Posts featuring Dias Novita Wuri

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…

Announcing Our September Book Club Selection: Birth Canal by Dias Novita Wuri

To resist, the women in Birth Canal—as object of desire, porn actress, and sex worker—must stare back in their own fashion. . .

In an intricately woven novel of generational legacies, untold inheritances, and our multivalent history, Indonesian author Dias Novita Wuri navigates the matrixes of family and geography with a profound and powerful voice. Tracing a passage of interconnected lives across nations, regimes, territories, and spectacles, Birth Canal is a testament to both the visible and invisible impressions that our bodies make upon the world, a challenge to the archetypal presentations of sexuality that inflict their discreet violences, and a documentation of courage and perseverance.

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. 

Birth Canal by Dias Novita Wuri, translated from the Indonesian, Scribe, 2023

Birth Canal, Dias Novita Wuri’s provocatively-titled and self-translated debut novel, represents the Indonesian author’s mesmerizing endeavor to make visible both the female body and the structure of storytelling, deftly exposing the tensions between “legible” narrative and “shameful” history. Originally titled Jalan Lahir in its original Indonesian, the text carries multiple thematic and structural possibilities at its outset: jalan means pathway, road, approach, line, lineage, course, passage, while its etymological origins, borrowed from yalan in Ottoman Turkish, suggests deceit, fakery, lie; lahir, from the Arabic zahir, means “emergence / coming into existence” as noun, “to be born” as verb, and “outer,” “physical,” or “overt” as adjective.

Weaving this ambiguity throughout the narrative, Wuri explores the territory between linear storytelling and disputed, fragmented history by shifting gracefully between first-person, second person, and third-person omniscient viewpoints. As such, Birth Canal consists of four densely structured, cinematic chapters, crossing multiple timelines and cities in Indonesia and Japan to slowly reveal the links between its six female protagonists, Nastiti, Rukmini, Arini, Hanako, Dara, and Ayaka.

The novel opens in teeming, present-day Jakarta to trail after Nastiti, a young, sexually liberated office worker about to self-administer her abortion in secret; Indonesia—a Muslim-majority country—outlaws this procedure. The chapter is narrated from the perspective of an unnamed childhood friend who recounts his platonic, unrequited love for Nastiti up until the day after her abortion, upon which she disappears from his life. In his recollections, we see Nastiti refracted as a cypher—similar to how her image is captured on another occasion by a Western street photographer and subsequently enlarged for a gallery exhibition. The young man acknowledges that despite, or precisely due to Nastiti’s hypnotic allure, she is hard to read:

Sometimes Nastiti’s innocence could seem as bare as a peeled fruit, but that was only because she was allowing it. Other times she could close herself off completely.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

Our weekly roundup of literary news brings us to Brazil, Indonesia, and the United States.

We are back with the latest literary news from around the world! This week we hear about various happenings in Brazil, Indonesia, and the United States. 

Lara Norgaard, Editor-at-large, reporting from Brazil:

Brazil made international headlines when black feminist city councilperson Marielle Franco was assassinated in Rio de Janeiro on March 14. Renowned authors from around the world, including Chimamanda Adichie, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Angela Davis, and Arundhati Roy, signed a petition demanding an investigation into the death of the activist and civic leader. One of Brazil’s most prominent black women writers, Conceição Evaristo, recited a poem in Marielle Franco’s honor during the days of protest and mourning that followed the murder.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

The latest in literary news around the globe, all in one place.

If, like us, you can’t start the weekend without knowing what the literary world’s been up to this past week, we’ve got your back. We have dispatches from Central America, the United States and Indonesia with a real tasting board of talks, events and new publications. Wherever you’re based, we’re here to provide you with news that stays news. 

Editor-At-Large for Guatemala, José García, reports on events in Central America: 

Today Costa Rica’s book fair, the twentieth Feria del Libro 2017, kicked off in San José. During its nine days, CR’s fair will offer concerts, book readings, release events, and seminars. This year’s Feria will have the participation of writers like Juan Villoro (Mexico), Carlos Fonseca (Costa Rica), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winner Rita Dove (United States), Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador), and Mayra Santos-Febres (Puerto Rico), among others.

Some of the books to be presented or discussed during the fair are Larisa Quesada’s En Piel de Cuervos, Alfonso Chase’s Piélagos, Carlos Francisco Monge’s Nada de todo aquello, Isidora Chacón’s Yo Bruja, and Luis ChávesVamos a tocar el agua. Also, the renown Costa Rican writer Carlos Fonseca, famous for his first novel Coronel Lágrimas that was translated into English by Megan McDowell and published by Restless Books, will talk about his sophomore book, Museo Animal on September 2.

In Guatemala, the indie press Magna Terra continued the promotion of many of its titles released during this year’s Guatemalan Book Fair. On August 17 they officially presented Pablo Sigüenza Ramírez’s Ana es la luna y otros cuentos cotidianos. Also, they continue to push Pedro Pablo Palma’s Habana Hilton, about the most personal side of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, during his time in Guatemala and his early years in Cuba.

Fellow Guatemalan indie press, Catafixia Editorial recently finished a local tour that included their participation in FILGUA, the international poetry festival of Quetzaltenango FIPQ, and a quick visit to Comalapa, for the presentation of Oyonïk, by the twenty-two-year-old poet, Julio Cúmez. Additionally, Catafixia is preparing for their participation in the IV Encuentro de Pensamiento y Creación Joven en las Américas in Habana Cuba next month. And recently they announced the inclusion of writer, poet, and guerrilla leader Mario Payeras to their already impressive roster; they have yet to share which of Mario’s books they will republish.

Finally, Guatemalan writer, Eduardo Halfon, has a new book coming out August 28 titled Duelo (Libros Asteroide).

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