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Asymptote is unique among literary magazines with a world literature focus in that it is not incorporated in the US. Even so, many key editors—from section editors and digital editors to assistant managing editors and blog editors—responsible for the vitality of the journal are either based in or from the US. Our largest slice of readers by far also hail from the US, as evidenced by the solid turnout for the anniversary event we held in New York ten years ago. As its Singaporean editor-in-chief, I spent what I consider my formative years in the US—Robert Coover, who recently passed, was a mentor—and it was under the aegis of an MFA program, with the lovely Sidney Wade, that I took my first and only translation studies class that probably planted the seed for this very magazine. Two American friends Anthony Luebbert and Kevin Kunstadt helped birth the inaugural edition (the former as contributing editor; the latter as guest artist); a creative writing teacher, the brilliant American author Mary Gaitskill, wrote an essay on Natsuo Kirino from scratch just because I happened to ask—and she certainly didn’t have to help out a former student to the extent that she did. Americans are among the most generous and caring people I know. That’s one of the reasons why the US election result was so devastating, to me at least.
It’s hard to reconcile the Americans who helped make the journal happen and who continue to sustain the journal, with the Americans who put a convicted felon in power for the next four years (yes, incumbents the world over, from the UK to Japan, are having a bad year, but this feels somehow more personal, with much bigger implications for so many issues). I keep going back to the words that Eliot Weinberger movingly shared with me, seven years ago, when, to answer Trump’s #MuslimBan, we organized a Special Feature spotlighting new writing from said banned countries: “Literature always manages to slip through the real and symbolic walls of oppressive governments. Asymptote may be a small chisel and drill, but these things force cracks that, time and time again, have eventually brought the walls down.” And if, “sometimes the fight takes a while,” we as a journal will be there to see the pendulum swing the other way. Count on it.
—Lee Yew Leong, Editor-in-Chief
Your Itinerary Today:
- TAKEOFF: Three more weeks to submit to our upcoming Special Feature on new forms!
- POSTCARD ONE: Mateo García Elizondo on his first novel and the richness of Mexican Spanish
- IN TRANSIT: Staff reads from Vietnam and the US
- PASSAGES: Martina Bastos’s guide to Galician words for rain
- REARVIEW: All the latest from the Asymptote Blog
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If a piece of writing were to mimic Pachelbel’s Canon in D, what would it look like? Taiwanese author Yu Wenzheng attempted this exercise in her 2008 collection of interconnected stories Taipei Canon; no doubt, so have other authors working in different languages posed the same question to themselves, with different results. For our Winter 2025 issue, in the spirit of learning from one another, and in homage to the late pioneer Robert Coover, we seek texts that take on new forms—not necessarily riffs of existing ones—opening up new perspectives and perhaps “knock(ing) us into new places” (Coover) as a result. Submissions may be written originally in English or translated into English; we will consider any creative text, regardless of genre, including hypertext and visual poetry. General guidelines apply. Deadline: December 1st, 2024
Mateo García Elizondo’s fondness for Mexican Spanish stands out in his writing, and the diversity in his reading list is testament to the transnational influences in his texts. His travels between countries, languages, genres, and formats all speak to the fundamental role of translation, both in the interlingual and the intersemiotic sense, in his poetics and career. His first novel, Una city con la Lady, follows a drug addict who is ready to leave the world of the living behind. The novel explores the blurred and unidentifiable boundaries between life and death, and as the protagonist wanders through the village, unresolved heartbreak from the past imposes itself, complicating the execution of his ultimate project. Una city con la Lady has been awarded the City of Barcelona Award and translated into Greek, Arabic, Italian, French, Portuguese, and now English—as Last Date in El Zapotal, translated by Robin Myers. The Mexico-born writer recently sat down to talk with guest interviewer Elisabeth Goemans about literature, screenwriting, meditation, the richness of the Spanish language, influences, and the privilege to work on non-commissioned projects.
You studied Literature and Creative Writing in London and speak English and French. Do you feel like living between cultures and languages has influenced your creative process?
I believe it has. For a long time, I was really keen on writing in English. I love the English language, I read a lot in English and I wrote a lot in English in my younger years. I still write more personal stuff in English. But now that I’ve gone through translations with Robin, for instance, I’ve realized that I don’t have the same sort of ease or emotional connection with the language. I couldn’t have written the novel in English.
Speaking other languages is always a doorway to other ideas. I think that you don’t think about things the same in French or in English. Sometimes I have ideas in English or even in French and I work at translating them to Spanish. So I do think it helps with the creative process in general, even though I feel really settled in Mexican Spanish.
Did you struggle to publish in Mexican Spanish?
I thought Anagrama would be more keen on making it more of a Spanish-Spanish and I thought they would want to tone down the Mexican Spanish, but I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that they were welcoming of the Mexican Spanish and they didn’t make many changes in that sense. A few of the first readers were saying that it was very idiosyncratic, and it caught the attention of some, but it was never a problem.
I think publishers need to be open to different language varieties, because that’s the richness of the Spanish language: it is becoming a lot of different languages that we all can understand. I feel like the great thing about Spanish now is that even if you hear a Colombian, an Argentinian or a Spaniard, you always understand the language and you can always connect to it. I believe that every variety has a different personality.
Actually, I think translators suffer the most, because they have to translate into a sort of neutral Spanish. It would be interesting to have an Argentinian translation and Mexican translation of the same text and see which different aspects come out. That would be fun.
Let’s talk about your novel. It’s often compared to Juan Rulfo. Your wikipedia page says Last Date in El Zapotal is a homage to Pedro Páramo. How do you feel about the comparison?
I think it’s a fair comparison. It wasn’t my intention when I was writing it. When I realised, I reread it to make sure I wasn’t treading on something sacred. While I was rereading it, I was surprised about how many connections there were between my novel and Pedro Páramo, and I sort of assumed that it would somehow be a little bit of a homage. My writer friends used to say: you’re writing Trainspotting in Comala.
A few years before I wrote it, I was living in a very small and very sad town in Oaxaca in south-east Mexico. Juan Rulfo, who was also a photographer, spent a lot of time in that area. So I always like to think that it’s not so much the novel that influenced me directly, but rather that we hung around the same sort of places.
Apart from the authors who influenced Last Date, who do you admire?
I admire different things about different authors. I always come back to Camus and Kafka, and to Dostoevsky for his sad but very endearing characters. Part of me is also very inspired by horror fiction. I love Shirley Jackson, I love Thomas Ligotti. I started reading with Edgar Allan Poe and his disquieting narratives. And then there are the romantic poets and their dreamy, imaginative aesthetic. At some point in my also early adulthood, I was reading the Beat generation and they really inspired me. I also admire Hemingway for saying so much with so little.
Lately I’ve been reading a lot of Albert Cossery, an Egyptian-French author who writes a lot about down and out characters, bums and drop-outs. I like stories about losers and about coming to terms with being a loser.
Watch for the complete interview to be published in the blog later this month.
Fast paced and kaleidoscopic, I See Yellow Flowers in the Green Grass is a novel about childhood in the Vietnamese countryside where wonder coexists with horror. Nguyễn Nhật Ánh draws spectacularly with words, each chapter a vivid sketch that conjures the magic of childhood: the charms of Uncle’s stories, the sweet feats of an angelic brother, the knack for getting into trouble, the thrill of ghosts, the beauty of nature, the joy of toads and dragonflies and millipedes, and endless lessons about kindness, bravery, and wit. However, nostalgia for such innocence doesn’t preclude an unflinching depiction of the harsh reality in a poor community where children are routinely abused by adults, and some are forced to drop out of school for work. Nhã Thuyên and Kaitlin Rees’s colourful translation often gives me the illusion that I could glimpse the original text through what seem like literal translations of Vietnamese phrases, which are always refreshing and punchy in English. You can buy a copy here.
—Catherine Yu, Assistant Editor (Fiction)
I recently encountered selected texts from Chen Chen whilst working on the Slovak translation as a proofreader for the Czech and Slovak magazine of contemporary poetry Psi vino. Chen Chen’s second collection of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, investigates familial bonds, American politics, COVID-19, and the omnipresence of violence from the perspective of a queer lyrical subject. Chen Chen’s verses, juxtaposing a multitude of interpretations of everyday situations, explore deeper philosophical or social themes with an ironic, anarchist, subversive and transgressive twist, preserving both serious poetic inquiry and playfulness, joyfulness and paradoxical complexity of existence as both an ethnic minority and a queer person in the USA. Given recent political developments in the Slovak cultural scene, the translation and publication of the selected poems can also be viewed as an act of resistance and refusal of resignation in the face of increasing oppression and censorship within the arts. Order a copy here.
–Terezia Klasova, Assistant Editor (Fiction)
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With the fall season now in full swing, I was delighted to rediscover Martina Bastos’s Rain is a thing that happens in the past (translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes and published in Asymptote’s Fall 2014 issue). The text is playful, inviting the reader to accept rain, not water per se, as the connecting element of all that comes to pass under the rather cloudy skies, including the narrator’s existence. Rain is the force that simultaneously governs the pace of everyday life and ignites the artistic imagination. Bastos also explores the linguistic impact of this stubborn, at least in some parts of the world, natural phenomenon, allowing us a glance into the rich Galician vocabulary used for describing the different nuances of the rain.
–Andriana Hamas, Editor-at-Large for Bulgaria
We have more than seventy words for “rain” in Galicia. Froalla if it falls alongside sunshine, corisca if it comes down with snow, arroia if it fills up ponds, poalla if it’s slow to soak, sarabia if it rains hailstones, chuvasca if it brings the wind, treboa if it comes with thunder, orballa when it’s light, babuña when it’s vicious, pingota if the drops are fat, mera if there’s dense fog, batega if it’s fleeting and barruña if it persists. It’s logical: language adapts according to its environment and the rain is a frequent guest in our lives. Nobody would have the nerve to call it “pluvial precipitation.” It would be an insult. Galicians treat the rain with a confidence of a friend—one who we forgive everything. We worry if it’s late and implore it not to leave. We grow used to its smell. In Lima, the humidity gets up your nose, but it never smells of rain. Scientists say that this aroma comes from the plants and a few bacteria from the ground releasing their own smells. The smell of damp earth is the smell of well-hydrated bacteria.
Translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes
After reading the rest of the piece here, check out more work from our archive, organized by issue and geographic region.
In the past month, members of our far-flung team sent in myriad dispatches from France, Greece, the United States, Kenya, Hong Kong, Peru, Bulgaria, and Ireland. Following our Fall 2024 issue launch, the blog team unveiled their highlights from the latest issue. In Translation Tuesdays, we present a trio of short stories: Zazaki author Pınar Yıldız’s reflections on preservation and vitality, Argentine writer Luciano Lamberti’s haunting field notes from the land of the giants, a powerfully disturbing vignette about vultures from late Brazilian master Carla Bessa, and Portuguese master Raul Germano Brandão’s affecting portrait of a long-suffering old woman. Then we got up front and personal, sitting down with, among others, Mardonio Carballo about multilingual texts and the role of translation in preserving an indigenous language and poet Samira Negrouche on the Algerian poetry and translation scene. After interviewing translators Caline Nasrallah and Michelle Hartman on our September Book Club selection, we unveiled our delightful October Book Club pick: Thinking-About-Gladys Machine, by innovative Spanish author Mario Levrero. Elsewhere, we reviewed the scathing anticapitalist verses of Peruvian poet Valeria Román Marroquín, the late Croatian writer Dubravka Ugrešić’s bracing meditations on feminism, nationalism, and her own status as a “traitor” to Croatian literature, a swirling quasi-novel by Vietnamese author Nguyễn Ngọc Tư. A front row seat to the latest and best in international letters is available—just make the Asymptote Blog your daily window on world literature.
We hope you’re enjoying our latest issue as much as we’ve enjoyed putting it together, but there’s always more discover in the ever-evolving world of global lit—subscribe to us on Facebook, X, Instagram, and Threads for more frequent updates. Perhaps you’re looking for a physical book to read on your days off? Our Book Club will bring you a new masterpiece of world literature every month, chosen from the latest offerings available each month; sign up by today to give or receive your first title this very month. Or are you a writer yourself? Our submissions are open year round; remember, we are organizing a Special Feature on New Forms (details here)! As always, it is a joy for us to seek out and advocate for underrepresented gems, but we can’t do it alone. Every contribution helps us keep the lights on, so if you’re able, consider joining us as a sustaining or masthead member.
All our love,
Your friends at Asymptote
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