Posts filed under 'social media'

Translation Tuesday: An Excerpt from The Guard by Maisku Myllymäki

September 2, 2025  |  in Translations  |  by Tabatha Leggett

He doesn’t see himself until he takes his selfie.

What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleeping? 50 hours? 70? What about 200? In this week’s Translation Tuesday, the unnamed protagonist of Maisku Myllymäki‘s novel The Guard has been awake so long they have to write the day of the week on their hand to remember that it’s Sunday. Yet in spite of their insomnia, they remain almost hypnotically attentive: to the pilasters of columns and poorly-named green paint in the atrium of the museum where they work, to the remembered touch of their boyfriend, to the asinine behavior of museum-goers and to the strange effect of social media on personal identity. Translated into deft and subtle prose by Tabatha Leggett, this excerpt is sure to leave you eagerly awaiting a full translation of the novel. Read on!

It’s December 9, the final day of the exhibition. Tomorrow, the people in dark blue and sand grey coloured overalls will pack it all away. They’ll destroy the setting in which Peter and I first met eight months ago. They’ll wrap the artworks in paper and protective plastic sheeting and pack them into bespoke wooden chests. This is meticulous work. The art will be handled with the kind of deep tenderness very few living beings ever truly experience. Sometimes Peter touches me that way.

I’m sitting on a tall, black stool in the corner—the very stool on which I’ve spent countless hours sitting these past eight months and long before, supervising different artworks, different kinds of exhibition. It’s hard to remember exactly how long I’ve worked here. It’s the kind of job where nothing really gets done, no progress is made during the hours I spend in this hall. For me, a regular work day is one in which nothing extraordinary happens. In that sense, you might compare my job to that of a lifeguard.

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Crushing Millennial Ennui: Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico

March 27, 2025  |  in Reviews  |  by Sayani Sarkar

Latronico’s novel is a deeply personal book of objects gazing back at us, full of questions about authenticity, reality, their significance.

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from the Italian by Sophie Hughes, Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2025

In the early 2010s, a specific gastronomic corner of the internet flourished alongside the rise of the Instagram aesthetic; food blogging evolved beyond sites run by home cooks from around the world, and social media brought its democratization to full swing. I too was among the converted. My weekends throughout grad school became increasingly spent wandering supermarket aisles in search of capers, plum sauce, sumac, fig jam, and macadamia nuts—which were especially hard to find in India at the time—while around me, artisanal coffee shops serving cold brews were just starting to appear, and the profession of pastry chef was becoming a lucrative pursuit. At the same time, a new generation of photographers emerged in Berlin’s culinary scene, sharing dreamy images of mid-century tables with pastel ceramic bowls of oatmeal and ruby-red berry coulis, positioned in wildflower fields with Photoshopped late-evening glow. Food, like everything else in life, became a highly publicized mode to exhibit the paragons of life, beauty, and self.

Vincenzo Latronico, a Milanese author originally from Rome, has previously written four books, but the Booker International-nominated Perfection is his first to be translated into English. Though the novel is affecting on several levels, it’s important to note that it will resonate differently with readers of various age groups. As a millennial, reading Perfection was like stepping into the looking glass; at times, it felt like the narrator’s striking delineation of the digitally idealized lifestyle, tinged with biting wit, was aimed directly at me. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

September 13, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Ibrahim Fawzy, Miranda Mazariegos, and Wambua Muindi

The latest from Kenya, Egypt, and Mexico!

In this edition of our column for global literary news, Arabic titles are celebrated with the National Book Award’s longlist of Translated Literature, a vital literacy program in Kenya travels to a women’s prison, and a new cinematic adaptation of one of Mexico’s most important novels premiers at the Toronto International Film Festival. Read on to find out more!

Ibrahim Fawzy, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Egypt

Against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, literature emerges as a beacon of hope. Now translated into English, three Arabic literary works have been longlisted for the prestigious National Book Award for Translated Literature, standing as testaments to the resilience of the human spirit. Nasser Abu Srour’s The Tale of a Wall: Reflections on the Meaning of Hope and Freedom, translated by Luke Leafgren, is a poignant memoir recounting his decades-long imprisonment in Israeli jails. Through the lens of his imagination, Abu Srour transforms confinement into a realm of boundless possibility, exploring themes of love, justice, and the unwavering power of hope. The book’s evocative prose and its author’s unflinching honesty combine into a compelling narrative that has resonated with readers around the globe; interested readers can also see an excerpt published on Asymptote as a part of our All Eyes on Palestine column.

Additionally, Leri Price, a frequent contender for the National Book Award, has once again made the longlist with her translation of Samar Yazbek’s Where the Wind Calls Home (which Asymptote had selected for the February edition of our Book Club). This haunting novel delves into the complexities of human relationships and the devastating impact of war on individuals and communities. Another longlisted work is Bothayna al-Essa’s The Book Censor’s Library, co-translated by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain. This thought-provoking novel examines the censorship of literature and its profound implications for society. I’m so glad that Arabic literature is shining thanks to the fabulous work of its translators. READ MORE…

We Stand With Ukraine: “The Ghost of Kyiv” by B. R. Dionysius

April 9, 2022  |  in We Stand With Ukraine  |  by B. R. Dionysius

Through his phone’s / cracked canopy he plays you a black streak / over Kyiv

In this week’s edition of literary works written in support and solidarity with the citizens of Ukraine, we are proud to present a poem by B. R. Dionysius. “The Ghost of Kyiv” movingly comments on the distancing voyeurism of watching tragedy unfold from afar, and of wide-ranging human affairs condensed into byte-sized consumption. As we continue to navigate the ever-shifting boundaries between the virtual and the real, Dionysius’ poem works between man and machine, its precise lines edging out the bodies caught within them.

The Ghost of Kyiv

Your son shows you a Tik Tok clip;
You both play Russian computer games.
Simulators that glorify World War Two/
mid-century armour & the cold war era
where each new development increased
penetration; rounds that defeated steel’s
stubborn thickness. You watch your son
take to the skies over maps of Ukraine.
1941. Get shot down a lot. The next best
thing to flying solo. Through his phone’s
cracked canopy he plays you a black streak
over Kyiv; a medieval, barbed arrowhead
punching through the sky’s grey cuirass. For
fifty years the fulcrum has been idle; three up
-grades, engines, radar, missiles, but never seen
combat. Seventies bones good enough to mix
it over the capital with its modern successors,
flankers & frogfeet; a retro jet where the ghost
got good purchase from his re-engineered multi-
role fighter. The first ace in a day in fifty years.
Not since Alam’s F-86 sabre rattled in the Indo-
Pakistani war has the aerial world revelled in six
kills in one day. Your son doesn’t bother to fact
check the video, sold on social media’s bravado;
a pilot’s last stand. He tells you the ghost was shot
down, but ejected. His short clip trimmed to fit.
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“Thirst for a Deeper Understanding”: An Interview with the Founders of Absynt

July 17, 2019  |  in Interviews  |  by Julia Sherwood

Perhaps the fact that we were amateurs was an advantage: we were willing to take on the risk.

In 2015, two friends, a Pole and a Slovak, took a gamble and ventured into the overcrowded book market in Slovakia. And as if starting a new publishing house wasn’t risky enough, they chose to focus on literary reportage, a genre that was not well-known in Slovakia at the time. Since then, Absynt has published eighty titles and in late 2017 launched a Czech branch. At this year’s London Book Fair, the founders of Absynt, Filip Ostrowski and Juraj Koudela, shared their remarkable success story with Asymptote’s editor-at-large for Slovakia, Julia Sherwood.

Julia Sherwood (JS): Reportage is increasingly being recognized as a bona fide literary genre and gaining popularity around the world. What is it about reportage that attracts you and that distinguishes it from ordinary journalism? Why do you think it resonates with readers?

Filip Ostrowski (FO): There is this general thirst for a deeper understanding of events and their context. We get coverage of the whole world from the media and the internet, but what is missing is a detached view, a kind of more universal commentary. For such a text to emerge, some time has to elapse. We feel that online coverage doesn’t respond to this need, but literary reportage can.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

November 16, 2018  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Barbara Halla, Julia Sherwood, Kelsey Woodburn, and Paul M. Worley

The latest in world literature can be found here in Asymptote's weekly roundup!

This week, our weekly dispatches take you to Poland, France, Mexico and Guatemala for the latest in literary prizes, and literary projects, featuring social media, and indigenous poets in translation.

Julia Sherwood, Editor-At-Large, reporting from Poland:

Hot on the heels of a US book tour for her International Man Booker Prize-winning novel Flights (translated by Jennifer Croft), the indefatigable Olga Tokarczuk appeared at a series of events to mark the UK publication of her newest book. The “existential thriller” Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, is fast garnering rave reviews, and London audiences had an opportunity for a Q&A with the author combined with a screening of Spoor, the book’s film adaptation. There was also a lively conversation between Olga Tokarczuk and writer and chair of the International Man Booker judges, Lisa Appignanesi, at the Southbank Centre. Meanwhile, Flights has been shortlisted for the National Book Award for translation as well as for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, the shortlist of which includes another book by a Polish author, Żanna Słoniowska’s The House with a Stained Glass Window (also translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones).

Anyone who may have been afraid to tackle the classics of Polish literature will no longer have any excuse now that Adam Mickiewicz’s epic poem Pan Tadeusz has appeared in a new and highly readable English version. “I undertook this translation out of the conviction that Pan Tadeusz is fundamentally an accessible poem for twenty-first-century non-Polish readers. It’s witty, lyrical, ironic, nostalgic, in ways that seem to me quite transparent and universal,” writes multi-award-winning translator Bill Johnston in his introduction. At a book launch at the Polish Hearth Club in London on October 8, Johnston compared notes with poet and translator George Szirtes, who introduced his translation of the Hungarian classic The Tragedy of Man by Imre Madách.

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Ricardo Lísias, the Brazilian Novelist on Trial for Unconventional Form

July 30, 2018  |  in Essays  |  by Lara Norgaard

If an author designs his text to inspire a reader response in a specific social context, is translation even possible?

Featured in our Summer 2018 issue, Brazilian writer Ricardo Lísias’s “Anna O.” examines Latin American politics and memories of dictatorships in the region. In her translator’s note, Lara Norgaard discusses the way Lísias blends truth and fiction to create a unique reading experience: “Lísias’s many references are a key component of the unique relationship he builds between text and reader. The author’s goal is to cause confusion in his audience, to break the boundaries of the book as a discrete object, separate from the world. Nonfiction pours into his fiction and, conversely, the reader reacts to his stories in the real world. In ‘Anna O.,’ Lísias plays with the expectations and knowledge of his audience.” In the following essay, Norgaard further explores this exciting young author’s work.

Ricardo Lísias should be on everyone’s radar.

In Brazil, he already is, and in unconventional ways: two of the writer’s novels over the past four years have landed the writer in court trials. The first, a detective fiction eBook series; the other, a novel signed “pseudonym: Eduardo Cunha,” the name of a prominent right-wing senator currently in prison for corruption charges.

Lísias has the uncanny ability of ruffling feathers in a country where literature too often falls by the wayside. These trials—the former, a charge for the falsification of state documents; the latter, for the defamation of character—might indicate a lack of understanding or urge to control experimental art, both within the justice system and in the general public. But they might also imply that this specific author has managed to escape the bubble of traditional literary readership. His work is controversial, in a broad sense. And yet, despite his dramatic reputation in Brazil, and despite having been named one of Granta’s best young Brazilian novelists, only two of Lísias’ texts have appeared in English translation: the short stories “Evo Morales,” published in Granta and “Anna O.”, just released in Asymptote’s Summer 2018 issue.

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“Delicacy,” by Maria Rita Kehl

February 4, 2014  |  in Translations  |  by Julia Sanches

Translated by Julia Sanches

If I were God and I existed, I would execute an act of administrative intervention on São Paulo. I would raze the whole city to the ground throughout the next decade: it stays just the way it is. Nothing else will be knocked down, nothing more will be built. Try to work on the city as it exists: monstrous, imbalanced, poorly planned and poorly maintained. If it’s a matter of moving money, invest in public spaces: in roads, squares, gardens, sidewalks, lighting, leisure centers, flood prevention—anything and everything that makes of what would otherwise be nothing but a heap of housing, something alike to that impressive human invention we call a city. Investing in urbanity also gives financial return. READ MORE…