Originally written in Bengali, Shabnam presents a passionate love story set in 1920s Afghanistan. What is love? asks author Syed Mujtaba Ali: a dream or a dreamy reality? Maybe, it is like an overnight train journey through a long tunnel, in which the traveler stays awake to catch a glimpse of the sun’s first rays, but falls asleep just before dawn. When he wakes up frustrated, he comforts himself by thinking that the soft light had touched his skin and its warmth had seeped into his veins through the pores. The elusiveness of love is a potent theme in this classic novel now available in an English translation from Nazes Afroz.
Modern classic
The modern classics of Southeast Asian literature, with the singular exception of Pramoedya Ananta Toer, largely remain a blank spot on the English-language literary map. Thank goodness, then, that Penguin Southeast Asia has in recent years published translations from, for example, Vietnamese and Tagalog; Pauline Fan’s recent translation of a collection of Malay short fiction by the iconic writer Fatimah Busu is a welcome addition.
Titles from the venerable Penguin Classics imprint are usually books one knows one should have read even if one hasn’t (yet): known unknowns, as the famous saying goes. Behind the Painting by Thai author Siburapha is, even for the well-read anglophone consumer of literature, likely to qualify as an unknown unknown. First published 1937, this slim novel is one of Thailand’s best-known modern classics, has been adapted to film twice (as well as three stage musicals), and is a common set text in Thai secondary schools. Yet it is surely largely unknown outside Thailand.
Translators have made books from around the world available through the centuries to those unable to read the language in which a work first appears. Translation allows us to gain insights and grapple with the arguments of authors from around the globe. A world without translation would be, for most readers in the Anglosphere, a world without such works as Sun Tzu’s classic Art of War or Mao Zedong’s modern On Protracted War. While Asian literature is relatively well represented in English translation, from Murasaki Shikibu’s ancient Tale of Genji to Murakami Haruki’s latest novel, The City and Its Uncertain Walls, translations of their non-fiction equivalents are comparatively rare.
There is a tendency with Osamu Dazai, who in his lifetime struggled with addiction and ultimately committed suicide, to focus on the more overwrought and confessional elements of his prose, hoping to find a mirror of the tragedy of his life in his writings. For his dedicated readers spanning the globe, the relatable elements of the ill-fated author may well be the pessimism and emotive voice within his works, but as well as being blessed with a razor-sharp and often damning self-awareness, Dazai was an adept comic writer who mixed the jocular with the melancholic to brilliant effect.
Rogelio Sicat (or Sikat), often referred to as “one of the greatest pioneers of Philippine fiction”, along other young writers in the 1960s, chose to write in Tagalog in deliberate reaction to the literature written in English during the American occupation. Sixty years after his Bleeding Sun was written, this translation by his daughter Maria Aurora is a step towards making Sicat’s work more accessible.
Long unavailable, Rohit Manchanda’s newly reissued A Speck of Coal Dust won the Betty Trask Award when it was first published (under a different titles) a generation ago. It takes place in the kingdom of childhood, not however to be confused with that of innocence. In this world, everything can be—and is meant to be—explored and experienced. A flower cannot be marvelled at; it must be touched. A snake cannot be avoided; it must be prodded. The result is a bildungsroman that is starkly refreshing, adding depth to a period and place relatively ignored in literature.