opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

21 - 30 April 2015

21 April: Pulitzer Prizes | Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize | Israeli book-price law | Attachment review
22 April: Vilas Sarang (1942-2015) | Gerald Murnane Q & A | Pamuk's A Strangeness in my Mind | Proffer on Brodsky
23 April: Book-keeping/burning in ... North Korea | Russian book prizes | New issue of list
24 April: Österreichischer Staatspreis für Europäische Literatur | Иностранная литература - prize | Tales of the Metric System review
25 April: Translations-from-the French shortlists | STEFG Short Story Award | Poetic extinction ? | The Author and Me review
26 April: Publishing in ... Kenya | Murder on the Thirty-First Floor review
27 April: Juan Goytisolo picks up Premio Cervantes | The Mahé Circle review
28 April: Peter Stamm Q & A | Leg over Leg as/is a novel ? | PEN World Voices Festival countdown
29 April: Crossword Book Awards | Shona literature | Lurid & Cute review | Chevillard's Best Translated Book Award chances ?
30 April: PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation | Publishing translations | Don Bartlett Q & A | Afrikaans as world literature ?

go to weblog

return to main archive

       PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation

       They've announced that Burton Watson -- a translator of many classical Chinese and Japanese works -- will get the 2015 PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation -- a triennial lifetime-achievement award, with an impressive list of previous winners.

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

---

       Publishing translations

       In The International New York Times Stephen Heyman writes about Who Is the Biggest Publisher of Foreign Literature in the U.S.? -- relying heavily on the Three Percent databases.
       The answer on offer is ... AmazonCrossing (see the titles under review at the complete review) -- though Dalkey Archive Press give them a run for their (our ?) money .....
       The article does note that, as far as AmazonCrossing goes: "most of its titles would be qualified as genre fiction" -- with Open Letter- (and Three Percent-)man Chad Post noting: "They're doing a lot of things that most translation publishers don't do" -- and correctly pointing out:

"To fully understand a culture, to understand literature the whole way, you need more than just the best books," Mr. Post said. "You need the book about Spanish history along with the book about zombies."

       Damn right, and far too few other publishers are publishing those Spanish-zombie (etc. etc etc.) books. (That said, AmazonCrossing also repeatedly surprises with some first-rate/significant stuff that apparently fell through all the other cracks.)
       The most interesting take-away for me:

This year, AmazonCrossing says it expects to increase its output, projecting 70 new translations into English and 200 into German.

       Even in the schlock market, translation into English lags .....

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

---

       Don Bartlett Q & A

       At The Paris Review's The Daily weblog Scott Esposito has a Q & A on Translating Knausgaard: An Interview with Don Bartlett (as the fourth volume of the Knausgaard epic, My Struggle, comes to the US -- I'll be getting to it).
       (The Knausgaard focus is understandable/sensible -- still: too bad there's no Jo Nesbø -- or, for that matter, Per Petterson -- mention/translation challenge comparison, two other authors he's translated extensively. (A pretty impressive diverse trio, by the way.))

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

---

       Afrikaans as world literature ?

       Via BooksLive I'm pointed to this exchange between Jeanne-Marie Jackson and Leon de Kock, Is Afrikaans Literature a World Literature ? New Notes on an Old Field at litnet.
       Always a fun debate, regardless of the literature/language.

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

       Crossword Book Awards

       They've announced the (Indian) Crossword Book Awards (though perhaps not ... ideally, at the official site).
       The fiction prize went to The Blind Lady's Descendants, by Anees Salim; get your copy at Amazon.com.
       The (Indian language) translation prize went to Children, Women, Men, by Sundara Ramaswamy, in Lakshmi Holmstrom's translation (from the Tamil); see the Penguin (India) publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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

---

       Shona literature

       In The Herald Beaven Tapureta finds Shona literature impressive, 35 years on.
       He suggests:

Although literature in Shona has not much resonance internationally for obvious reasons, locally it has been more vigorous than literature in English due to the wide variety of issues and styles it has covered.

       (The 'obvious reasons' for its lack of international resonance presumably center on its unavailability in other languages -- including English.)

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

---

       Lurid & Cute review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Adam Thirlwell's new novel, Lurid & Cute.

       (It's almost fun covering the Thirlwell-output just for the review-commentary on his person (rather than simply the books), especially in the UK press. Almost.)

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

---

       Chevillard's Best Translated Book Award chances ?

       I recently reviewed Éric Chevillard's The Author and Me, and yesterday also argued 'Why this book should win' the Best Translated Book Award at Three Percent.
       (We've been posting on each of the twenty-five longlisted titles; I hope you've been keeping up .....)

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

       Peter Stamm Q & A

       At the PEN Atlas Tasja Dorkofikis has a Q & A with All Days are Night-author Peter Stamm
       Among the points of interest: with Michael Hofmann (not 'Michael Hoffman', as the post has it ...) having translated all his available-in-English titles, Stamm notes: "Michael asks very few questions. (...) Other translators ask me more questions."

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

---

       Leg over Leg as/is a novel ?

       At her Arabic Literature (in English) weblog M. Lynx Qualey reports on a recent Library of Arabic Literature workshop in Oxford where they discussed What Does it Matter if Leg Over Leg is the 'First Arabic Novel' ?
       That would be Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq's Leg Over Leg, in the wonderful Library of Arabic Literature edition of Humphrey Davies' translation -- now available in paperback ! -- the first two volumes of which are under review at the complete review, here and here.
       An interesting discussion -- but I too don't know that it's particularly important to consider/hail any particular book as 'first' in its category -- though, of course, literary scholars enjoy that sort of thing.
       Whatever you want to consider it, it's a hell of a book -- and a hell of an historically important one, too.

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

---

       PEN World Voices Festival countdown

       The PEN World Voices Festival runs 4 to 10 May in New York.
       Lots of worthwhile events -- and note that reservations are advised for even the free ones, so you might want to get on that .....
       Hard to pick and choose from the offerings -- but consider:

• Opening Night: The Future Is Now (4 May; 19:30) - Stoppard ! Ngũgĩ ! Enough said
  
  
• Sergio Ramírez and Nick Caistor: Divine Punishment (6 May; 19:00) - the English translation of Ramírez's novel is introduced
  
  
• Who We Talk About When We Talk About Translation: Women's Voices (9 May; 13:00)
  
  
• Who We Talk About When We Talk About Translation: The Bloggers (9 May; 15:00) -- a panel I'm on ...
  
  
• The Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (10 May; 18:00)

       But there's a lot more, too -- check out the full schedule .....

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

       Juan Goytisolo picks up Premio Cervantes

       They announced (and I mentioned) a while back that the great Juan Goytisolo would receive the 2014 Premio Cervantes, the leading Spanish-language author-prize and on 23 April -- not just Shakespeare's birthday, but also Cervantes' -- they had the ceremony handing over the prize.
       I was waiting/hoping for some English-language coverage -- it's Goytisolo ! the major Spanish-language author-prize ! royalty ! -- but ... little has been forthcoming. (Still, there's some: Cervantes prizewinner laments state of Spain during ceremony, Javier Rodríguez Marcos reports at El País 'In English'.)
       You can watch/listen to Goytisolo's acceptance speech here, or read it here, both in the original Spanish. (Come on, someone publish the English translation !)

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

---

       The Mahé Circle review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Georges Simenon's The Mahé Circle.

       Penguin Classics have started publishing the complete Maigret-series in new translations -- a wonderful undertaking -- but I've always been more partial to the other half of his œuvre, the so-called romans durs (as well as the hors catégorie works such as the Mémoires intimes (not in the abbreviated English translation ...)), and admirably they've been paying some attention to these as well.
       The Mahé Circle -- first published in 1946 -- was, astonishingly, never translated into English before; it finally came out, in Siân Reynolds' translation, in the UK last year and has now made its way to the US.
       You can understand that some of Simenon's prodigious output might fall through the cracks, but this corrects a major oversight: this is a major work. Brutally bleak -- probably why it was previously neglected -- but very well done.

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

       Publishing in ... Kenya

       Always fun to see the local complaints -- though admittedly it's also a bit depressing to see such problems and issues appear to be universal -- as in The Standard Abenea Ndago notes there are Few arguments that publishers and editors will never win.
       Ndago doesn't mince words:

The universe of locust feeding on the grass of Kenyan literature is presided over by a clueless generation of publisher CEOs that is probably a hundred times more traditional than the old people they usually accuse of this disease.

       And:

We did not initially know it, but it should now be clear that the second biggest stumbling block to the growth of Kenyan literature -- second only to State House -- is the Kenyan publisher.

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

---

       Murder on the Thirty-First Floor review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Per Wahlöö's Murder on the Thirty-First Floor -- a recent re-translation of his 1964 novel (originally published in English as The Thirty-First Floor, in 1967).

       Wahlöö is of course best known for his Martin Beck series, co-written with his wife, Maj Sjöwall, but he also wrote several novels on his own, including this one, the first in his Inspector Jensen diptych.
       In the US Vintage Crime/Black Lizard have re-issued five of his solo efforts -- I had previously reviewed The Generals -- and this one was certainly worth resurrecting (and re-translating).

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

       Translations-from-the French shortlists

       The French-American Foundation and Florence Gould Foundation have announced the finalists for their Translation Prizes.
       Only one overlap with the Best Translated Book Award longlist -- Pierre Michon's Winter Mythologies and Abbots -- but several others are under review at the complete review:

• Fiction:
  • The Mad and the Bad, by Jean-Patrick Manchette; tr. Donald Nicholson-Smith
  • Privy Portrait, by Jean-Luc Benoziglio; tr. Tess Lewis
• Non:
  • Limonov, by Emmanuel Carrère; tr. John Lambert

       The winners will be announced 9 June.

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

---

       STEFG Short Story Award

       They've announced that A Sheltered Woman, a story by Yiyun Li, has won the 2015 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award.
       At £30,000, it pays out more than most US novel awards .....

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

---

       Poetic extinction ?

       Some depressing graphs and charts at The Washington Post's 'Wonkblog', where Christopher Ingraham reports that Poetry is going extinct, government data show [via]
       The statistics certainly do not look good.
       (I struggle to review a reasonable amount of poetry at the complete review -- but, honestly, it's hard to get me interested in anything other than novels. Of course, there are those novels in verse .....)

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

---

       The Author and Me review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Éric Chevillard's The Author and Me.

       This is one of the titles on the Best Translated Book Awards longlist -- and next you week you can read me argue 'Why this book should win' at Three Percent .....

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

       Österreichischer Staatspreis für Europäische Literatur

       The Culture Division of the Federal Chancellery of Austria (as the former Ministry of Culture is now apparently organized) announced their annual literary prizes yesterday, including the big one, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature -- probably the most prestigious European-author prize going (check out the previous winners) -- and this year it goes to Nostalgia-author Mircea Cărtărescu (who has been picking up the prizes right and left recently -- most recently the Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding).

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

---

       Иностранная литература - prize

       The Russian Ясная Поляна-literary prizes now also have an 'international literature' category -- a best-translated-into-Russian award --, and they've announced the 33 longlisted titles. (Despite the long-longlist they will not have a shortlist -- they'll just announce a winner in October.)
       Among the requirements is that the winners show up for the ceremony -- interesting to see if Thomas Pynchon (who is longlisted) would consider that.
       Lots of these titles are under review at the complete review. It is interesting to see what titles they consider of merit -- and a bit disappointing that are no non-European-language-writing representatives.
       See also the Russia Beyond the Headlines report, The nominees for the Yasnaya Polyana Award's Foreign Literature category announced.

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

---

       Tales of the Metric System review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Imraan Coovadia's recent (and Sunday Times Fiction Prize longlisted) novel, Tales of the Metric System.

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

       Book-keeping/burning in ... North Korea

       At DailyNK Choi Song Min reports on Furnaces Ablaze with Kim Literature -- book-burning not, as you might expect, to provide heat but rather:

Some households in North Korea are reportedly incinerating literature and books written by the two former leaders, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, to evade potential punishment for failure to take adequate care of material deemed sacred under state doctrine.

       The inspectors -- yes, inspectors apparently come around to check up on the state of the Kim-lit in your library -- apparently face a problem now:

"Officials from the Propaganda and Agitation Department who carried out the inspection this time around are at a loss for words because it's not just a few households devoid of any Kim family literature -- it's almost all of them," she said. "Afraid that reporting this to their superiors in the Central Party will reflect poorly on their work and character, opening them up to myriad punishments, they're all staying tight-lipped about what they've seen."

       (Helpfully, the article also notes: "The content of this article was broadcast to the North Korean people via Unification Media Group" .....)

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

---

       Russian book prizes

       Lizok's Bookshelf has the run-down of the latest Russian book prizes -- the Национальный бестселлер (catchily shortened to 'NatsBest') shortlist and the Большая книга ('Big Book', sigh) longlist.
       A couple of familiar names -- notably Pelevin, Limonov, and Gelasimov on the 'Big Book' longlist -- but still noteworthy how few of these authors really figure in any way meaningfully abroad.

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

---

       New issue of list

       The Spring 2015 issue of list: Books from Korea is now available online (though not very obviously so -- that site redesign still needs a lot of work ...).
       There's a special section on the 'Korean Künstlerroman', as well as the usual variety of reviews, excerpts, etc.

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

       Vilas Sarang (1942-2015)

       Indian author Vilas Sarang has passed away; see, for example, Ramu Ramanathan on The Incomparable Silence of Vilas Sarang in the Mumbai Mirror and Anu Kumar's Vilas Sarang: the writer you should have read to understand post-modern Indian literature at Scroll.in.

       I'm fairly certain his collection of stories, Fair Tree of the Void, is the first translated-from-the-Marathi volume I managed to get my hands on (purchased, in 2003, for US$2.98 at the Strand in New York) -- though I think what struck me most back then was that it was: "translated from the Marathi by the author and Breon Mitchell", Mitchell even then, before his re-translation of The Tin Drum, known to me only as a translator from the German ..... (Anu Kumar's piece explains how this came about.)
       The larger collection, The Women in Cages, building on Fair Tree of the Void, is probably the place to dive in; get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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

---

       Gerald Murnane Q & A

       At 3:AM Tristan Foster has a Q & A, Eight questions for Gerald Murnane.

       See also, for example, my review of Murnane's Barley Patch.

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

---

       Pamuk's A Strangeness in my Mind

       Orhan Pamuk's new novel will be published in the UK and US in October, in Ekin Oklap's translation, as A Strangeness in my Mind (pre-order your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk). (In Ekin Oklap's translation: I can't help but note that Pamuk seems to be going through an awful lot of translators .....)

       At Qantara.de Ceyda Nurtsch now looks at the novel and Turkish reactions to it (and Pamuk), in A journey through time to a lost world -- the most detailed look in English we've gotten at the novel so far.

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

---

       Proffer on Brodsky

       At her Book Haven weblog Cynthia Haven enthuses about Ardis-co-founder Ellendea Proffer Teasley's Joseph Brodsky-focused memoir, Бродский среди нас ('Brodsky Among Us'), in The book that's rocking Russia: Ellendea Proffer’s Brodsky Among Us is a bestseller.
       As she notes:

Here’s why this story is important here, now: most of his poetic career was in the U.S., not Russia

       Nice to see a book like this can meet with such success in contemporary Russia -- and surely it's something that should also appear in English. Meanwhile, see also the АСТ publicity page.

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

       Pulitzer Prizes

       The 2015 Pulitzer Prizes -- which include several book categories -- have been announced.
       The Fiction prize went to All the Light We Cannot See (by Anthony Doerr; get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk). Nice to see The Moor's Account by Laila 'MoorishGirl' Lalami was one of the finalists .....
       The Criticism prize went to a TV critic.

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

---

       Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize

       They've announced the (co-)winners of this year's Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize: Diary of the Fall (by Michel Laub) and Hanns and Rudolf (by Thomas Harding); see, for example, the report at The Jewish Chronicle.

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

---

       Israeli book-price law

       Last year Israel passed legislation placing limits on book-discounting (previously widespread, especially among the market-dominating retailers), and it would be interesting to learn about the consequences of the implementation of this legislation.
       Unfortunately, what coverage one finds tends to be along the lines of Sharona Schwartz's New Israeli Law Mandates Price Controls for Books, Minimum Payments to Authors -- Here's What Happened to Sales After Just One Year at something calling itself 'The Blaze'.
       While several sources are cited, the only person who seems to have been interviewed for the piece is one "Boaz Arad, the head of the Ayn Rand Center's Israel branch", with predictable results -- quoted at length and offering such helpful textbook economic explanations as:

For example, Arad said, "If I can produce at the rate of $5 an hour -- that's what I'm worth to my employer -- maybe I'm not disciplined, maybe I'm disabled, but if you enact a minimum wage of $6 an hour, it means my employer will lose a dollar on every hour he will have me so the next day I'll lose my job."

       Much as readers no doubt appreciate the 'lesson' in basic economic theory ... well, there's considerable debate about the effects of minimum wage laws and this simplified version only makes the grade in your junior-high economics class. Beyond that, and more significantly: minimum wage laws are not really comparable to pricing laws of the sort under (ostensible) discussion.
       But good to see Arad 'understands' publishing -- and how authors can become successful ! --, offering helpful and insightful advice such as:

Almost the only way for unknown writers to become popular is to put their first book on sale, even to give it for free if possible, to publicize their name and get their audience and eventually make money from their writing,

       So that's the secret ! Now you know !

       As to the Israeli law in question: more (real) hard data and less ideologically tainted theorizing, please. Please.

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

---

       Attachment review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Florence Noiville's Attachment., due out shortly from Seagull Books (in a nice-looking little volume, by the way).

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

previous entries (11 - 20 April 2015)

archive index

- return to top of the page -

© 2015 the complete review


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