opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

21 - 30 September 2018

21 September: Man Booker Prize shortlist | Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters | What to Do review
22 September: Prix Page America | The Snail on the Slope review
23 September: Writing in ... Québec | 10 years of Open Letter
24 September: English-language Indian literary awards | One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand review
25 September: Nobel Prize non-countdown | Mina review
26 September: The National Book Award for Translated Literature | Cundill History Prize shortlist | The Cold War Swap review
27 September: Goldsmiths Prize shortlist | Wilhelm Raabe-Literaturpreis | Victor Martinovich on Belarusian culture | Lady Chatterley's Lover up for auction
28 September: Future Humanities panel | Khmer Literature Festival | 'Conversations on the Art of Literary Translation' | Löwenstern review
29 September: Hungarian Translators' House | Meilleur livre étranger finalists | Fiction from ... Greenland
30 September: Most-produced plays in US | Ferdinand Bruckner reviews

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       Most-produced plays in US

       American Theatre has its lists of the eleven Most-Produced Plays of the 2018-19 Season and the twenty Top 20 Most-Produced Playwrights of the 2018-19 season (excluding A Christmas Carol and plays by Shakespeare (of which there are apparently 96 productions this season)).
       A Doll's House, Part 2, by Lucas Hnath, easily led the way -- and also propelled Hnath to most-produced playwright.
       I was surprised not see more old, 'classic' playwrights among the most-produced - with August Wilson coming in as 10th most produced, and Tennessee Williams only 17th (and Sam Shepard at 20th).

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

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       Ferdinand Bruckner reviews

       The most recent additions to the complete review are my reviews of the two plays by Ferdinand Bruckner (Theodor Tagger) in the collection Two Plays of Weimar Germany just out from Northwestern University Press:

• Youth Is a Sickness
• Criminals

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

       Hungarian Translators' House

       At hlo Owen Good has a Q & A with Péter Rácz: As often happens in life, it was love, about his role as chairperson of the Hungarian Translators' House Foundation
       Among the points of interest:

Every year 120-140 translators visit the house, half of them come with their own commissioned job and are already professional literary translators, whereas the rest come to take part in seminars. Out of all of Europe, I think Greek is the only nationality we haven’t had yet. From the Far East there’s been Mongolian, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Indian, and in the other direction, from across the water, the USA. It’s clear that where the Hungarian language is well-taught, there are more translators, for example in Poland. In 2017, roughly 40 writers were translated into 18 languages, and 28 works translated in the house were published around the world.

       What's up with the Greeks ? Surely they need Hungarian works to read, too !

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

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       Meilleur livre étranger finalists

       The rather boringly titled French 'best foreign book' prize has announced its six fiction finalists and five non finalists -- with three apiece translated from English; see, for example, the Livres Hebdo report.
       This actually has a pretty decent list of previous winners (but no official site/page, alas), and it's always interesting to see what foreign literature attracts attention elsewhere.
       The winner will be announced 29 November.

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

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       Fiction from ... Greenland

       The only Greenlandic novel under review at the complete review is Mathias Storch's Singnagtugaq, but a much newer author is finally also on the English horizon: already profiled last year at The New Yorker, as The Young Queer Writer Who Became Greenland's Unlikely Literary Star, Niviaq Korneliussen's 2014 HOMO sapienne (see the miliq publicity page) is finally coming out in English -- as Crimson, soon, in the UK; as Last Night in Nuuk early next year in the US. (Publish it with a uniform title ? Ha ! The publishing professionals obviously know better .....) See the publicity pages from Virago and Grove/Black Cat, or pre-order your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk
       At The Economist's 1843 Sarah Ditum now also profiles the author, in Breaking the ice: Greenland's new literary star.

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

       Future Humanities panel

       On Monday they held the Future Humanities: Translating World Literature panel, bringing together the editors of such great series as the I Tatti Renaissance Library, the Loeb Classical Library, the Library of Arabic Literature, the Library of Chinese Humanities, the Murty Classical Library of India, and the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library
       At ArabLit M Lynx Qualey reports on it, in Six Classical Libraries: Challenges in Editing, Translation, and Beyond -- and you can watch the whole thing here.

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

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       Khmer Literature Festival

       The Khmer Literature Festival ran 21 to 23 September, and in the Khmer Times Say Tola reports on Celebrating local literature.

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

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       'Conversations on the Art of Literary Translation'

       Today and tomorrow they're holding Conversations on the Art of Literary Translation: In Celebration of the Fortieth Anniversary of the Boston University Literary Translation Seminar.
       Looks like a great program.

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

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       Löwenstern review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Adolf Muschg's Löwenstern (not yet translated into English, I'm afraid).

       Muschg has been on quite a Japanese kick for a while now, including this year's German Book Prize longlisted (but not shortlisted) Heimkehr nach Fukushima, though this one is more about not reaching Japan than reaching it.
       I am surprised how little by this leading Swiss author is available in translation -- the collection The Blue Man (get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk) seems to be the extent of it, which is astonishing.

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

       Goldsmiths Prize shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Goldsmiths Prize, celebrating: "the qualities of creative daring associated with the College and to reward fiction that breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form" -- always one of the more interesting prize shortlists.
       In The Guardian the chair of judges, Adam Mars-Jones, writes about this year's prize, in Novel senses of new: the 2018 Goldsmiths prize for fiction shortlist.
       The winner will be announced 14 November.

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

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       Wilhelm Raabe-Literaturpreis

       They've announced that Verzeichnis einiger Verluste, by Judith Schalansky, takes this year's €30,000 Wilhelm Raabe-Literaturpreis, one of the leading (and best-endowed) German book prizes.
       See also the Suhrkamp foreign rights page for the novel; MacLehose Press is apparently bringing it out in the UK.
       Several of Schalansky's books have been published in translation, including The Giraffe's Neck and the widely praised Atlas of Remote Islands.
       She gets to pick up the award on 4 November.

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

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       Victor Martinovich on Belarusian culture

       Victor Martinovich -- author of Paranoia and Мова -- writes about Belarusian culture: National, European, post-Soviet in a New Eastern Europe-article now available at Eurozine.
       An interesting overview.

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

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       Lady Chatterley's Lover up for auction

       Sotheby's is auctioning the copy of D.H.Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover that the presiding judge at the 1960 obscenity trial, Laurence Byrne, relied on -- complete with the damask bag his wife stitched for him to carry it in.
       It's Lot 159 in their 30 October auction; the estimate is £10-15,000.
       See also the BBC story, Judge's copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover to be auctioned.

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

       The National Book Award for Translated Literature

       The (American) National Book Awards include a translation category again for the first time in over thirty years, and they recently announced the longlist for it -- and now you can read me on The Longlist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature at the Words without Borders Daily weblog.

       (Looking back at that list of winners of the previous incarnation of the National Book Award for translation is, however, a reminder that translation prizes just ain't what they used to be: John E. Woods' translation of Arno Schmidt's Evening Edged in Gold won the 1981 prize (and the 1981 PEN Translation Prize, too) -- and 35 years later his Bottom's Dream (the translation-into-English-of-the-millennium, to date) couldn't even crack the Best Translated Book Award's twenty-five-title strong longlist ...... (By the way: used copies of Evening Edged in Gold sell for even more than the already much-appreciated Bottom's Dream.))

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

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       Cundill History Prize shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for the US$75,000 Cundill History Prize.
       Three finalists will be announced 31 October, and the winner on 15 November.

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

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       The Cold War Swap review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Ross Thomas' 1966 debut, the thriller The Cold War Swap.

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

       Nobel Prize non-countdown

       Nobel Prize announcement week is coming up, with the Nobel laureates to be revealed 1 through 8 October -- all, that is, except for the literature prize-winner, because, as they put it:

The Swedish Academy has decided to postpone the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature, with the intention of awarding it in 2019.

       Since I usually milk the run-up to the Nobel Prize here at the site for all it's worth, this is kind of disappointing (and the fact that they'll (probably) be awarding two next year -- the 2018 and the 2019 prize -- dilutes rather than doubles the future fun ...).
       (The ridiculous New Prize in Literature is, of course, no substitute -- and even less so since they allowed Murakami Haruki to withdraw. (Among the good things about the admittedly also ridiculous (but-it's-been-around-so-long-it's-fun-to-pretend-to-take-it-seriously) Nobel Prize is that they wouldn't even acknowledge author's whims like that, much less bow to them.))
       At least there have been some attempts to continue the what-if pantomime -- as, for example, The New York Times got together a couple of its critics (Dwight Garner, Parul Sehgal, and Jennifer Szalai) and let them offer their takes, in The Nobel Prize in Literature Takes This Year Off. Our Critics Don't.
       (It will be interesting to see how the Swedes handle next year's one-two punch (if it comes to that -- who knows if the Swedish Academy can ever get their house in order ...), an unusual opportunity that might allow for some more interesting picks, appeasing different factions in this strange institution.)

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

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       Mina review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Kim Sagwa's Mina, due out shortly from Two Lines Press.

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

       English-language Indian literary awards

       At Scroll.in Kanishka Gupta offers a useful overview of Indian literary awards for books in English, in Eye on the prize: This list of Indian literary awards for books in English is a long and varied one.

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

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       One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Nobel laureate Luigi Pirandello's 1926 novel, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand.
       This 1990 William Weaver translation is now (just about) out in a new edition from Spurl.

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

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       Writing in ... Québec

       Peter McCambridge reports on New Frontiers of Canadian Publishing in Québec in Publishers Weekly, just one of a dozen articles looking at publishing in the Canadian province in this issue; scroll down for links to the others.

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

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       10 years of Open Letter

       In Publishers Weekly Ed Nawotka reports Chad Post's Open Letter Books Turns 10.
       Over the course of this decade, Open Letter has now published an impressive "103 books from 44 countries and 26 languages"; 45 of them are under review at the complete review.

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

       Prix Page America

       Yet another French literary prize honoring ... American books -- in this case, first novels: the prix Page America, which has now announced its 2018 winner: In the Distance, by Hernán Diaz (which, you might remember, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist this year); see the Livres Hebdo report.
       See also the official book site, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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

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       The Snail on the Slope review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's The Snail on the Slope.
       This is just out in a new translation, by Olena Bormashenko, the latest of several Strugatskys Chicago Review Press has brought out over the last few years in their very welcome revival of this classic author-team.

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

       Man Booker Prize shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and the six finalists are:

• Everything Under by Daisy Johnson
• The Long Take by Robin Robertson
• The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
• Milkman by Anna Burns
• The Overstory by Richard Powers
• Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

       (Yes, none of these are under review at the complete review; I haven't seen any of these.)
       The novel in verse -- with photographs, too, apparently --, The Long Take, remains in the running ..... (This one is only coming out in the US next January (though presumably a Man Booker win would push that release date up ...); see the Knopf publicity page or pre-order your copy at Amazon.com, or get it already at Amazon.co.uk.)
       The winner will be announced 16 October.

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

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       Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters

       The National Book Foundation has announced that Isabel Allende will receive the 2018 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
       She's the first author who doesn't write in English to get the award; the list of previous winners includes ... quite a variety.

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

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       What to Do review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Pablo Katchadjian's What to Do.

       This came out from Dalkey Archive Press a couple of years ago, and they're bringing out his Thanks later this year; pre-order your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. Of course, the book which he is best known for, his 'fattened' Borges, El Aleph engordado, is unlikely to be available in English anytime soon; see, for example, Lucy Popescu's overview in the Literary Review.

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

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