Posts featuring Carlos Fuentes

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

August 1, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News  |  by Charlie Ng, Linnea Gradin, and René Esaú Sánchez

The latest literary news from Hong Kong, Sweden, and Mexico!

This week, our Editors-at-Large bring us updates on book fairs, industry trends, and tk. From the impact of censorship on book fairs in Hong Kong, to the domination of Scandi-noir in Sweden, to a celebration of a beloved publishing house in Mexico, read on to find out more!

Charlie Ng, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong

The 35th Hong Kong Book Fair took place from July 16 to July 22, at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai. This year’s theme, “Food Culture.Future Living,” aimed to explore culinary traditions and histories, connecting food cultures and lifestyles. As part of the event, the “Theme of the Year Seminar Series” featured a variety of sessions with authors and speakers dedicated to discussing food cultures from various perspectives. Topics included the historical significance of culinary traditions, the link between nutrition and health, and future trends in food consumption. Despite its rich programming, the fair experienced a notable decline in visitor numbers, with attendance dropping approximately 10% from the previous year. Organizers from the Hong Kong Trade Development Council reported that around 890,000 visitors participated, down from 990,000 in 2024. This decline followed the disruption caused by Typhoon Wipha, which forced the fair to suspend activities for an entire day. Some exhibitors expressed dissatisfaction with the situation as there was a significant drop in sales attributed to the typhoon’s impact on the peak business day.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong literary group the House of Hong Kong Literature announced the cancellation of its own book fair, originally scheduled for July 18-27. The non-profit organization expressed regret for the abrupt decision, which stemmed from unspecified reasons that were beyond the organizer’s control. Co-founder Tang Siu-wa mentioned that the cancellation affected their fundraising efforts, especially as profits were intended to support their relocation. In recent years, independent publishers and bookstores in Hong Kong have increasingly organized alternative book fairs to counter perceived censorship by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. The HKTDC had explicitly rejected applications to join Hong Kong Book Fair from publishers that published books on pro-democracy movements or asked exhibitors to remove sensitive titles from their shelves. Moreover, the “Reading Everywhere” independent book fair co-hosted at Hunter Bookstore, located in Sham Shui Po, faced scrutiny from the pro-Beijing newspaper Wen Wei Po, which alleged that the event fostered “soft resistance” against the government. The bookstore’s director, Leticia Wong, defended the fair, stating that the selection of books focused on local authors and was not intended to conceal any titles. Some other businesses in the same district were also accused of “soft resistance,” including a pen shop that sold ballpoint pens featuring local-concept designs, which won an award in 2019, and a café with graffiti of a frog on the wall, interpreted as Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character that gained symbolic meaning as a pro-democracy icon during the 2019 protests. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

June 28, 2024  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by MARGENTO, Miranda Mazariegos, and René Esaú Sánchez

The latest from Canada, Mexico, and Latin America!

Join us this week as our Editors-at-Large bring us updates on fascinating digital archives, literary time capsules, and a prestigious award. From e-lit cult works, to ruminations on the future, to a podcast on Mexican literature, read on to learn more!

MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large, Reporting for Canada

“Why this huge line,” I wondered, “rolling out of the University of Victoria (UVic) McPherson Library?” The bright British Columbia sunlight, the sweet breeze across the greens, not even the irresistible campus café patios could prevent people from crowding in for one of the coolest events of the year. 

The “Hypertext & Art” exhibit, hosted by the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) from June 10 to June 14, was living up to the reputation and coverage it had already garnered thanks to its exhibition in Rome at Max Planck Institute for Art History in fall 2023 and the indefatigable work done in the field by its well-known and widely awarded curator, author Dene Grigar. The tagline of the exhibit was “A Retrospective of Forms,” and that is exactly what Grigar has been doing for quite a number of years now at the Electronic Literature Lab she leads at Washington State University Vancouver (WSUV), where she archived over three hundred works of electronic literature and other media alongside dozens of vintage computers, software, and peripherals. 

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An Alternative Valentine’s Day Reading List

February 14, 2019  |  in Essays  |  by Chloe Lim, Jonathan Egid, and Nina Perrotta

St Valentine is the patron saint not only of lovers, but also of beekeepers, greetings, epilepsy, travelers, and the plague.

If Valentine’s Day doesn’t get your heart racing, Asymptote has something different to offer this February 14. Read on for sinister mansions, absent wives, and the ambivalent origins of Valentine’s Day as a celebration of love!

This Valentine’s Day, consider instead the often terrible odds that romantic endeavours will succeed, the relationships that end mysteriously, and the partners that vanish without a trace. This is exactly what happens in Taiwanese author Wang Ting-Kuo’s English debut, My Enemy’s Cherry Tree (Granta Books, April 2019), translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-Chun. First published in 2015, the novel has already won all major Taiwanese literary awards and is set to make a spectacular entrance into the English literary scene.

The novel is a first-person retrospective narrative by an unnamed protagonist who has set up a small cafe by the sea, waiting for his missing wife, Qiuzi, to return to this spot, her favourite along the coast. The initial premise is simple: Qiuzi, dissatisfied with the narrator’s absence, his financial lack, and his unintentional neglect of her, disappears one morning into the arms of Luo Yiming, a philanthropist and Qiuzi’s photography tutor. The unnamed protagonist’s narration is then triggered by Luo’s chancing upon the cafe, setting in motion an encounter that drives Luo mad. As the story unfolds, however, the truth of the matter becomes increasingly less certain, complicated also by the appearance of Miss Baixiu, Luo’s daughter, who haunts the cafe daily in an attempt to ‘heal’ the protagonist’s soul. READ MORE…