opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

11 - 20 June 2020

11 June: PEN Translates awards | Libraries in ... Japan | Michael Dirda's book collection
12 June: Bookselling in ... Mumbai | The Hospital Ship review
13 June: Walter Scott Prize | Theakston Crime Novel shortlist | African crime fiction
14 June: Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize shortlist | Jean Raspail (1925-2020) | European Essay Prize | Publishing in ... Quebec
15 June: Daniel Kehlmann Q & A | Four by Four review
16 June: NBCC board | Siegfried Lenz Preis | Norway's Frankfurt Book Fair report | The Thousand and One Ghosts review
17 June: Wolfson History Prize | Fitzcarraldo Editions profile | Literature from ... Nepal | Online literature in ... China
18 June: Peace Prize of the German Book Trade | Miles Franklin shortlist | You Should Have Left - the movie
19 June: Princess of Asturias Award for Literature | Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist | Plautus reviews
20 June: Carlos Ruiz Zafón (1964-2020) | Publishing in ... Bangladesh

go to weblog

return to main archive

       Carlos Ruiz Zafón (1964-2020)

       Bestselling Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafón has passed away; see, for example, the obituary as well as Mark Lawson on The Shadow of the Wind and the remarkable success of Carlos Ruiz Zafón, both at The Guardian.
       His big success was The Shadow of the Wind -- long also one of the most popular reviews at the site.

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

---

       Publishing in ... Bangladesh

       At Scroll.in Rifat Munim wonders: Books were an essential part of life in Bangladesh before Covid-19. Will they bounce back ?
       An interesting overview -- not least:

As for imported books, no new book has arrived in the country since all cross-border transportation remained suspended with India since March 22. More than 90% of imported books [...] enter Bangladesh through the Petrapole-Benapole border crossing with India.

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

       Princess of Asturias Award for Literature

       They've announced that this year's Princess of Asturias Award for Literature will go to Norma Jeane Baker of Troy-author Anne Carson, selected from 28 candidates from 17 different countries.
       There are eight Princess of Asturias Awards, and they've announced six of them so far this year, including the one for Communication and Humanities, which will be shared by the Guadalajara International Book Fair and the Hay Festival of Literature & Arts, and Sports, which is going to ... rally car driver Carlos Sainz. The prize comes with €50,000; also: a diploma and an insignia. And, by the way and for what it's worth, the Princess of Asturias herself is both "Heir to the Crown of Spain" and all of fourteen years old.

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

---

       Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist

       The Arthur C. Clarke Award, "given for the best science fiction novel first published in the United Kingdom during the previous year", has announced its shortlist for this year's prize; the winner will be announced in September.

       Impressively -- because it remains the exception, rather than the rule -- they reveal all the titles that were in the running for the prize, a total of 121 submission.
       As I can not repeat often enough: every book prize should do this.

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

---

       Plautus reviews

       The most recent additions to the complete review are my reviews of two plays by Plautus, from the (relatively) recently updated Loeb Classical Library-series edition:

• Amphitryon
• Asinaria, or The Comedy of Asses

       The Loeb Plautus covers five volumes, with the plays presented alphabetically; these are the first two plays (of the five in the first volume), but I think I will continue to work my way through more of them. Though not all at once.

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

       Peace Prize of the German Book Trade

       They've announced that this year's Peace Prize of the German Book Trade -- awarded at the conclusion of the Frnakfurt Book Fair -- will go to Indian economist and philosopher Amartya Sen.
       He will receive the prize -- "linked with a prize money of 25,000 euros" -- on 18 October.

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

---

       Miles Franklin shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Miles Franklin Literary Award, a leading Australian novel award.
       The Gerald Murnane -- A Season on Earth -- that was longlisted did not make the cut.
       The winner will be announced 16 July.

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

---

       You Should Have Left - the movie

       Daniel Kehlmann's novel You Should Have Left has now been made into a movie, directed by David Koepp and starring Amanda Seyfried and Kevin Bacon; due to circumstances it is a straight-to-digital release and will be available to rent starting tomorrow; see also the official site.

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

       Wolfson History Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Wolfson History Prize, awarded: "to promote and recognise outstanding history written for a general audience" and paying out £40,000, and it is (the 1088-page !) The Boundless Sea, by David Abulafia (not to be confused with his earlier book, The Great Sea ...).
       This is one of those books published by a traditional publisher in the UK -- Penguin/Allen Lane -- but a university press in the US -- Oxford University Press ..... See also the publicity pages from Allen Lane and OUP, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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

---

       Fitzcarraldo Editions profile

       At inews.co.uk Catherine Taylor reports on Fitzcarraldo Editions: how an industry upstart published two Nobel laureates in its first five years.
       While some of the titles mentioned here are published by other publishers in the US, quite a few Fitzcarraldo Editions-titles are under review at the complete review; they're reliably good.

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

---

       Literature from ... Nepal

       At GlobalVoices Sangita Swechcha has a Q & A with Karen Van Drie, considering: How can Nepal's literary tradition make its mark on the global scene ?
       Among the advice -- and certainly worth considering:

Don't underestimate the power of your cuisine to get people around the world interested in your literature. Cookbooks related to Nepalese cuisine and a natural advocate for your cuisine able to cook and market the books in English are an exciting entry point to learning about the culture.

       Though I'm hoping for more fiction in translation .....

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

---

       Online literature in ... China

       Online literature is, as I have often noted here, very big in China, and, since they like to control these kinds of things, it's no surprise to hear that, as Xinhua reports, that: "China's National Press and Publication Administration has released a document, requiring strengthened regulation of online literature publishing".
       Mandy Zuo reports at greater length in the South China Morning Post, that: 'Healthy, positive, correct': China's censorship machine tightens its grip on online literature

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

       NBCC board

       The American National Book Critics Circle has not had a good couple of days: as John Maher reports at Publishers Weekly, NBCC Board Gutted as Fallout Over Leaked Emails, Race Issues Widens.
       The article has links to the relevant Twitter posts and the like; it's a pretty spectacular mess, and it'll be interesting to see what happens next.

       (Note: I have been a member of the NBCC in the past, but haven't kept up for quite a few years.)

       (Updated - 17 June): See now also Lila Shapiro's report at Vulture, The National Book Critics Circle Has Imploded.

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

---

       Siegfried Lenz Preis

       They've announced the winner of this year's Siegfried Lenz Prize, a biennial €50,000 international author prize now awarded for the fourth time, and it is Ljudmila Ulitzkaja -- i.e. Ludmila Ulitskaya.
       Although she is the 2020 prize winner, the prize ceremony is only planned for 19 March 2021; yes, they announce these things way in advance.
       Two Ulitskaya novels are under review at the complete review: Daniel Stein, Interpreter and The Big Green Tent.

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

---

       Norway's Frankfurt Book Fair report

       Norway was the 'guest of honour' at the Frankfurt Book Fair last year, and NORLA has now presented their report on how that went; see the summary here.
       Among the statistics:

510 Norwegian titles appeared on the German book market in 2019, both translations from Norwegian and books written about Norway in German. Of these, 296 were books from Norway. 80 Norwegian authors were translated into German for the first time.

       I'm almost as impressed that there were apparently 214 books "written about Norway in German" as that there were 296 books from Norway itself .....
       Of course, it would be interesting to see how many books were translated into English .....
       I realize the Publishers Weekly Translation Database only gives a partial picture, but the numbers there do not suggest a rousing success: looking at all translations into English from Norwegian (fiction as well as poetry), the totals for the year before Norway was guest of honour, the year it was the guest, and the year after suggest an anti-trend:

• 2018: 28
• 2019: 20
• 2020: 7

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

---

       The Thousand and One Ghosts review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Alexandre Dumas' 1849 novel, The Thousand and One Ghosts.

       This translation was originally published by Hesperus, in 2004, under the title: One Thousand and One Ghosts; Alma recently (2018) re-published it -- changing the title ever so slightly. Why, I can not fathom; the ways of publishing remain a mystery to me.

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

       Daniel Kehlmann Q & A

       In the New Indian Express Jaideep Sen has a Q & A Writer's nook: How did Daniel Kehlmann's Tyll gain unexpected relevance from the pandemic ?
       Amusing to hear that Kehlmann reports that when he started writing Tyll in 2012: "I felt it was a very untimely topic, which was part of its attraction for me".
       And good to see that he's read fellow International Booker Prize-longlisted The Memory Police ("which I loved") and is planning on reading The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree ("what a great title !").
       As to his pandemic-writing:

I'm actually writing a play about the pandemic. A couple of short satirical scenes in the style of Bertolt Brecht or Karl Kraus about the danger of the virus and the crazy consequences of radical lockdowns. My favourite theatre in Vienna is going to perform them as soon as all this is over and they are allowed to.

       His 'favourite theatre' is presumably the Theater in der Josefstadt, though they have no listing for this project yet. They do have one he is associated with planned, however -- his translation of Christopher Hampton's play Visit from an Unknown Woman, which is based on Stefan Zweig's Brief einer Unbekannten, an unusual German-to-English-to-German journey for a story. Adding a final twist: Hampton is directing. It was supposed to premiere in the spring, but now is scheduled to debut 1 October.

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

---

       Four by Four review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Sara Mesa's Four by Four, recently out from Open Letter.

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

       Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize shortlist

       They've announced the eight-title strong shortlist for this year's Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, a prize for: "book-length literary translations into English from any living European language".
       The only title under review at the complete review is Max Havelaar, by Multatuli -- but my review is of an older translation, not the new one shortlisted here, by Ina Rilke and David McKay. Somewhat surprisingly, I actually only have two more of these titles, the Salústio and the Ganás.

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

---

       Jean Raspail (1925-2020)

       French author Jean Raspail has passed away; there's tons of French coverage -- see, for example, obituaries in Le Monde and Le Figaro. (Hard not to be impressed that he published not one but two novels last year .....)
       Raspail is of course best-known -- indeed, notorious -- for his novel The Camp of the Saints which has, alas, been far too much in the news again, as it is apparently a popular read and, shockingly, influential among those advising and otherwise supporting the current American president. It is not a good book. It is deeply misguided, problematic, and offensive -- one of the few books about which one can say unreservedly that we'd be better off without it.

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

---

       European Essay Prize

       So this is kind of fun: the Fondation Charles Veillon has announced the winner of its 42nd European Essay Prize -- a CHF20,000 prize -- and it is the French translation of an Italian work that has an English title, The Game, by Alessandro Baricco; see, for example, the Einaudi publicity page, as well as the Livres Hebdo report on the prize.
       Entirely predictably, even though quite a bit of Baricco's work has been translated into English (e.g. Mr. Gwyn), this has not.

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

---

       Publishing in ... Quebec

       In the Montreal Gazette T'Cha Dunlevy reports on how Crisis puts Quebec's smaller literary presses in a tight bind.

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

       Walter Scott Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, a £25,000 prize, and it is The Narrow Land, by Christine Dwyer Hickey -- a novel about the marriage of the artists Edward and Jo Hopper.
       See also the Atlantic Books publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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

---

       Theakston Crime Novel shortlist

       They've announced the six-title shortlist for this year's Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year; the public can now vote for their favorite.
       The only title under review at the complete review is My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite.
       The winner will be announced 23 July.

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

---

       African crime fiction

       At The Conversation Aretha Phiri has a Q & A with Sam Naidu on how African crime and detective fiction reshapes the genre.
       Naidu's paper -- 'That Ever-blurry Line Between Us and the Criminals: Re-Visioning Justice in African Noir' -- does not appear to be available online, but the discussion is still quite interesting -- though very contemporary-work focused.

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

       Bookselling in ... Mumbai

       At Scroll.in Suhit Kelkar considers What will masks, physical distancing, and public fear of Covid-19 mean for Mumbai's booksellers ? -- though of course similar issues and questions are faced by booksellers the world over.

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

---

       The Hospital Ship review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Martin Bax's 1976 novel, The Hospital Ship -- too much of which feels entirely contemporary at this time.

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

       PEN Translates awards

       English PEN has announced that Nineteen PEN Translates awards go to titles from fifteen countries and thirteen languages.
       These awards fund: "up to 75% of translation costs for selected projects" (and they'll consider subsidizing the whole thing for publishers with a turnover of less than £500,000).
       Some promising-looking projects here, including new works by several authors already under review at the complete review -- Daniela Hodrová and César Aira -- and great to see that a novel from South Sudan is coming.

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

---

       Libraries in ... Japan

       At nippon.com they report that the Number of Libraries Increasing in Japan, as:

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology released statistics showing that there were 3,360 libraries and similar facilities in Japan as of October 1, 2018. This sees an added 29 facilities since the last statistics were published in 2015 and an increase of 618 since this survey began in 2002.

       And in 2017:

There were 33.8 million registered patrons who borrowed 653.8 million books.

       That was, however, a decline in the number of books borrowed compared to the previous survey.

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

---

       Michael Dirda's book collection

       Michael Dirda writes in The Washington Post on how All the books in my 300 boxes sparked joy. The lockdown made me rethink why I was keeping them.
       A fun look at the books he has, as well as ones he hasn't read, as he sorts out what to (try to) get rid of. Yes: "seven extra copies of Cyril Connolly’s moody collection of pensées, The Unquiet Grave" is, no question, excessive .....

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

previous entries (1 - 10 June 2020)

archive index

- return to top of the page -

© 2020 the complete review


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