Asymptote’s April 2013 issue has just come out and, as always, contains a lot of great prose, poetry and more, some of which comes from the part of the world written about hereabouts.
The introduction of Hungarian writer Miklós Szentkuthy continues with an excerpt from Towards the One and Only Metaphor translated by Tim Wilkinson and published by Contra Mundum Press. The same publisher translator combination recently came out with Szentkuthy’s Marginalia on Casanova. Asymptote also has made Contra Mundum founder Rainer J. Hanshe’s introduction to Szentkuthy available online.
There is also some Russian poetry, including work by Nekrasov, though not the Nikolay Nekrasov who was a friend of Dostoevsky’s (as I thought from a first, admittedly quick glance from my desk at work trying to switch back to work things when people walked by my monitor even though I’ve already been fired so why bother?) but a very different Vsevolod Nekrasov, “who became active in the literary and artistic underground in the late 1950s.”
The other Russian poem is by 2012 Debut Prize for Poetry winner Aleksey Porvin, “A Dark House is Quietly Collapsing.” As always, you can read the work in the original if you are able to.
Two more Russian pieces are a dramatic extract from Latvian playwright Aleksey Scherbak’s Colonel Pilate and an interview with Olena Bormashenko on translating Soviet-era science-fiction, a timely subject following the recent death of the great Boris Strugatsky.
Of course there’s a lot more to read from all over the literary world as well, and don’t forget to keep Asymptote going by giving to their Indiegogo fundraiser, which comes to an end on April 30. Not only aren’t there many magazines like this, there actually aren’t any . . at all . . anywhere. So give!
Photo – From the Diary of a Fly, visual art in the latest Asymptote, by Maria Chevska (including an interview with the artist)
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