“Babak, don’t you realize that these empty theories from your university years have ruined everything? They only made Homa become the wife of that junkie who married her without even conquering her first. Was it the disease of the intellectuals of our generation, or are you saying that students born in the nineties also suffer from it?
Belly buriedby Aliyeh Ataei (translation by Giacomo Longhi and Harir Sherkat; Utopia Editore), is a dreamlike and hypnotic immersion in obsession and research on the streets of Tehran. A young engineer on the verge of a nervous breakdown wanders through the Iranian capital to find his twin sister. As he wanders, conflicting feelings cross his mind. He suffers from mental disorders and uses drugs. His wife left him because he is unable to give her a child and doubts emerge in him about her personality: a feminine ego increasingly cumbersome you make space within yourself. And it will be this element, as he wanders in a metropolis that advances towards tomorrow at an inhuman pace, that will make him enter his sister’s soul, towards an unpredictable and moving ending.
“At dawn the radiant sun rose and shone in the sky illuminating the awakening city of Phnom Penh. A large crowd walked through the streets and sidewalks, vehicles of all kinds circulated, making the ground shake. There was a commotion in the houseathipadey Sena. Distraught people ran in search of Sophat who disappeared during the night.”
Cambodian Soulby Rim Kin and Nhok Them (translation by Maurizio Gatti; ObarraO Edizioni), collects two short novels among the most important of twentieth-century Cambodian literature. It’s about Sophatby Rim Kin e Pailin’s rose, by Nhok Them. The themes reflect the reality of Cambodia in the 1930s: a country bogged down in a muddy socio-cultural immobility and where there was a pathological deference towards parents. In both stories the protagonists are orphans who seek, through education and strength of mind, the tools to emancipate themselves and redeem themselves socially and where women, who have always been subordinate to men in the Khmer tradition, seek their own revenge by making their own voice.
“Once upon a time there was a Korean named Song Sang-in, with an upright mind and sincere spirit. He hated witches with all his heart and considered them deceivers of the people. He said: «With their so-called prayers, they devour the goods of the people. There is no limit to the madness and extravagance that accompanies them. This doctrine of theirs is all nonsense. I wish I could rid the earth of their existence and eliminate their names forever.”
Korean fairy talesedited by James S. Gale (preface by Heinz Insu Fenkl; translation by Rebecca Pignatiello; Il Saggiatore), is a journey into Korean tradition. It is a collection of stories collected by James S. Gale, a Canadian missionary who came to Seoul in 1888 to teach English and translate the Bible into Korean. Goblins, men who transform into fish, spirits, fairies, good witches, fox-girls, man-eating giants, mischievous snakes, haunted houses follow one another in tales of love and revenge, where fantasy mixes with reality, in a musicality of ancient oral origin.
