opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 10 February 2013

1 February: Herman Koch's The Dinner | CIBF report | Coming in 2013 ... from Russian | Escape review
2 February: Translation Prizes | Dany Laferrière profile | African preview, 2013 | Anselm Hollo (1934-2013) | February issues of online periodicals
3 February: Writing in ... Africa | Thai sampler | Writing in ... Libya
4 February: Summa Technologiae ! | Katherine Silver profile | Where Tigers are at Home review
5 February: Irrawaddy Literature Festival reports | Tim Parks on translation
6 February: Translation Prizes reports | Funding for sports and, not so much, literature ... | Overheated review
7 February: Prizes: Íslensku bókmenntaverðlaunin - The Hindu Literary Prize shortlist | Yan Lianke profile | Basti review
8 February: McSweeney's 42 | Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse shortlists | Review spoilers | La Boutique Obscure review
9 February: Jerusalem International Book Fair | UK library lending | David Mitchell profile
10 February: Chika Unigwe Q & A | Mark Linz | Harmony review

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       Chika Unigwe Q & A

       In Vanguard Prisca Sam-Duru has a Q & A with Chika Unigwe.

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

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       Mark Linz

       Sad to hear that Mark Linz, longtime guiding light at the American University in Cairo Press, has passed away; see, for example, Arabic Literature (in English)'s Remembering Long-time AUC Press Director Mark Linz.

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       Harmony review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Project Itoh's dystopian Harmony.

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       Jerusalem International Book Fair

       The Jerusalem International Book Fair runs from tomorrow through the 15th, and in The Jerusalem Post Hannah Brown previews it.
       A highlight is, of course, the awarding of the biennial Jerusalem Prize, to the certainly deserving Antonio Muñoz Molina (more of whose books, as I often repeat, should be translated into English ...). [Updated - 11 February]: See now also Greer Fay Cashman's report in The Jerusalem Post, Molina accepts J'lem prize despite boycott calls.
       Among the events of particular interest:

• Literary Criticism.com - Bloggers Panel -- featuring, among others, the venerable Maud Newton and Mark Sarvas (who certainly have long been active in the scene but both of whom, I can't help but note, regrettably don't actually do much blogging any longer)
         (Updated - 11 February): See now also Danna Harman's preview of the panel, OMG I loved that book ! in Haaretz
  
  
• Books and Other Adult Pleasures - Literary Criticism Today, with representatives from the US, France, and Germany
  
  
• Lost and Found in Translation, as "Etgar Keret and Zuria Shalev meet with their translators, editors and publishers to discuss professional and personal aspect of being published"

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       UK library lending

       The UK Public Lending Right sees to it that authors are compensated when their books are borrowed from public libraries (a small amount, and only up to a certain level, but still ...), and the 2011/2012 lending data is now out.
       As they sum up, US Writers Smother UK Rivals When it Comes to Bodies in the Library (warning ! dreaded pdf format !); see also this general overview (warning ! dreaded pdf format !), as well as the list of the 100 most borrowed books (warning ! dreaded pdf format !).

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       David Mitchell profile

       In The Guardian Stuart Jeffries profiles Cloud Atlas-author David Mitchell: 'I don't want to project myself as this great experimenter'.

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       McSweeney's 42

       The most recent issue of McSweeney's, "Multiples", is, as they describe it, "a monumental experiment in translated literature". I've begun to make my way and around this, and it is pretty awesome; I hope to get proper review coverage up at some point.
       At The Believer Logger Sheila Heti now has a Q & A with editor/shaper Adam Thirlwell, which gives a bit more insight into the whole undertaking (though I'm afraid you'll have to overlook and somehow try to excuse a mention of "Finnegan's [sic] Wake").
       At the Paris Review Daily Lorin Stein called the issue:

an unorthodox thing of beauty, a stunt that only a kid would attempt, and an absolute pleasure to read

       And at Readux Amanda DeMarco also had a look.
       Get your copy from McSweeney's, or at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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       Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse shortlists

       The Germans have two big book fairs -- Leipzig in the spring and Frankfurt in the fall -- and the two big German book prizes (as opposed to the many German author prizes ...) are announced at these, the German Book Prize, for best work of fiction, in Frankfurt, and the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair (Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse) in Leipzig.
       The PLM is in fact a trio of prizes, as they hand one out each in the categories of fiction, non, and translation. 430 titles were submitted (though unfortunately I can't find the breakdown of submissions by category), and they've now announced the fifteen finalists.
       I don't think any of the fiction finalists are likely to be familiar to English-language readers; the book most likely to eventually appear in English translation is probably the non-fiction finalist by Götz Aly (subtitled 'Euthanasia 1939-1945' ....).
       As to the translation shortlist, it includes a translation of Pound's Cantos (by no-not-that-Eva Hesse, this one (who was actually born over a decade before the other Eva Hesse -- and has now outlived her by over forty years), a new translation of The Master and Margarita, and of yet another Mikhail Shishkin book (the Germans are a few ahead of US/UK publishers with Shishkin).

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       Review spoilers

       As longtime readers know, one of the ways I differentiate between 'literary criticism' and 'book reviews' is that I figure in literary criticism you have to discuss -- to put it simply -- whodunnit, and in a book review you can't -- or, to put it another way: literary criticism is for readers who already have read (or never will) the book in question, book reviews are for those who are considering reading it (and want to know if it's worth their while, etc.).
       The complete review is pretty much all book reviews, straying very rarely into literary criticism. This leads to the occasional contortions in discussing a book -- especially (though not solely) of the mystery/thriller variety, where it most obviously would be unfair to reveal too much -- often not only who did it, but even the exact nature of the crime, the body-count, or other significant facts. Certainly, it seems to me that the reader should be allowed to discover the essential features of a text him- or herself; reviews should merely offer general guidance and impressions.
       Recently I reviewed Herman Koch's The Dinner, an international bestseller that's finally also being published in the US. It's about two sets of parents, who get together at a fancy restaurant to discuss something their children did. Whether or not one likes the book, one has to acknowledge that Koch unfolds his story fairly well -- in particular regarding the heinous deed at the center of it all. Koch has a way of withholding and then presenting information that makes for some decent tension; arguably the 'moral issues' on the table here are what's most significant about the book, but I'd say what makes it 'work' is how Koch presents the issue(s).
       Reading the early American reviews, I've been shocked to find that some reviewers spell it all out for readers. The most egregious -- because also most widely circulating -- instance is Janet Maslin's review in The New York Times yesterday. She offers a parenthetical warning:

Now please (spoiler alert) can we cut to the chase ?

       Then she spills all the beans.
       Maslin clearly loathed this book, arguing that: "it's the morality of the story that's really sickening" -- though, clearly, she lost it somewhere along the line here, mistaking the (im)morality of the characters for that of the story: The Dinner may not be a successful morality tale, but surely the use of these characters and actions is meant to be provocative, rather than a straight-out endorsement of the shocking things Koch describes (and excuses/explanations he offers).
       It's perfectly valid to argue that Koch fails in his picture-of-contemporary-life, and that the characters and/or their actions are too outrageous even for fiction. But Koch tells his story in a specific way, and the success of the novel and the enjoyment (if one can call it that) it offers rests on that presentation, and by revealing essentially everything reviewers such as Maslin (and she's not the only one) pull out the rug from under Koch, leaving only the rickety end-moral of the story standing (and tumbling).
       Yes, in summary The Dinner is a hollow story -- but Koch has crafted something different here, and the point of the tale isn't (just) in its summary, but in its telling (or so it seems to me -- I take the whole 'moral question'-aspect to be a sideshow more than anything else) And even if you disagree, Koch deserves at least enough benefit of the doubt that readers should be left with the option to come to the book on Koch's terms, and not those of the reviewer. But Maslin takes that option off the table.
       It's unfair to the author, and it's unfair to the (potential) readers; whatever satisfactions readers could have gotten out of The Dinner are largely compromised by the reviewer having given almost all of them away.
       Bad form -- and bad reviewing.

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       La Boutique Obscure review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of 124 Dreams by Georges Perec, La Boutique Obscure, finally coming out in English, from Melville House.

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       Prize: Íslensku bókmenntaverðlaunin

       As, for example, Iceland Review reports, Icelandic Literature Awards Winners Announced. This being Iceland, where they take literature fairly seriously, the awards were presented by the president of the country, at the presidential residence.
       The fiction award went to Illska ('Evil'), by Einar Örn Norðdahl; see, or example, the Forlagið publicity page.
       The Forlagið foreign rights catalog (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) suggests it's an ... intriguing (and long) read:

Evil is about the holocaust and about love, about Iceland and Lithuania, about Agnes who becomes lost in herself while Jon Baldvin Hannibalsson, Icelandic ambassador in Lithuania, acknowledges the independence of the Baltic countries and Lithuanian criminals begin operating from Reykjavik, about Agnes who doesn't know whether she is a fan of the B-Ranking World Champions in Handball or of Bogdan Kowalczyk, about Agnes who loves Omar who loves Agnes who loves Arnor. 540 pp

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       Prize: The Hindu Literary Prize shortlist

       They've announced that Five books shortlisted for The Hindu Literary Prize.
       I was a bit more excited about this prize last time around -- a time when the rules were more welcoming, as: "Works in English and translations from Indian languages are eligible" -- resulting also in a shortlist that included several (too many ?) works in translation (including one by Man Booker International Prize finalist U.R.Ananthamurthy).
       So what happened this time, with the rules (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) changed so that: "Only original works in English will be eligible. Works in Indian languages and translations are not eligible" ?
       Surely I'm not the only one who thinks this lessens the prize ? (And what the hell happened that they reverted to being an English-only prize ? Sure, The Economist Crossword Book Award has a translation category, but if you want to be the (or even a) premier Indian literary prize, surely you have to consider all Indian literature.)

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       Yan Lianke profile

       In Chinese intellectuals avoid key issues amid censorship fears, says author in The Guardian Tania Branigan profiles Yan Lianke, whose Lenin's Kisses comes out in the UK shortly.
       It comes complete with obligatory Mo Yan diss:

I was very complimentary about Mo Yan's work, but as an author and intellectual I don't think he has done enough.

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       Basti review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Intizar Husain's Basti.
       Oxford University Press brought this translation out a couple of years ago -- and, indeed, it's been available online even longer -- but now finally New York Review Books brings out an official US version. As I've noted, not much by this Man Booker International Prize finalist is 'generally available' in English, but at least this one should now be relatively easy to find.

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       Translation Prizes reports

       As I mentioned a few days ago, they handed out eight translation prizes in London on Monday, and Boris Akunin delivered the annual Sebald Lecture (it should eventually be available online here), and there are now a few reports available from those lucky enough to attend the event.
       At the TLS blog Thea Lenarduzzi reports on The angels of translation -- and offers the great anecdote from Boris Akunin's lecture, that his mother didn't approve of him switching from being a translator to writing his own books:

She read his novels with a pencil and questioned his plots -- why not do something "serious, "why not translate something ?", she pleaded.

       At the tanjara there's also a nice report -- with pictures ! --, Roger Allen presented with Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation at London ceremony (though the whole ceremony is covered there), and between the lines also has a report, The freedom to look at clouds in a non-predatory way, or the joy of being a translator, by Boris Akunin.

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       Funding for sports and, not so much, literature ...

       In the The Age Norman Jorgensen ponders that age-old question, Why don't we give literature a sporting chance ? as he notes that sports are rather better subsidized down under (as also elsewhere) than all things literary:

Compared to sport, in Australia literature funding is a joke. Sport funding eclipses literature's beyond all measures imaginable. The Australian Institute of Sport spent $324 million last year, while the Australian Institute of Literature ... well, it doesn't even exist.

       Instead:

What we have here in WA is, not million dollar institutes but Writing WA, The Literature Centre at Fremantle, a few writers' centres and Fremantle Press. They receive some government funding, but it is in the thousands, not the millions of dollars which go to sports bodies.

       (Indeed, the most recent ASC annual report (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) is an eye-opener -- A$ 570,000 for touch football last year, for example; A$ 5,511,600 for 'high performance' (i.e. competitive) rowing and A$ 2,816,500 for competitive ... canoeing.)

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       Overheated review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Andrew T. Guzman on The Human Cost of Climate Change, in Overheated.

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       Irrawaddy Literature Festival reports

       They held the first Irrawaddy Literature Festival in Burma from 1 to 3 February. It's gotten good coverage, and there are now several reports of the event, such as Kate Hodal's Burma literary festival flourishes under patron Aung San Suu Kyi in The Guardian.
       At CNN Kate Whitehead reports that Aung San Suu Kyi draws thousands to Myanmar's first literary festival -- but also notes that:

It's uncertain whether the Irrawaddy Literary Festival will be staged again next year. Heyn conceived and created a one-of-a-kind festival. She and her ambassador husband will leave Yangon in the summer after four years and no one has yet stepped forward to take responsibility for putting it on again.

       In The Myanmar Times Bill O'Toole reports that Literary festival encourages bolder writing, open debate -- and it's good to see that even here the same old perceived slights crop up:

Author and activist Maung Maung San bemoaned the fact that not one Myanmar author had ever won a Nobel Prize for literature.

"It's because our books don't get translated into English and French and German," he explained, "but we hope it will change soon.

       Oh, that's why ..... Though he has a point regarding the dearth of translations. (A very few are under review at the complete review .....)
       Meanwhile, in The Irrawaddy Kyaw Phyo Tha reports that For Bookworms, a Historic Event in Burma's Biggest City, while the BBC radio programme, The Strand, has an audio report.

       (Updated - 7 February): see now also Vaudine England on Reclaiming Dialogue, by Literary Light in the International Herald Tribune.

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       Tim Parks on translation

       Good to see Tim Parks continue to muse on translation at the New York Review blog -- now on Listening for the Jabberwock.
       Here he suggests:

Translated texts, then, and there are ever more of them in the world today, tend to be cooler, a little less fluid -- they will operate more on the rational intellect than on the rhythm-wired senses. They will deceive you less and charm you less.

       Among the interesting questions he raises -- and will, I hope address at greater length in the future -- is:

I have often wondered if that is now why, in certain countries, translations even seem to be preferred to native texts.

       And he mentions a 'large study' that:

suggests that while the national language in Italy is changing fast, with Italian novelists ever more open to stylistic influence from the cinema or from abroad, translations keep alive a hypercorrect literary Italian that has otherwise lapsed into disuse.

       I'd love to hear more about that.

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       Summa Technologiae !

       No doubt, one of the highlights of the 2013 publishing year: via I see that the University of Minnesota Press is (finally) bringing out an English translation (by Joanna Zylinska) of the great Stanisław Lem's classic Summa Technologiae; see their publicity page, or pre-order your copy from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
       I was lucky enough to get my hands on the (German) Suhrkamp edition when that came out some three decades ago (though that now sadly appears to be out of print ...), and while all of Lem's work (at least the thirty-plus volumes available in English and German that I could find over the years) made a tremendous impression on me, this one was certainly among the half dozen most influential of his works. I was and remain in awe of the guy (and his work).
       It's probably a bit dated by now -- they waited an awfully long time to translate this -- but, still, it's Lem, and you should always scoop up (and dive into) any- and everything by Lem you can find.

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       Katherine Silver profile

       In the Edmonton Journal Michael Hingston profiles Katherine Silver, in Translating the 'beautiful art' of literature.
       A co-director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre, she also recently translated -- as he notes -- The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira by César Aira and The Cardboard House by Martín Adán.

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       Where Tigers are at Home review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès' Where Tigers are at Home, coming to the US (from Other Press) next month.
       Dedalus admirably brought this out in the UK in 2011 -- but, outrageously and shockingly, it got almost no review coverage there. (How could this fat, fantastic book slip through the cracks ?) I can only hope the Americans are wiser: this is a pretty impressive (and highly entertaining) yarn (and more), and deserves good coverage and many readers.
       (The author apparently had trouble getting it published in France, too, and it went on to win a couple of prizes (and made the four-title-strong last cut for the 2008 Goncourt).)
       It was also Sophie Schiavo's selection in the Quarterly Conversation's call to Translate This Book ! from a few years ago -- good choice !

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       Writing in ... Africa

       In the Sunday Nation Eddie Ombagi argues that War literature should stop thriving in Africa taking on, among others, Abdourahman A. Waberi's Transit.
       He notes:

As Nyanchwani wonders, why hasn’t Meja Mwangi been studied in secondary schools ? Charles Mangua writes beautifully in excellent prose and dictum. Has his books been acknowledged as part of African literature ?

       (In case you're not familiar with Mangua, see also Julius Sigei's profile, with the depressing title: I could drink my royalties in one week, says Mangua (which is, regrettably, not an admission of world-class alcoholism or expensive tastes ...).)
       Ombagi does have a point -- though honestly, what I'd like to see is (much as I complain about his writing ...) a sub-Saharan African Chetan Bhagat (preferably one who writes a whole lot better than the One night @ the call centre author ...), for example.

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       Thai sampler

       In the Bangkok Post Ezra Kyrill Erker reports on Literary gems found in translation, as Mr.Thai-fiction-in-translation, Marcel Barang, has brought out the anthology 12 Thai Short Stories 2012, which presents: "a dozen of last year's finest short fiction by Thai writers into an accessible and absorbing e-book" You can get your copy (and a wide selection of other Thai fiction) from Barang's Thai Fiction site -- see the publicity page for the book.

       As I often note, fiction from Southeast Asia, and especially the Thai/Burma/Laos/Cambodia region, is particularly hard to come by in English. Just how unknown it remains hereabouts is also brought home by another recent Bangkok Post piece, which begins:

Recently crowned a National Artist and once voted Thailand's favourite novelist, Tomyantee is a recognisable name even to those who don't read novels

       Somehow I suspect that even among my well- and widely read readers that may not be the case .....

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       Writing in ... Libya

       At ahramonline Mary Mourad reports on Challenges for Libyan authors: Desertification of the cultural space, as Libya was the guest of honour at the recent Cairo International Book Fair and so the local situation was much discussed.
       Among the interesting observations:

Mohamed Al-Tarhuny, writer and critic, described how authors had to keep inventing means to overcome the challenge of the regime that worked hard to destroy every creative pen in the country.

Mentioning big names of contemporary Libyan literature, he considers them examples of how the authors were able to overcome the suppression of Gaddafi's tyranny: Ibrahim Al-Koni, for example, spoke of a world of the Tuareg that was fading from existence, while Mohamed Al-Asfar escaped into fantasy.

       More provocatively:

"True Libyan creativity isn't the monologue in books, but rather the online wide-open space where someone's idea receives input, criticism and updates," said Mohamed Al-Malky, head of the Benghazi office for discourse analysis, who chaired one of the sessions.

       As someone who's a big fan of the 'monologue in books', I beg to differ -- but I'm so impressed that there's a 'Benghazi office for discourse analysis' that I won't complain too much.

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       Translation Prizes

       Monday is the big translation-prize day in the UK, as they hold the Sebald Lecture -- 'Paradise Lost: Confessions of an Apostate Translator' by Boris Akunin -- and hand out a whole bunch of (well, eight) translation prizes, from the recently announced Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation and the usual annual prizes for translations from the French, German, and Spanish, to four of the less frequently awarded prizes, for works translated from Modern Greek, Italian, Portuguese, and Swedish.
       As usual, TLS editor Peter Stothard will present the prizes -- and as usual, there's a run-down of who won what in the TLS, which they admirably make available at their site: see Adrian Tahourdin's overview of this year's Translation Prizes.
       Among the noteworthy points: two of the winners are re-translations, while Margaret Jull Costa bagged both the win and second place for the Calouste Gulbenkian Prize (translation from the Portuguese) -- and then got a second runners-up placing in the Premio Valle Inclán. The latter is noteworthy too, because it's a translation from the Spanish -- of a book originally written in Basque, Bernardo Atxaga's Seven Houses in France.
       The only winning title under review at the complete review is Juan Goytisolo's Exiled from Almost Everywhere -- one of two Dalkey Archive Press titles to win.

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       Dany Laferrière profile

       In The Guardian Maya Jaggi profiles Dany Laferrière: a life in books.

       Several of his books are under review at the complete review:

• Eroshima
• I am a Japanese Writer
• Why Must a Black Writer Write About Sex ?

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       African preview, 2013

       In The Guardian Samuel Kolawole offers a list of what turns out not to quite be African novels to look out for ("Those hungry for his first book hopefully won't have to wait long" he unhelpfully notes about Mehul Gohil, for example). Still, some names -- and a few books -- to look out for, in 2013 and beyond.

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       Anselm Hollo (1934-2013)

       Poet and translator -- from Finnish, English, German, Swedish, French, and Estonian ! -- Anselm Hollo has passed away; see, for example, the Books from Finland report, In memoriam Anselm Hollo 1934-2013.
       Among the authors he translated are the recently deceased Jakob Arjouni, as well as the great Jaan Kross.

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       February issues of online periodicals

       Among the February issues of online periodicals now available is that of Words without Borders, themed International Graphic Novels: Volume VII (with an Oubapo comics section !), as well as the new issue of Open Letters Monthly.

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       Herman Koch's The Dinner

       Herman Koch's The Dinner is (finally) due out in the US in less than two weeks, and in the Wall Street Journal Alexandra Alter previews it -- as A European 'Gone Girl'.
       A few interesting titbits, including:

In early 2012, American publishers began scrambling to acquire U.S. rights to the English translation from Mr. Koch's British publisher, Atlantic Books. Eight publishers bid on it. Hogarth, a literary imprint under the Crown Publishing Group, won with a bid of roughly $240,000.

       2012 ?!?? Really, what does it take for a US publisher to even consider a work in translation ?
       Interesting, too, the debate over how to shelve/categorize the book -- and:

Mr. Koch says he's uncomfortable with the "thriller" label. "If you advertise it as a thriller, the real thriller-readers could be disappointed," he says. "This is a literary novel, but it's not a boring literary novel."

       I'm not sure that was the ideal way for him to explain himself ..... (It isn't boring, but it didn't strike me as particularly literary, either -- certainly no more so than many thrillers are.)

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       CIBF report

       There has been quite a bit of coverage of the 44th Cairo International Book Fair, including now at Qantara.de, where Asira El Ahl finds A Breath of Fresh Air for Publishers.
       Among the points of interest:

Bakr says the Gulf states are usually a good market for Egyptian publishers. Every university and library would buy new publications in order to support the market. "But since the revolution, they've become careful with Egyptian publishers," notes Bakr. "They don't want to import the revolution."

       On the other hand, maybe they don't have to worry quite so much: apparently "Sixty percent of the titles that are sold at the fair are religious books" -- a figure that apparently hasn't changed much over the years.

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       Coming in 2013 ... from Russian

       Lizok's Bookshelf offers a useful overview of Notable New Translations: The 2013 Edition, listing what we might/should hope to expect as far as translations-from-the-Russian go in 2013.
       Way, way too little gets translated from the Russian, but there are some promising-sounding titles here.

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       Escape review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Perihen Magden's Escape -- yet another book in translation from AmazonCrossing.

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

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