Place: South Korea

A Year of Reading the World

Sometimes reality would seem unbearable if literature were not there to decipher it, to give it heart.

Every month, the Asymptote Book Club shares a newly published, translated title with readers and subscribers. From Nobel laureates to electrifying debuts, this selection features some of the most powerful voices writing in any language, opening up an entry into the immense archives of  wold literature. In this essay, we look back on the books of 2023 thus far. 

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Whenever a major event transpires, anywhere in the world, the instinct of many is to reach into the annals of writing—for explanation, ruminations, solace, transcriptions of history, glimmers of what’s to come, stories of people and their ordinary or extraordinary lives. . . On January 1 of this year, Croatia officially joined the Schengen Area, making it the twenty-seventh member to benefit from the region’s removal of border controls—and the search for Croatian books and literature went up 30%. During the surprising and intermittently absurd “Chinese balloon incident” in early February, searches for books on Chinese espionage went up a full 100%. Interest for Ukrainian literature stayed at a high amidst the ongoing conflict, and peaked when the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin for committing war crimes regarding the illegal deportation of children. As a devastating civil war broke out in Sudan in mid-April, the world immediately sought out writing from and about the region, and when Niger’s government was overthrown in a military coup on July 26, searches for Nigerien books and authors also saw a significant surge. And as writers from Palestine and Israel continued, over the decades, to release texts around nation, land, exile, occupation, humanity, and violence both physical and psychological, we all watched in horror as the devastation grew almost unimaginably—and we looked for those books.

Books and the world they’re written in, books and the worlds they give us—sometimes reality would seem unbearable if literature were not there to decipher it, to give it heart. As the poet Adonis said, “My homeland is this spark this lightning in the darkness of the time remaining. . .” (translated by S.M. Toorawa); with language, such texts lend us that brightness, and we are rendered able to discover the many narratives and landscapes of our long, shadowy era.

In this year’s Book Club, we’ve thus far featured eleven titles: eleven authors, eleven countries, eleven languages, and eleven translators. Each brought their own entrancing energy of storytelling, whether taking history or the human psyche as material, building on myth or fearlessly experimental. There were titles that sought to give us a vivid portrait of a certain neighbourhood, a certain period. Others dove into the intricate channels of thinking to paint a picture of the mind. READ MORE…

The Infinite Potentials Between Korean and the World: A Conversation With Nicole Hur, Editor-in-Chief of the Hanok Review

I consider a solely ethical aim in translation to be unattainable, and one that mistakenly assumes a culturally void image of the translator.

The Hanok Review is a rising journal of Korean literature, publishing Korean-to-English translations, interviews, and original creative writing by authors identifying with Korean culture. At the intersection of contemporary, global letters and the Korean diaspora, the Hanok Review cultivates its unique voice by managing each translation internally, curating Korean-language poetry submissions that speak to a multilingual world of pan-Korean identity, with each editor contributing to the journal’s harmonious chorus of translations. In this interview, I spoke to the founder and editor-in-chief, Nicole Hur, about the philosophy of translation and Korean literature, as the Hanok Review launches their second issue.

Michelle Chan Schmidt (MCS): Nicole, in addition to founding and editing the Hanok Review, you also wear the hats of poet and translator. I’d love to hear your opinion on a wonderful essay by Nicole Wong published in our Summer 2023 issue, “The Terroir of a Single Work: Redefining Scope in Approaches to Translation.” It dissects the techniques of translation with metaphorical heft and eloquent clarity and asks the same question you do: “What is home?” How do you understand Wong’s words on foreignization and domestication in relation to the Hanok Review’s translations?

Nicole Hur (NH): Perhaps because I was a poet before a translator, I naturally came to the process of translation with the textual cues and self-awareness enabled by poetic depth. I see this in what Wong articulates as “foreignization with an appropriate scope,” in which the receptor language takes on a “foreign” or non-standard form in an effort to resemble the particular authorial manipulation of the source language; that is, translation as an act of transferring the various stylistic elements in which an author articulates their world from the bounds of one language to another. I believe this intimate approach to translation yields a natural sensitivity to—or at least awareness of—the source text’s socio-cultural context. This sensitivity enables resisting unfounded projections of foreignization or domestication.

Translation can never be perfect, in the sense that the Korean “eomma” can never fully equate to the English “mother,” even in its literal glory. I often think back to Ocean Vuong’s quotation: “even if I were to write the word ‘the’… that is still an Asian-American ‘the.’ I can’t escape it, so if I can’t escape it, I should tend to my curiosities beyond the identity. Because the identity is already there, it’s embedded into everything.”

I want to emphasize the notion of traversing “beyond the identity.” As Wong asserts that the “translator is not a transparent vessel for the foreign author,” I consider a solely ethical aim in translation (at least in regard to foreignization and domestication) to be unattainable, and one that mistakenly assumes a culturally void image of the translator. Translation can never fully be ethical, nor should it aim to be, so how, then, can we reconcile these innate cultural differences—the difference between a Korean “the” and an English “the”? I propose the medium of poeticism. Through careful and deliberate poetic choices, translators have the opportunity to reimbue texts with their socio-cultural nuances beyond the inextricable murkiness of cultural identities and into the workable scope of literary identity—which is in itself a kind of cultural identity. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday : “Little Sow” by Yi Hyosŏk

Where could she be, my little Puni?

A quotidian tale of a young man and his sow in the idyllic Korean countryside is not all that it seems. Translator Young-Ji Kang captures the disquieting undertones that pervade Yi Hyosŏk’s writing, as we learn of our main character’s growing discontent with his little Puni and Little Sow. This Translation Tuesday, become a spectator to the breeding grounds, meander through the market, and follow the railroad tracks. 

The ruins of a fortress wall, a willow crowned by a magpie nest, a squat beryl blue sky. Below, a hutch containing a rabbit that in color is white but whose huddled form and spiky fur give it the appearance of a hedgehog. The onshore wind sweeps over the fields, tickling the crab-apples before swirling through the barley field where the breeding grounds still sit under a layer of snow, to buffet the pigsties.

Beside the pigsties, exposed to the wind and squealing at the top of its lungs, a sow is tethered, each splayed leg to a stake. Around those four stakes stalks the stud boar, its livid maw frothing, and then up go its front legs and it mounts. The sow, resembling a turtle pinned beneath a dark boulder, shrieks and wiggles frantically, dislodging the boar. Ever ready, the boar begins stalking again. From the sties all around comes the squealing and bellowing of mating pigs—it’s a raucous afternoon at the breeding grounds.

A crowd has gathered to cheer on the boar, but after witnessing half an hour of wasted effort, they begin to stir. And then one last time the boar comes crashing down on the sow—the stakes snap clean off, and the sow manages to slip free and scamper off.

“Poor little runt,” chuckles one of the breeding-grounds handlers. “Like trying to mate a hen with a bull—it’s unnatural, I tell ya.”

“Yeah,” says a farmer. “She must have had the scare of her life.” So saying, the farmer goes out behind the pigsty and corners the sow.

“I had her serviced here last month, I guess it was, but nothing happened,” says Shigi, the color rising on his face. “So here we are again.”

“Even animals have to be old enough to know better, but your sow’s still way too young.”

At the farmer’s words, Shigi gets even more red in the face. “Goddamn animal!” he mutters.

And if that were not enough, the annoying beast has broken free and is once againrunning loose. Humiliated, Shigi flares up and gives chase, the farmer close behind. One of Shigi’s rubber shoes comes off in the muck and his pants begin to slide down.

At last he manages to grab the tether circling the sow’s midsection and out of pique yanks it hard, bringing the sow up short. He whips the animal furiously with the tether, and the young sow wiggles and jumps every which way, squealing all the while. Yes, he will surely feel remorseful later on for lashing the pitiful beast, the family’s lifeline for the farm year in that the proceeds from its sale will cover their first tax payment of the year as well as keeping them stocked with provisions until the early-summer potato harvest. But losing face in front of the stand of onlookers is too much for him to bear, and he takes out his anger on the pathetic animal.

“C’mon, let’s give it another try.” After re-setting the stakes and ramming them in, the farmer beckons Shigi.

This time, Shigi and the farmer tether the terror-stricken creature to the stakes all the more securely, then position the wooden lever beneath the sow’s belly so that it’s suspended in air and can’t budge.

Shigi feels the boar’s hairy body as it squirms and paces, and then the moment he steps back, the boar charges the sow like a piston on a coal-fired locomotive, a lusty bellow issuing from its crimson maw. At the throat-rending squeals of the helpless sow, the onlookers’ laughter is stilled—for the moment their jokes are forgotten.

The image of Puni flits through Shigi’s mind and he looks away.

READ MORE…

What’s New with the Crew? (Aug 2023)

Find out what our staff members have been up to when we’re not editing your favorite literary journal!

Editor-at-Large for Palestine Carol Khoury will be the guest editor of a special issue of the Jerusalem Quarterly, titled “Write-Minded: Jerusalem in Literature”; check out her call for submissions here or email her for further details.

Newsletter Editor Cody Siler published an essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books about  the impact of the American suspense writer Patricia Highsmith’s diaries on her critical reputation.

Chris Tanasescu aka MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large for Romania & Moldova, chaired in June the 5th edition of #GraphPoem at Digital Humanities Summer Institute, a “data commoning” hyper-platform performance involving hundreds of participants and watched by thousands of viewers online.

Nonfiction Editor Ian Ross Singleton translated four poems by Marina Eskina for Barzakh.

M.L. Martin has a new translation of the pre-10 c. Anglo-Saxon queer, feminist poet in the latest issue of Cordite.

Assistant Editor Megan Sungyoon‘s translation of The Cheapest France in Town by Korean poet Seo Jung Hak is scheduled to be published by World Poetry Books in October 2023.

Blog Editor Meghan Racklin’s essay on sore throats as illness and as metaphor was published in Full Stop and her review of The Light Room by Kate Zambreno was featured in The Brooklyn Rail.

Assistant Editor (Fiction) Michelle Chan Schmidt published a review of Owlish by Dorothy Tse, translated from the Chinese by Natascha Bruce, in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal.

Editor-at-Large for North Macedonia Sofija Popovska‘s Macedonian translation of the novella Im Kopf von Bruno Schulz by Maxim Biller was published in July by Makedonika Litera Press; additionally, “Thaumatropes”, a poetry collection she co-authored with Jonah Howell also appeared in July, published by Newcomer Press.

Copy Editor Urooj recently had two poems published in Gulmohur Quarterly‘s Issue 10, released in June 2023. They were also invited to share their poems at the Bangalore Poetry Festival, in Bangalore, India as one of four young, emerging poets in a panel called “Poems in Progress.”

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Interested in joining us behind the scenes? We’re still finalizing our mid-year recruitment drive—hurry and apply if you’d like to help power the world’s literature! 

What’s New in Translation: August 2023

New work from Uruguay and South Korea!

This month, we take a look at two brilliant titles that embody the acts of interpretation and evocation. In Silvia Guerra’s poems, nature is given voice in stunning scenes of linguistic complexity. In Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s retelling of a Korean classic, beloved characters are brought to life in the graphic form. 

sea

A Sea at Dawn by Silvia Guerra, translated from the Spanish by Jesse Lee Kercheval and Jeannine Marie Pitas, Eulalia Books, 2023 

Review by Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large for North Macedonia

What constitutes a translation? Thinkers like Mikhail Bakhtin and Jacques Lacan have argued that every utterance is a deeply intimate expression channeled through shared, culturally standardized verbal structures; that is to say, every time we speak, we are translating.

As with speaking, so with listening, as well. Bakhtin describes the act of conversing with someone else as a (re-)construction of our concepts upon the “alien territory” of the other’s mind. In A Sea at Dawn (Un mar en madrugada), a poetry collection originally published in 2018 and now out in English translation from Eulalia Books, the Uruguayan poet Silvia Guerra manages to push against even these (admittedly broad and inclusive) boundaries of defining translation. In her panoramic, evocative poems, she invites all kinds of life, organic and inorganic, to speak, thereby creating a delightfully strange linguistic landscape that is equally alien and welcoming to the voices of the world, all at once.

Given the vertiginous and heterodox nature of the book itself, it’s helpful to start with the afterword written by the translators Jesse Lee Kercheval and Jeannine Marie Pitas, which illuminates the process of recasting Guerra’s captivating and difficult voice into English, and offers various ways to think about her poetry. For those that have read her in Spanish, it might seem that translating Guerra might seem an exercise in futility, leading to “disappointment and outright lamentation”; however, Kercheval and Pitas’ exquisite translation evokes neither of those things. Instead, contemplating Guerra’s intricate verbal designs allowed the translators to experience “lost and found” moments—instances where English revealed its ability to produce accomplices to Guerra’s “extremely innovative soundscapes” and formulations. Kercheval and Pitas cite an instance where they rediscovered the potential of English words to be “sonically evocative,” in which editor Michelle Gil-Montero offered “hacked in half” as a match for “pensamiento imbricado hendido”—instead of the initial idea, “thought interwoven split.” Later, quoting Walter Benjamin’s notion that “translation makes one’s native language foreign to itself,” Kercheval and Pitas’ afterword shows that reading Guerra in translation not only allows one to experience her mysterious Spanish transformed into English (A Sea at Dawn being a bilingual edition), but leaves our image of English irrevocably altered by her expansive, multipotential approach to language. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

The latest literary news from Palestine, Kenya, and the Philippines!

This week, our Editors-at-Large offer a fond remembrance of a recently-departed literary icon, and report on book fairs and BTS. From books on boats and boy bands to the changing texture of Ramallah mornings, read on to find out more.

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine

Early mornings in Ramallah are varied, except for one scene: an older man, back almost fully straight, all-white head lowered, walking slowly towards one specific coffee house in the old city. A serene smile below a deep gaze, the man would sit in his friends’ company, not for long—just enough to empty his coffee cup, and his head from the thoughts that weighed him down on his way.

Since last week, the beloved older man has not appeared in the streets. Zakaria Mohammed, a celebrated poet and a Palestinian literary icon, now resides in his admirers’ hearts. At the age of seventy-three, Zakaria’s body was lowered to rest, but his soul will continue to visit Ramallah, reminding everyone that:

There is no death
There is only a tiny cloud that passes and covers your eyes
Like a friend who comes from behind and blindfolds you with his hands
There is no death
There is a black goat and a tattooed hand milking an udder
White milk fills your mouth and flows in your eyes
Again, there is no death
There is a Raspberry tree
It holds your shoulder and hurts you
because it wants to open the way for turtles
There is no death
There isn’t
at all

Read more of Zakaria’s poems, translated here by Sinan Anton.

Zakaria Mohammed - Apr 2023 - photo by Ahmad Odeh READ MORE…

Summer 2023: Highlights from the Team

Still looking for entry points into our brand-new Summer issue? Members of our multi-continental team offer you several!

From the Indonesian Feature in the Summer edition, I was intrigued by the poems of Nirwan Dewanto, in vivid translations by John H. McGlynn, including “The Way to the Museum,” which begins with “All eyeballs dipped in the vinegar of the bourgeoisie will become pickled eyeballs” and continues, in long lines, to contemplate class, blindness, and revolution. It resonated against the pathos and absurdity in excerpts from Ulrike Draesner’s Schwitters, translated by Sharon Howe, and Tatiana Niculescu’s play Brancusi v. United States, fresh portraits of European Modernist artists Kurt Schwitters and Constantin Brâncuși, respectively. In each case, as the exile of the artist comes to the fore, the language of their place of origin is woven into the text, along with glimmers of humor. I particularly appreciated the note from Niculescu’s translator Amanda L. Andrei, which describes the process of working, as a heritage speaker, with her father Codin Andrei: “The emotional challenge [of translating this work] lies in my own hang-ups of being a non-native speaker due to political and historical forces beyond my control. When we co-translate, my father and I converse about Romanian culture from a perspective free of Western stereotypes of communism, vampires, and oppression, and we are delighted.” Finally, I was swept up in the atmospheric excerpt from Habib Tengour’s Women of the Odyssey (tr. Teresa Villa-Ignacio) while listening to Tengour’s mellifluous reading of the subtle text in French, describing those who console themselves by “sticking ear in seashell” or the “Unfinished / Wave bringing you to the threshold.”

—Heather Green, Visual Editor

I adore the rush of the speaker’s voice in Enrico Remmert’s The War of the Murazzi (tr. Antonella Lettieri), and its syntactical verbality, meandering but never losing control, digressing into tightness, into an accumulation of narrative stress. I love as well the narrator’s contextualisations of the backdrop of Turin and its historico-social problems with violence, particularly in a refugee context: Turin feels masterfully integrated into the plotline, like a combattant in the Murazzi war itself, and the vivacity of its violence continues running, naturalistic, organic, as the “river never stops running.”

The textuality of Mateo Díaz Choza’s Precipitations (tr. Lowry Pressly) is staggering: the dual columns that inform multiple methods of reading the poem, as well as the materiality of the poem, almost transforming it into an object itself. The way the words waterfall down the screen mimic the “drop,” a kind of fall from heaven, in a mode that lends itself to the digital form undoubtedly better than it would a magazine or a standard-format book, in the “depths of the page” that ultimately do not supercede the infinite scroll of the screen. When the poem’s substance and words meet and meld into each other, the poem’s two columns also merge into one, into the “weather,” “snow-mute” but “beautiful” in the void of its meaning. Choza creates an aesthetics of decay, of death, of abandonment, but of regeneration as well. The drop recurs again and again; the speaker will continue to recognise his lover, again and again.

I love the adventure of Amyr Klink’s One Hundred Days Between Sky and Sea (tr. Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren), the sense of movement through space and time that underpins the narrator’s paradoxical stillness, immobility. It is remininescent of Jules Verne’s Voyages extraordinaires, venturing beneath the sea or into the heart of volcanoes, on a journey pushing against the boundaries of human capacity. Klink melds the joy and exuberance of a child discovering the world with a practical, didactical style of writing that underpins the veracity of his voyage. I find this piece particularly apt for Asymptote as a vessel in the sea of understanding, a buoy of translation in the archipelago of languages.

I appreciate Asymptote‘s continued dedication to featuring Ukrainian writing in each issue, particularly Ukrainian writing about the Russian invasion. In my view, this is one of the most essential tasks of literature in translation: to continually draw attention to the diversity of global experiences; to remind us that our lives are not insular, that we are not islands. To that end, I found Anton Filatov’s Finding Myself at War (tr. Patricia Dubrava) both heart-wrenching and vital. As his “eyes bleed” before the cruelty of false news stories, so do readers’ eyes before the horrors of Ukrainian soldiers’ war experiences. They are given voice not in those news stories, but in literature. Sharing their stories—and I love the detail of the abandoned cat, ironically (or not?) named Death, as well as the final section on cinema—is an act of taken care.

I find Nicole Wong’s discussion of translation theory in The Terroir of a Single Work: Redefining Scope in Approaches to Translation incredibly pertinent and eloquent, and I particularly enjoy the ‘close reading’ section where she dissects her own translation of Proust. It’s a priviledge to experience the clarity and sharpness of such a mind through this piece. Her style is reminescent of Kundera’s narrator in The Unbearable Lightness of Being: playful, heavy on metaphor without falling into abstraction, clear, enlightening (and bearably so!). Since reading this piece, I’ve found myself returning to it as I internalise and integrate her analysis into my own understanding of translation.

 —Michelle Chan Schmidt, Assistant Editor (Fiction)

READ MORE…

Blog Editors’ Highlights: Summer 2023

Taking a closer look at pieces on landscape’s multiplicity, unrequited love, and memory amidst grief.

Launched four days ago, our blockbuster Summer 2023 issue gathers never-before-published writing from a remarkable thirty countries—including a spotlight on Indonesia. Don’t know where to begin with this thrilling mélange of established and emerging voices? To help you dip your toe into this brand-new edition brimming with literary gems, our blog editors take you through their favorite pieces. Read on!

Within the tensions of unrequited love, the transformative faculties of ardor conduct their most astounding magic. Time is stretched to its utmost limits, unbound feelings hit a multiplicity of extremes, and the physical proof of reality collapse under the extraordinary pressures of belief. There’s not a lot of happiness that can be found amongst the shifting phantasms and polarities of this condition, but there is plenty of beauty, of poetry, of hope and awe, all of it stemming from nothing but the imagination in overdrive, sparked brilliantly alive by the beckoning figure of desire.

There are many examples of such love to be found in life and art, but one that seems particularly difficult to understand is the love of a fan. The indulgent culture of fandom gives free reign to displays of love-as-devotion, ranging from pedestrian claims of destiny to reckless acts of sacrifice—and because it often inflicts the young and the hyperbolic, its passions are seen as lacking any certifying element of truth. A one-sided, disingenuous, superficial love. But just try telling that to a fan.

In an excerpt from her novel, Phantom Limb Pain, Heejoo Lee does much to redeem this expressive, unrestrained love. Tracing the contours of a fan’s deep—even vicious—adulation for an idol, Lee’s forthright prose, translated with a sensitive colloquiality by Yoojung Chun, reaches a tender, natural honesty, describing an emotion that gives a rhythm to the days and months, a thrill to the pedestrian events of waiting and wanting, and a vividity to the fantasies making life more beautiful. Manok, the young woman who paves the way for our nameless protagonist into fandom, is “downright shameless,” keenly following her idol’s every move, openly displaying her possessive jealousy, and attributing her love to an act of God. Being a fan in South Korea’s multibillion-dollar idol industry is nothing less than laborious; fans religiously attend promotional events, spare no expense in purchasing goods and merchandise, and “pour their hearts out” at every opportunity. From the outside, one is made to wonder what any individual gets out of this all-consuming lifestyle, and here, Lee explains it to us through Manok, with the eloquence of absolute sincerity:

Their presence stayed mysterious over repeated encounters, and it refused to be locked into language. Their real presence rendered everything in high relief, so that everything—even their shadows or things that might be their shadows—became amazing to me.

READ MORE…

The 2023 PEN/Heim Grantees Talk Translation: Part II

I still remember the joy and hope in learning new words and how that does expand, if not the world, a word.

In this three-part series, Asymptote has asked the 2023 PEN/Heim grantees to talk about their work in progress; their responses, brimming with excitement, conviction, and connection, are a testament to how much translators put themselves into their labor. Through the varied approaches and languages, they share the important commonality of surety: that the work they’ve been entrusted with has an immense potential to illuminate our reality, enlarge our world, and enrich our experiences of literature.

Here, Stine An grows the vocabulary of her world; Stoyan Tchaprazov wrestles with a complex, multilingual diction; and Joaquín Gavilano translates his way back home.   

Stine An on Yoo Heekyung:

I was initially drawn to Yoo Heekyung’s work because of both his poetic lineage and breadth of contributions as a cultural worker. Having studied poetry with Kim Hyesoon, Yoo is most known for his poetry; however, he also writes plays and essays and frequently collaborates with other poets and artists on video content, podcasts, and events. Additionally, he runs wit n cynical, a one-of-a-kind poetry bookstore and project space in Seoul. I started translating his poems back in 2019 for a literary translation workshop with Sawako Nakayasu during my final year of MFA studies at Brown University; there, she not only inspired me to explore literary translation as a meaningful way to connect with my Korean heritage as a poet, but also as an exciting and potentially life-changing activity. I take invitations to change my life seriously. I started writing poetry because I wanted to change my life, and it’s for the same reason that I continue my work as a translator. The possibility to change my life. How exciting is that? What does it mean to grow the vocabulary of your world?

Sawako introduced me to the poet and translator Don Mee Choi, who in turn introduced me to Yoo’s work. One of the earliest pieces of feedback I received from Don Mee and other early readers for my translations was that I had nailed the tone for Yoo’s work, so I took that as a sign to continue. During my ALTA translation mentorship with Joyelle McSweeney, she invited me to reflect on my relationship to tone, and I realized that tone was something I deeply cared about in my own work—both as a poet and a stand-up comedian. So, I’ve been prioritizing tone, mood, and voice when translating Yoo’s poems. For inspiration, I’ve been revisiting Joachim Neugroschel’s translations of Franz Kafka’s short stories and aphorisms; I remember being utterly bewildered and enchanted by Kafka’s words through those translations—the humor, grief and wonder.

READ MORE…

A Weird Alchemy of Taste and Determination: Speaking with Taylor Bradley of Honford Star

That’s what is cool about Specters—it tries to explore how government censorship affects the world of art.

South Korean author Hwang Yeo Jung’s scintillating, multi-layered novel, The Specters of Algeria, was our Book Club selection for the month of April; in a narrative that holds fictions inside facts, facts inside fictions, Hwang brilliantly builds and unravels with the double-speak and intimate language of life under authoritarian governance. This invigorating book has come to us by way of the East Asia-centric publisher Honford Star, a small press that has continued to undertake the vital and thrilling work of bringing groundbreaking writers to English-language audiences. In this following interview, Laurel Taylor speaks with the co-founder of Honford Star, Taylor Bradley, about their process from obtaining rights to publication, their mission and goals, and why The Specters of Algeria is such a special title.

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 USD20 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.  

Laurel Taylor (LT): It’s been six years since Honford Star’s founding. What led you and your co-founder Anthony Bird to form this new publishing house?

Taylor Bradley (TB): Anthony and I had known each other since 2008, when we were both English teachers at the same school in Korea. Fast forward to 2015, my wife and I were on our honeymoon in London, where we met up with Anthony and his wife for a pint at this 300-year-old pub called the Chesire Cheese. Charles Dickens was a regular there, and perhaps feeling the inspiration of the Ghost of Literature Past, Anthony and I talked about how nice it would be to have a publishing company. I continued on my honeymoon and didn’t think about the conversation again until a few months later, when Anthony messaged saying he wants to publish the classic Korean author Kim Dong-in and asked me if I want in. I said yes.

Our purpose for starting a new publishing company was to bring a broader range of East Asian stories into English. At the time, we felt the types of books being published were from an extremely narrow band. For example, there hadn’t been much, if any, Korean sci-fi translated into English. We hoped to bring things from areas like classic literature, sci-fi, and queer fiction into English. Fortunately, I think that the translated field has changed a lot in the past eight years, thanks to the efforts of indie and university presses.

LT: You and Anthony were both already working in the publishing sphere prior to Honford Star’s founding, but I’m wondering if there been any unexpected challenges along the way? Unexpected rewards?

TB: We did have experience with printing and publishing, but we had never been in charge of doing an entire book. So finding good translators, editors, artists, printers, distributor, publicists, and sales team has been a journey of trial and error. We’ve been fortunate that our network has really grown into strong group of collaborators, and we have a great printer in Korea that can make the most gorgeous books. Our sales team are a group of wizards, and the distributor is very reliable.   READ MORE…

Announcing Our April Book Club Selection: The Specters of Algeria by Hwang Yeo Jung

Fact and fiction are irrelevant.

Amidst the mysterious, intricate narrative of The Specters of Algeria, there is another elusive, shrouded text: the only play that Karl Marx had ever written. This absurdist work, which gives the novel its name, goes on to inflict immense violence onto a circle of close friends, initiated by the hotheaded crackdowns of a censorious regime. In her generation-spanning, multi-threaded debut, Hwan Yeo Jung spins a fascinating inquest into authorship, aesthetics, authoritarianism, and how such things resonate into our intimate relationships. As the arrival of an exciting new voice in Korean writing, we are thrilled to introduce this fascinating inquest into political and human nature as our Book Club selection of April.

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 USD20 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.  

The Specters of Algeria by Hwang Yeo Jung, tr. from the Korean by Yewon Jung, Honford Star, 2023

In her theorizing of anti-neocolonial translation, Don Mee Choi has described the experience of speaking as a twin—in the context of a Korea divided by colonial powers in twain, existing inside a language that has been colonized and recolonized by invasion and annexation, Choi describes the act of translation from between two nations that have never technically stopped being at war. This twinning across history is an idea that came to me again and again as I read The Specters of Algeria by Hwang Yeo Jung, translated by Yewon Jung. Hwang Yeo Jung’s first novel, released in Korean in 2017, takes an incredibly cerebral dive into the minds of two childhood friends who do not quite understand the circumstances of their own upbringing. In seeking answers to the dissolutions of their families and friendships, Yul and Jing (who are also Eunjo and Hyeonga, and maybe also Yeonghee and Cheosul, and maybe also Lily and Marx) sink deep into the fog of memory and a historical era, whose sins are often swept under the rug.

This labyrinthine novel bears rereading, as moments that were baffling on first readthrough settle into clarity when revisited. In the first chapter, for instance, we learn that Yul’s father, Han Jiseop, is terrified of books and paper, burning every scrap he discovers in Yul’s secret keepsake box of Jing’s letters. As a child, Yul does not understand her father’s fear. It is only later in life that Yul learns her father was once a playwright who, along with the rest of his theatre troop (including Jing’s parents), was arrested for producing “seditious materials” about communism. The resulting violence against Jiseop and his fellows ripped their friendships, and in some cases even their minds, apart. When Yul comes upon Jing’s mother Baek Soi on Jeju Island, Soi’s mind has crumbled completely, able to remember only her son and nothing else. But inside her backpack is the titular play that caused them all so much anguish—The Specters of Algeria.

This play resurfaces in Soi’s broken mind, haunting her with memories of times before the break, and pointing to one of the key concepts of this novel—the importance of naming. In her mind’s eye, Soi travels back to recitations at gatherings when Yul was a child:

“What on earth does it mean for someone to feel something about something?” Jing’s mom asked.

“Do you want to be human?” my dad asked in return.

“Tell me a secret,” she said.

“A secret about what?”

“About anything.”

“Find a contradiction.”

“If I do, will you give me a name?”

“Why do you need a name?”

“Because I need courage.”

“Then I will.”

“What is my name?”

“Hammonia.”

“And who are you?”

“Who am I?”

“Fred.”

READ MORE…

Weaving the Intangible into the Concrete: An Interview with Mattho Mandersloot

I tried to let her poetry do its work. That is to say, by trying not to explain anything, but to convey her words in their purest form.

The Korean poet Choi Jeongrye once wrote: “As you can tell from my poems, memory is both my deficiency and my mind’s ruin . . .” A powerful assertion of the poet’s battle against the intangible, Choi’s work speaks to the formless, the absent, the incoherent, and the hidden. We were proud to publish a selection of her vivid writings in our Winter 2023 issue, and in this following interview, Assistant Editor Matt Turner speaks to the translator, Mattho Mandersloot, about his process, his relationship with the poet, and the universality of these poems. 

Matt Turner (MT): First, let me say how much I enjoyed these poems by Choi Jeongrye from the Winter 2023 issue; your translations conveyed the eye of the author very clearly. It was as if the poems, to paraphrase Zhuangzi, used their language in order to forget their language, and pointed towards something else—the particulars of the world maybe, or maybe the stray feelings that such particulars evoke. This gave me a sense, at least in part, of the author as a person.

One lingering question I had was about Choi Jeongrye’s place—and her poetry’s place—in the world around her, and in the literary community of South Korea. Could you say a little about that?

Mattho Mandersloot (MM): Thank you for your kind words! I think your comment about the poet shining through her work as a person is very accurate, and it is this aspect of her poetry that drew me in from the very start. The way she writes off the back of her own experiences and observations, while simultaneously touching on the world as a whole, really gets to me. Somehow, her work is both personal and universal at once.

As for her place in the literary community, I am fortunate enough to have met her several times while I lived in Korea. We had this weekly ‘poetry exchange’, where she would walk me through her version of the history of Korean poetry, and I would help her—as best I could—with some English poems that she was reading and translating at the time (something in which she took a great interest, given that her translation of James Tate’s prose poetry collection, Return to the City of White Donkeys, was published by Changbi in 2019). During these meetups, which soon turned into my favourite moment of the week, she did not hide her preference for poetic realism as she explained which Korean poets influenced which. She herself greatly took after Oh Kyu-won (1941–2007), who was known for his attempts to deconstruct language and look at ‘naked reality’. To me, Choi’s collection Kangaroo is kangaroo, I am I (2011, Moonji) always brings to mind Oh’s collection Tomatoes are red, no, sweet (1999, Moonji).  READ MORE…

Winter 2023: Highlights from the Team

Dip your toe into our milestone Winter 2023 issue with these recommendations from our global team!

I found, as I sat down to read this issue, that what I was hungry for was urgency, vitality, wit and I found pieces that gave me what I was looking for. “There’s No Cure for the Dead” by Nazli Karabiyikoglu (tr. Ralph Hubbell) weaves a breathtakingly complex tapestry, rife with competing rhythms and energies. Selim Özdoğan’s “Seven Difficulties and One Ever-Narrowing Path” (tr. Katy Derbyshire) brought exactly the acerbic, incisive voice I needed. The Alfred Döblin story “The Woman Who Walked In Her Sleep” (tr. Joachim Redner) was filled with great verbs, gestures, colors, sounds, taking the reader on a dizzying trajectory, a plummet, really, from the character swanning about Berlin, showing off his colorful fashion ensemble, to a murderous rag doll come to life. Menke Katz’s poems with their structural challenges around diminishing or growing numbers of syllables and the love of Yiddish had me re-reading them and admiring the translation. And Aco Šopov’s deep, painful poems (tr. Rawley Grau and Christina E. Kramer) after the devastation of the 1963 Skopje earthquake show how despair communicates across decades and has much to say to us about loss and survival now, sixty years later.

—Ellen Elias-Bursac, Contributing Editor

This issue I was particularly blown away by the quality of the interviews published. The César Aira interview conducted by Michal Zechariah is truthfully hilarious, and the line of questioning really allows his trademark wit and absurdism to shine through. I found Geetanjali Shree’s interview with Rose Bialer to be incredibly generous and thoughtful, fascinating and sharp. In both cases, I thought a really strong sense of their writing came through thanks to the interviewers. The visual section brought together two incredible artists—I’m researching the interplay of poetic text and space at the moment, so Lynn Xu’s thinking (teased out by Laura Copelin) really spoke to me, and I appreciated the climate focus of Bahia Shehab’s work, and her interview with Heather Green. Last but certainly not least, I loved Jared Joseph’s review of Johannes Göransson’s Summer. As a researcher, Göransson’s thinking on poetry translation has been incredibly insightful, and I enjoyed the same insights applied to his work, really engaging in depth with poetry as a genre and mode of being. As a bonus, I thought the criticism section was pleasantly varied in terms of geographies and genres!

—Georgina Fooks, Director of Outreach

All the fiction pieces in this issue are truly marvelous, as if they’re in conversation with one another! For example, Kim Cho Yeop’s “Laura” (tr. Sukyoung Sukie Kim) and Dalih Sembiring’s “Floccinaucinihilipilificatius” (tr. Avram Maurits) can be seen as companion pieces, as both stories deal with corporeal limitations and spiritual transcendence. Laura’s sci-fi context, on various conditions related to body dysmorphia, eloquently evokes the plight of non-binary and transgender groups, while Floccinaucinihilipilificatius represents a metaphorical lotus—its trajectory from pain and putrefaction toward the light of maternal love. There’s a sense of metaphysical wonder to both stories—even though one is inspired by science and the other by magical realism. READ MORE…

The Winter 2023 Edition Has Landed

Helping us celebrate our milestone 12th anniversary issue are César Aira, Geetanjali Shree, Alfred Döblin, and Choi Jeongrye in our Korean Feature!

Earthquake, war, disease, unrequited love, even a man-made hell conjured through scents—what haven’t the protagonists in our Winter 2023 edition been through? Tagged #TheReturn, this issue is not only a celebration of human resilience but also of our twelve years in world literature. Helping us mark this milestone are César Aira, one of the most beloved names in the canon, and Geetanjali Shree, 2022 International Booker Prizewinner—both give us exclusive wide-ranging interviews. Amid new work from 34 countries, we also have stunning short stories from Alfred Döblin and Dalih Sembiring, powerful drama by Anna Gmeyner, a brilliant review of past contributor Johannes Göransson’s latest publication, and a Special Feature sampling the best in contemporary letters from a world literature hotspot sponsored by LTI Korea. All of this is illustrated by our talented guest artist Weims.

In Emmelie Prophète’s slow-burning fiction, “The Return” is a dramatic answering of prayers when a former Olympic athlete turns up unannounced before his mother a lifetime after his escape from Port-au-Prince. That same longed-for return is impossible for poet Fadi Azzam—“a Syrian / who had to flee his homeland / to countries that wish to flee from him.” In Juana Peñate Montejo’s poems of exile—our first work from the Mayan language of Ch’ol—on the other hand, it’s the self that requires summoning and remembering: “Bring the scent of amber, / return me to myself.” Re-membering, in the most literal sense, is foregrounded in Kim Cho Yeop’s macabre but fascinating story, one work in a sci-fi-tinged Korean Feature of startling breadth, wherein we are initiated into a community of amputees-by-choice, since “the body is hardly capacious enough to contain the human soul, which is so full of potential.” So full of potential, perhaps, that even a lover’s reincarnation on the 49th day of his death in the womb of a stranger seems possible in a transcendent story by the Mongolian writer Bayasgalan Batsuuri.

“Six months before his death in 1991, Menke Katz had a dream. In it, his long-dead mother admonished him to return to writing in his native language, Yiddish.” This dream resulted in the Oulipian poems that Jacob Romm has beautifully translated for this issue. Proving an exception to Shree’s claim that “the creative writer is instinctively drawn to her mother tongue,” Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine describes an opposite impulse in his essay: writing in French—a second language—is his deliberate choice, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Anyway, isn’t the true writer one who is “always a stranger in the language he expresses himself in”? In any case, even if the process of writing is estranging, the outcome when a piece of writing finds its intended reader can be sublime. For Lynn Xu, “the act of reading is the act of making kin . . . For example, when I read [César] Vallejo, I recognize that he is my mother . . .” By utter coincidence or divine fate, César Vallejo is also featured in these very pages, translated by another César, the intrepid César Jumpa Sánchez, who is determined to project Vallejo’s breakthrough collection, Trilce, to, in his own words, “a network of planetary outreach.”

Just as “encyclopedism has been the permanent horizon of [César Aira’s] work,“ the asymptotic impulse to realize a world literature that truly reflects the world has been our north star from the get-go. If our very existence has connected you with your kindred authors, help us get to our big 5 0 (in issues, not years!), just around the corner. The best way to support us is to sign up as a sustaining or masthead member—the New Year brings new perks and we’ll even put together a care package (rabbit theme optional) for supporters at the USD500-a-year tier and above. Thank you for being with us all these years!

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