Asymptote Global Literature

One swallow does not make a summer, nor a spring. Like birds chased out of their natural dwellings or those that overshoot their breeding grounds due to climate change, so are human migratory patterns anything but seasonal. This edition of Asymptote is dedicated to the notion of diaspora. Alongside an English-language feature comprising writers from Bosnia, Botswana, India, Singapore, Japan and the US (the 81-year-old Japanese-American debut novelist Gene Oishi), we're proud to showcase fiction  and nonfiction written by or about people who've left their home country. From Dremko Candil, a Uruguayan refugee in Sweden, to Nobel winner Herta Müller, herself once exiled from Soviet-era Romania to a different Germany than that of her ancestors, these writers show us that "each language has different eyes sitting inside its words." (Find our new issue's video trailer here.)

		Vladimir Vertlib, for instance, made it to Austria from his native  Russia via Israel, the Netherlands, the US, and Italy, where his novel excerpt is set. Frequent contributor Jonas Hassen Khemiri, a  writer of Tunisian and Swedish descent, not only led the writing workshop from which Candil's moving and Joe Brainard-inspired  piece sprang, he also graces us with an excerpt from his latest play, which addresses the suspicion and paranoia those that look different are faced with in cities haunted by terrorism. In nonfiction, meanwhile, the dark documentary photography of Bénédicte  Kurzen is paired with Prix Goncourt winner Jonathan Littell's  report on the Ugandan military's search for stray soldiers of  Joseph Kony's LRA, an army made up of kidnapped children now scattered and stateless among the wilderness bordering Congo  and South Sudan.

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