For Your Consideration: Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky & Delicious Hunger by Hai Fan
This week, Cameron dives into Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic and Hai Fan’s Delicious Hunger, trying to probe the question plaguing recent episodes: “What is the value of art during wartime?”
This week, Cameron dives into Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic and Hai Fan’s Delicious Hunger, trying to probe the question plaguing recent episodes: “What is the value of art during wartime?”
Deaf Republic tells an all-too-familiar parable of a town under occupation, subjected to abuse and murder, and how the people there chose their own forms of resistance to occupation.
Delicious Hunger tackles the issue from another angle: Hai Fan is the pen name for Ang Tiam Huat, a guerilla who fought for the Malaysian Communist Party for over a decade. His book fictionalizes the stories and struggles of his comrades during their years in the rainforest.
The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka.
Jake Zawlacki joins the podcast to talk about his translation of Akhmet Baitursynov's 1911 poetry collection Mosquito, a political tract that contains his hopes and fears for the Kazakh people and a yet-to-exist state.
A novel about the Great Terror written during the Great Terror, Lydia Chukovskaya's Sofia Petrovna lives a fairly comfortable Soviet life – until her son is arrested for an unspecified crime.
