opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

       Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012)

       The great Mexican author Carlos Fuentes has passed away; see, for example, obituaries by Nick Caistor (The Guardian), Marcela Valdes (The Washington Post), and Anthony DePalma (The New York Times).
       He was active until the very end -- including giving out interviews: El País just published one by Francisco Peregil, and in Publishers Weekly Robert James has A Conversation With Carlos Fuentes -- mainly about his forthcoming-in-English novel, Vlad. (I already have a copy, and should be reviewing it soon; meanwhile, see the Dalkey Archive Press publicity page, or pre-order your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.)

       Several of Fuentes' works are under review at the complete review -- though not the epic Terra Nostra, or The Death of Artemio Cruz:

• Christopher Unborn
• The Crystal Frontier
• The Eagle's Throne
• Holy Place
• This I Believe
• The Years with Laura Díaz

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

---

       Prize: Georg-Büchner-Preis

       They've announced that Felicitas Hoppe has won the Georg-Büchner-Preis -- the most prestigious German author- (as opposed to book-) prize (and worth €50,000); see, for example, the (German) Börsenblatt report.
       None of her work appears to have been translated into English yet, but she's been in the US several times (including apparently getting an MA from the University of Oregon), most recently earlier this year as a fellow at the Villa Aurora, where she was working on 'Ilf and Petrow revisited' -- following up on Ilf and Petrov's 1935 American road trip (see the Princeton Architectural Press publicity page for their book).

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

---

       Prize: The Sophie Kerr Prize

       The 'big American literary prizes --= the Pulitzer, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award -- pay squat or close to it (if they even bother naming a fiction winner ...), but every year a graduating senior at Washington College takes home The Sophie Kerr Prize, which, depending on how well the endowment is doing, pays out around $60,000 -- only $58,274 this year, but it's been as much as $68,814 as recently as 2009.
       It is:

awarded each year to the graduating senior who has the best ability and promise for future fulfillment in the field of literary endeavor

       They announced this year's prize yesterday, and it went to Kathryn J. Manion:

Manion, an English major from Clarksville, Md., took the prize with her submission of four short stories she considers works in progress, and excerpts of her thesis on the role of letter writing in literature -- a study that drew from the novels of Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, George Eliot and Emily Bronte.

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

---

       Prize: James Tait Black shortlists

       They've announced the James Tait Black shortlists, in fiction and biography.
       Recall that this year they will also be awarding the Best of the James Tait Black Prizewinners -- the best of the first ninety years of the prize (which, however, apparently only considers the fiction winners (which seems entirely appropriate and fine with me: fiction is all that counts, after all)).

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

---

       Prize: Man Asian Literary Prize judges

       They've announced the judges for this year's Man Asian Literary Prize: Maya Jaggi will chair, and her fellow judges will be Monique Truong and Vikram Chandra.

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

       Prize: Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

       They've announced that Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld, translated by Jeffrey M. Green, has won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; in The Independent Jerome Taylor writes about how 'Love can overcome brutality': foreign fiction award won by Holocaust novel.
       Blooms of Darkness isn't under review at the complete review yet, but see the publicity pages from Alma Books and Schocken, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

       Some bloggers also held a 'shadow IFFP' -- and came up with a different winner.

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

---

       Prize: Sonning Prize

       They've announced Orhan Pamuk får Sonningprisen 2012 (though not yet at the English-language part of the official site, last I checked). This biennial prize -- which they describe as: "Denmark's largest cultural award" -- has a pretty good list of previous winners. It also comes with DKK 1 million -- about US $ 172,500, at the current exchange rate.

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

---

       Festival: Sydney Writers' Festival

       The Sydney Writers' Festival has started -- and runs through 20 May; in The Age Matt Buchanan and Scott Ellis report on how Literary Sydney on show.

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

---

       Festival: Letterature

       The more laid-back-sounding Letterature in Rome begins tomorrow and runs through 21 June.

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

---

       Festival: PEN World Voices review

       At Publishing Perspectives Chad W. Post has an editorial, reviewing this year's PEN World Voices Festival -- which he found to be a bit of a dud -- and suggesting what he'd like to see in future years, in PEN World Voices: Make it New, Make it International (Dammit) !
       I have to admit I was a bit disappointed by this year's festival too -- and somehow even managed to attend more international literary events that weren't part of the official festival than actual PEN World Voices events that week ..... (On the other hand, Melville House managed to bring Mahmoud Dowlatabadi from Iran for the festival (no easy task) and getting to meet him (and having him sign a copy of The Colonel) pretty much made my month, so there was at the least that super-highlight for me.)
       I'm on board with many of Chad's suggestions -- though I don't know how realistic some of the desirable ones (a central location !) are. And I do kind of like some of the esoteric and political panels (which he'd like to see less of), especially when you get an interesting mix of foreign authors weighing in.
       (As far as the promotion of the festival goes, Chad certainly has a point: I realize I'm pretty much a nobody, but being New York City-based and covering a lot of international literature at this site (including both news about as well as reviews of works by many of the authors appearing at the festival) I'm a bit surprised that no one at PEN made any effort to sell me on any events, or indeed anything at all; they did kindly send me the printed program in advance, but if the World Voices Festival has an e-mail list (and I sure hope they do) I'm certainly not on it. Sure, it hardly matters -- I'll cover what I can, regardless -- but if they're not reaching out to me how many other more significant opportunities are they also ignoring ?)

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

---

       Vertigo review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Boileau-Narcejac's 1954 thriller, Vertigo -- originally published as The Living and the Dead, but now taking its title from the Hitchcock film it inspired

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

       Translating from (and to) ... Arabic

       At ahramonline Mary Mourad reports on a one-day workshop that considered the question Why Arabs translate a small fraction of publications relative to other languages ?
       She notes:

Translation to and from Arabic has been so low to the extent that, according to the UNESCO Index Translation, out of top 50 languages it is the 17th language being translated to other languages, and 29th target language (translations to Arabic)

       As longtime readers may recall, I don't believe the Index Translationum is completely reliable (and I assume that Arabic is one of those languages where there are more reporting issues than, say, Western European languages); still, there seems little question that there should be more translation both from and into Arabic. But the situation surely has improved in recent years, and there seems to be great potential for continued improvement.

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

---

       Festival of Asian Literature

       The Asia House Festival of Asian Literature runs 15 to 30 May, and in The National Huma Qureshi previews/introduces it -- and finds there's a Literary focus on females, as:

Thirty out of 50 writers speaking at this year's Festival of Asian Literature are female, an impressive change from the London event's launch in 2007 when only two women were involved

       But there's more to it than that, of course -- and good to hear that:

But it's about quality writing, not quotas, as Loftus Parkins stresses. "Despite a desire to promote Asian women writers, I didn't make a conscious effort to invite mostly women to the festival. I chose the best books, and the best moderators. It just so happened that 30 are women."

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

---

       New Swedish Book Review

       The 2012:1 issue of the Swedish Book Review is now up.
       Among the pieces on offer: satirical poems by Stig Dagerman, Eric Dickens on Lotta Lotass: Experimental Author of Fiction and Drama, and a nice batch of reviews of not-yet-translated titles.

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

---

       Zona review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of A Book about a Film about a Journey to a Room by Geoff Dyer, Zona (the film being Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker).

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

       Writing in ... Malta

       The Times of Malta profiles EU prize-winning author Immanuel Mifsud, in Writer's plea: Open our market ... and our minds, as he argues: "Maltese literature urgently needs to be translated and exported".
       Easier said than done, of course .....

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

---

       Nigeria Prize for Literature

       They've announced that the submissions are in for this year's Nigeria Prize for Literature, and there are 214 writers in race for Africa's largest prize in Literature. (Compare that to the Man Booker, where they'll barely consider half as many titles .....)
       The prize rotates through four genres from year to year; this year the prize goes to a work of prose again.

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

---

       NIBF 2012

       The Nigeria International Book Fair ran 7 to 12 May, and in the Sunday Tribune Akintayo Abodunrin has an overview, in That the book may thrive again.

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

---

       The Bridge event

       Tomorrow, 14 May, at 19:00, The Bridge presents a group of Dalkey Archive Translators -- Burton Pike, Damion Searls, Todd Hasak-Lowy, and Mary Ann Newman -- in a reading and discussion moderated by Joshua Cohen, at McNally Jackson Books in New York. Should be good.

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

---

       Reading North Korea review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Sonia Ryang's Reading North Korea: An Ethnological Inquiry.

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

       Orhan Pamuk Q & A

       At Qantara.de Aygül Cizmecioglu has a Q & A with Orhan Pamuk -- about his Museum of Innocence (and his novel, The Museum of Innocence ...).
       Amusing to hear that:

When my daughter was small I used to take her to school every day and we always passed by a house that stood on the corner of a street. And suddenly, one day, I had the absurd idea of telling a story in that house. So I bought it and began to write.

       Of course .....

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

---

       Persian poetry in the UK

       There are still a couple of stops on the Persian Poets' Tour 2012 in the UK, featuring the poetry of "five acclaimed poets from three Persian-speaking countries -- Afghanistan, Iran and Tajikistan".
       In The Independent today Christina Patterson reports on it, in Persian poetry power: Writers are bringing the spirit of Iran's verse to Britain.

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

---

       Ali and Ramazan review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Perihan Mağden's Ali and Ramazan, just out from AmazonCrossing.
       (Admirably, AmazonCrossing often doesn't just bring out individual titles by foreign authors, but commits to publishing several -- so, for example, another novel by Magden is due out later this year.)

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

       HHhH and translation issues

       Laurent Binet's HHhH recently came out in English, to wildly differing critical opinions (see the links at my review for many of them). As it turns out, some of the problems reviewers had with it may have to do specifically with the English version and how the text was mauled in translation.
       Anthony Cummins just reviewed it in The Spectator and notes, for example:

This translation changes Simone Veil to Simone Weil, Tunis to Tunisia, and Birmingham to Stoke-on-Trent. Binet's half-brother becomes a brother-in-law. Heydrich says 36 Jews were murdered on Kristallnacht, one more than stated previously. There are cuts as well as slips. Our presumed ignorance or impatience may account for lost lines about, say, medieval Bohemia; but why does Heydrich no longer vow to shove his deputy into a mass grave ?

       Why indeed ?
       Cummins also writes:

Far better to have HHhH in English than not at all, of course, yet more could have been preserved, in terms of tone as well as detail. [...] The French expects you to know the story already; the English worries you won't keep up.

       This points to one of the major under-reported problems about literature in translation: aside from the translator there's another figure that lurks ominously -- and often interferes horribly -- in bringing a text from one language to another: an 'editor'. Whoever had that responsibility here certainly seems to have failed -- not only in catching mistakes (Weil for Veil, jeez ...), but also in reshaping the book in a way that has diminished it. (Note also that there is no editorial note, at least in the American edition, acknowledging that the text has been changed and cut for English-speaking audiences .....)
       This kind of stuff drives me nuts -- but is widespread practice; if there's any one thing I could change about how translations are published in English it would be to get 'editors' to keep their dirty mitts off the stuff. (They'll all tell you that sometimes it's 'necessary', or for the best; it's not. Never. Fidelity to the text should be the highest priority ! (Especially since aiming to 'please the reader' generally inevitably goes terribly wrong).)

       I'm sorry that I didn't read HHhH in the original, or at least have the original to compare it to, but getting one's hands on originals is even more arduous than getting the books in English in the first place (whereby in this instance -- as in so many others -- I had to resort to borrowing my copy from the library, sigh ...). It's frustrating not being able to consult the original when reviewing books in translation -- but then it is the English version that the majority of readers of the complete review are presumably interested in; too bad they (and I) can't count on that being simply a true-to-the-original English version .....

       (I do note, however, that these flaws don't really affect my biggest objections to the book and Binet's approach; possibly things aren't quite so bad in the French version, but I can't imagine that the translation and editing alone are behind the issues I have with these.)

       (Also: all things considered, I think it's now probably a pretty safe bet that HHhH will not be in the running for next year's Best Translated Book Award .....)

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

---

       Andrés Neuman profile

       At Untitled Books Mark Reynolds profiles Andrés Neuman, whose Traveller of the Century (US title: Traveler of the Century ...) recently came out, and which I hope to get to soon.
       See also the publicity pages from Pushkin Press and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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

---

       Q & A: Peter Carey

       In the Wall Street Journal Alexandra Alter has a Q & A with Peter Carey (whose The Chemistry of Tears should be out now or soon), Writing Through Moments of Panic.
       It's amusing to hear that:

Do you read reviews of your work still ?

I try not to. It's stupid. It's only driven by ambition and vanity, insecurity.

       But he certainly seems to find it hard to ignore them entirely.

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

---

       Q & A: 'Reading in Translation'

       At the Picador Book Room Gabrielle Gantz has a Q & A with Tom Roberge (of New Directions) and Chad Post (of Three Percent and Open Letter) about reading in translation.

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

---

       Ondaatje Prize shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize -- "an annual award of £10,000 for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, evoking the spirit of a place" -- though not yet at the official site, last I checked. But Charlotte Williams has you covered in The Bookseller, in Two for Cape on Ondaatje shortlist.

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

---

       My First Suicide review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Jerzy Pilch's My First Suicide, just out from Open Letter.

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

       Fact and fiction in Pamuk's museum

       I mentioned the opening of Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence -- based on his novel, The Museum of Innocence -- some ten days back. At the Wall Street Journal Ron Gluckman now reports on A Nobelist's Novel Museum -- and his piece includes this great titbit:

At the entrance is a wall display of cigarette butts -- 4,213, arranged in columns dated 1976-84. However, fiction upon fiction, these cigarette butts are facsimiles, as real cigarettes would decay in the glass display.

       Fantastic !

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

---

       Lev Grossman confesses

       Time-critic Lev Grossman offers Confessions of (Another) Book Reviewer, recounting how he got his gig -- and explaining:

I don't write hatchet jobs. A thoroughly negative review needs to justify its existence thoroughly, and for that you need a lot of words, and Time's book reviews don't run long enough. So if I don't like a book, I leave it alone. Books come into this world mortally wounded as it is. It's pretty rare that a book is so malignant and so tough that it needs someone like me to come along and finish it off. It's enough to deny them care.

       Which seems a valid excuse -- though I'd suggest there are actually quite a few such books out there, foisted on an unsuspecting public with lots of marketing bucks -- books that can't be killed by your garden-variety reviewer, but which Time could readily put out of readers' misery .....

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

---

       Quantitative patterns of stylistic influence !

       In The Dartmouth Ester Khachatryan reports that Research quantifies literary trends, as:

In a published report of their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers concluded that the literary styles of modern authors vary from their predecessors more than authors of previous eras. This gap between authors and their immediate predecessors has widened over generations in a quantifiable manner.

       They analyzed data from 7,733 books, written by 537 authors.
       Only the abstract of the paper -- 'Quantitative patterns of stylistic influence in the evolution of literature' -- is freely accessible online. That, at least, explains:

We find temporal stylistic localization among authors through the analysis of the similarity structure in feature vectors derived from content-free word usage, nonhomogeneous decay rates of stylistic influence, and an accelerating rate of decay of influence among modern authors. Within a given time period we also find evidence for stylistic coherence with a given literary topic, such that writers in different fields adopt different literary styles.

       Who would have expected otherwise ?

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

---

       Grand Theories and Everyday Beliefs review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Wallace Matson on Science, Philosophy, and their Histories, in Grand Theories and Everyday Beliefs.
       I'm surprised this hasn't attracted a bit more notice yet -- though of course reviews/reactions in the academic journals take some time.
       Longtime Berkeley-man -- a one-time colleague of Paul Feyerabend, too -- Matson regrettably passed away a few weeks ago.

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

       Tonio wins Libris Literatuur Prijs

       A.F.Th.van der Heijden's Tonio has been awarded the 2012 Libris Literatuur Prijs.
       The Libris Literatuur Prijs -- "gemodelleerd naar de roemruchte Booker Prize", sigh ... -- is, along with the AKO Literatuurprijs, the major Dutch literary prize, with the winner taking home €50,000. Admirably -- and unlike the outrageously secretive Man Booker Prize -- they provide a list of all submitted titles in the running -- 154 for this year's prize (considerably more than the Man Booker folk consider ...).
       For more about Tonio, see the NLPVF information page; this very personal books -- for once not part of a larger series -- seems the most likely van der Heijden-title to finally make it into English. (As longtime readers know, I'm a big fan -- and consider him by far the most significant not-translated-into-English Dutch author -- but acknowledge that his (generally very long and/or part of a multi-volume series) books aren't the easiest to get into the English-speaking market; I'm (slowly) making my way through Het schervengericht (see also the NLPVF information page), which also has American potential (but is also quite the heap).)
       See also, for example, Van der Heijden wins Libris Literature Prize at Expatica.

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

---

       Denys Johnson-Davies profile

       In The Egyptian Gazette Caryll Faraldi profiles the Dedicated Arabic literature 'dictator', Denys Johnson-Davies, celebrating his 90th birthday, and the publication of his anthology, Homecoming: Sixty Years of Egyptian Short Stories; see the American University in Cairo Press publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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

---

       Iranian fiction abroad ?

       IBNA report that A selection of Iran's contemporary literature to go international, as:

Managing director of Iranian Fiction Foundation Mohammad Hassani said that the foundation's international section has been established and it will render a selection of Persian contemporary literature into other languages.

       I would love to see more contemporary Iranian fiction available in English (see what's under review at the complete review), but I always worry about these 'official'/government-aided efforts -- especially if they get involved in the selection process. My advice is always: provide information, provide money (translation and marketing subsidies), and get out of the way. But everybody always likes having a say, sigh .....

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

       Prize: Sunday Times Fiction Prize longlist (South Africa)

       The longlist for the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize -- at R75,000 the "richest one-off" fiction prize in South Africa -- has been announced.
       It is a very long list; surprisingly, one of the titles is under review at the complete review: Trackers by Deon Meyer.

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

---

       Prize: Debut Prize (Russia) Q & A

       Publishers Weekly has an interesting Q & A with 2017-author (and prize-director) Olga Slavnikova and publisher Natasha Perova, who runs Glas, about Publishing in Russia 2012: The Debut Prize and Young Russian authors.
       Among the interesting answers:

Do Debut authors turn to self-publishing ? And how is self-publishing in Russia, by the way ?

OS: Many Debut authors have enough material for a book or two, and failing to find a publisher, they often make it available on the Web, where an outstanding work can easily get lost in the sea of online garbage. In the provinces, writers often find sponsors to subsidize the publication of their books. But booksellers rarely carry these titles. Back in the 1990s, a self-published author would stand in an underground passage and often sell more copies per day than what a bookshop now can do with some bestsellers. In those days, people regarded books as something in short supply that they should immediately grab. Today, authors turn to self-publishing mostly for economic reasons. However, such books often have little impact on the overall literary scene.

       And a reminder that your best source of Russian literary (and literary-prize) news in English remains the invaluable Lizok's Bookshelf.

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

---

       Mahfouz movies (in NY)

       Great news for those of us in New York city: the Museum of Modern Art is screening Mahfouz at the Movies -- eight movies (including two from Mexico) -- 10 to 21 May.
       (See also the complete review's Naguib Mahfouz-page, with links to reviews of many of his works.)

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

---

       The 'Unbound' conference

       In Publishers Weekly Judith Rosen reports on Speculations on the Future of the Book at MIT Conference.
       That was the Unbound: Speculations on the Future of the Book conference, held 3-4 May; there's some interesting information at that official site, too; I'm sorry I didn't hear about this earlier.

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

---

       Maleficium review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Martine Desjardins' Maleficium.
       Compare also the different cover-choices made by the French- and English-Canadian publishers for this decadent work: I suspect the French one (see the Éditions Alto publicity page) might attract more ... attention than the English one (see the Talon Books publicity page).

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

       Most popular ... Turkish authors

       Today's Zaman reports that Ayşe Kulin ranks first in Forbes Turkey list of top-earning authors. The Forbes Turkey-piece isn't available online, but they offer a good overview here of which Turkish authors made the most money last year -- and, yes, Ayşe Kulin took the top spot, earning TL 1,634,660 in royalties (on sales of TL 8,173,300) in 2011 (and yes, that's not bad: close to a million US dollars).
       Elif Şafak came in second, while Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk only ranked eleventh.
       So: Ayşe who, you ask ? Well, you can check out her official site -- and several of her titles have been published in English -- albeit only in Turkish publisher Everest Yayınları's Contemporary Turkish Literature-series. But one of those titles -- IMPAC longlisted (though that only thanks to a nomination by ... the National Library of Turkey, Ankara ...) Farewell -- is coming out in a US edition soon, too, from ... Dalkey Archive Press.
       Yes, in what has to be one of the oddest author/book-publisher marriages of recent times, Dalkey Archive is publishing this work of pop historical fiction; see their publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. Dalkey does publish the occasional bestselling-back-home title -- books by Carlos Fiuentes, say, or Patrik Ouředník -- but as best I can tell they've never come close to publishing such a dominant chart-topping local pop writer. This is sort of like if they started publishing novels by Guillaume Musso and Marc Lévy. So I'm kind of scratching my head here ..... But I have a copy of the book, and I look forward to taking a look, and I am glad it is readily available (because, in fact, too few of the most popular authors from elsewhere in the world are made available in translation (including works by Guillaume Musso and Marc Lévy ...)).

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

---

       BTBA ... 2013 ?

       So with the Best Translated Book Award winners announced on Friday (see my mention) ... well, you should, of course, have a look at the winners (and runners-up -- the entire shortlist (indeed, longlist) was pretty darn solid).
       But since we're already well into 2012 I can't but help but look ahead to the BTBA 2013. Who might the contenders be ?
       I think that we can count among the early favorites/likely shortlist candidates:

• Almost Never by Daniel Sada
• The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi
• Dublinesque by the always popular Enrique Vila-Matas
• My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard (despite some not so enthusiastic UK reactions, this looks like a shortlist lock)
• Satantango by Krasznahorkai László (which I also think will be hard to keep off the shortlist)

       Other titles that I think have a strong chance to make the longlist

• Autoportrait by Edouard Levé (which, I remind you, I liked much better than this year's longlisted Suicide)
• Brooklyn Heights by Miral al-Tahawy (and I hope that's not the only Arabic title ...)
• The Planets by Sergio Chejfec (whose My Two Worlds was also a strong contender this year)
• Varamo by the perennially popular César Aira
• We're Flying, a two-for-one title by Peter Stamm (though story-collections tend to fare less well, it seems)

       And I'll be curious to see how the two prominent French titles which have divided readers do:

• HHhH by Laurent Binet
• The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq

       Of course, I've no doubt forgotten (or am not even yet aware of) many other possible contenders.

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

---

       Joseph Walser's Machine review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Gonçalo M. Tavares' Joseph Walser's Machine, the third in his 'Kingdom'-series available in English (and my favorite of the lot, so far).

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

       NGC Bocas Lit Fest

       The NGC Bocas Lit Fest ran 26 to 29 April.
       Among the highlights was the awarding of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, which went to Is Just a Movie by Earl Lovelace; see the publicity pages from Faber and Haymarket Books, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
       See also reports on the festival from the Trinidad Express (Lovelace savours Lit Fest victory) and Stabroek News (Reviving Caribbean literature).

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

---

       Mahmoud Dowlatabadi

       Mahmoud Dowlatabadi -- whose The Colonel is just out from Melville House -- was one of the authors at the PEN World Voices festival this week, and I was thrilled to be able to see him at a separate event on Friday at Melville House, where he was in conversation with Hamid Dabashi. Good news for all those who couldn't make it: C-SPAN taped the event, and it should air there -- probably on Book TV -- (meaning also it will be available online) at some point; I'll certainly mention it as soon as I hear exactly when.
       The PEN festival brings an impressive array of authors to town -- including, for example, Nobel laureate Herta Müller -- but Dowlatabadi is among the towering (if still far too little-known hereabouts) figures of contemporary literature, and certainly the one I am most pleased to have been able to hear and meet. It's also good to hear that there was apparently some serious press interest in him, and I look forward to the pieces that should appear in the coming days and weeks.
       I certainly recommend The Colonel to you (yet again ...) and look forward to seeing more by him become available in English in the coming years (The Colonel is only the second work to appear so far).

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

---

       Karl May

       It's a hundred years since German author Karl May -- famous for, among much else, his American Indian-stories -- passed away, and here's yet another retrospective piece, as Andreas Pflitsch wonders: Literary Genius or Man of Legendary Hubris ? at Qantara.de.
       Among the fascinating things about May is that he never seems to have caught on in English, and remained very much a German phenomenon. Many of the works have been translated, but interest remains limited -- get Winnetou from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk in an edition from Preposterous Press, but given the state of their official site that doesn't seem to have worked out too well either.

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

       International/translation prizes: Best Translated Book Awards

       The Best Translated Book Awards were announced yesterday; I was one of the judges for the fiction prize.

       The very worthy Stone Upon Stone, by Wiesław Myśliwski and translated by Bill Johnston won the fiction category. Embarrassingly, there's no review of it up at the complete review yet, but see the Archipelago publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

       Spectacle & Pigsty by Nomura Kiwao and translated by Kyoko Yoshida and Forrest Gander won the poetry category. See the Omnidawn publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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

---

       International/translation prizes: Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize

       They've announced the shortlist for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize (given for: "book-length literary translations into English from any living European language").
       The shortlist was selected from (only) 102 books; two of the shortlisted titles are under review at the complete review:

• Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos
• New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani

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

---

       International/translation prizes: Internationaler Literaturpreis

       The German Internationaler Literaturpreis – Haus der Kulturen der Welt has announced its shortlist.
       Curious fact: all except one of the authors' names have diacritical marks in them (and the American author isn't the exception).

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

---

       Translation from the ... Chinese

       In China Daily David Bartram finds Writers' careers found in translation, with several translators -- including Julia Lovell -- weighing in on the subject.

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

---

       Strindberg's Star review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Jan Wallentin's Strindberg's Star.

       This book isn't an example of everything that's wrong with publishing, but it is an example of one particular area where they go dreadfully wrong (and throw out a lot of money in the process). Strindberg's Star is one of these über-hyped novels where the hype comes before there's even a book. With its photogenic author (never mind that he'd never written a novel ...), and a few buzzwords -- ancient symbols and mythology, conspiracies, Nazis -- this thing was able to ride the whole if-it's-a-Swedish-thriller-we-gotta-have-it wave. As Bert Menninga reported for the folks who unleashed this on the world, the Bonnier Group Agency Sweden, Swedish Debut Novel Destined to be Blockbuster.
       How destined ? Well, when Menninga reported this, rights had been: "sold in 12 countries before it has even come out in Sweden" -- indeed, at the time it was: "still in the final stages of being polished and fact-checked" (fact-checked ! this thing ? that's so funny I can only cry ! and the idea that this was polished ...). Way to go, publishers -- buy a book pretty much sight unseen. (Yes, I know that's pretty common -- but given how American publishers always seem to wait ages before publishing anything in translation, making sure its has come out and done okay elsewhere before daring to buy the rights, what happened here ?)
       Of course, some couldn't be more thrilled by how this worked out:

"The international response has been absolutely fantastic and the total advance sum is record breaking as well !" says Jenny Thor, CEO for Bonnier Group Agency.

       Which counts for something. Perhaps the sum that publishers (everyone except Bonniers, who are rolling in the foreign-rights money) will write off on this heap will also be record breaking .....
       Strindberg's Star is, as anyone who has looked at it will tell you, not a good book. You can argue about whether it's truly terrible, or simply not very good, but the consensus is clearly that it is not very good. Formulaic, pretty poorly pieced together -- well, one can always compare it to Dan Brown (but, despite his success, that probably won't be enough to help much here).
       The Scandinavian reviews were pretty critical -- and the big papers seem only to have reviewed it because of all the pre-publication hype; the media elsewhere seems to have pretty much ignored it. There are six reader reviews at the Amazon.fr page, and it gets all of a one-star average rating .....
       Perhaps the only hope for the foreign editions is that, as the Dagens Nyheter review has it, the original Swedish edition was such an abomination with its "språkfel, havererat bildspråk och allmänna klumpigheter" the book can only be better in translation .....
       Unfortunately, publishers have sunk so much into this that they have to try to sell it to their poor, largely unsuspecting readers. (Hey, I got suckered in -- the Strindberg-connection and the eagerness for some thriller-entertainment convincing me to have a look.) So this is being heavily promoted, and there's not only an American official site but also French and German ones, etc. Presumably US publisher Viking has already down-scaled expectations (i.e. cut back on the original print run) because of the book's disastrous critical and public reception elsewhere), but they'll still try to flog it hard, and there will be people buying it. It's not going to earn them back what they spent (not by a long shot, I figure), and will no doubt soon be remaindered, but everyone has to go through the motions -- and the time of many readers, who could have spent it reading a good book, wasted -- before it sinks into well-deserved oblivion.
       Yet another sad but never-learned lesson in American publishing .....

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

       PalFest

       The Palestine Festival of Literature -- PalFest -- runs tomorrow through 9 May.
       In The Bookseller Charlotte Williams previews PalFest set for Gaza, while at Publishing Perspectives Olivia Snaije reports that Gaza or Bust: Palestine Festival of Literature Perseveres.

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

---

       Arabic women on writing about sex

       At Qantara.de Rim Najmi looks at 'Sexuality in Contemporary Arab Women's Literature', asking a number of female Arab writers about it in Of Personal Experience and Artistic Freedom.
       Among the authors: The Proof of the Honey-author Salwa al-Neimi.

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

---

       Szentkuthy Miklós' Prae

       At hlo Ferenc Takács writes about A comedy of ideas. Miklós Szentkuthy: Prae -- and offer two excerpts from it, here and here.
       The Takács-piece is actually a 'slightly revised version of a review originally published in World Literature Today. Spring 1981', but Szentkuthy still remains largely unknown in the English-speaking world. (Quite a bit of his work has, however, been translated into French.)

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

go to archive

- return to top of the page -

© 2012 the complete review


Main | the New | the Best | the Rest | Review Index | Links