opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 10 November 2020

1 November: Pushkin House Book Prize | On Zamyatin's We | Q & As: Elfriede Jelinek - Phillipa K. Chong
2 November: Mishima Yukio abroad | Hope of Heaven review
3 November: A decade of AmazonCrossing | The Goncourts | Prix Femina
4 November: Royal Society Science Book Prize | Murata Sayaka profile | Neutron Stars review
5 November: Q & As: Shelley Frisch - DBC Pierre
6 November: Prix Renaudot finalists | The Lute review
7 November: Prix Médicis | JCB Prize roundtable
8 November: JCB Prize for Literature | Finlandia-palkinto finalists
9 November: Funding literature in ... Australia | The War of the Poor review
10 November: Österreichischer Buchpreis | Scotiabank Giller Prize | The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: A Day in the Life review

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       Österreichischer Buchpreis

       They've announced the winner of this year's €20,000 Austrian Book Prize, and it is Geschichten mit Marianne by Xaver Bayer; see also the Jung und Jung publicity page.
       The €10,000 debut prize went to Die Forelle, by Leander Fischer; see also the Wallstein Verlag publicity copy.

       I had a look at some of the Austrian Book Prize finalists but not this one; I have an e-copy of the Fischer and I think I'm more likely to get to that one .....

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

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       Scotiabank Giller Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's C$100,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the leading Canadian fiction prize, and it is How To Pronounce Knife, by Souvankham Thammavongsa.
       See also the publicity pages from McClelland & Stewart and Bloomsbury Circus, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, or Amazon.ca.

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       The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: A Day in the Life review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of the final volume in Ricardo Piglia's trilogy, The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: A Day in the Life, just out in English from Restless Books.

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       Funding literature in ... Australia

       At The Conversation they have an edited version of Gail Jones' submission to a parliamentary inquiry into the creative industries, Australian literature is chronically underfunded -- here's how to help it flourish.
       While the specifics here are Australia-related, similar issues of course exist in many other countries.

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       The War of the Poor review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Éric Vuillard's Thomas Müntzer-work, The War of the Poor, just out in the US from Other Press (and coming in the UK from Picador).

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

       JCB Prize for Literature

       They've announced the winner of this year's JCB Prize for Literature, the leading Indian fiction prize -- not yet at the official site, last I checked, but see, for example, the PTI report, here at The Hindu.
       The wining title is Moustache, by S.Hareesh, in Jayasree Kalathi's translation from the Malayalam; see, for example, the Harper Collins (India) publicity page. This isn't readily available in the US/UK (yet), but you can get a copy via Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk; in India, get your copy at Flipkart.
       I haven't seen this but of course hope eventually to .....

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       Finlandia-palkinto finalists

       They've announced the finalists for this year's Finlandia Prize for Fiction, the leading Finnish fiction prize, worth €30,000; a few days ago they also announced the finalists for the non-fiction prize.
       Several previous winners of the fiction prize are under review at the complete review, including: Oneiron by Laura Lindstedt (2015), Purge by Sofi Oksanen (2008), and Troll (published in the UK as Not Before Sundown) by Johanna Sinisalo (2000), so it's a prize that's worth paying some attention to.
       The winners will all be announced 25 November.

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

       Prix Médicis

       They've announced the winners of this year's prix Médicis in its three categories; see also the Livres Hebdo report.
       Chloé Delaume's Le cœur synthétique took the main prize; see also the Seuil publicity page.
       The foreign fiction prize went to the French translation of Antonio Muñoz Molina's Un andar solitario entre la gente; see also the Seix Barral publicity page. Quite a few of his works have been translated into English -- e.g. In her Absence -- but this one hasn't been yet -- though I expect we'll eventually see it.
       Interestingly, the essai-prize -- open to both works originally in French and in translation -- goes to a book that, in the US and UK, is generally considered a novel: the French translation of Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle: Book Six (The End).

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       JCB Prize roundtable

       They'll be announcing the winner of this year's JCB Prize for Literature, the leading Indian fiction prize, today and as a warm-up at Scroll.in they have: 'A roundtable discussion among five authors and one translator', in JCB Prize 2020: What the shortlisted authors told one another when they met for the first time.

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

       Prix Renaudot finalists

       The prix Renaudot is the number two French book prize, and is now also following the number-one Goncourt regarding the announcement of its prize: they've now announced the finalists but will continue holding off on saying who won until after the bookstore-lockdown currently in effect in France is lifted.
       See the Livres Hebdo report for the finalists -- six in the novel category and three in the essai category. One of the latter is already available in English -- Dominique Fortier's Paper Houses; see also the Coach House publicity page.
       The only novel still in contention for both the Goncourt and Renaudot is Hervé Le Tellier's L'anomalie; this is forthcoming from the Other Press in the US next year; meanwhile, see the Gallimard publicity page.

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       The Lute review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Kao Ming's P'i-p'a chi, the fourteenth-century The Lute.

       This one was a finalist for the 1981 National Book Award for Translation -- the year that John E. Woods' translation of Arno Schmidt's Evening Edged in Gold shared the prize (with Francis Steegmuller's translation of The Letters of Gustave Flaubert). Back then, dead authors were eligible for the prize -- they aren't now, for the revived Translated Literature prize.

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       Q & A: Shelley Frisch

       At Lizzy's Literary Life there's a Meet The Translator: Shelley Frisch-Q & A.
       Her most recent translation is of J.W.Mohnhaupt's The Zookeepers' War -- see the Simon & Schuster publicity page -- and much of the conversation is about that, but they cover more as well.

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       Q & A: DBC Pierre

       At the New Statesman Chris Power has a Q & A with DBC Pierre: “Novels are free spaces, just about the only ones left”.
       His recent novel, Meanwhile in Dopamine City, is shortlisted for this year's Goldsmiths Prize; I still can't quite see myself getting to it ..... (That he describes Vernon God Little as a work: "to which this novel is a loose book-end" doesn't help.)

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

       Royal Society Science Book Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Royal Society Science Book Prize, the £25,000 prize which is intended: "to promote the accessibility and joy of popular science books to the public", and it is Camilla Pang's Explaining Humans.
       At least that is what it's called in the UK, the forthcoming US edition will be called An Outsider's Guide to Humans, because ... publishers ..... (Amusingly, too, the UK edition is billed as by: "Dr. Camilla Pang", the US edition as by: "Camilla Pang, PhD".)
       See also the publicity pages from Viking (UK) and Viking (US), or get your copy at Amazon.co.uk, or pre-order your copy at Amazon.com.

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

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       Murata Sayaka profile

       At nippon.com Itakura Kimie profiles the Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings-author, in Aliens and Alienation: The Taboo-Challenging Worlds of “Earthlings” Author Murata Sayaka.
       Itakura sums up:

The message of Murata's fictional worlds is the importance of survival, no matter what challenges come, while battling the pressures of society's ideas of normality, common sense, and justice.

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

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       Neutron Stars review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Katia Moskvitch's new book on The Quest to Understand the Zombies of the Cosmos, Neutron Stars, just out from Harvard University Press.

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

       A decade of AmazonCrossing

       At Publishing Perspectives Porter Anderson talks with the editorial director of AmazonCrossing -- the Amazon imprint specializing in works in translation --, Gabriella Page-Fort, in Ten Years and 400 Titles Ago: The First Translation from Amazon Crossing.
       That first translation was Tierno Monénembo's The King of Kahel; quite a few other AmazonCrossing titles -- though nowhere near the 400-total ... -- are under review at the complete review.

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

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       The Goncourts

       In the Literary Review Anthony Cummins writes: 'On the brothers behind the prize', in A Brush with the Goncourts.
       Cummins mentions that he translated their novel, Germinie Lacerteux: "for a firm that specialised in publishing forgotten classics in smart little editions introduced by star names", but that it: "vanished into the cracks opened up by a succession of managerial changes at the publisher" (The publisher was Hesperus Press, and the book did get as far as (one creepy) cover, ISBN, and Amazon-listing.) It is a weird read -- "it's a remarkably powerful and unsettling novel that remains worth reading" he suggests -- and hopefully his translation will appear at some point; there was a Penguin Classics edition, a translation by Leonard Tancock, but that appears to be quite long out of print (but get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk).
       As to the Goncourts, they were an ... interesting pair, so this is a fun little read; as Cummins notes:

That one of the world's most prestigious literary prizes safely bears their name perhaps only testifies to how little read they are. One can imagine Edmond and Jules being cancelled in a heartbeat (I haven't said anything about their racism and anti-Semitism).

       Meanwhile, the announcement of this year's winner of the prix Goncourt remains up in the air, as we wait for the French lockdown to run its course.

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

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       Prix Femina

       The prix Goncourt may be keeping us waiting, but they have now announced the winners of the prix Femina in its three categories; see, for example, the Livres Hebdo report.
       UV-author Serge Joncour won the main prize for his Nature humaine -- see also the Flammarion publicity page --, while the Deborah Levy-doublet of Things I Don't Want to Know and The Cost of Living won the prix Femina étranger.

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

       Mishima Yukio abroad

       At nippon.com Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit writes on Mishima in the World: 50 Years Later.
       As she notes, Mishima wrote a lot -- and:

What is remarkable about this output is not just its extraordinary quantity of well over 20,000 pages, but the author's scope in respect to genre, theme, style, and audience.

       Though also, sadly: "In relation to his aforementioned literary output, his works in translation represent a fairly small section" -- and, indeed, far too few are available in English, even though in recent years there have at least been a few new translations (e.g. Life for Sale and Star).
       Hijiya-Kirschnereit's two examples of how Mishima has been a: "source of inspiration in the field of literature" abroad are both under review at the complete review: Christian Kracht's The Dead and Dany Laferrière's I Am a Japanese Writer.

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       Hope of Heaven review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of John O'Hara's 1938 novel, Hope of Heaven.

       O'Hara was once hugely successful -- my 1966 Bantam paperback advertises for eleven O'Hara bestsellers on the back pages, noting: "16,000,000 copies have already been sold", and apparently no one had as many stories published in The New Yorker as he did (a staggering 247) -- but he's not exactly widely read any longer (though the Library of America did publish two collections, one of four novels (including this one) and one of stories).
       This one does suggest his strength was in the story-form -- he fumbles around with the material here some, and it's very short for a novel -- but he had some talent and this is of some interest (even if arguably largely for its oddity).
       With characters and dialogue like this ... well, it's something, ain't it:



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

       Pushkin House Book Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Pushkin House Book Prize, a £10,000 prize "awarded each year for the best non-fiction writing in English on the Russian-speaking world", and it is The Return of the Russian Leviathan, by Sergei Medvedev; see also Michele A. Berdy's report in The Moscow Times.
       See also the Polity publicity page for The Return of the Russian Leviathan, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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       On Zamyatin's We

       In the new issue of The New Criterion Jacob Howland writes, at considerable length: 'On the legacy of Yevgeny Zamyatin's seminal dystopian novel', in One hundred years of We.
       Get your copy of We at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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

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       Q & A: Elfriede Jelinek

       Elfriede Jelinek's On the Royal Road is just out in English from Seagull Books -- see their publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk -- and in The Hindu Milind Brahme and Arati Kumari have a Q & A with Nobel Laureate Elfriede Jelinek on how she uses theatre as a licence to seize speech
       As she explains:

I try to find structures in reality (in the complex reality) and also exaggerate them in order to cut paths with a machete through the jungle, so to speak, and to structurally display such complicated correlations and circumstances, without simplifying them. Generalising does not mean simplifying to me. In this regard, the drama of ancient Greece has always offered me a model, which I highlight by using quotations from it

       Jelinek was a controversial Nobel pick, and in the English-speaking world remains best-known for her novels, but she is also one of the leading German-language dramatists, and though quite a bit of her theater-work has been translated it is not nearly as widely performed as in continental Europe. It's interesting how she describes her playwriting here:

Strangely, for me, writing for theatre has nothing to do with the practice of theatre. Rather, I use theatre as a kind of licence to write. Privately, I speak very little. But my language for the theatre is like an exhibiting, almost as in the visual arts. I exhibit texts which allow me to speak or, rather, I seize speech, even if it is not intended for me. It is always said that women talk incessantly, albeit in private; yet they are still not represented in public. So, then I speak through theatre and doing so, I am conscious that I am fighting for the right to speak in public. My theatre is language, and it is incumbent upon those staging it (directors, actors, designers) to make a play out of it, with which I don't want to be held up in the urgent, urging flow of my speech. Thus, every one of my plays is many plays, because everyone can make their own out of it.

       I wonder if that's one of the reasons the US/UK theater-world hasn't embraced her as much as those elsewhere have .....

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

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       Q & A: Phillipa K. Chong

       At the LSE Review of Books they have an Author Interview: Q and A with Dr Phillipa K. Chong on Inside the Critics' Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times.
       See also my review of that book.

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

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