Posts filed under 'world cup'

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

Our weekly roundup of literary news brings us to France, Brazil, and Argentina.

It’s never a slow news day on Fridays at Asymptote. This week we bring you the latest publications, events, and news from France, Brazil, and Argentina.

Barbara Halla, Editor-at-Large, reporting from France

Is it perhaps time to talk about a renaissance for French literature in English translation? More classic French literature has always had an audience in the English-speaking world, but in the past few months new authors are taking the literary world by storm. Édouard Louis is only twenty-five but already a public figure in France. His latest book, a semi-autobiographical work, History of Violence (translated by Lorin Stein) was published to great acclaim in late June. Alison L. Strayer translated for Seven Stories Press Annie Ernaux’s The Years (published in the UK by Fitzcarraldo Editions), an innovative collective autobiography that is both memoir and social critique of our times. To continue the trend, in June came also the publication of Gaël Faye Small Country (translated by Sarah Ardizzone), a coming-of-age story that tackles hard issues, including the Rwandan genocide and Civil War in Burundi. The Guardian went so far as to call Faye “the next Elena Ferrante.”

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Transcending Language Through Sports: Football Writers

Asymptote team members and readers share their favorite pieces of writing about the game.

We are well into the World Cup, which means endless amounts of football (or soccer, depending on your location) for the serious fans and a chance to dabble in that world for those less-serious fans of the sport. The group stage is coming to a close and there have been more than a few surprises, including Iceland’s humbling of Messi and Argentina, Poland going down against the tenacious Senegalese team—and Germany? Really?

The World Cup, an event that very much goes beyond the ninety minutes of twenty-two players and a ball, generates an endless amount of controversy, discussion, national pride, rivalry, and politics from all sorts of people, including our favorite writers. With that in mind, today we bring you a special treat as Asymptote team members and readers share their favorite pieces of writing about the game.

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From Austria: Elfriede Jelinek

Already, the 2018 World Cup has delivered its quota of surreal moments. Some have been joyfully surreal—the director of Iceland’s 2012 Eurovision video leaping to keep out a penalty from one of the greatest players of all-time; Iran’s failed attempt at a somersault throw-in during the final seconds of a crucial game against Spain—but others have had a more sinister edge. Among the defining images from the opening match was the handshake between Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Salman, two star players for the Axis of too-wealthy-to-be-evil.

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Weekly News Roundup, 27th June 2014: Bilingual immorality, soccer on the brain

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Remember the “trolley problem?” (Should you kill one person in order to save five?). If it seems like your moral compass is irrefutable, you’re wrong: the ethical judgement you make depends on the language in which you are called to make it.

Shadowy truths: the origin of Yiddish is nebulous, and it may remain so indefinitely. At Tablet, the latest in an ongoing series examining how the academic field is destroying its own attempt to map an etymology. More verboten things: the Moscow Times takes a peek in a Soviet Union-era erotica collection.

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Weekly News Roundup, 19th June 2014: World Cup in Books, New Neruda

This week's literary highlights from across the world

(Re)discovering familiar authors. Those familiar with Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (that is to say: everybody) might be happy to discover that more than twenty previously unknown poems have been uncovered and are slated for publication later this year in Latin America (no word on translations quite yet).

Big, big news in letters across the globe (especially for us Asymptote-fans): the shortlists for the PEN Literary Awards have been announced, and the translation categories are peppered with our very own past contributors. In the prose category, Vasily Grossman’s An Armenian Sketchbook sports a nomination. You can read an excerpt from the novel, translated by Elizabeth and Robert Chandler, in our January 2013 issue! And Asymptote alum and professor Michael Hoffman is up in the same category for his translation of The Emperor’s Tomb by Joseph Roth (read his essay on Wolfgang Koeppen in our January 2014 issue here). We like to see our past contributors doing big things: Reif Larsen, frequent contributor and goofy Asymptote friend, writes in The Guardian on the trials of seeing his first novel receive the Hollywood treatment.

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