Posts featuring Zsófia Bán

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

The latest in literary news from Slovakia, Czechia, Kenya, and Bulgaria!

This week, our editors are providing coverage of headlining events featuring intercultural dialogues, book launches of groundbreaking texts, and political corruption. In Slovakia and Czechia, the two countries discuss the ramifications of Czechoslovakia’s breakup on the two nations’ respective literatures. In Kenya, a collection featuring the stories of women hawkers—a burgeoning national economy—is released to the public. And in Bulgaria, a beloved theatre director takes aim at the National Theatre’s “moral degradation.” Read on to find out more!

Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting on Slovakia

The thirtieth anniversary of the breakup of Czechoslovakia prompted reflections in both the Slovak and the Czech press on the legacy of the common state, and how the cultural links between the two nations have evolved since the countries went their separate ways. Summing up the literary developments in a recent episode of Knižná revue, an excellent podcast produced by the Slovak Literature Centre, the Czech literature scholar and translator of Slovak literature Lubomír Machala suggested that there are now more differences than parallels between the two literatures—although what has not changed is that the Czech reading public shows less interest in Slovak literature than vice versa. The Slovak literature scholar Magdalena Bystrzak also sees this relationship as asymmetrical, as does her colleague Radoslav Passia, who points out that the ties between the two literatures are, nevertheless, much stronger than those between either nation and any other literature, as reflected in numerous bilateral literary projects, such as a Czech/Slovak poetry competition, or the Month of Authors’ Readings.

The end of January marked the 105th birthday of Leopold Lahola (1918-1968): playwright, film director, screenwriter, poet, and essayist, whose short stories reflect his harrowing wartime experiences. Lahola’s promising postwar literary career was cut short when his plays were denounced as “existentialist” in 1948, upon which he emigrated to Israel, where he helped to launch the country’s burgeoning  film industry, before moving to Austria and Germany. Although he spent nearly half of his life in exile, Lahola never stopped writing in Slovak. In the late 1960s, Lahola began to visit his native country again but, sadly, died of a heart attack in January 1968, shortly before his fiftieth birthday. It is a pity that so far, only one of his short stories is available in English.

The 2022 recipients of one of Slovakia’s major awards, the Tatra Banka Foundation’s Arts Prize, were announced at the end of January. The prize for a debut work of literature went to Nicol Hochholczerová for Táto izba sa nedá zjesť (This Room is Too Much to Swallow, as reported here) and the poet Mila Haugová added to her many previous accolades the main prize for literature, for her collection Z rastlinstva (From Flora). And although not strictly speaking a literary prize, it is  worth mentioning  the bank’s Special Prize, awarded to Gabriela Garlatyová for her monograph on the extraordinary visual Slovak artist Mária Bartuszová. Garlatyová was a consultant on a major exhibition of Bartuszová’s work at London’s Tate Modern, which has just been extended to June 25, and which I urge everyone to visit. READ MORE…

Announcing an Animal-themed Special Feature

“There is a different way of knowing here and I see all around me a constellation of animals.” —Linda Hogan

For our Spring 2023 Special Feature, we will be putting together an animal-themed feature that looks at wildlife in a new light. We seek fictional and nonfictional narratives that place such animals at the center, whether in natural or urban environments (the animal or animals in question must play a central role in the story’s plot; we also welcome stories where the narrator is an animal).

Of special interest are texts that illuminate what Linda Hogan has called a “different way of knowing” or imagine the coexistence of the animal in question with human beings. Hrant Matevossian’s “The Green Field” from the current issue, or Zsófia Bán’s “On the Eve of No Return” from the Summer 2014 edition are excellent examples of the kind of work we are looking for. The Feature is intended to be a showcase of the many nonhuman existences who share this planet with us.

For once, we’ll be accepting original English-language submissions (although translations will still be prioritized in our curation). Fees will be waived for the first submission to this Special Feature; in addition, contributors whose work is accepted will receive an honorarium of USD100 per article. Check out our full guidelines and send in your best work today!

Questions from Night School: An Interview with Jim Tucker

Look before . . . you enter the lion’s den. Which is the home address for translation, a job that can only be done wrong.

Zsófia Bán’s Night School, “a textbook like no other,” is among the most playful of our fourteen Asymptote Book Club selections so far. In keeping with the book’s “defiant irreverence,” its English translator, Jim Tucker, agreed to ditch our regular interview format and temporarily become one of Night School’s pupils.

Each chapter of Zsófia Ban’s textbook ends in a series of questions or assignments, each with a winning mixture of pure zaniness and profound resonance. Here, Jim Tucker answers a set of questions from his own English translation of Night School. 

Complete the following sentence: Look before . . . 

Jim Tucker (JT): Look before . . . you enter the lion’s den. Which is the home address for translation, a job that can only be done wrong. It’s a miracle that you can make a living at it. Similar to prostitution (“Oh yes, mister, whatever you say”) except it pays a lot less, and you don’t get out as much.

READ MORE…

Announcing our January Book Club Selection: Night School by Zsófia Bán

Night School is a textbook like no other.

With our February selection, the Asymptote Book Club is taking subscribers back to school. Fortunately, Zsófia Bán’s Night School is a school unlike any other—populated by a cast of literary and cultural figures ranging from Frida Kahlo (and her double) to Laika the space dog. Each chapter of Bán’s textbook primer is filled with ‘defiant irreverence’ and the perfect combination of wit and profundity.

We’re delighted to be sending our subscribers one of the year’s most coruscatingly original short story collections, in Jim Tucker’s superb English translation. If you’d like to join us in time for next month’s Book Club pick, you’ll find all the information you need on our web page. Once you’ve joined, head to our Facebook group to meet other Book Club members and contribute to the discussion. We look forward to seeing you there!

Zsofia Ban Night School

Night School: A Reader for Grownups by Zsófia Bán, translated from the Hungarian by Jim Tucker, Open Letter, 2019

Reviewed by Jacob Silkstone, Assistant Managing Editor

Let’s begin with a simple biographical detail: Zsófia Bán has spent much of her life in academia, and her first novel (originally published in Hungarian in 2007) is a textbook. It seems barely necessary to add that Night School is a textbook like no other.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

The most exciting world literature news—all in one place.

It’s Friday and that can only mean one thing at Asymptote: reports of exciting developments in the world of literature. This week our focus falls on a diverse set of countries, including Tunisia, Hungary, and Hong Kong. 

Jessie Stoolman, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Tunisia: 

In just a few short weeks, the 34th edition of Tunis’s annual Book Fair will begin, where numerous prize winners will be announced, including the winner of the newly created Prize for Literary and Intellectual Creativity, or prix de la créativité littéraire et intellectuelle.

However, if you’re itching for activity now, don’t fret, there are numerous literary events taking place throughout Tunisia in the meantime, with a special focus on young writers and readers. Specifically, the 10th annual Festival of Storytelling, organized by the Tahar Haddad Cultural Association in Tunis, has already begun and will continue until March 25th. The festival is dedicated to preserving Tunisian oral traditions, as each day it presents a storyteller, or حكاوتي, who brings to life tales taken from regional oral literature. Similarly, the literary association “Above the Wall” (فوق السور), created for young writers, will host its 10th annual assembly on March 20th and 21st in Benzart, one of the northernmost cities in Tunisia.

Further south, in Sousse, on April 1st, the Book Lovers Association of Sousse will hold a discussion at Le Paradoxe, a local cultural café, to discuss the Tunisian writer and poet Shafiq Tariqi’s award-winning novel, Lavazza (لافازا,) which questions the full realization of the Tunisian revolution. In 2015, the novel was awarded a monetary prize for creativity by the journal, Culture Dubai (دبي الثقافة). READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “Le Rouge et le Noir (Moving House and Farewell)” by Zsófia Bán

As we were leaving the paralyzed city and the country, we too were facing a journey, though rather than flight, it turned out to be a return.

An award-winning fiction writer, essayist, and critic who grew up in Hungary and Brazil and now teaches American literature, Zsófia Bán is no stranger to forking paths; the roads not taken. Her beautiful essay below segues quickly from house-moving to the broader and richer philosophical theme of derailment against the backdrop of the ongoing refugee crisis. We hope you like it as much as we do.

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In memory of Svetlana Boym

 

Tumultuous, yes, tumultuous is what the summer of 2015 was. An unruly, riotous, tempestuous, bewildered summer, ravaged by the lack of order. Only the weather would not stir, hellbent on keeping up the atmospheric conditions prevalent since the beginning of summer. All heat records were broken, with temperatures close to 40 degrees recorded in July and August. We were clearly making meteorological history in Europe. The dull blanket of heat paralyzed our reason just enough to keep us from realizing the obvious until it was too late: history was being made, quite apart from the weather. In fact, the masses, the tumult of refugees pouring through the southern border, then the large families stranded in railway stations in the heart of our city, the gathering of desperate, exhausted people robbed of almost all their possessions warned us clearly enough, that this was the time, here and now, of fateful events. As we were leaving the paralyzed city and the country, we too were facing a journey, though rather than flight, it turned out to be a return: the compulsive, perpetual return to memory, to absence, to the relentless rigor of facts.

On August 3 we packed the car and set out for Berlin. With an ingenious space-saving trick we packed the child’s plush animals into plastic bags shrunk with a vacuum cleaner, so even the plumpest specimens were docilely flattened to two dimensions.

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Photograph by Zsófia Bán

Once taken out of their plastic bags upon arrival, they slowly regained their original dimensions: the breath of life gradually returned into them. Zserbó, the giant owl was the first to come to, then Dr Czuki-Czukermann, the anteater and finally Menyus, the ferret, Pöpe, the parrot and the rest, the whole sizeable coterie. The child greeted each miraculous resurrection with a dance of joy: her friends were saved, we had outwitted Archimedes or one of those types. The death news that came the day after our arrival flattened us to two dimensions the same way, except we held no hope of ever regaining our original shape. Remembrance, however alive, is inevitably flatter than the tumultuous nature of presence, the noisy, confusing, disorderly and yet, by virtue of the senses, coherent presence which only one word fits: the person’s name. The name that refers to the single being who is the sum of her traits: the voice, the gait, the colorful fabric of her mind, the fears and desires, the betrayals of the body, the dreams, and the loneliness. Her name is a message inscribed in stone, the imprint of sea-waves on prehistoric geological strata.

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