Die, My Love

In Catching Fire, the translation of Diamela Eltit's Never Did the Fire unfolds in real time as a conversation between works of art, illuminating both in the process. The problems and pleasures of conveying literature into another language—what happens when you meet a pun? a double entendre?—are met by translator Daniel Hahn's humour, deftness, and deep appreciation for what sets Eltit's work apart, and his evolving understanding of what this particular novel is trying to do.

Not a police chronicle, not a thriller, but a contemporary noir novel of the ongoing catastrophe of femicide and the murder of three young women in interior of Argentina.

Femicide is generally defined as the murder of women simply because they are women. In 2018, 139 women died in the UK as a result of male violence (The Guardian). In Argentina this number is far higher, with 278 cases registered for that same year. Following the success of The Wind That Lays Waste, internationally acclaimed Argentinian author Selva Almada dives into the heart of this problem with this journalistic novel, comparable to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood or John Hersey’s Hiroshima, in response to the urgent need for attention to a serious problem of our times.

Almada narrates the case of three small-town teenage girls murdered in the 1980’s; three unpunished deaths that occurred before the word ‘femicide’ was even coined. In this brutal but necessary novel, Almada brings to the fore these crimes committed in the interior of the country, while Argentina was celebrating the return of democracy. Three deaths without culprits: 19-year old Andrea Danne, stabbed in her own bed; 15-year old María Luisa Quevedo, raped, strangled, and dumped in wasteland; and 20-year old Sarita Mundín, whose disfigured body was found on a river bank. Selva Almada takes these and other tales of abused women to weave together a dry, straightforward portrait of gender violence that surpasses national borders and speaks to readers’ consciousness all over the world.

This is not a police chronicle, although there is an investigation. This is not a thriller, although there is mystery and suspense. The real noir element of Dead Girls lies in the heart of the women described here and of the men that have abused them. With her unique style of prose that captures the invisible, and with lyrical brutality, Almada manages to blaze new trails in this kind of journalistic fiction.

Compared to Carson McCullers, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Sara Gallardo and Juan Carlos Onetti, Selva Almada (Entre Ríos, Argentina, 1973) is considered one of the most powerful voices of contemporary Argentinian and Latin American literature and one of the most influential feminist intellectuals of the region. Including her debut _The Wind that Lays Waste, _she has published two novels, a book of short stories, a book of journalistic fiction and a kind of film diary (written in the set of Lucrecia Martel's most recent film Zama, based on Antonio di Benedetto's novel). She has been finalist of the Rodolfo Walsh Award and of the Tigre Juan Award (both in Spain). Her work has been translated into French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Swedish and Turkish. This is her second book to appear in English after _The Wind that Lays Waste _(Winner of the EIBF First Book Award 2019).

Known and celebrated in Brazil and abroad for his novel Resistance, Julián Fuks returns to his auto-fictional alter ego Sebastián in a narrative alternating between the writer’s conversations with refugees occupying a building in downtown São Paulo, his father’s sickness, and his wife’s pregnancy. With impeccable prose, the author builds associations that go beyond the obvious, not only between glimpsing a life's beginning and end, but also between the building’s occupation and his wife's pregnancy — showcasing the various forms of occupation while exposing the frailty of life, the risk of solitude and the brutality of not belonging.

A young writer has his heart set on his aunt's large apartment. With this seemingly simple conceit, the characters of The Planetarium are set in orbit and a galaxy of argument, resentment, and bitterness erupts. Telling the story from various points of view, Sarraute focuses below the surface, on the emotional lives of the characters in a way that surpasses even Virginia Woolf. Always deeply engaging, The Planetarium reveals the deep disparity between the way we see ourselves and the way others see us.

The author of eleven novels, three works of criticism, a collection of plays, and an autobiography, Nathalie Sarraute (1900-1999) is well-known as one of the prime proponents of the New Novel, alongside Alain Robbe-Grillet, Robert Pinget, and Claude Simon. Among her books are Do You Hear Them?, Martereau, Portrait of a Man Unknown, Between Life and Death, and Tropisms.

The third and final installment of Ariana Harwicz's Involuntary Trilogy finds us on familiar, disquieting ground. Under the spell of a mother's madness, the French countryside transforms into a dreamscape of interconnected imagery: animals, desire, the functions of the body. Most troublingly: the comfort of a teenage son. Scorning the bourgeois mores and conventionality of their small town, she withdraws him from school and the two embark on ever more antisocial and dangerous behavior. Harwicz is at her best here, building an interior world so robust, and so grotesque, that it eclipses our shared reality. Savage, and savagely funny, she leaves us singed, if not scorched.

Compared to Nathalie Sarraute and Virginia Woolf, Ariana Harwicz is one of the most radical figures in contemporary Argentinian literature. Her prose is characterised by its violence, eroticism, irony and criticism of the clichés surrounding the notions of the family and conventional relationships. Born in Buenos Aires in 1977, Harwicz studied screenwriting and drama in Argentina, and earned a degree in Performing Arts from the University of Paris VII as well as a Master's in comparative literature from the Sorbonne. She has taught screenwriting and written plays, which have been staged in Buenos Aires. Feebleminded (which has also been adapted for the stage in Argentina and Spain) is her second novel and a sequel in an 'involuntary' trilogy, preceded by Die, My Love (Charco Press, 2017) and followed by Precocious. Her fourth novel, Degenerate comes out in June 2019. Die, My Love was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize (2018) and shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize (2018). It has been translated into more than ten languages.

Translated by Carolina Orloff and Annie McDermott.

‘Rave vertelt verhalen uit het leven in het diepst van de nacht.’ Er wordt gefeest, gedronken, drugs genomen. Er wordt gepraat over wil de ideeën en banaliteiten. Dansvloeren, nachtclub krochten, wc’s, parkings en achterafjes worden aangedaan in München, Berlijn, Ibiza. Er wordt gevreeën, op de dealer gewacht en bij ochtend krieken overlegd waar de afterparty voor de preparty voor de volgende party zal doorgaan. ‘Ieder uur sleept een van zo’n weekend in exces fataal verwoeste zich ergens over de heel normale dagdagelijkse mensenstraten f inaal afgemaakt voort.’ Daartussen samplet en mixt Goetz af en toe stemmen van bepaalde producers, tv en krantenredacteurs en andere mediaspelers die ook de realiteit van rave, een gesofisticeerd gecodeerd soort outsider kunst van allemaal insiders, denken te kunnen vatten. Voor lange scheldtirades is er, anders dan in Gestoord, geen plaats. Er moet immers gefeest worden. Rave: de zich steeds herhalende extase van het basale, rave als esthetische theorie en sociale praktijk, als radicale utopie, in de absoluut tegenwoordige tijd. ‘Kom hier, vallende ster.’

De Duitse cultauteur Rainald Goetz (1954) maakte naam als scherp zinnig waarnemer van media en popcultuur, in teksten waarin hij neo-expressionisme en sociaal realisme vermengt met de nerveuze schrijfsels van beat en popauteurs. Goetz is een van de belangrijkste en interessantste stemmen van de hedendaagse Duitse literatuur en ontving meerdere literaire prijzen, waaronder de Georg Büchner Preis 2015. Eerder verscheen bij het balanseer Gestoord, Sebastian Roths vertaling van Irre (1983).

Sebastian Roth (°1991) behaalde een bachelor Taal- en Letterkunde (Engels – Duits), een master Westerse Literatuur en een master Journalistiek. Hij schreef voor Knack Focus, vertaalde nieuwsartikels en reportages voor Knack en werkte mee aan Helblauw (2018), een vertaling van Hellblau (2001) van de Duitse auteur, dj en muzikant Thomas Meinecke door een vijftigkoppig vertaalcollectief.

Guest edited by artist Helen Marten and literary agent Harriet Moore with Matthew Stuart, this volume of the journal considers what it means for a publication to be an allegorical container. A simple box in which to gather multiple things, an economical set of permutations — rational in one sense, yet defiantly flexible to move. Contributors were approached with an open invitation; some explored the multiplicities of containing or containers, while others filled the printed vessel with their own ongoing preoccupations. The following pages perform as envelope, bag, shell, net, fold, alarm, letter and instruction. There are holes to disappear within; smoke to knot and wind; shadows to unfold — a context that takes in and binds, finding new kinships from unforeseen proximities.

THE FIRE FLOWERS AND THE FLOWER LIGHTS UP –
Lucy Mercer
(spine)

WE SHALL GREET THE MOON AGAIN
Walter Price
(front cover)

BACK PAGES OF ALGIERS DIARIES 2018
Lydia Ourahmane
(inside front & inside back cover)

AN INTRODUCTION TO / NOTES ON / INSTRUCTION FOR THE FRONT NOVEL
Eliza Barry Callahan
(pp.1–16)

SATURDAY MORNING
Kathryn Scanlan
(pp.25–29)

KILLDEER
Jason Schwartz
(pp.33–38)

ALARMS AND EXCURSIONS
Rosmarie Waldrop
(pp.45–61)

"THE BATHROOM"
Najwa Barakat
(pp.67–76)

ARMY ROLLS, A CIRCUMSCRIPTION
Roy Claire Potter
(pp.81–91)

CONCHOMANIA
Felix Bernstein
(pp.95–109)

O-POEM
Line-Gry Hørup
(pp.113–129)

THIS MUSCLE
Cally Spooner
(pp.133–153)

STERLING PARK IN THE DARK
Susan Howe
(pp.159–179)

COCONUTTERY
Mathelinda Nabugodi
(pp.183–193)

YOUR SELF CONFIDENT BABY
Aurelia Guo
(pp.197–206)

BIOGRAPHY OF A NET: HOLDING A VOLUME
Daisy Hildyard
(pp.211–225)

A GUIDE TO THE POETRY OF LI HO
Eliot Weinberger
(pp.229–235)

WOMEN SMOKING
Charline von Heyl
(throughout & p.239)

INFRATHIN
Marcel Duchamp
(throughout & p.239)

THE MAZED WORLD
Rachael Allen
(bookmark insert)

UNTITLED
Helen Marten
(back cover)

What happens when you peak in high school, or maybe earlier, or maybe not at all? When you hate your friends, or love them too much? When the warmth of nostalgia starts to slowly poison you? In Girl on Girl, Emily Costa explores desperation and loneliness, screen obsession, and casual cruelty as characters—mostly women and girls—struggle to be seen.