal to start. The boy lagged behind right from the beginning, while she and her father thrust their legs forward, side by side; she was trying to perfect her incredibly fast steps to compensate for his much longer strides. The boy was behind mainly because, between the excitement and the distraction, he had delayed a couple of seconds before reacting to the starting gun.

Her head only came up to her father’s waist, but the fact is that, at that moment, she was barely looking at him, focused entirely as she was on her own performance. All she could manage was to feel his presence next to her, a dark, solid figure of great size, wearing the trousers he always wore. She was frustrated that his body needed to make much less effort than hers. Her father looked like he was floating in mid-air, but even so he still seemed invincible. It seemed as if he was moving forward, pulled by the power of the real propellers that were her feet, attracting everything around them like magnets. She could swear that he didn’t know where and how his daughter had learned to run as fast as that. The truth is that she learned a lot in the time she spent away from him and her mother. Hour after hour, day after day playing in the open field next to the house, dressed like a boy, wearing trainers—sometimes even barefoot—t-shirt and shorts, very different from the pretty little Beatrice her father saw at night, in pink or light-yellow pyjamas, or on Sundays, when she dressed up or went for lunch at their relatives’ house.

Now they were all in the open, her father, little Luke and her, and that would give her even more advantage, since she knew the field like the back of her hand. Her father shouted something and, by the way the words were framed by his lips, he seemed to be smiling, but she didn’t quite understand as she was concentrating on her task and the wind was howling heavily in her ears. She felt annoyed when she realized that her lazy dad, in addition to being carried on the wings of her jet propellers, still looked relaxed and happy. She quickened her pace even more to the point where her heart was almost touching that little thing in the back of her throat the doctor calls tonsils, and her mother calls bells.

As for little Luke, she didn’t have time for him now, he was such a baby. She only hoped that he wasn’t sitting on the grass crying and forcing their father to interrupt the competition and help him. But she couldn’t hear any crying, perhaps because the wind was blowing in her ears, the wind of that open field, a wind that lived there. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Prodigy” by Nei Lopes

August 2, 2022  |  in Translations  |  by Robert Smith

Rumor had it the festival in the bay was being watched from the highest parts of the city too.

This Translation Tuesday, dive into a short story from Jabuti Prize-winning author Nei Lopes that takes the reader a century back to Guanabara Bay in Brazil where a circus troupe disembarks. Drawn from a short story collection (Nas águas desta baía há muito tempo: Contos da Guanabara) that zooms in on complex and forgotten chapters in Brazilian history. Hear from translator Robert Smith how Lopes, in Smith’s own words, “undertook meticulous historical research to offer a sweeping view of the place and era, celebrating Afro-Brazilian culture and exploring the history of systemic racism.”

“In portraying a dynamic period of upheaval, the narrator Prodigy occasionally overwhelms readers with the feeling that too much is happening too fast. At the same pace that his story becomes entangled with that of the geographical region, two revolts, and the historical figure João Cândido Felisberto, his ebullient mood overlaps episodes of horrific violence. This translation took some liberties in altering punctuation to maintain this disorienting effect. When translating idiomatic expressions indicative of a past era, I looked to rough English equivalents that would sound similarly dated to contemporary readers. A challenge specific to this short story is the multivocal narrative, which leaves the question open as to whether we are facing a carnival storyteller who is cordially inviting us to suspend disbelief, a folktale with elements of magical realism, or an unreliable narrator whose traumatic experiences as a victim of abuse and a soldier have led him to rewrite his life story.”

—Robert Smith

This island has a lot of stories. They all do, I should say; the whole bay: land and sea. The day the first circus arrived, for example, was like the world was starting all over again.

When the barge docked and started unloading all that stuff, we had no idea what it might be. But a strange joy took hold of everybody, made us want to sing and dance to do something to please that gift that had fallen from the sky without saying what they had come for. Little by little, the colorful poles, the boards, the wheels, the iron braces, the motley flags appeared… Then the cages with the animals.

It was the Seventh of September¹, and, while we were watching everything in awe, the fireworks were going off. The ships, Tamandaré, Trajano, Liberdade², were sailing by in the bay, shooting their fireworks toward the city, way over on the other side. Right then and there, we knew that something truly beautiful had begun in all of our lives.

Disembarking in the quay, the caravan of oxcarts and wagons continued down the bumpy old road. The company was directed by the famous artist Benedito de Lima. And it arrived on our island, straight from Niterói, to save us from our isolation and change our daily routine. It popped up out of nowhere, the only attraction in our village, stirring up the hopes and daydreams of rich and poor, young and old, black and white; everybody.

No one had known the circus was going to come. But when it arrived, even without announcements or pamphlets or newspapers, word got round. READ MORE…

The Blurriness of Intimacy: On Caio Fernando Abreu’s Moldy Strawberries

June 1, 2022  |  in Reviews  |  by Georgina Fooks

Abreu has the ability to narrate big emotions while undercutting them with a self-consciousness that means these moments never feel trite.

Moldy Strawberries by Caio Fernando Abreu, translated from the Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato, Archipelago Books, 2022

Moldy strawberries: just past the point of ripeness, bursting with life until they exude decay. Sweet yet bitter, delicious yet spoilt, nourishing yet rotten. It is this dichotomy that sustains Caio Fernando Abreu’s Moldy Strawberries, tenderly translated from the Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato: a collection of short prose pieces and stories that brims with life even as its flesh bruises.

Abreu (1948-1996) came of age in a turbulent time in Brazilian political history. In 1968, the Department for Political and Social Order put him on the watch list they used to target their ideological opponents, and Abreu subsequently spent time in exile across Europe—in Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, England, and France. While his writing was heavily censored by the Brazilian authorities, he nonetheless became one of the country’s most beloved queer writers, winning the prestigious Jabuti Prize for Fiction three times for his luminous work.

Moldy Strawberries is considered by many to be his magnum opus. Published in 1982, its vivid depictions of queer communities amidst the perils of the military dictatorship, rising homophobia, and the looming AIDS crisis serve to affirm life even when the threat of death feels ever-present. In eighteen prose pieces, which range from dialogues and vignettes to fully developed stories, Abreu’s writing bears witness to humanity in all its fragile glory. His prose affirms the possibility of love, desire, and connection—or at least indulges that dream. READ MORE…

David J. Bailey on Translating Jorge de Sena’s “The Green Parrot”

April 6, 2022  |  in Interviews  |  by Rose Bialer

Discover Portugal’s colonial legacy in de Sena’s humorous and heartbreaking account of life under the Estado Novo dictatorship

Featured in the current Winter 2022 issue, “A Tribute to the Green Parrot” by Jorge de Sena manages to be both a humorous and heartbreaking account of life under the Estado Novo dictatorship in Portugal. The story centers around an unlikely friendship between a young boy growing up in a stifling conservative household and the family’s pet parrot, an “impassioned” and “exuberant individual” from Brazil. In his English translation David J. Bailey captures the colorful hues of de Sena’s language and introduces Anglophone speakers to a beautiful piece from one of the greatest Lusophone writers of the twentieth century. I had the opportunity to speak with Bailey over email about his experience translating “A Tribute to the Green Parrot,” and in the following interview we discuss representations of colonialism in language, the power of children in conveying narratives, and the different measures that Lusophone writers have taken to overcome dictatorial censorship in their careers.

Rose Bialer: I wanted to start by asking: How did you first begin translating from Portuguese?

David J. Bailey: I became interested in Portuguese almost by chance, opting to study it at degree level alongside Spanish. I quickly grew fond of the language and culture and eventually took a PhD in Portuguese and Brazilian literature to pursue an academic career. I’ve done commercial translation in the past, but this was my first serious attempt at translating a literary piece.

RB: When did you first come to encounter the work of Jorge de Sena? How did your engagement with his writing develop into your translation of “A Tribute to the Green Parrot?”

DB: When I started lecturing at the University of Manchester, I inherited a course on Portuguese colonialism from my predecessor, Prof Hilary Owen. Some of Jorge de Sena’s stories were on the reading list and I was especially moved by this one, which ends the collection Os Grão-Capitães. De Sena was a key figure in the resistance to the Portuguese dictatorship, on a par with other writers from his generation such as Miguel Torga and José Régio. “A Tribute to the Green Parrot” was something of an anomaly in not having been translated before. I looked at it with some M.A. students last year and ended up translating the entire story during lockdown. READ MORE…

The International Booker Comes Home

April 4, 2022  |  in Essays  |  by Barbara Halla

There is much to be said about the (fleeting) feeling of accomplishment in seeing a favorite longlisted.

With the upcoming announcement of the Booker International shortlist on April 7, our in-house Booker expert is here to take you through the impressive longlist, discuss the intersection between closed-door judging and fervent public online discourses, and the increased visibility of the translator in bringing these vital titles into the English-language sphere, Read on to find out more!

The International Booker Prize, like a number of other British literary prizes, has become a unifying topic amidst a very active online community. Twitter is the kind of place where bubbles of connections and affinities naturally form, but participating in this nexus simultaneously fosters a detached sense of irony that makes any earnest acknowledgment to it a touch mortifying. I am willing to take the risk of too much earnestness today because, for the sake of honesty, my relationship to the International Booker would not be the same without this community.

I became a regular follower of the prize after attending a meeting with the judges at Shakespeare and Company in Paris back in 2016 (a discussion I left certain in the knowledge that Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, translated by Deborah Smith, was going to win, as it did). But it was entering in conversation with other readers and translators through Twitter that made the International Booker an event that I await impatiently every March. We make a friendly race out of reading the entire longlist, and debates about the merits of each selection get unreasonably heated, as we work to change the minds of others about the books we love—or even loath at times. Not to mention that I would be very happy not to have the “what constitutes nonfiction” debate again in my lifetime, which was in full swing both last year, with the longlisting of In Memory of Memory and The War of the Poor, and in 2019 when The Years was shortlisted.

Perhaps more importantly, being part of this community has shaped the approach I take the reading (and reviewing) the list. Thanks to it, I am constantly aware of the labor that goes into each book, not merely the translation but the efforts by the translators themselves, often acting as both agent and publicist. For instance, when Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights won the International Booker in 2018, Jennifer Croft had spent a decade advocating for it to be published. Furthermore, participating even somewhat actively in the discussion happening on places like Twitter is to be aware of the uneven dynamics of the publishing world. Much has rightfully been said about the International Booker’s Eurocentrism (which this year’s longlist provides a refreshing break from), but at the same time, as an online participant in these communities, you see in real time that the Booker is probably replicating trends that exist within publishing at large. READ MORE…

Happy World Poetry Day!

March 21, 2022  |  in News  |  by Lee Yew Leong

Celebrate with an eclectic selection of the best poems from our archives!

In honor of World Poetry Day, we invite you to revisit some of the best international poetry from our eleven-year archive. For a start, Brazilian poet Lêdo Ivo’s work soars to great heights through its accumulation of brilliant specificities. But it also catches one unawares with looser, breath-taking lines like these: “Life itself is a round thing / so that when we go wrong, we go wrong roundly.” Revisit Lêdo Ivo’s “The Earth Is Round” from our Summer 2021 issue.

 

A leading light of South Korea’s contemporary poetry scene, Yi Won takes ‘avant-garde’ to new extremes. Catapulting the reader into a future where technology rules the human spirit, her lacerating social commentary interrogates the very nature of poetry itself. Courtesy of translator Kevin Michael Smith, discover Yi Won’s radical work from our Summer 2018 edition. READ MORE…

Blackness and the Experience of Blackness: Paulo Scott and Daniel Hahn on Phenotypes

February 24, 2022  |  in Book Club, Interviews  |  by Rachel Farmer

I think if you read a sentence in Portuguese, you would recognize it as a Paulo Scott sentence from two hundred meters away.

In the electrifying novel Phenotypes, Paulo Scott takes on the complex subject of Brazil’s racism and colorism, dispelling rosy myths of the country as one of harmonious multiculturalism. In a story of two brothers—Lourenço and Federico, the former dark-skinned and the latter light—the intricacies of privilege, identity, activism, and guilt are brilliantly explored in Scott’s unmistakable blend of length and lyric, bringing to the page some of the most urgent and daunting questions of our time. We are honored to host this title as our Book Club selection for January, and also to have spoken live to Scott and translator Daniel Hahn about the novel’s nuances, regionality, and language.

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, join our Facebook group for exclusive book club discussions and receive invitations to our members-only Zoom interviews with the author or the translator of each title.   

Rachel Farmer (RF): One of the main themes of Phenotypes is what constitutes an activist approach to the many problems portrayed in the novel. Paulo, could you talk about what inspired you to write about activism in this way?

Paulo Scott (PS): Well Rachel, I come from Southern Brazil, which is a very racist region. My family is black, upper-middle class—you know, the kind of family that is in a position to speak out against this racism. So I took the truth of my family to create fiction. My brother is black—real black—and I have this lighter skin. But I see myself as a black man. My mother might deny it now, but as I remember, she always said that we were a black family.

I think that this book is both one of anger and of self-reflection. The protagonist found a place in the heart of anger to build a very specific story for himself, then at some point, he got lost in this fight against racism. He believed himself to be really strong, he saw his father as a very strong man, and he thought that his father’s power was in this anger, his rage against the world—but it wasn’t. Instead, the fact is that his father could understand the complexity of racism, like [Martin Luther] King [Jr.].

There is a connection between the members of this family: father, grandfather, son, and granddaughter—Roberta, the niece of the protagonist. They are almost the same entity, as three different movements of the same vision. The story ends with Roberta sleeping in the back seat of the car because she’s the future. I could have written a book about Roberta, for efficiency’s sake, but this is not a book of answers; this is a book of questions. The racism in Brazil is very, very strong, and it’s still a taboo topic here. The suffering is so pervasive that some readers struggle to see themselves in this mirror. 

RF: Were certain characters—such as that of the mother—inspired directly by the memories of your own family?

PS: My brother was the coach of my state’s basketball team, and he is a really dark-skinned man. He’s not afraid to be with white people—powerful people. He’s black, but he’s in that club of the upper-class, and he doesn’t accept any disrespect. That’s really strong. READ MORE…

Announcing Our January Book Club Selection: Phenotypes by Paulo Scott

January 31, 2022  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Rachel Farmer

In raising the issue of racism and one’s actions in the face of it, the book itself is arguably a force of social progress and understanding . . .

In the first few pages of Paulo Scott’s striking Phenotypes, the protagonist and narrator describes the appearances of himself and his brother in contrasts: blond and brown, fair and dark. What follows is an immersive and urgent novel that addresses the ethics and injustices of Brazil’s colourism in Scott’s signature fluidity and perspicacity, exploring the limits of intentions and justices to probe at the centric forces of activism. As our first Book Club selection of 2022, it is a vital and incisive look at a nation—and a world—stricken with crises of race and identity.

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, join our Facebook group for exclusive book club discussions and receive invitations to our members-only Zoom interviews with the author or the translator of each title.  

Phenotypes by Paulo Scott, translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn, And Other Stories, 2022

What is the price of activism? Of wanting to change the world for the better? Do motivations, or true intentions, make a difference?

Federico, the protagonist of Paulo Scott’s engrossing and astute novel Phenotypes, is an activist by most definitions. He is co-founder of the Global Social Forum in his hometown—the “whirring blender” that is Porto Alegre; he has researched colourism in Brazil; he has advised NGOs in Latin America and beyond; and now, he is serving on a commission tasked with solving the problems caused by racial quota systems within universities.

Activism, from catalyst to consequence, forms an unavoidable part of his reality. The son of a white mother and a Black father, Federico has always been light-skinned while his brother Lourenço is much darker, and this ability to pass as white has afforded Federico privileges that his brother has never been able to enjoy. The discrepancy has been a lifelong source of awkwardness and discomfort, forcing him into a complex relationship with his own identity. Over time, Federico has ensconced himself in layer upon layer of guilt—a self-inflicted yoke around his neck that continually fuels his activism and shapes his life’s ambitions.

Federico’s impressive resume of achievements stem from his efforts to tackle Brazil’s seemingly insurmountable racism problem—but are these noble actions merely attempts at controlling his circumstances? Is he simply—as his former girlfriend Bárbara puts it—surrounding himself with “noise”? Bárbara, a psychologist who provides clinical care for those traumatised by activism, knows all too well the price people pay fighting for causes they believe in. In her patients, the constant struggle to topple a seemingly insurmountable system, as well as exposure to the true extents of injustice, has left them physically and emotionally drained. In certain cases, the trauma is irreparable. READ MORE…

A Thousand Lives: Staff Reads from Around the World

October 7, 2021  |  in News  |  by Andriana Hamas, Janet Phillips, and Mary Hillis

A selection of staff reads from Asymptote’s Fortnightly Airmail!

When it comes to browsing the shelves and diving head-first into the wonderfully vast world of translated literature, sometimes you just need a little help from your friends. In this case—let us be your friends. Our editors are sharing their favourite reads to make sure that yours is time well spent.

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Readers already familiar with Nina Berberova’s fiction in collections such as Billancourt Tales, The Tattered Cloak and The Ladies from St. Petersburg will find her first novel—translated by Marian Schwartz—a surprising divergence in style from the lightness of touch and sparse but pungent details in her stories about small casts of characters grappling with challenges in their everyday lives. Written in 1928-29, The Last and the First (Pushkin Press, 2021) is a drama on a broader canvas about Russian émigrés in France struggling to decide whether to return to the Soviet Union or to throw all their energies into establishing a meaningful life in France, specifically whether to join Ilya, the messianic central character, toiling on the land in Provence. It is driven by a complex plot in which the true identities and motives of some characters are initially hidden, and stylistically has more in common with novels of the nineteenth century, Dostoevsky being the writer who springs most to mind for the intense and knotted emotional relationships between the main characters, their striving for some kind of salvation, as well as in the vivid and grimy descriptions of the backstreets of Paris.

—Janet Phillips, Assistant Managing Editor (Issue Production)

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A tale of two lives, that of a poetess living in the USA and of a Yazidi who saves the women of Sinjar, unfolds through a series of phone calls and a single face-to-face visit. In her pensive The Beekeeper of Sinjar (New Directions, 2018), masterfully translated from the Arabic by Max Weiss, the Iraqi-born Dunya Mikhail recalls her conversations with Abdullah, an ordinary man turned local hero, who has chosen to devote his days and nights to rescuing the innocent girls kidnapped by the militant group Daesh. Simultaneously a meditation on absurdity and a truthful account of real-life experiences, the book offers its readers a path to understanding the shifting values of a region long tormented by its past. The unimaginable loss and heartbreak that pour from every page are curiously accompanied by an almost inhuman ability to forgive, while the deceptively simple descriptions of misery bring home the scale of the disaster. Despite the traumatic events, however, the locals have managed to retain their purity and, what is more, to find time for the poetry of existence. As we all should.

—Andriana Hamas, Editor-at-Large for Bulgaria READ MORE…

How the Light Hides Us: On Cuíer: Queer Brazil

October 4, 2021  |  in Reviews  |  by Alex Tan

Cuíer gives us pause and proclaims its own foreignness—only on its terms are we invited into its gambit.

Cuíer: Queer Brazil, translated from the Portuguese, Two Lines Press, 2021

Can we translate “queer”?

Cuíer: Queer Brazil—a brand-new anthology of queer/cuíer Brazilian poetry, fiction, and non-fiction translated from Portuguese into English—wants us to grapple with this conundrum. Uniting voices across generations, genders, and mediums, the latest offering from Two Lines Press’ chic Calico series is, like all its predecessors, expansively and thoughtfully curated.

A vibrant portrait by Igor Furtado graces the cover; in it, we glimpse a masc-identified person lying in prone position—one could say amphibiously—on what appears to be the earth of a river bank. His lime-green skin-tight top accentuates the exposure of his body’s lower half, boldly visible in the background through spangles of rippling water. The tattoo on his arm, the earring basking in shadow, the painted nails of his splayed fingers. His direct gaze at the camera mingles enticement and challenge in equal measure.

Like the photograph, Cuíer gives us pause and proclaims its own foreignness—only on its terms are we invited into its gambit. As the only Calico title so far with a non-English word as its name, “Cuíer” demands to be sounded, savoured on the tongue—it audibly carries the phonetic ghost of “queer,” but must be shaped differently in the mouth. The word ostensibly stems from Tatiana Nascimento’s avant-garde “cuíer paradiso,” a poem in Cuíer wherein parentheses, wordplay, and dialect wreath around a yearning for the simple pleasures of quotidian love. What unfolds is an enumeration of possible “less than”s: “less bureaucratic than / marriage equality regulated by the state,” “less surveilled than e-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y / asking if it is (non-)exclusive,” “less of all that makes us listless.”

In the absence of utopia, one can only imagine it in terms of what it is not (yet). Nascimento’s Afro-futurist linguistic experiments—near the book’s centerpiece—perhaps gesture to the impulse behind Cuíer’s formation: to know another “with no need for armor, / anticipating no answer, / no need to learn how to punch nor / map the space before entering.” A place of silence beyond translation. READ MORE…

An Occupied Literature: On Julián Fuks’s Occupation

September 15, 2021  |  in Reviews  |  by Rachel Stanyon

Fuks has “put something more than pain, something more than misfortune” in his novel, making “something worth writing.”

Occupation by Julián Fuks, translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn, Charco Press, 2021

I’m writing a book about fatherhood without being able to become a father—and probing motherhood as if I didn’t know that I will never learn it. I’m writing a book about death without ever having felt it switch off a body, in a speculation of feelings that one day will seem laughable, when I do encounter the pain. I’m writing a book about the pain of the world, the poverty, exile, despair, rage, tragedy, ludicrousness, a book about this interminable ruin surrounding us, which so often goes unnoticed, but as I write it I am protected by solid walls.

Occupation, Julián Fuks’ latest novel to appear in English translation by Daniel Hahn, is a quiet masterpiece. Touching on family and relationships, birth and death, colonialism, the refugee crisis, political activism, the Holocaust, our (in)ability to identify with one another, and how to find hope in a world of ruin, this novel is sweepingly ambitious in its themes, yet the measured, self-critical voice of the narrator and the calm, understated prose prevents it from veering into sensationalism or sentimentality.

The novel’s chapters alternate between the different preoccupations of our narrator, Sebastián: his father, who is occupying a hospital bed; his wife’s decision to have a child, which will occupy her body and shift the dynamics of their relationship; a group of migrants occupying a dilapidated building, many of whom exiles from lands that have been occupied, now seeking refuge in Brazil, a country with its own history of occupation; and his own attempts to understand what all of this means for his occupation as a writer.

Small jumps in time, along with chapters that begin mid-conversation, can at times create a sense of dislocation, but Fuks weaves the strands together so gently and dexterously that when they coalesce, it does not feel like the technique has been a pretext for creating suspense; rather, it is as though the narrative has been constructed this way so that the narrator might himself work through and better understand the components—as if each narrative thread must be understood on its own to bring the whole into relief. Nevertheless, the technical mastery of this construction should not be downplayed, and throughout the book, the reader will notice explicit motifs along with subtle echoes and patterns in the language. All this adds to a sense that the novel’s threads are both connected and discreet, amplifying the plurality of the voices and experiences which ultimately merge with the voice of the narrator, who “allow[s] them to occupy [him], to occupy [his] writing: an occupied literature.” READ MORE…

Section Editors’ Highlights: Summer 2021

July 26, 2021  |  in News  |  by Bassam Sidiki, Caridad Svich, and Lee Yew Leong

Our Section Editors pick their favorite pieces from the Summer 2021 issue!

The brand-new Summer 2021 edition of Asymptote is barely ten days old and we are still enjoying the diverse offerings from thirty-five countries gathered therein. Last week, blog editors Xiao Yue Shan, Allison Braden, and Shawn Hoo shared their favorites. Today, section editors Lee Yew Leong, Bassam Sidiki, and Caridad Svich distill their highlights for us:

From Lee Yew Leong, Fiction, Poetry, Special Features, and Interview Editor:

Why do so few men read fiction by women? lamented MA Sieghart as recently as seventeen days ago in The Guardian. With female authors taking five out of six slots, the Summer fiction lineup, published just in time for #WomeninTranslation month, offers parochial-minded readers a taste of what they are missing out on. These stories are also deeply centered on the female experience: Gabriel Payares and Maša Kolanović deliver unsettling takes on pregnancy and new motherhood, while the aging protagonists of Kathrin Schmidt’s and Can Xue’s stories go on mushroom-fueled head trips that seem to set the universe right again. A third set explores the corrosive effects of work on identity (in particular, Joanna Chen’s superb translation of mechanical engineer Tehila Hakimi’s Company recalled for me Amelie Nothomb’s masterpiece Fear and Trembling).

When you don’t go by a Judeo-Christian name, the constant bracing against mispronunciation can result in estrangement from your own identity, as Xiao Yue Shan explored in her recent essay on linguistic exile. I can relate. That’s why I found the ending of Abdushukur Muhammet’s “My Name” deeply moving. Translator Munawwar Abdulla not only does an excellent job nailing Muhammet’s melancholic voice, but also provides much needed contextualization in her translator’s note that imbues the poem with a sharp political layer. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “It Was Then That I Lost That Child” by Carla Bessa

July 20, 2021  |  in Translations  |  by Elton Uliana

And so then, I had: my children, I had: seven children, I mean: six

The fate of a working class mother who loses her child is the focus of this week’s Translation Tuesday, which features an unforgettable experiment with the short story form. Devised through a verbatim technique, Carla Bessa—actress, director, and winner of Brazil’s most prestigious literary award, the Jabuti Prize—mines the genre for its dramatic possibilities. Bessa’s moving story switches deftly between a confessional monologue with eclectic punctuation that lends the mother’s voice a searing, staccato quality and, on the other hand, a set of intricate stage movements revolving around a domestic scene. The effect is a casual meeting of tragedy and mundanity. Indeed, for translator Elton Uliana, this story conveys “a reality of marginality and crime which is becoming increasingly prevalent in Brazil, particularly with the rise of far-right politics, its contempt for and disenfranchising of the lower classes.” This social commentary is achieved with great formal and emotional intensity in “It Was Then That I Lost That Child.” 

(She takes the chicken out of the freezer and puts it in the microwave. She rinses the thermos with boiling water, she puts the filter holder over the mouth of the flask, she places the paper filter in the holder and fills it with coffee powder, five level soup spoons.)

And so then, I had: my children, I had: seven children, I mean: six. Because: the one who got killed, I never really got to raise him. I couldn’t. I only: I only had him for the first month, then his father: stole my child from me, yes, it was his father: he kidnapped my boy.

(She pours the hot water carefully over the coffee until the filter is full. She stops, and waits for the water to seep through. The microwave beeps. With the kettle in one hand she goes to the microwave, presses the button that opens the door to remove the chicken. She realises that she has only one hand free and pauses.)

He beat me up. I’ve got the scars here on my face, see, ruined: it was him. That’s why I’ve got a face like this, all: destroyed, have a look. 

(She pours more water on the coffee, she stops and waits.)

He stole my son, and: I reported him. And so: it was his mother that had to look after my son. He and his mother raised my son, but: they never let me visit him. Then: I took them to court again: and I won: I won the right to see my own son. A right that was already mine. READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: July 2021

July 12, 2021  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Alyea Canada, Barbara Halla, Ruwa Alhayek, Suhasini Patni, and Thuy Dinh

New texts from Italy, Brazil, Korea, Morocco, and Spain!

In this month’s selection of excellent literature in translation, there’s something for everyone. From a dreamy and architecturally expressive graphic novel that speaks to fates and futures, to a collection of strange and visceral short stories delineating the network between bodies and their definitions. And if science fiction or unsettling tales aren’t your thing, there’s also the powerful narrative on a prodigal son who returns to navigate the pathos-filled landscape of past tragedies, loneliness, and isolation; the masterfully told history of Catalonia as it plays out through the life of a woman embroiled in the tumult of her time; or a cunning satire of contemporary Morocco that traverses territory of both physical and virtual landscapes. Read on for reviews on each of these remarkable works; hope you enjoy the trip!

celestia

Celestia by Manuele Fior, translated from the Italian by Jamie Richards, Fantagraphics, 2021

Review by Thuy Dinh, Editor-at-Large for the Vietnamese Diaspora

“. . . from above, this island is in the shape of two hands intertwined.”

                                                           —Dr. Vivaldi, from Manuele Fior’s Celestia

Such is how Dr. Vivaldi alludes to Venice—curved strips of land yearning to touch and engulf each other in blue space. Ambitiously realized by Manuele Fior and eloquently translated by Jamie Richards, Celestia—Venice’s oneiric double—is a visual poem and modernist dance in graphic novel form, encompassing diaphanous terrains and gothic undertow, exuberantly tumescent with allusions to literature, art, and architecture.

Born in 1975 in Cesena, Italy, Fior currently lives in Paris, France. Drawing from his studies at Venice’s University of Architecture (Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia, or IUAV), he has, over time, developed a dynamic visual language with narrative elements drawn from both Western and Eastern aesthetic traditions. Several of his acclaimed graphic novels have been translated into English and published by U.S.-based Fantagraphics, and Celestia marks his fifth collaboration with Richards—a scholar and translator of Italian literature.

Deeply influenced by John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice, Joseph Brodsky’s Watermark, and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s poem “Profezia” (“Prophecy”)—Fior depicts Celestia as a fusion of dualities that exist both in the history of Venice as well as in the fictional universe of his work: Gothic and Renaissance, spiritual and secular, traditional and modern, rational and organic, freedom and oppression, community and exile. While in Fior’s earlier work—such as The Interview—telepathy is depicted as an extraterrestial gift, in Celestia this ability has existed from time immemorial among certain people, possibly as an evolutionary process. When the story opens, the island of Celestia is home to a group of telepathic refugees, who long ago fled from a horrific invasion that had devastated the mainland. One of them, Pierrot—cloaked in his commedia dell’arte persona—now wishes to renounce his telepathic power, which he perceives as a tragic link to his childhood. After delivering vigilante justice to a member of the demonic syndicate that controls the island’s murky depths, Pierrot escapes Celestia with Dora—a seer also burdened by her gift, as well as the oppressive intimacy enforced by her mind-melding circle of elites, led by Dr. Vivaldi.

Beset by this innate ability that has become a form of enslavement, Pierrot and Dora set off—hoping their journey would both resolve the past and guide them toward a new future. The couple’s subsequent arrival on the mainland brings them into contact with an omniscient child, or Child—who embodies both the future of mankind and its messiah. READ MORE…