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  • What We Don't Know About North Korea

    This week’s PEN Atlas despatch comes from Krys Lee, who takes a look at the literature from (and about)  North Korea that is available in English translation.North Korea has featured prominently in the news for many years, particularly in recent months with the death of its leader Kim Jong-Il on Dec 17, 2011. But it has been largely absent in fiction, at least in English. What is available in English is Adam Johnson’s much-praised and recently published novel The Orphan Master’s Son, James Church’s Inspector O novel A Corpse in the Koryo, and a few stories from my book Drifting House. Translated works, usually from South Korea, open up a few more  opportunities, including Jia: A Novel of North Korea by Hyejin Kim that reads much like a news report, as well as a more nuanced rendition of the country in Young-ha Kim’s Your Republic Is Calling You.I was able to have brunch with Young-ha in New Yorka few weeks ago. I’ve been reading his work for over eight years, both in Korean and in translation, so when he came to the Center for Fiction where I was reading and suggested that we meet, I quickly agreed. I wrote in English but have lived in Seoul, South Korea for over ten years, and Young-ha wrote in Korean but has been living in New York for the past two years as a writer in residence at ColumbiaUniversity. We are both part of a wave of transnational writers, and seemed to recognize this in each other. We talked about many things, but one of them was the sense of loneliness that Young-ha, as a seasoned writer, warned me of, that would inevitably mark my life as a writer. The constant travel and time spent away from home will change your life, he said. This observation is much in keeping with his book Your Republic Is Calling You.Though Your Republic Is Calling You is set in South Korea, it is the best novel about North Korea available in translation. The novel follows one day in the life of a North Korean spy named Ki-yong who has been slumbering at his job incognito for many years in Seoul, when he is suddenly called back to the homeland. Though it was marketed as a thriller in the English-language market and given a new glamorous, chilling title, the original book in South Korea was seen as literary novel with the title which would translate roughly as The Empire of Light. As a thriller, it is quiet at best. Not much happens in terms of action, and more time is spent on the ruminations of the main narrator as he makes the greatest decision of his life: Does he return toNorth Korea, with no idea of what awaits him, or does he stay in the South, with all its potential unknown repercussions? Either way, the reader becomes intimate with his neither here nor there status, and with the sense of being an outsider that has shaped Ki-yong’s life. Young-ha’s intimacy with the details of North Korean life as well as his deep understanding of Korean culture, help readers vividly feel and understand the troubled modern history of the Koreas.Yi Mun-yol’s An Appointment with My Brother is another seminal work in Korean that is being retranslated into English by noted translator and writer Heinz Fenkl. Two separated brothers, one from North Korea and one from the South, meet in China after their father has died. This meeting between separated brothers is a popular theme in Korean modern literature as it is emblematic of the relationship of the divided Koreas, but this trope is still powerful and fresh in Yi Mun-yol’s telling. Yi, one of Korea’s most eminent living writers, knows this particular story intimately. His father defected to North Korea after the Korean War, which caused incredible economic and psychological hardship to the family, all subjects that Yi explores in his fiction.The story of division has figured largely in the imagination of South Korean literature, but more recently North Koreaitself has taken center stage with the novel Rina by South Korean writer Kang Yong-Suk. The novel’s premise is promising, and it begins with great urgency as we follow North Korean refugees in China through the jungles of Southeast Asia as they seek safety in a third country. Despite the one-dimensional characters and a rather limited understanding of North Korea, Rina was successful in the domestic market, showing that the issues are ever present.More fiction about North Korea will continue to be published in South Korea and abroad, but what is available from North Koreans themselves is usually of little artistic merit, as all art forms strictly serve the government’s purposes. North Korean defectors have not yet made significant contributions to the world of letters, in part due to the vastly different education and literary systems of North Koreaas well as skewed demographics, as most defectors originate from the northern provinces where farming, mining and logging are concentrated. The most prominent cause, however, is the difficult climate awaiting them in South Korea, Japan, theU.S., and other “safe” third countries. Adaptation to a foreign culture and to capitalism, discrimination issues and the daily war of survival have made literature a luxury for most. I look forward to a future when more defectors write fiction and poetry the way they are making inroads into memoir, visual art and film.Young-ha Kim and I parted after two hours of food and conversation. In that time we spoke in Korean with a smattering of English, but when the English rose up it felt awkward and artificial, so we reverted back to Korean. This state of being between languages and between cultures takes on an entirely different meaning and import for the North Korean defector community of today, the only community of North Koreans that the international community can truly know, if we care to.

    About the author

    Krys Lee is the author of Drifting House recently published by Faber and Faber in the U.K. and Viking/Penguin in the U.S.. She was born in Seoul, South Korea, studied in the U.S. andEngland, and lives in Seoul. Her work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Narrative magazine, Granta (New Voices), California Quarterly, Asia Weekly, the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Huffington Post and Condé Nast Traveller,UK.www.krys.lee.comhttp://faber.co.uk/author/krys-lee/

    Additional Information

    Adam Johnson (1967): ‘The Orphan Master’s Son’, Doubleday, 2012.  American novelist and short story writerJames Church (pseudonym) ‘A Corpse in the Koryo’, St Martin’s Press, 2007. He is a former Western intelligence officer with decades of experience in Asia and an author of four detective novels featuring a North Korean policeman, Inspector O.Hyejin Kim:  ‘Jia – A Novel of North Korea’, Cleis Press, 2007 She has written for numerous publications including, Asia Times. ‘Jia’is her debut novel and was inspired by her encounters with North Korean refugees in northern China.Young-ha Kim (1968): ‘Your Republic is Calling You’, Mariner Books, 2010.  Novelist. His books are translated into many languages.Yu Mun Yol (1948):  ‘An Appointment with My Brother’, currently unavailable in English, is being retranslated by Heinz Fenkl for Azalea Journal. He is one of South Korea’s most admired novelists and his books are translated into many languages.Heinz Fenkl is a writer, editor and translator. His fiction includes ‘Memoirs of My Ghost Brother’, Anchor, US, 2007.Kang Yung-Suk; ‘Rina’, 2006, Munhakdongne Press. Kang is a respected short story writer and novelist. ‘Rina’ is her debut novel.

  • Yo ya no quiero salir en esta película

    La narrativa de la violencia en México 1: el cuento.

    Juan Pablo Villalobos

    Creo ciegamente que los escritores mexicanos estamos condenados a decepcionar a nuestros interlocutores extranjeros. Escribí una novela que ha sido traducida a varios idiomas y cada vez que tengo una entrevista o que participo de una lectura en el extranjero acabo con la sensación de no haber cumplido con la expectativa, frustrado por no poder ser suficientemente auténtico, lo que en el caso de México quiere decir folclórico. Me siento justo como el narrador de “Amigos mexicanos”, el divertidísimo y lúcido cuento de Juan Villoro, en el que un famoso periodista estadounidense, Samuel Katzenberg, contrata a un escritor mexicano para que sea su “contacto hacia lo genuino”, para que le ayude a diferenciar lo que es horrible de lo que es “buñuelesco”, para que le muestre el verdadero México. Al describir el México que Katzenberg quería conocer, Villoro resume a la perfección el abismo que separa a mexicanos y extranjeros al construir la imagen de nuestro país: “Él deseaba una realidad como los óleos de Frida: espantosa pero única”.

    En los últimos años la situación no ha hecho más que empeorar: la llamada “guerra contra el narco” del presidente Calderón ha provocado alrededor de 50.000 muertes violentas en el país. Nuestra realidad se ha vuelto espantosa, a secas, sin que tenga absolutamente nada de “única” o fascinante. De manera paralela a la escalada de violencia, ha surgido una escalada literaria, porque un número importante de escritores ha intuido la necesidad – social, diría yo – de buscar un lenguaje para narrar la violencia. Se escriben por igual novelas, cuentos, obras de teatro, guiones de cine e incluso poemas o performances, que recrean nuestro horror cotidiano. Comenzaré por el cuento.

    Narrar la violencia supone narrar el mundo del crimen organizado, las entrañas del monstruo aficionado a la decapitación. En el genial “Ese modo que colma”, Daniel Sada relata la fiesta de un grupo de narcotraficantes, fiesta que se suspende porque en una hielera de cervezas se realiza el hallazgo de tres cabezas humanas. Las páginas transcurren mientras las viudas pican hielo para evitar que las cabezas se pudran y apesten, los narcotraficantes comienzan a indagar quiénes son los traidores y las mujeres piensan en cómo dar sepultura a las cabezas: ¿en un féretro chiquito?, ¿en una caja de fruta? Sada culmina el cuento con una admonición escalofriante: “eso de las decapitaciones se estaba poniendo de moda”, “una moda que podría durar varios años”.

    ¿Qué nos ha pasado?, ¿cómo llegamos aquí?, son dos preguntas terroríficas que nos agobian. La realidad nos obliga a volver a pensarlo todo, a regresar, incluso, a lo elemental, a la definición de las cosas, para tratar de descubrir dónde nos hemos perdido. Francisco Hinojosa cree necesario, y lo es, citar el significado del verbo descuartizar en “Lo que antes eran calles”, cuento en el que un sicario con dislalia, apodado El Bóiler, termina descuartizando, por calentura, a la novia que lo ha engañado: “Descuartizar. Verbo transitivo que significa cuartear, hacer cuartos, despedazar, hacer pedazos, desmembrar, destrozar. Dividir en cuartos, a modo de castigo, el cuerpo de una persona”. Y sigue.

    Hay que volver a nombrar las cosas, narrarlas, porque ya no son lo que eran, o porque ya no son lo que parecen, o porque ya no parecen lo que son. En “Ojos que no ven” Iris García relata el reclutamiento de actores para un película entre los borrachos asiduos a una cantina. Su papel en el filme consistirá en declararse miembros del Cártel de Sinaloa culpables de algunos asesinatos. Delante de la cámara, a fuerza de golpes y balazos para dar realismo a la escena, porque no hay presupuesto para maquillaje, acabarán descubriendo que están siendo usados por el Cártel del Golfo para que se culpe al cártel rival de “todo lo que pasa”. Uno de los borrachos reclutados chilla una frase que bien podría decir cualquier mexicano que ve invadida su cotidianeidad por ese tipo de violencia que antes solo veíamos en el cine o la televisión: “Yo ya no quiero salir en esta película”.

    Algunos empezamos a delirar con visiones apocalípticas. Antonio Ortuño imagina en “Historia” que un país extranjero decide invadirnos, debido “al tráfico de drogas, el contrabando de órganos, el secuestro y homicidio de extranjeros, el estado de anarquía que priva y la migración masiva”. El protagonista del cuento intenta huir al tiempo que nos relata el miedo de los varones locales a que sus mujeres se ofrezcan a los soldados invasores para tener hijos rubios. Al final, justo antes de sucumbir al ataque de los tanques enemigos, se salva al encontrar refugio tras una puerta que le abre una mujer “gorda y renegrida”, “el cabello teñido de rubio y los dientes cubiertos por casquillos de oro”.

    Es la patria.

    Posdata: a los extranjeros aterrados con el presente texto, me gustaría transcribirles, para tranquilizarlos, una frase de Burroughs que Villoro repite en el cuento citado: “No te preocupes: los mexicanos solo matan a sus amigos”.

     Sobre el autor

    Juan Pablo Villalobos nació en Guadalajara, México, en 1973. Después de ocho años en Barcelona ahora vive en Brasil. Tiene dos hijos mexicanos-brasileños-catalanesitalianos. Su primera novela, Fiesta en la madriguera, fue publicada en 2010 y está siendo traducida a catorce idiomas. Su segunda novela se publicará en septiembre en español y en inglés durante el primer semestre de 2013. Escribe para diferentes revistas, periódicos y blogs de México, España, Brasil y Colombia.

     Sobre la traductora

    Rosalind Harvey ha vivido en Lima y en Norwich, donde se enamoró del español y de la traducción, respectivamente. Actualmente vive en Londres, donde traduce ficción en español. Su reciente traducción de Fiesta en la madriguera fue nominada al premio de primera novela del diario The Guardian. Es co-traductora, junto con Anne McLean, de El olvido que seremos de Hector Abad y de Dublinesca de Enrique Vila-Matas. El pasado otoño fue una de las primeras traductoras en residencia en el Free Word Centre.

    Información adicional

    Juan Villoro (DF, 1956): “Amigos mexicanos” en Los culpables, Almadía, Oaxaca, 2008.

    Daniel Sada (Mexicali, 1953-2010): “Ese modo que colma” en Ese modo que colma, Anagrama, Barcelona, 2010.

    Francisco Hinojosa (DF, 1954): “Lo que antes eran calles” en El tiempo apremia, Almadía, Oaxaca, 2010.

    Iris García (Acapulco, 1977 ) “Ojos que no ven” en Ojos que no ven, corazón desierto, Tierra Adentro, México, 2009.

    Antonio Ortuño (Guadalajara, 1976) “Historia” en La señora rojo, Páginas de Espuma, Madrid, 2010.

  • I Don’t Want To Be In This Film Any More

    The PEN Atlas series continues with a powerful despatch by Mexican writer Juan Pablo Villalobos.  This piece has been translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey.

    The Narrative of Violence in Mexico 1: the short story

    Translated by Rosalind Harvey

    I believe unconditionally that Mexican writers are condemned to disappoint our foreign readers. I wrote a novel that has been translated into several languages and each time I do an interview or take part in a reading abroad I end up with the sensation of not having lived up to people’s expectations, frustrated at not being authentic enough, which in the case of Mexico means ‘colourful’. I feel just like the narrator of ‘Amigos mexicanos’ [Mexican friends], the hilarious and perceptive story by Juan Villoro, in which a famous American journalist, Samuel Katzenberg, hires a Mexican writer to be his ‘contact with the genuine’, to help him distinguish between what is hideous and what is ‘Buñuelesque’, to show him the real México. When he discovers the Mexico that Katzenberg wants to see, Villoro sums up perfectly the gulf separating Mexicans and foreigners when they come to construct an image of our country: ‘He wanted a reality like Frida’s paintings: horrific but unique’.

    In recent years the situation has done nothing but worsen: president Calderón’s so-called ‘drug war’ has caused around 50,000 violent deaths in the country. Our reality has become simply horrific, with nothing ‘unique’ or fascinating about it. The increase in violence has seen a parallel increase in literature, as a significant number of writers has sensed the need – a social need, I would say – to seek out a language for writing about the violence. Novels, short stories, plays, screenplays and even poems and ‘happenings’ are being written in equal measure, recreating our daily horror. I’ll begin with the short story.

    Writing about violence means writing about the world of organised crime, the inner workings of the monster so fond of decapitation. In the brilliant ‘Ese modo que colma’ [Sense of achievement], Daniel Sada describes a party thrown by a group of drug traffickers, a party called off because of the discovery in an ice box of three human heads. The story rolls on while the widows crush ice to stop the heads from decomposing and stinking, the traffickers start to investigate who the traitors are, and the women think about how to bury the heads: in a tiny little coffin? In a fruit crate? Sada ends the story with a chilling warning: ‘this decapitation thing was starting to become fashionable’, ‘a fashion that could last several years.’

    ‘What has happened to us?’ and ‘how did we get here?’ are two terrifying questions that are currently overwhelming us. Reality is forcing us to re-think everything, to go back, even, to basics, to the definition of things, in order to find out where we got lost. Francisco Hinojosa believes it is necessary – and it is – to cite the meaning of the verb descuartizar (to quarter, dismember or chop up) in ‘Lo que antes eran calles’ [What once were streets], a story in which a hitman with a speech impediment nicknamed ‘The Boiler’ ends up dismembering, in a fit, the girlfriend who has cheated on him: ‘Dismember. Transitive verb that means quarter, divide into quarters, disjoint, tear apart, break into pieces, chop up, destroy. To cut into four parts, as a form of punishment, a person’s body.’ And it goes on.

    We have to re-name things, write about them, because they are no longer what they were, or because they are no longer what they seem, or they no longer seem like what they are. In ‘Ojos que no ven’ [What you don’t know can’t hurt you], Iris García writes of actors being recruited for a film from among the regular drunks of a cantina. Their role in the movie is to admit to being members of the Sinaloa Cartel guilty of certain murders. In front of the camera, beaten and shot at, so as to lend the scene some realism since there is no budget for make-up, they discover that they’re being used by the Gulf Cartel so that their rivals in Sinaloa are blamed for ‘everything that happens.’ One of the hired drunks screams out a phrase that could well be uttered by any Mexican who sees his daily existence invaded by this kind of violence, which we used only to see in the cinema or on TV: ‘I don’t what to be in this film any more.’

    Some of us started to hallucinate with apocalyptic visions. In ‘Historia’ [History], Antonio Ortuño imagines that a foreign country decides to invade us, because of ‘drug trafficking, the illegal organ trade, the kidnap and murder of foreigners, the prevailing state of anarchy and mass migration.’ The story’s protagonist attempts to flee while describing the local men’s fear that their wives will offer themselves to the invading soldiers so they will have blond children. At the end, just before he surrenders to the enemy tanks, the man escapes by taking shelter behind a door opened by a ‘fat, blackish’ woman, ‘her hair dyed blonde and her teeth covered in gold caps.’

    She is the motherland.

    …

    Postscript: for foreigners terrified by the present text, I would like to transcribe, so as to reassure them, a phrase of Burroughs’ repeated by Villoro in the above cited short story: ‘Don’t worry: Mexicans only kill their friends.’

    Read the original text in Spanish here: Yo ya no quiero salir en esta película

    About the Author

    Juan Pablo Villalobos was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1973. After eight years in Barcelona he lives now in Brazil. He has two Mexican-Brazilian-Catalan-Italian children. His first novel, Down the Rabbit Hole, was published in Spanish in 2010 and is being translated into fourteen languages. His second novel will be out in Spanish in September and in English in the first quarter of 2013. He writes for different magazines, newspapers and blogs of Mexico, Spain, Brazil and Colombia.

    About the Translator

    Rosalind Harvey has lived in Lima and Norwich, where she fell in love with Spanish and translation, respectively. She now lives in London, where she translates Hispanic fiction. Her recent translation of Down the Rabbit Hole was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book award, and she is the co-translator with Anne McLean of Hector Abad’s prize-winning memoir Oblivion, and Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas. Last autumn she was one of Free Word Centre’s first ever translators-in-residence.

    Additional Information

    Juan Villoro (Mexico city, 1956): “Amigos mexicanos” in Los culpables, Almadía, Oaxaca, 2008.

    Daniel Sada (Mexicali, 1953-2010): “Ese modo que colma” in Ese modo que colma, Anagrama, Barcelona, 2010. Almost Never his last novel is published by Graywolf in the US.  He began his career as a poet and was one of Mexico’s most admired novelists and story writers.

    Antonio Ortuño (Guadalajara, 1976) “Historia” in La señora rojo, Páginas de Espuma, Madrid, 2010. His writing has been translated into many languages. ‘Small Mouth, Thin Lips’ is a new story and can be read in Granta magazine 113.

    Francisco Hinojosa (Mexico city, 1954): “Lo que antes eran calles” in El tiempo apremia, Almadía, Oaxaca, 2010.

    Iris García (Acapulco, 1977 ) “Ojos que no ven” in Ojos que no ven, corazón desierto, Tierra Adentro, México, 2009.

  • I Don't Want To Be In This Film Any More

    The PEN Atlas series continues with a powerful despatch by Mexican writer Juan Pablo Villalobos.  This piece has been translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey.

    The Narrative of Violence in Mexico 1: the short story

    Translated by Rosalind Harvey

    I believe unconditionally that Mexican writers are condemned to disappoint our foreign readers. I wrote a novel that has been translated into several languages and each time I do an interview or take part in a reading abroad I end up with the sensation of not having lived up to people’s expectations, frustrated at not being authentic enough, which in the case of Mexico means ‘colourful’. I feel just like the narrator of ‘Amigos mexicanos’ [Mexican friends], the hilarious and perceptive story by Juan Villoro, in which a famous American journalist, Samuel Katzenberg, hires a Mexican writer to be his ‘contact with the genuine’, to help him distinguish between what is hideous and what is ‘Buñuelesque’, to show him the real México. When he discovers the Mexico that Katzenberg wants to see, Villoro sums up perfectly the gulf separating Mexicans and foreigners when they come to construct an image of our country: ‘He wanted a reality like Frida’s paintings: horrific but unique’.

    In recent years the situation has done nothing but worsen: president Calderón’s so-called ‘drug war’ has caused around 50,000 violent deaths in the country. Our reality has become simply horrific, with nothing ‘unique’ or fascinating about it. The increase in violence has seen a parallel increase in literature, as a significant number of writers has sensed the need – a social need, I would say – to seek out a language for writing about the violence. Novels, short stories, plays, screenplays and even poems and ‘happenings’ are being written in equal measure, recreating our daily horror. I’ll begin with the short story.

    Writing about violence means writing about the world of organised crime, the inner workings of the monster so fond of decapitation. In the brilliant ‘Ese modo que colma’ [Sense of achievement], Daniel Sada describes a party thrown by a group of drug traffickers, a party called off because of the discovery in an ice box of three human heads. The story rolls on while the widows crush ice to stop the heads from decomposing and stinking, the traffickers start to investigate who the traitors are, and the women think about how to bury the heads: in a tiny little coffin? In a fruit crate? Sada ends the story with a chilling warning: ‘this decapitation thing was starting to become fashionable’, ‘a fashion that could last several years.’

    ‘What has happened to us?’ and ‘how did we get here?’ are two terrifying questions that are currently overwhelming us. Reality is forcing us to re-think everything, to go back, even, to basics, to the definition of things, in order to find out where we got lost. Francisco Hinojosa believes it is necessary – and it is – to cite the meaning of the verb descuartizar (to quarter, dismember or chop up) in ‘Lo que antes eran calles’ [What once were streets], a story in which a hitman with a speech impediment nicknamed ‘The Boiler’ ends up dismembering, in a fit, the girlfriend who has cheated on him: ‘Dismember. Transitive verb that means quarter, divide into quarters, disjoint, tear apart, break into pieces, chop up, destroy. To cut into four parts, as a form of punishment, a person’s body.’ And it goes on.

    We have to re-name things, write about them, because they are no longer what they were, or because they are no longer what they seem, or they no longer seem like what they are. In ‘Ojos que no ven’ [What you don’t know can’t hurt you], Iris García writes of actors being recruited for a film from among the regular drunks of a cantina. Their role in the movie is to admit to being members of the Sinaloa Cartel guilty of certain murders. In front of the camera, beaten and shot at, so as to lend the scene some realism since there is no budget for make-up, they discover that they’re being used by the Gulf Cartel so that their rivals in Sinaloa are blamed for ‘everything that happens.’ One of the hired drunks screams out a phrase that could well be uttered by any Mexican who sees his daily existence invaded by this kind of violence, which we used only to see in the cinema or on TV: ‘I don’t what to be in this film any more.’

    Some of us started to hallucinate with apocalyptic visions. In ‘Historia’ [History], Antonio Ortuño imagines that a foreign country decides to invade us, because of ‘drug trafficking, the illegal organ trade, the kidnap and murder of foreigners, the prevailing state of anarchy and mass migration.’ The story’s protagonist attempts to flee while describing the local men’s fear that their wives will offer themselves to the invading soldiers so they will have blond children. At the end, just before he surrenders to the enemy tanks, the man escapes by taking shelter behind a door opened by a ‘fat, blackish’ woman, ‘her hair dyed blonde and her teeth covered in gold caps.’

    She is the motherland.

    …

    Postscript: for foreigners terrified by the present text, I would like to transcribe, so as to reassure them, a phrase of Burroughs’ repeated by Villoro in the above cited short story: ‘Don’t worry: Mexicans only kill their friends.’

    Read the original text in Spanish here: Yo ya no quiero salir en esta película

    About the Author

    Juan Pablo Villalobos was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1973. After eight years in Barcelona he lives now in Brazil. He has two Mexican-Brazilian-Catalan-Italian children. His first novel, Down the Rabbit Hole, was published in Spanish in 2010 and is being translated into fourteen languages. His second novel will be out in Spanish in September and in English in the first quarter of 2013. He writes for different magazines, newspapers and blogs of Mexico, Spain, Brazil and Colombia.

    About the Translator

    Rosalind Harvey has lived in Lima and Norwich, where she fell in love with Spanish and translation, respectively. She now lives in London, where she translates Hispanic fiction. Her recent translation of Down the Rabbit Hole was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book award, and she is the co-translator with Anne McLean of Hector Abad’s prize-winning memoir Oblivion, and Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas. Last autumn she was one of Free Word Centre’s first ever translators-in-residence.

    Additional Information

    Juan Villoro (Mexico city, 1956): “Amigos mexicanos” in Los culpables, Almadía, Oaxaca, 2008.

    Daniel Sada (Mexicali, 1953-2010): “Ese modo que colma” in Ese modo que colma, Anagrama, Barcelona, 2010. Almost Never his last novel is published by Graywolf in the US.  He began his career as a poet and was one of Mexico’s most admired novelists and story writers.

    Antonio Ortuño (Guadalajara, 1976) “Historia” in La señora rojo, Páginas de Espuma, Madrid, 2010. His writing has been translated into many languages. ‘Small Mouth, Thin Lips’ is a new story and can be read in Granta magazine 113.

    Francisco Hinojosa (Mexico city, 1954): “Lo que antes eran calles” in El tiempo apremia, Almadía, Oaxaca, 2010.

    Iris García (Acapulco, 1977 ) “Ojos que no ven” in Ojos que no ven, corazón desierto, Tierra Adentro, México, 2009.

  • Writing In A City That’s Collapsing

    English PEN Launches the PEN Atlas with this piece by Athens based writer Gazmend Kapllani.

    What does an author do in a city that is collapsing? Like all the other non-authors, he tries not to collapse. He hopes that the worst is over, and yet he fears that perhaps the worst is yet to come. He observes the falling snow and for a moment he thinks about the homeless who have filled the streets of Athens. To them, snow means death. Perhaps this makes a certain book come to mind – 

    A Sun for the Dying by Jean-Claude Izzo.

    If he uses the metro often, he’ll observe that since the economic crisis began, the number of people reading books on the train has increased. Unfortunately the number of beggars who move from one train to another with their hand outstretched, has increased even more. In any case, the metro is the only place in Athens where the crisis, with all of its hazardous force, has not yet been entirely felt. Every time I descend into the station, it’s as if I am in a shelter which protects me from the prevailing feeling of melancholy which persists above ground. The people waiting on the clean platforms have more relaxed expressions on their faces. It’s as if they’ve put on a temporary mask. Once you ascend to the surface, the mask falls.

    You walk along the streets of Athens, “collecting” various images – broken storefronts, glum faces, burnt buildings and homeless people who are like sad witnesses standing across from burned-out buildings. The ruined buildings are some of the most beautiful in Athens. They are victims of violence at the hands of “neo-barbarians” who are “children” of an “eternal present” – with no recollection, without a past and without a vision for the future besides their only slogan: “a burning city is a blossoming flower.”

    One of the buildings destroyed by fire is the Attikon cinema, one of the city’s oldest. It was at this cinema, in February 1991, where I watched my first film in Athens – An Angel at my Table – a movie which tells the dramatic life story of New Zealand author Janet Paterson Frame. Back then I was a recent immigrant, in Athens for only two months, without residency papers and knowing very little Greek. I can still recall some scenes from that movie. Janet Frame was horribly stigmatized and suffered a great deal but in the end she made it. Standing in front of this burned cinema in Athens, I hope that Greece will follow the same fate of this famous writer, coming out of its scary present stronger.Putting my memories aside, I continue a little further down the street. Near the cinema I notice an open-air stall selling used books. Five euros per book. Used books, especially during these times of crisis, are sold for pennies in Monastiraki, an area below the Acropolis in the center of Athens. So how do these books end up for sale at the bookseller’s stall for five euros? If you follow their trail perhaps you will understand something about how Greece’s economy works. Since the crisis began, the number of readers in Greece has dramatically decreased. The price of books, however, used or new, has not decreased and in some cases, the prices have even gone up.

    How can one find the nerve to write in a city that is collapsing? In my conversations with authors, new authors and well-established authors alike tend to feel despondent. They say the market for books is collapsing as well. Rumors about publishing companies are circulating: some are not paying authors, others are in danger of closing their doors, while bookstores are closing down one after another. People have other things to worry about and reading was never their strong point. “Author” was always a risky and extravagant “profession.” In a city that’s collapsing, however, being an author is like jumping into a void.

    I take a look at the best-seller lists in the newspapers. In fiction, mostly romantic novels and crime fiction are popular. Best-selling essays are those trying to explain the economic crisis and criticize ruthless capitalism. I talk with owners of bookstores who have shops in wealthy Athenian neighborhoods. They have not shut down yet, like hundreds of other bookstores in poorer neighborhoods which have had to close. They tell me that the “quality readers” are those who have been hardest hit by the crisis. And that many readers ask for books that will make them forget and not think about what is happening around them.  

    In a city that is collapsing, what can an author write about? And in the final analysis, who will read what you write? But if you don’t write when everything around you is tottering and changing, then when will you write? I recall something that Dino Buzzati wrote in one of his books: “Please write. At least two lines, even if your soul is restless and your nerves are gone. Every day, write.” Writing is a shield and therapy; it is an escape, an analysis, a reminiscence and it is imagination. You write because you have the illusion that you can translate the incomprehensible into a story. To borrow a phrase from Sepulveda, to write means to endure. Especially, to withstand one’s own fear, one’s own misery and melancholy. Through writing, you discover how unforgiving time is. And how every so often, hope springs from despair….

    Athens, February 2012

    About the Author

    GazmendKapllani was born in 1967 in Lushnjë, Albania. In January 1991 he crossed the border into Greece on foot to escape persecution by the communist secret services. In Greece he worked as a builder, a cook and a kiosk attendant, while also studying at Athens University and completing a doctorate on the image of Albanians in the Greek press and of Greeks in the Albanian press. He is now a successful writer, playwright, broadcaster and journalist. His best-selling first novel, A Short Border Handbook has been translated into four languages (English, Polish, Danish and French). A Short Border Handbook was published and by Portobello Books in 2009, and was translated by Anne-Marie Stanton-Ife.

    Additional Information

    Jean Claude Izzo (1945-2000) French writer – Sun for the Dying (1999) published by Europa Books, 2008. 

    Dino Buzzati-Traverso (1906 – 1972) was an Italian novelist, short story writer, painter and poet, as well as a journalist for Corriere della Sera. His worldwide fame is mostly due to his novel Il deserto dei Tartari, translated into English as The Tartar Steppe, 1939. Available in Canongate edition. 

    Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1489–1573) was a Spanish humanist, philosopher and theologian