Asymptote Blog » Japanese
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Asymptote is a new international journal dedicated to literary translation and bringing together in one place the best in contemporary writing including: fiction, poetry, drama, visual poetry, criticism, essays, and interviews.
Asymptote Blog » Japanese
1M ago
In this week of literary updates, we discuss the blend of technology and literature around the globe—from a virtual imagining of the Popul Vuh in Guatemala, to the use of ChatGPT by the winner of a prestigious literary award in Japan, to an interactive exhibition of Wisława Szymborska’s poetry in Shanghai. Xiao Yue Shan, Blog Editor, reporting ..read more
Asymptote Blog » Japanese
3M ago
This week, our team from around the world brings news of literary award shortlists and winners! From the launch of the inaugural issue of Debunk Quarterly, to the winners of the Sawiris Cultural Awards, to the recent closure of a historical bookstore in Tokyo, read on to learn more! Bella Creel, Blog Editor, Reporting from ..read more
Asymptote Blog » Japanese
3M ago
A sensitive college flunker enacts sweet, obscure revenge in this excellent short story by Osamu Dazai. Here’s how it’s done: saunter into the finals of a year you’ve as good as failed; sit triumphant among your more studious peers; inflict an essay on your professor that pantses his sacred cows. The rush of emotions touched off by this act of gratuitous non-conformity ..read more
Asymptote Blog » Japanese
4M ago
Not sure where to start with our tremendous fiftieth issue? Our blog editors talk their favourites. In its overarching theme of “Coexistence,” Asymptote’s monumental 50th issue draws together the quiet, the forgotten, and the unseen, allowing us to inhabit worlds that are not our own. From the bright unease of Elena Garro’s “The Week of Colors ..read more
Asymptote Blog » Japanese
4M ago
The new year is all dressed up with a powerful display of voices in translation: a Japanese epic, a tri-lingual edition of Mexican poetry, and the latest collection of prose from one of France’s most spiny and entertaining voices. Read on to find out more! Marshland by Otohiko Kaga, translated from the Japanese by Albert ..read more
Asymptote Blog » Japanese
5M ago
Hit Parade of Tears by Izumi Suzuki, translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett, David Boyd, Daniel Joseph, and Helen O’Horan, Verso, 2023 In the moody, deliriously humorous worlds of Hit Parade of Tears, Izumi Suzuki’s protagonists embody searing emotions, from anguish to apathy, all felt at an apex that seems like a breaking point ..read more
Asymptote Blog » Japanese
5M ago
When My Mother Is Most Beautiful by Rebecca Suzuki, Hanging Loose Press, December 2023 Technically classified as a book of poetry, Rebecca Suzuki’s debut collection, When My Mother Is Most Beautiful, contains verse, prose, drama, and haibun, a form that combines prose and haiku. Across the delightful hybridity, the author achieves thematic cohesion through her ..read more
Asymptote Blog » Japanese
5M ago
From August 17 to 20, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Zealand, Denmark, hosted the twelfth edition of the annual Louisiana Literature Festival. Since 2010, on the lawns parenthesized between Louisiana’s wings and the Øresund Strait, authors from around the world—including Adonis, César Aira, Olga Tokarczuk, László Krasznahorkai, Mariana Enríquez, and Itō Hiromi—have participated ..read more
Asymptote Blog » Japanese
5M ago
From the Indonesian Feature in the Summer edition, I was intrigued by the poems of Nirwan Dewanto, in vivid translations by John H. McGlynn, including “The Way to the Museum,” which begins with “All eyeballs dipped in the vinegar of the bourgeoisie will become pickled eyeballs” and continues, in long lines, to contemplate class, blindness, and ..read more
Asymptote Blog » Japanese
5M ago
Wedged between sky and sea is the thin line we all know as the horizon, ever-present in Brazilian explorer Amyr Klink’s nail-biting account of survival in shark-infested waters—just one of many new works from this Rubik’s Cube-like Summer edition. Though this particular horizon is “defined” against a clear sky on the day of Klink’s wondrous salvation ..read more