Croatia | Croatian | Four-part Short Fiction
January, 2012A musicologist and classical music editor on Zagreb's Third Program, Đurđa Otržan has also written stories, novels, and screenplays, examining an intellectual universe of great breadth. This four-part short story, written during the 1980s and published in 2002, ventures into the Samos of Pythagoras, the Athens of Phidias, the nether world of Rilke's posthumous correspondence with Tsvetaeva, and after these three most still, plunges into the life of a porn writer with aspirations to contribute to Partisan Review.
Chinese | Novel (excerpt) | Taiwan
January, 2012Notes of a Crocodile (1994) is a coming-of-age novel and a cult classic of queer literature by the late Taiwanese novelist Qiu Miaojin. Set at one of the nation's most elite universities in cosmopolitan Taipei in the late 1980s, it tells the story of a burgeoning romance between two female students. Sardonic, honest, and painful, the novel takes the ostensible form of a series of journals written by one of the young women--the masculine, defiant Lazi--as she recounts the struggle to realize selfhood and reconcile her deeply taboo desires under the watchful gaze of an authoritarian society.
Arabic | Germany | Novel (excerpt)
January, 2012The sibling rivalry between Yusuf and Yunus is already toxic in their childhood and goes ballistic as they mature, swap wives, trade identities, and adopt multiple additional aliases. The bleak setting for this tale of Cain and Abel is Iraq during the last years of Baath Party rule and the beginning of the American Occupation. Much of the story is recounted in flashbacks recorded on cassettes by Yusuf, but the "live" action occurs during only a few days as the hero traverses Baghdad to locate those responsible for a series of phone calls threatening him with punishment for crimes committed by his brother. Although Yunus has been declared dead by Iraqi authorities, Yusuf suspects that he may still be alive, may have returned with the Americans, and may want him dead. While both looking for and fleeing from his brother, after living under so many aliases, Yusuf finds that the one person hardest to get a clear picture of is himself.
Most of the characters' names in this novel have some extra layer of meaning. In a tribute to Kafka, one character refers to himself as Josef K. Yusuf is the name of the Biblical patriarch and the Qur'anic prophet Joseph, who in Sufism stands as an exemplar of human perfection. Yusuf's wife is Sarab, whose name means mirage. Yunus is Jonah, and his second wife, Maryam, whose child brings hope to the novel, is Mary. His four daughters by his first wife take their names from the cries for mercy of prisoners he has tortured. Harun Wali, the hero's friend who has fled Iraq, has a name that is suspiciously reminiscent of the author's, suggesting there may be some autobiographical scenes--like the one where children are thrown into Yusuf's cell--to this novel, which is this tribute to a lost generation of Iraqis.
China | Chinese | Novel (excerpt)
January, 2012"The Adventures of Monkey King" comprises the first seven chapters of Journey to the West, the great epic of pre-modern China. The book was first published anonymously in the late 16th century during the waning years of the Ming Dynasty, but the story of Monkey is based on folk legend and a much older oral tradition. Wu Cheng En, a poet who published during his lifetime under the pen name "She Yang Hermit," is generally credited as the author.
Opera Libretto | Russia | Russian
January, 2012This was the first English translation of Victory over the Sun, which was originally performed in 1913. A re-creation of the original 1913 production using Larissa Shmailo's translation was held in conjunction with the exhibition The Avant-Garde in Russia, 1910-1930: New Perspectives at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (July 8 - September 28, 1980), and at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. November 20, 1980 - February 15, 1981. This translation has also been performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and at theaters and museums internationally.
Original production credits: text by Alexei Kruchenykh; prologue by Velimir Khlebnikov; music by Mikhail Matiushin; and stage and costume designs by Kazimir Malevich.
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