opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

       Banipal Prize

       They've announced (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) the winner of this year's Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, and it is Katharine Halls' translation of Ahmed Naji's Rotten Evidence; see also the McSweeney's publicity page.
       I haven't seen this one, but have reviewed Naji's Using Life.
       This prize will be handed out along with the other (still unannounced) Society of Authors Translation Prizes on 12 February.

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       More secondhand booksellers in the UK

       At Fine Books & Collections Alex Johnson reports that the Number of Secondhand Booksellers in Britain Rising -- increasing impressively from 1,380 in 2023 to 1,616 last year.
       Sounds good.

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       Martin Pollack (1944-2025)

       Austrian author -- and translator, notably of the works of Ryszard Kapuściński -- Martin Pollack has passed away; see, for example, the APA report.
       It looks like only his The Dead Man in the Bunker is available in English -- see the Faber publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk -- but see also the Hanser foreign rights page for information about more of his books.

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       Old Soul review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Susan Barker's new novel, Old Soul, which is just about out.

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       Most anticipated in 2025 lists

       Quite a few most-anticipated-in-2025 lists are out, including:

• Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 - 291 books, covering the first half of the year
  
  
• Most Anticipated: The Great Winter 2025 Preview at The Millions -- nearly 100 titles
  
  
• 30 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2025 at Vulture
  
  
• The most anticipated books of 2025 at the AV Club
  
  
• The Most Anticipated Books of 2025 at Foreign Affairs -- "The biggest releases in foreign affairs, history, and economics."

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       DNA book

       As Emily Mullin reports at Wired, An Entire Book Was Written in DNA -- and You Can Buy It for $60; see also the Asimov Press information page.
       Apparently:

Each capsule was sealed under an inert atmosphere — meaning there is no oxygen or moisture inside the capsule — preserving the DNA inside for tens of thousands of years.

       Not the most convenient format for reading, however.

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       Japanese literary prizes

       They've announced the latest batch of winners of the prestigious Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes; see, for example, Alyssa I. Smith's report in The Japan Times, Japan's most prestigious literary awards go to a trio of contemporary voices.

       The Akutagawa Prize was shared by Ando Jose's DTOPIA -- see the Kawade publicity page -- and Suzuki Yui's ゲーテはすべてを言った ('Goethe Said It All') -- see the Asahi publicity page; I look forward to seeing the latter.

       The Naoki Prize went to 藍を継ぐ海 ('The Sea Inherits Indigo') by Iyohara Shin; see the Shinchosha publicity page.

       That DTOPIA cover is ... interesting:



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       Republic of Consciousness Prize (US+) longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Republic of Consciousness Prize for Independent Presses in United States and Canada (the press release is misdated '2024'; it was released yesterday).
       The only longlisted title under review at the complete review is Overstaying, by Ariane Koch.
       The shortlist will be announced 27 February and the winner on 12 March.

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       Dublin Literary Award longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Dublin Literary Award -- unfortunately so far only in this cumbersome (if well-illustrated, with all the covers ...) overview. (A simple list, folks; a simple text list will do -- indeed will do much better.)
       This is the prize where participating libraries -- 83 this year -- nominate the books for consideration -- the 71 that now make up the longlist -- before the panel of judges whittles it down to a shortlist ("of no more than ten titles") and then a winner.
       Of the 71 titles in the running, 26 are in translation, from 15 languages.
       Disappointingly, only three of the titles are under review at the complete review -- oddly, all translations from the French:

• Beyond the Door of No Return, by David Diop
• The Most Secret Memory of Men, by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
• Vladivostok Circus, by Elisa Shua Dusapin

       I do have a few more of these, but I haven't seen the vast majority of these titles.

       The shortlist will be announced 25 March, and the winner on 22 May.

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       American creative writing and translation fellowships

       The (American) National Endowment for the Arts has announced a whole pile of grants -- "1,474 awards totaling $36,790,500 to support the arts" -- including 35 Creative Writing Fellowships (they're all for poetry this year) and 22 Translation Fellowships, for translation projects for "works from 17 languages and 21 countries into English" (unfortunately, you have to click on to each translator to learn about these projects -- god forbid they'd provide a simple text list with the basic information on one (web-)page ...).
       Good to see the translation support -- and I look forward to seeing some of these when they are published.

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       Wortmeldungen finalists

       They've announced the five finalists for this year's Wortmeldungen Ulrike Crespo Literaturpreis für kritische Kurztexte, a prize for critical, short texts that pays out an impressive €35,000; you can read the texts via the links on that shortlist page.
       Among the authors of the shortlisted texts is one by Clemens J. Setz.

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       Nobel nominees in 1974

       The Swedish Academy opens up the archives regarding Nobel nominations and deliberations fifty years after the fact, and so they've now opened up the archives for the 1974 Nobel Prize in Literature, (in)famously shared by the Swedish Academy's own Eyvind Johnson and Aniara-author Harry Martinson.
       Kaj Schueler has published his annual look at the prize-selection in Svenska Dagbladet but it is, alas, paywalled, but the Swedish Academy has released the list (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) of nominations and nominators.
       First-time nominees include: Ralph Ellison, Uwe Johnson, Herbert Marcuse, 1980 laureate Czesław Miłosz, R.K.Narayan, 1994 laureate Ōe Kenzaburō, and 2005 laureate Harold Pinter.
       Elie Wiesel got a lot of nomination-support in 1974 -- but Borges, Nabokov, and Malraux didn't do too badly either. Not that that helped.

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       T.S. Eliot Prize

       They've announced the winner of the 2024 T.S. Eliot Prize and it is Fierce Elegy, by Peter Gizzi; see also the publicity pages from Wesleyan University Press and Penguin, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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       £2 George Orwell

       The British Royal Mint will start selling a George Orwell-commemorating £2 coin tomorrow.
       It certainly looks ... nice, and creepy:



       It even comes in a limited gold edition -- though the ostensibly £2-coin sets you back £1,515.00 here ..... But even the standard issue apparently isn't really meant to circulate. A shame: it might send a ... message.

       See also the AP article, ‘Big Brother is watching you': Collector’s coin marks George Orwell’s death 75 years ago.

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       Ballerina review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of the latest by Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano, Ballerina, coming out from Yale University Press in their Margellos World Republic of Letters-series.

       (This is the sixteenth Modiano title under review at the site -- but I'm still way behind .....)

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       Alexis Wright profile

       At The Guardian Sian Cain profiles the author, in ‘I didn’t want to fit in a box of what an Aboriginal person should write’: how Alexis Wright found her voice.

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       Surendra Mohan Pathak Q & A

       In the Financial Express Garima Sadhwani has a Q & A with the The 65 Lakh Heist-author, in ‘Despite selling well, crime literature has been looked down upon’: Writer Surendra Mohan Pathak.

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       Strange Pictures review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Uketsu's novel, Strange Pictures.

       This was a huge bestseller in Japan, and is now appearing in English (and many, many other languages); I'm curious to see how well it does abroad. (The appeal should translate fairly well, even if Uketsu doesn't have the same YouTube-reach in foreign markets as he does in his domestic one.)

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       de Boon shortlists

       They've announced the shortlists for this year's de Boon Prize -- a Flemish prize for Dutch-language literature and, at €50,000 for the winner in each of the two categories -- fiction/non and children's/YA literature -- one of the top three Dutch-language book prizes.
       The winners will be announced 25 March.

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       Prix Naissance d'une œuvre finalists

       They've announced the seven authors for this year's prix Naissance d'une œuvre, a French award for the best fourth, fifth, or sixth novel by an author.
       The winner of this €20,000 prize will be announced 21 May.

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       Book cafes in ... Riyadh

       At Arab News Waad Hussain reports on Riyadh's literary havens: Where coffee meets the love of books,
       These look pretty nice -- but not necessarily what I would have expected/hoped to find in Saudi Arabia.

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       Victor Pelevin profile

       In The Guardian Sophie Pinkham profiles The mysterious novelist who foresaw Putin's Russia -- and then came to symbolise its moral decay, at considerable length.
       A few Pelevin titles are under review at the complete review:

• Empire V
• The Hall of the Singing Caryatids
• The Helmet of Horror
• The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

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       Newman Prize for Chinese Literature

       They've announced (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) the winner of this year's Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, a biennial author prize for an: "outstanding achievement in prose or poetry that best captures the human condition, based solely on literary merit", and it is Ling Yü.

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       Robert Paul Wolff (1933-2025)

       Philosopher Robert Paul Wolff has passed away; see, for example, the obituary at Legacy.
       Quite a bit of his work is of interest -- but he's probably best-known for his In Defense of Anarchism; see the University of California Press publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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       August Gailit's remains repatriated

       ERR reports that Estonian writer August Gailit's remains reburied in Tallinn cemetery.
       Dedalus published a translation of Gailit's Toomas Nipernaadi in English a few year's ago.

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       New Inventions and the Latest Innovations review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Gaston de Pawlowski's 1916 collection, New Inventions and the Latest Innovations, recently out in English, from Wakefield Press.

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       Eça de Queiroz in the National Pantheon

       They transferred the remains of the great Portuguese author Eça de Queiroz (The Crime of Father Amaro, etc.) to the Portuguese Panteão Nacional in an impressive ceremony that included the Portuguese prime minister and president; see also the speech by Afonso Reis Cabral, president of the Eça de Queiroz Foundation.
       See also the Ema Gil Pires' euronews report, Eça de Queiroz, a noble figure in Portuguese literature, transferred to the National Pantheon.

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       Westminster Book Awards shortlists

       The Booksellers Association and the Publishers Association have announced the shortlists for this year's Westminster Book Awards -- previously known as the Parliamentary Book Awards.
       Two of the three catgoreies are for books written by British members of parliament -- Best Non-Fiction or Fiction by a Parliamentarian and Best Biography by a Parliamentarian -- and parliamentarians get to vote for the winner. (The third category is Best Political Book by a Non-Parliamentarian.)
       Alas, there's no equivalent for US members of Congress.

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       IPAF longlist

       The International Prize for Arabic Fiction has announced the longlist for the 2025 prize, 16 novels chosen from 124 submissions.
       The only author with a longlisted book by whom other works are under review at the complete review appears to be Rashid al-Daif (Dear Mr Kawabata, etc.).
       The six-title shortlist will be announced 19 February, and the winner on 24 April.

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       Gerald Murnane's life-diagram

       At The Paris Review blog they present A Diagram of My Life by Gerald Murnane (Barley Patch, etc.).
       Everyone should diagram their life !

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       Taiwan Travelogue review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Yáng Shuāng-zǐ's Taiwan Travelogue.
       This won the 2024 (American) National Book Award for Translated Literature.

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       Richard Foreman (1937-2025)

       American playwright Richard Foreman -- founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater -- has passed away; see, for example, Anita Gates' obituary (presumably paywalled) in The New York Times or Logan Culwell-Block's obituary in Playbill.
       See also Sara Farrington's 2020 Q & A with Foreman in The Brooklyn Rail.

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       Paco Ignacio Taibo II Q & A

       In The Los Angeles Times Patrick J. McDonnell has a Q & A with Paco Ignacio Taibo II: A bookireading advocate in the era of TikTok.

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       2024 in review at the complete review

       Here is the annual overview of the year that was at the site in numbers:

       Most of the numbers were down -- from visitors to the site to the number of books reviewed. In 2024, only 121 books were reviewed at the complete review, down from 150 in 2023. The total number of pages of the reviewed books was also down significantly -- 31,901 compared to 40,931 in 2023 -- with the average length of reviewed books down to 263.64 (2023: 272.87).
       The longest book reviewed was 908 pages long, with only seven more 500 or more pages in length. Eight books were under 100 pages in length.

       The total number of review-words written was 121,676 -- down considerably from 174,443 in 2023 --, with the average review-length down to 1006 words (2023: 1163).
       The longest review was 3122 words long, while only four more reviews were over 2000 words.

       You can find the 50 most popular reviews, 2024 here.

       The Patrick White author page was again the most popular of these, with Annie Ernaux the only author to drop out of 2023's top five (down to 10th place), and Naguib Mahfouz rounding out the top five this time around.

1. Patrick White
2. Jonathan Coe
3. Murakami Haruki
4. Amélie Nothomb
5. Naguib Mahfouz

       The ten most popular index-pages were those for:

1. Far East Asian literature
2. Erotic, Pornographic, and Sex-related books
3. Books Written Before 1900
4. Books from selected Imprints and Publishers
5. Eastern European literature
6. Mysteries and Thrillers
7. Latin and South American literature
8. French literature
9. Science Fiction and Fantasy
10. German literature

       Books originally written in 25 languages (including English) were reviewed in 2024 -- down one from the 2023 total.
       The top ten languages were:

• 1. English 34 (28.10 % of all books) (2023: 45)
• 2. French 19 (18)
• 3. Japanese 16 (17.5)
• 4. Spanish 10 (10)
• 5. German 4 (19)
• -. Italian 4
• 7. Chinese 3
• -. Danish 3
• -. Polish 3
• -. Russian 3

       There were sixteen languages which at least two reviewed books were originally written in -- up from fourteen in 2023.

       The count of which countries books/authors are from is, as always, less precise (and less interesting), but the leading countries-of-origin appear to be:

• 1. France 16 (2023: 12)
• -. Japan 16 (17)
• 3. UK 15 (20)
• -. US 15 (17)
• 5. Italy 5 (5)

       The ratio of male-to-female authors was higher than usual (if still far too low), with reviews of 34.5 titles by women writers -- 28.51 %, up from 24.67% in 2023.

       No books were rated "A+", but there was one "A" (Alejo Carpentier's The Lost Steps), with books rated over the range:

• A 1 (2023: 0)
• A- 10 (13)
• B+ 41 (61)
• B 62 (65)
• B- 3 (8)
• C 1 (0)
• -- 3 (3)

       Fiction dominated coverage, as it always does, with reviews of 88 novels posted, as well as three story-collections and a novella.
       Only seven works of general non-fiction were reviewed, along with three works of autobiography and two biographies. Three volumes of poetry, and an epic, were also reviewed; only one drama was.

       After site traffic surged again in 2023 the decline-trend that was already becoming apparent late in 2023 continued apace, with the number of visitors to the site in 2024 down a staggering 54.93% compared to the previous year. Page-views were only down 29.43%, however -- in part, no doubt, because a larger percentage of users didn't reach the site via search engines (which generally point them directly to a specific review), but rather via one of the site's 'front doors' -- tha main or new-review page, or this Literary Saloon, from which users then clicked on deeper into the site.
       The average time users spent on the site was also up -- by 27.01% -- suggesting, perhaps, that users were more engaged than in previous years .....

       As always, Google search results were the main avenue by which users came to the site, with nothing else even anywhere near close. With the Google algorithm currently burying most review-pages from the site, the drop in total Google searches leading to the site -- down some 60% in 2024 over 2023 -- closely mirrored the overall drop in traffic to the site.
       The ten most popular Google searches leading users to the site in 2024 were:

1. complete review
2. literary saloon
3. the complete review
4. complete reviews
5. strangers taichi yamada ending
6. michael orthofer
7. the literary saloon
8. complete-review
9. poor things book review
10. poor things book

       (Unsurprisingly, most of these are searches where pages from the complete review do rank high; only 'poor things book' fell outside the top 10.)
       Meanwhile, in the depressing category, there were, for example, 75 users who reached the site through searching for: "300-500 words of critique of memoir of my life and writings by edward gibbon" (and 34 more for: "a critique of memoirs of my life and writings summary") and 65 for: "the dilemma of a ghost summary sparknotes".
       Among the words most commonly found in search-queries 'summary' and 'ending' (and 'ending explained') stand out. Somewhat bafflingly, a considerable number of people click through to the site on search queries that include the term 'wikipedia', when you'd figure they'd head to ... well, that site (which is surely the top result that Google returns for these queries).

       While all other traffic sources -- including all other search engines -- were basically in the negligible category, it's interesting to see the first AI referrals cropping up: there were 199 referrals from ChatGPT in 2024, and 78 from Perplexity AI, for example. (As points of comparison: there were 850 referrals from reddit in 2024, and 45 from MetaFilter.)

       There were visitors from 214 countries and territories to the complete review in 2024 (2023: 226).
       The countries from which the most traffic came were:

1. United States (38.81%; 2023: 37.21%)
2. United Kingdom (10.29%)
3. India (8.32%)
4. Canada
5. China
6. Australia
7. Philippines
8. Germany
9. Netherlands
10. France

       The top nine were the same countries as in 2023, with France replacing Nigeria in the tenth spot; the Philippines dropped from fourth to seventh place.
       The decline in traffic was broadly similar across most of the nations from which significant numbers of visitors came, but there were some outliers: traffic from China was *only* down 22.68%, but down 78.98% from the Philippines. Among the top 100 nations, only a single one showed a user-plus in 2024 -- Poland, at number fifteen, where traffic was up ... 0.78%, buoyed by Olga Tokarczuk's Nobel win.
       Traffic collapsed in several countries and territories -- though surprisingly Palestine (down 80.6%) did not show the greatest decline among countries with at least a decent bit of traffic, as, for example, traffic was down 81.48% from Nicaragua and 82.69% from Bhutan.
       Places where traffic was or had been basically trivial of course make for the most impressive changes: traffic was up a sensational 2,300% in the Marshall Islands ! (One visitor in 2023; 24 in 2024 .....)

       All in all, not a great year by the numbers, in any respect (review copy arrivals also reached a twenty-year low; see my previous mention). Some of them will improve -- the total number of titles reviewed should increase again, if not this year then next -- but I don't know that traffic to the site will ever recover; the internet has been reshaped in recent years, and the mega-site (Google, above all else) alternatives to the information one finds at the complete review seem to increasingly crowd it out. With the rise of AI it seems likely search engines and the like will (auto-)generate book-information-summaries and *reviews* even more extensively and that most users will turn to these (or have them foisted upon them) and won't bother seeking out pages such as those at the complete review. We'll see .....

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       Translations from ... Russian in 2024

       Lizok's Bookshelf has her useful annual overview of New Russian-to-English Translations Published in 2024.

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       The Place of Shells review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Ishizawa Mai's The Place of Shells, coming soon from New Directions.

       Yes, it's yet another Akutagawa Prize-winning novel in translation ! (It's the twenty-first under review at the site.)

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       David Lodge (1935-2025)

       British author David Lodge has passed away; see, for example, A statement from Harvill Secker, Vintage Books UK, and the obituary by John Mullan in The Guardian.

       None of his work is under review at the complete review, but I read and thoroughly enjoyed several of his novels before I started the site.

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       Men (not ?) reading

       At Vox Constance Grady looks at 'The questionable statistic at the heart of the “men don’t read fiction” discourse' as she wonders Are men's reading habits truly a national crisis?
       Among her observations:

The truth is that most American adults, regardless of their gender, simply do not read very many books at all.

       As she notes also, regarding whether men read far less fiction than women: "It doesn't look like anyone has actually fact-checked this question in quite a while" Ah, fact checking statistics ! Getting actual numbers ! What concepts !

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       Robert Thacker Q & A

       At The Walrus Carmine Starnino has 'An exclusive interview with Robert Thacker on the secret he carried for twenty years', in: Why Alice Munro's Biographer Left Her Daughter's Abuse Out of His Book.

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       Translations from Korean in 2025

       In The Korea Times Kwon Mee-yoo has an overview of what's appearing in English translation, in From sci-fi to healing fiction, Korean books cross borders in 2025.

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       Bestselling in 2024 in ... France

       At ActuaLitté Clotilde Martin reports on the bestselling titles and authors in Farnce in 2024, in Bilan : Quel auteur aura vendu le plus de livres en 2024 ? with both unit-sales numbers and turnover.
       As anticipated -- see my previous mention -- Anna Stuart's The Midwife of Berlin beat out all the local boys, selling 499,639 copies -- some 75,000 more than Joël Dicker's latest, Un animal sauvage, and two by Guillaume Musso. Kamel Daoud's prix Goncourt-winner Houris came in fifth, with 391,085 copies sold, while Gaël Faye's prix Renaudot-winner Jacaranda came in seventh, with 344,187 copies sold. There was only one other book in translation in the top ten -- Freida McFadden's The Housemaid's Secret.
       The title that apparently took in the most money was the Joël Dicker -- €9,624,465 (though given its list price, I'm not sure why the Anna Stuart didn't top the table).
       As far as authors go, Guillaume Musso rules the day (well, year), with the two books he published last year selling 806,992 copies, and selling for €12.46 million.

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       Transit Books profile

       At Berkeleyside Joanne Furio profiles The indie Berkeley publisher with a worldwide view -- Transit Books
       Among others, they've published several works by Nobel laureate Jon Fosse -- e.g. A Shining -- and/but: "Fosse's books have sold around 65,000 copies".

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       Most Popular Reviews - 2024

       The most-viewed reviews at the complete review in 2024 were:

1. Poor Things, Alasdair Gray
2. The Dilemma of a Ghost, Ama Ata Aidoo
3. Voice of a Dream, Glaydah Namukasa
4. Bird in a Cage, Frédéric Dard
5. The Face of Another, Abe Kobo
6. Trilogy, Jon Fosse
7. The Golden Fortress, Satyajit Ray
8. The Empusium, Olga Tokarczuk
9. Noli Me Tangere, José Rizal
10. The Legends of Khasak, O.V.Vijayan
11. A Play of Giants, Wole Soyinka
12. El Filibusterismo, José Rizal
13. The Secret Hours, Mick Herron
14. The Cairo Trilogy, Naguib Mahfouz
15. The Lost Steps, Alejo Carpentier

       In 2023 only two titles reviewed in 2023 made the top 50; in 2024 there were 14 reviews posted during the course of the year that cracked the top 50 -- yet more proof that readers aren't finding the backlist as readily as they used to (via Google search, which now buries the review-pages from the complete review way down on their search results).
       Similarly, turnover was enormous: in 2023 only 18 reviews that hadn't been in the previous top 50 made it on the 2023-list (in 2022: 21), but in 2024 more than two-thirds (34) of the top 50 were different from the previous year's top 50 .
       Continued interest in the movie-version propelled Poor Things to the top of the list, while Olga Tokarczuk's Nobel win obviously made for great interest in the most recent book of hers to appear in English, pushing it into the top ten.

       See also all the top 50 reviews of 2024.

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       The Proof of My Innocence review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Jonathan Coe's latest, The Proof of My Innocence.
       This is out in the UK (and Italy ...), but American readers will have to wait until April.

       This is the sixteenth work by Coe under review at the site -- and, yes, a good start to the new year.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

       Forthcoming in translation from ... Arabic

       ArabLit has a useful look at what we can expect of Arabic Lit in Translation: Forthcoming in 2025.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       Year-in-reading posts

       The Millions posted their A Year in Reading-series last month, with a nice variety of contributors, and there are also many other 2024-in-reading posts to be found elsewhere; here a selection of some I have come across which might be of interest:

• A few sentences on every book I read or reread in 2024 at Biblioklept
• Every book I read in 2024, with commentary by Elisa Gabbert
  
  
• 2024: A Year's Reading at irnewtonwrites
• Rounding up the year with some thoughts on my 2024 reading ! at Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings
• My reading year 2024 by Austin Kleon
• Year in Reading 2024. at Languagehat
• Looking back at a year of reading: 2024 edition at roughghosts
• My 2024 in Review at Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations
• 2024 reading at Stochastic Bookmark
  
  
• Novel Readings 2024: Part I and Part II by Rohan Maitzen
• End of year review 2024 at The Modern Novel
• The 2024 Tony's Reading List Awards at Tony's Reading List

       I can't offer much of a reading summing-up for the year -- most of my reading made at least some impression on me, in one way or another, and there's little I regret reading/reviewing (not that there weren't a lot of books that I tossed aside after a few (or, in a handful of cases, a few hundred) pages) so basically the 121 reviews posted over the course of the year at this site sums it up ..... There were quite a few very good books among them too, but the *best* book I read this year -- Alejo Carpentier's The Lost Steps -- was actually a re-read (albeit in a new translation) and the book that engaged me most fully was -- quite the cheat here -- the one I finally finished and (self-)published, Salome in Graz.
       It was a year in which I didn't read/review a single 1000-pager -- indeed, only a single reviewed title was more than 750 pages (compared to eight in 2023) --, suggesting I was slightly (or even considerably) less ambitious than usual (as does the smaller number of books tackled overall).
       So: it was a good year, but not a real stand-out one, with no real stand-out books or newly-discovered authors to dig into.
       Maybe this year .....

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       2024: the year in review copies

       The first of the site-statistic round-ups: review copies !

       As with everything else, it was also a down year regarding getting books: in 2024, 234 books were acquired (down 33.14% from the 350 acquired in 2023), of which 199 were review copies (down 27.90% from the 276 received in 2023); see the full list of Books Received and Acquired 2024. The 199 review copies are the fewest in two decades -- since 2004, when 179 were received; in 2005 it was already up to 299 .....
       (Note that I could get lots more -- total number-wise --, because I seem to receive more offers from publicists than ever, but very few of these are offers for books that I might actually want to read and review. Publishers -- including those with desirable titles -- increasingly also push e-versions, which I do sometimes download (but don't count towards the total review-copy tally as I rarely manage to do more than glance at them; I still find it almost impossible to read, much less review from e-formats -- I did not review any titles from e-versions in all of 2024 (or, for that matter, 2023 ...)). Fewer publishers send me their books without asking, and I have also become somewhat more selective in what titles I specifically request -- and all in all this all adds up to: fewer review copies.)

       The publishers providing the most review copies to the complete review in 2024 were:

• New York Review Books: 21 (2023: 25)
• Harvard University Press: 9 (26)
• Columbia University Press: 8 (3)
• Dedalus 8 (18)
• Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 8 (4)
• Open Letter: 8 (13)
• Pushkin Press: 8 (8)
• Sublunary Editions: 7 (3)
• Wakefield Press: 7 (3)
• Yale University Press: 7 (9)

       As usual, independent and university presses dominated -- with New York Review Books impressively ahead of the pack, sending me most of what they publish. Another twenty-one publishers sent at least two books -- though only one of those was from one of the 'big five' publishers/imprints (Alfred A. Knopf, with 3 (up from 2 in 2023)).
       Among publishers I got few or no review copies from are Penguin Classics (1, compared to 7 in 2023), and two publishers specializing in literature in translation who have been near the top providers in many previous years: AmazonCrossing (whose catalogue/offerings I admit I have a tough time keeping track of) and Dalkey Archive Press (who didn't bring out much in 2024 -- though I would have liked to have seen Kaga Otohiko's Marshland; see their publicity page), from neither of whom I saw anything in 2024.

       As of 31 December 2024 I had reviewed 65 of the 199 review copies I received -- 32.66%, considerably above the historic average. (In 2023, the year-end total was 75 out of 276 (27.17%); by year-end 2024 an additional 16 titles from that batch had been reviewed, bringing the percentage up to 32.97; old review copies do continue to get reviewed, often long after I receive them -- in 2024 the longest-delayed review was of a title received in 2006, appearing 6380 days after the review copy was received .....)

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

       2024 translations from ... Chinese

       At Paper Republic they have their 2024 Roll-Call of Chinese Literature in English Translation -- a useful overview.

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       2024 translations from ... Indian languages

       At Scroll.in they collect Chittajit Mitra's tweets, in A reader compiled a list of 103 Indian language books translated into English and published in 2024 -- a bit unwieldy, in this presentation, but also a useful resource.
       It's frustrating, however, how few of these are readily available/distributed in the US/UK .....

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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       2025

       The complete review celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2024, so that was ... something. And, yes, it's back (or rather continuing) in 2025 -- puttering along as always

       For a variety of reasons, reviewing slowed down some over the course of the year -- only 121 titles were reviewed -- and that slower pace will continue into 2025 (though hopefully things will pick up at some point later in the year; long-term, I should get fully back on track eventually -- but it'll be a while). But on the whole don't expect much change at the site ..... (I don't really need to say that, do I ? Longtime readers are surely well aware that I'm not really big on change .....)
       The quality of Google's search results -- still the only ones that matter -- has degraded further (to really quite abysmal levels), and they've been terrible for the site (both in terms of finding pages to link to as well as in listing (usually far, far down on results-lists) complete review-pages) for all of 2024, and I don't see that changing (which means less exposure for, less traffic to, less interest in, less engagement with the site). Among the consequences is a shift in the percentage of users finding their way to the site via the backlist (searching for information about specific titles) to those coming, as it were, through the front door -- i.e. checking in on 'what's new at the complete review' or via the postings about new reviews at this Literary Saloon -- a shift back to the way traffic came to the site in its earliest days ..... (This has led to a great decline in total traffic, since the number of regular users checking on 'what's new' and regularly visiting the Literary Saloon hasn't changed significantly in ages, while the occasional visitor coming via the backlist -- making up the bulk of traffic for at least the past fifteen years -- has largely been lost.)
       All the (fairly depressing) 2024 site statistics will be up in a few days.

       While 2025 promises political chaos (and everything that goes with it) pretty much everywhere, I remain hopeful that at least the reading will be good: the pile of books (old and new) I'm looking forward to is already looking good, and I feel very optimistic that I'll be able to cover a nice selection of interesting titles. (Logistics will be an issue for a while, but the reading and reviewing will get done !)

       Glad to see you're here for (at least the start of) a new year as well -- and I wish all my readers a great new year, filled with an abundance of good books and much good reading !

(Posted by: M.A.Orthofer)    - permanent link -

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