Art of the Formless Northen Dark Sea Tales of Wuxia
This week, our editors from effectually the globe written report on the political undertones of a Bangkok volume fair, new translations of Indian literature, new magazines out of Puerto Rico, and celebrations of Francophone literature in Romania. Read on to find out more!
Peera Songkünnatham, Editor-at-Big, reporting from Thailand
Bookworms are back wheeling their suitcases around in the land's biggest book off-white. It is the identify to get another year's worth of kong dong ("pile of pickles")—i.e., unread books. Later on a cancellation final year and a move online the yr before, the twelve-mean solar day National Book Fair, organized by the Publishers and Booksellers Association of Thailand is being held at the new rail transport hub, Bangsue Grand Station, until Apr 6. Many publishers, both major and independent, release new books in anticipation of this event, where they can get a bigger cut from sales and buyers have come to await extra-special discounts. With over 200 publishers participating, writer meet-and-greets, and predictable logistical complaints at the temporary new venue, nosotros can perhaps sense a return to normalcy.
If 1 looks at this normalcy more than closely, withal, one tin can see an increasing tendency of explicit politicization in the largely commercial enterprise. The calendar of principal-stage events includes book launches by pro-democracy politicians from the Move Forrad Party and the Progressive Movement (of the disbanded Futurity Forwards Party). The names of iv such politicians, all men, grace the official calendar—without the titles of their books, oddly enough. The Progressive Movement is also publishing its commencement translation: an illustrated children'southward volume, นี่แหละเผด็จการ (Así es la dictadura) by Equipo Plantel, first published in 1977 in post-Franco Spain. These examples provide quite a contrast to ostensibly political but finer depoliticizing events led by, for lack of a better word, the literary establishment, like the panel discussion "Stepping into the Third Decade of the Phan Waen Fa Award: Political Literature for Democratic Evolution," featuring three award committee members and a literary scholar.
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Our writers bring you lot the latest literary news this week from Lebanese republic, where writers have been responding in the aftermath of the devastating port explosion. In Japan, literary journals take published essays centred upon literature and disease, responding to the ongoing pandemic. Romanian literature has been thriving in European literary initiatives and in Hong Kong, faced with a tertiary wave of COVID-19, the urban center'due south open mic nights and reading series accept been taking place online. Read on to observe out more!
MK Harb, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Lebanon
This calendar week, every bit French President, Emmanuel Macron, began his Lebanese republic tour by meeting the iconic Lebanese diva, Fairuz, the literary world connected to grieve for Beirut in the aftermath of the explosion. Writer Nasri Atallah, writing for GQ Magazine, recounts the cataclysmic bear upon of "Beirut's Broken Center." Writer and translator Lina Mounzer and writer, Mirene Arsanios, exchanged a series of letters to each other for Lithub, talking about the anguish of altitude and the pain of witnessing tragedy.Writer Reem Joudi too wrote an intimate essay exclusively for Asymptote, reflecting on her experience of the explosion and the uncertain futurity that Beirut at present faces. Naji Bakhti, a immature Lebanese writer, made his literary debut with Between Beirut and the Moon. Published on August 27 with Influx Press, the book is a sardonic coming of age story in post-civil-war Beirut (1975-1990). While Bakhti was chronicling the past, reading it now feels eerily relevant.
In translation news, writer and transgender activist, Veronica Esposito, interviewed Yasmine Seale near her upcoming translation of the M and I Nights. Seale, whose English language translation of Aladdin isouthward beautiful in the about transgressive sense, will be the beginning woman to translate the K and Ane Nights into English. In the interview, she discusses the colonial and class legacy of translating classics and the wild possibility of re-translating and re-imagining many Standard arabic classics. Lastly, here at Asymptote, nosotros are excited about acclaimed Egyptian author, Mansoura Ez-Eldin'south new novel, Basateen Al-Basra from Dar El-Shourouk publishing business firm. Her previous novel, Beyond Paradise, was shortlisted for the International Prize for Standard arabic Fiction in 2010. We eagerly expect its translation from Arabic!
David Boyd, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Nippon
This month, Nihon'due south major literary journals proceed to showcase writing that deals with illness. The September result of Subaru features several essays on the intersection between literature and illness, including "Masuku no sekai wo ikiru" (Living in the Earth of the Masque), in which Ujitaka Ito connects Sayaka Murata'south Convenience Store Woman to the current pandemic. READ MORE…
This week, our reporters tell us about the literary response to the demonstrations in Hong Kong and the translation of protest verse past The Bauhinia Project, volume fairs in Vietnam, as well as guiding the states through the many Romanian writers performing at the largest Cardinal European literary festival, the Author's Reading Month festival.
Jacqueline Leung, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong
The extradition bill demonstrations in Hong Kong have been ongoing for four months and bear witness no signs of stopping. There has been countless speculation over the city's standing as a fiscal and trading middle, just what has happened for sure is the plethora of art created in response to the movement. In an interview on the subject of gimmicky art, a museum curator placed her bets: "The greatest art is going to exist produced in Hong Kong."
The same could be said for its literature. Since June, Hong Kong's literary scene has actively documented current happenings through poetry, fiction, and criticism. Numerous local literary magazines, including Fleur des lettres , Vocalisation & Verse, and Formless, are running issues dedicated to the protests, and the action is not restricted to within the city'due south borders. In detail, there is an initiative to translate protest verse from Hong Kong for an international audience. In July, The Bauhinia Project was launched by an anonymous Hong Kong poet in Berkeley, California. Named after the urban center'southward blossom emblem, the project gathers verse submissions and testimonials in text or audio from bearding sources. The submissions are then translated into English language and made into postcards. Then far, the postcards have been displayed in a series of exhibitions held in Germany as well equally dissimilar cities in California. The Bauhinia Projection is also curating events on the extradition bill movement. On September 25, a panel discussion on misinformation and misunderstanding surrounding the protests abroad were held at Moe's Books in San Francisco and featured half dozen speakers, among them Hong Kong poet Wawa, previously interviewed on Asymptote on her medium-pure poetry, and writer Henry Wei Leung.
I will also moderate a discussion on civil guild and literature between writer Hon Lai Chu, who spoke about politics and literature at the Frankfurt Book Fair before this year, and playwright Yan Pat To, whose latest play, Happily Ever After Nuclear Explosion, premiered in High german at Munich's Residenz Theater and later in Cantonese at Tai Kwun, an arts and heritage site in Hong Kong, and South korea's Asia Playwright Festival. The effect is part of Goethe-Institut Hong Kong's wider serial on civil club and fine art, which previously covered independent films, LGBT, and moving images. READ More than…
It's Friday and that means we are back with the latest literary news from around the world! From Hong Kong, Editor-at-Big Charlie Ng brings the states the latest on theater, literary festivals, and poetry readings. MARGENTO brings us exciting news about past Asymptote-contributors and other vivid writers from Romania and Moldova. Finally, our ain banana blog editor, Stefan Kielbasiewicz shares news about verse in the UK.
Charlie Ng, Editor-at-Big, Hong Kong
November is a month filled with vibrant literary performances and festivals in Hong Kong. On stage from belatedly October to early on November, a Cantonese version of The Male parent (Le Père) by French playwright, Florian Zeller, winner of the Molière Award for Best Play, is brought to Hong Kong audiences by the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre for the showtime fourth dimension.
The seventeenth Hong Kong International Literary Festival kicked off on November 3 with a grand dinner with Scotland'southward well-loved law-breaking fiction writer, Ian Rankin, who also attended two other sessions as a guest speaker: Mysterious Cities: the Perfect Crime Novel and thirty Years of Rebus with Ian Rankin. Carol Ann Duffy was another Scottish writer featured in this year's Festival. The British Poet Laureate read her poesy with musician John Sampson'due south music accompaniment on November 9. The dazzling Festival program includes both international authors such every bit Hiromi Kawakami, Amy Tan, Min Jin Lee, Ruth Ware, Hideo Yokoyama, and local writers and translators such as Xu Eleven, Louise Ho, Dung Kai-cheung, Nicholas Wong, Tammy Ho, and Chris Vocal.
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Today's Translation Tuesday is brought to you by MARGENTO, Asymptote Editor-at-Large for Romania and Moldova. The lyrical excerpts from Romanian essayist and poet Simona Popescu'southward writing explore a mood—memories of the nineties related as if at a remove, stating plainly what the narrator saw, while encapsulating the myriad complications simmering beneath the notwithstanding surface of the narration.
"I confess I do non believe in time. I like
to fold my magic carpet, after use,
in such a manner as to superimpose one part
of the pattern upon another."
—Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Retention
"So everything regroups as if in a hot fog
where things recover among the obscure
plantations of the accidental."
—Gellu Naum, The Blueish Riverbank
"I accept no idea of time, and I don't wish to have"
—Wislawa Szymborska, On the Tower of Babel
In the house of my babyhood, somewhere in my parents' mixed upwardly bookcase, leaning on a couple of books stood a blackness teddy bear in a white sash ribbon with some red lettering on it proverb Grüsse aus Berlin. On other shelves there were other "souvenirs" from Abroad. For instance, a wooden cylinder with a lid in the shape of a Russian church dome, with a rose and the word "Republic of bulgaria" burnt onto it. Within was a vial of Bulgarian rose perfume. My folks never traveled Abroad. In fact, nobody in our little town e'er traveled Abroad. Not even the Saxons and the Hungarians who, judging by the language they spoke, had to take another state somewhere, if push came to shove, right? You lot take every bit many countries as the languages you speak, the saying went. The Hungarians and the Saxons were therefore half foreign. But still, fifty-fifty they never got Abroad—it was only the old people that sometimes went, simply they always returned. Nobody needed them and they didn't need anybody or anything except a quiet life in their homes. But sometime people returned. They and the migrating birds.
It was me who had brought the rose perfume dwelling. I was 12 when I went, without my parents, on a trip—well, yeah—Abroad. I don't call back much. Information technology was I think in spring, there was I think a crisp sun, I was on a terrace I call back by the sea, somewhere on a cliff, in that location were breakers I call up in front of me, not very close though, I recall I never went downwards the stairs to dip my toes in the sea. In the "vision" conjured by the word "Bulgaria" in which I'm a child a milky light and a bluish expanse approach me. And I'm all lone at that place, for a second, my back turned on everybody else. And I can hear a roaring wind. (I am dorsum there someday I want. I'm 12 and then—as I keep adding now—44. I concur an invisible butterfly net in my hand and collect images with it.) READ MORE…
Literature is interdisciplinary past nature, and the globe showed us how this week. From visual art exhibitions and a reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Hong Kong to a music festival infiltrated by writers in Slovakia and a commemoration of the late sociolinguist Jesús Tuson in Catalan, there is much to take hold of up on the literary earth's doings this calendar week.
Hong Kong Editor-at-Large Charlie Ng Chak-Kwan brings united states of america up to speed:
Themed "Fictional Happiness," the third edition of Hong Kong Literary Season ran from June to tardily August. The annual event is organised by one of the most of import Hong Kong literary organisations, the House of Hong Kong literature. This year the result featured an opening talk by Hong Kong novelist Dung Kai-cheung and Taiwanese author Luo Yijun, a writing competition, an interdisciplinary visual arts exhibition, and a serial of talks, workshops and moving picture screenings. Five visual artists were invited to create installations inspired by five of import works of Hong Kong fiction in response to the exhibition championship, "Fictional Reality: Literature, Visual Arts, and the Remaking of Hong Kong History."
Interdisciplinary collaboration has been a hot trend in the Hong Kong literary scene recently. Led and curated by visual artist Angela Su, Night Fluid: a Science Fiction Experiment, is the latest drove of sci-fi short stories written by seven Hong Kong artists and writers. The volume launch on September 2 took place at the base of Hong Kong arts organization, "Things that Tin Happen," in Sham Shui Po. The experimental projection was initiated equally an artistic effort to reverberate on contempo social turmoils through scientific imagination and dystopian visions. The book launch also presented a dramatic audio adaptation of one of the stories, "Epidemic Investigation," from the drove.
On September 6, PEN Hong Kong hosted a bilingual reading session (Cantonese and English) as part of the International Literature Festival Berlin (ILB) at Art and Culture Outreach (ACO) in Wan Chai. Almost twelve Hong Kong writers, journalists, and academics participated in "The Worldwide Reading of the Universal Proclamation of Human being Rights" by reading excerpts of their choice from works that deal with bug of human rights.
Amid the literary and artistic attention to Hong Kong social issues and history, local literary magazine, Fleur de Lettre, will take readers on a literary sketching day-trip in Ma On Shan on September nine. During the outcome named "Baronial and On Shan," participants volition visit a former iron mine in Ma On Shan to imagine its industrial past through folk tales and historical relics. READ More than…
It's the official start of Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere and Spring in the South―the starting time of a new season where minor plans and promises are fabricated that nosotros desperately endeavor to be faithful to. Or perhaps non. Maybe it's simply the temperature that changes. Nonetheless, here atAsymptotenosotros'll ever fulfill our promise of bringing you the latest news from around the world, but in time for the weekend, with this week's reports from Argentina, Romania and Moldova, and Taiwan.
Lara Norgaard, Editor-at-Large, brings usa the news from Argentina:
August in Argentine republic was a calendar month for reading. Buenos Aires celebrated Jorge Luis Borges' birthday on August 24 by organizing a walking bout tracing Borges' most notable haunts. The 24th is too the country's annual Día del Lector, commemorating the renowned writer.
On August 23, the Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires (MALBA) hosted a conversation betwixt North American policy annotator David Rieff, and Argentine novelist Luisa Valenzuela on the topic of commonage retentiveness. Valenzuela is known for her novels that call up country violence, written during and later Argentina's fell last war machine dictatorship. The topic of historical retention is especially relevant correct at present equally the Argentine public protests the alleged disappearance of indigenous rights activist Santiago Maldonado, who went missing at a protest in Patagonia on Baronial 1.
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Source: https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/writer/simona-popescu/
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