We abide at present our peculiar circumstances, each in our way. With new work from 31 countries, Asymptote’s Summer 2020 edition reflects “This Strange Stillness”—hesitant, expectant, ominous, tragic. Alluding to both the ongoing pandemic and the #BlackLivesMatter movement, our excerpt from Gonçalo M. Tavares’s Plague Diary underscores the exceptional timeliness of one of our most unified issues ever. Alongside Christian Raimo’s bleak look at Italy during the financial crisis, a review of speculative fiction by Hong Konger Ysabelle Cheung against the backdrop of increasing Chinese encroachment, and the all-too-modern invasion of technology in Mohamed Makhzangi’s “Water Buffaloes,” past work by founders of surrealism André Breton and Philippe Soupault and our interview with enfant terrible of French literature Frédéric Beigbeder—where he discusses lockdown, life extension, and the xenophobia of some English readers—seem to resonate even more deeply with our historical moment.



This issue’s Special Feature showcases the humble vignette—i.e., compact serial work rendered poetically—from traditional shorts like those contributed by gifted Brazilian storyteller Cidinha da Silva to more metafictional offerings such as Macedonian author Sanja Mihajlovik-Kostadinovska’s brilliant “(In)finite Models of the Short Story” and up-and-coming Chinese writer Shuang Xuetao’s impressionistic “White Bird.” Throughout, anxiety lurks beneath the surface of jeweled prose accompanied by UK-based guest artist Laura Blight’s thrilling photography. In Russian poet Marianna Geide’s “People and Other Beings,” sinister predators are “waiting . . . always at the ready.” In acclaimed short story writer Tripura’s “Waiting for Bhagavantam”—marking our first piece from the Telugu—the frustration of our stood-up narrator seeps into his worldview like a contagion: “Across from me, a house that looked like pneumonia-given-form.” Everywhere, “a colossal virus whispers intimately in your ear,” writes Misty School poet Yang Lian.



Disease and endless waiting in confinement can exacerbate our distress at the state of the world. At such times, we relish especially the kind of celebratory transgression and liberation evoked in the irresistible poetry of Lolita Agamalova or Robert Rybicki, but we also share visual artist Rachel Blau Duplessis’s “unspeakable rage” about the course of the twenty-first century. Antonio Romani discusses Antonio Scurati’s novelistic depiction of Mussolini and Italian fascism, an all-too-timely subject for those living with today’s populist regimes. Journalist Tomáš Forró’s report on the 2014 conflict in Ukraine strikes a similar note of shame and fear regarding the State. Finally, in Hugo Carrillo’s Guatemalan drama, The Heart of the Scarecrow, a circus clown moonlights as a revolutionary, distributing anti-government tracts. Here as in our own reality, the police appears as an oppressive force, always on the verge of abusing its power.



Yet in spite of political upheaval and a palpable desire for change, something immobile in the moment lingers and persists. Alberto Caeiro, one of Fernando Pessoa’s most vivid and important heteronyms, describes this feeling as “a day when all day the thunder threatens / But still hasn’t arrived by nightfall . . .” Will the thunder break at last? One way or the other, art will bear witness, and Asymptote with it. You can help us remain vigilant in the face of history by joining our team (deadline: 27 July), by submitting work to our regular sections or to our Dutch Fiction Feature (deadline: 24 August), by subscribing to our Book Club (now open to readers all around the globe), by making a one-time tax-deductible donation (for those of you in our US), and, most of all, by becoming a sustaining or masthead member from as little as USD5 a month. Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter, or at our daily blog; don't forget to sign up for our free Fortnightly Airmails if you haven’t already. However you do it, it's more important than ever that we stay connected across the globe. Thank you for reading!

—Lee Yew Leong, Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Team for Issue July 2020



Editor-in-Chief: Lee Yew Leong (Taiwan/Singapore)



Assistant Managing Editors: Daljinder Johal (UK/India) and Josefina Massot (Argentina)



Section Editors:

Lee Yew Leong (Taiwan/Singapore)

Garrett Phelps (USA)

Varun Nayar (India)

Caridad Svich (USA)

Ah-reum Han (USA/South Korea)

Sam Carter (USA)

Eva Heisler (USA)

Sarah Timmer Harvey (USA/Netherlands)



Editor of Special Feature on Vignettes: Lee Yew Leong (Taiwan/Singapore)



Assistant Editors: Edwin Alanís-García (USA), Alyea Canada (USA), (Canada), Whitney DeVos (Mexico/USA), Helena Fornells (UK), Barbara Halla (France), Marina Martino (UK), Maya Nguen (USA), Erik Noonan (USA), Andreea Scridon (UK/Romania), Lindsay Semel (Portugal/USA), P. T. Smith (USA), Jay G. Ying (UK), and Lin Chia-wei (Taiwan)



Contributing Editors: Ellen Elias-Bursac (USA), Aamer Hussein (UK), Sim Yee Chiang (Singapore), Dylan Suher (USA), and Adrian West (USA)



Translation Tuesdays Editor: Edwin Alanís-García (USA)



Art Director: Lee Yew Leong (Taiwan/Singapore)



Assistant Director, Educational Arm: Kent Kosack (USA)



Editors-at-large, Argentina: Allison Braden and Sarah Moses

Editor-at-large, Brazil: Daniel Persia

Editor-at-large, El Salvador: Nestor Gomez

Editor-at-large, Guatemala: José García

Editors-at-large, Hong Kong: Jacqueline Leung and Charlie Ng Chak-Kwan

Editor-at-large, Iran: Poupeh Missaghi

Editor-at-large, Mexico: Andrew Adair

Editor-at-large, Morocco: Hodna Nuernberg

Editor-at-large, Peru: Paloma Reaño

Editor-at-large, Romania and Moldova: MARGENTO

Editor-at-large, Slovakia: Julia Sherwood

Editor-at-large, Taiwan: Vivian Chih

Editor-at-large, Uzbekistan: Filip Noubel

Editor-at-large, Vietnam: Quyen Nguyen





Masthead for Issue July 2020



Fiction: Lee Yew Leong

Poetry: Garrett Phelps

Nonfiction: Varun Nayar

Drama: Caridad Svich

Criticism: Sam Carter

WoW: Ah-reum Han

Special Feature "Vignettes": Lee Yew Leong

Visual: Eva Heisler

Interviews: Sarah Timmer Harvey

Illustrations and Cover: Laura Blight



Assistant Managing Editor (supervising Assistant Editors): Josefina Massot



Assistant Managing Editor (supervising Editors-at-Large): Daljinder Johal



Communications Director: Samuel Kahler



Director of Outreach: Alessandro Mondelli



Chief Executive Assistant: Samuel Miller



Senior Executive Assistant: Bernice Seow



Executive Assistant: Austyn Wohlers



Blog Editors: Xiao Yue Shan and Sarah Moore



Translation Tuesdays Editor: Edwin Alanís-García (USA)



Newsletter Editor: Rita Horanyi



Guest Artist Liaison: Berny Tan



Senior Copy Editors: Devarati Chakrabarti and Angela Glindemann



Copy Editors: Anna Aresi, Andrea Blatz, Allison Braden, Bella Bosworth, Whitney DeVos, Rose Green, Barbara Halla, Sophie Hoffman, and George MacBeth



Technical Manager: József Szabó



English Social Media: Scarlett Castillo, Georgina Fooks, Sarah Panfil, and Isabelle Rew



Spanish Social Media: Sergio Serrano



French Social Media: Filip Noubel



Chinese Social Media: Jiaoyang Li and Jessica Wang



Communications Managers: Alexander Dickow and Georgina Fooks



Assistant Director, Educational Arm: Kent Kosack



Educational Arm Assistants: Kasia Bartoszyńska, Lucchini Clémence, Mary Hillis, Clare Spaulding, and Ian Thompson



For their generous donations, our heartfelt thanks go too to Alexander Dickow, Anna Aresi, Cobina Gillitt, Daniel Hahn, Deewang Bhamidipati, Enrico Cioni, Jeffrey Boyle, Joseph Hutchison, Katarzyna Bartoszynska, Mallory Truckenmiller, Mark Cohen, Martin Ingebrigtsen, Martin Orwin, Matthew Mazowita, Monty Reid, Nancy Relaford, Nhi Ta Huong, MARGENTO, Ruth Diver, Siobhan Mei, Ulf Jacobsen, Velina Manolova, William Cadwallader, and Xiangxiu Meng.



This past quarter, we welcomed new masthead member Ian Chung, new sustaining member Mildred Santiago Nicotera, and new Book Club subscribers Maria Valdes-Perez, Lorna Amor, Kristina Lalas, Robert Gehret, Ludmila Mikhailova, Rosie Arscott, Giovanna Zivny, Joan Dowgin, Marcelene Isaacson, Cindy Jimenez, Rodney Brazil, Jane Miller, Ben Moon-Black, Enrico Cioni, Francesca Spedalieri, Aiman Haddad, Anne Fisher, Ana Lucia Hincapie, Alyssa Bowie, and Suzanne Carter. Thank you all for your support!