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The Literary Saloon Archive

21 - 31 December 2020

21 December: Top 21st century books ? | Translation in ... India | Never Go Back review
22 December: The Novel Prize shortlist | Shen Congwen profile | Dakshin Literary Festival reports
23 December: PEN America Literary Awards longlists | New World Literature Today | Dutch writers' 2020 most significant reads | Bestselling in ... Iran | Gulliver's Voyage to Phantomimia review
24 December: Athens Prize for Literature | Most-read PW reviews | Éric Chevillard roundtable
25 December: Translating from ... Bhojpuri | Brief Lives of Idiots review
26 December: Ernst Weiss | Heisei fiction | Jack, the Lady Killer review
27 December: Top 10s in ... India | '50 best new books on China' | Barry Lopez (1945-2020)
28 December: Coming in 2021 | 'Mining the Dalkey Archive' | Samuel R. Delany Q & A
29 December: Deutscher Krimipreis | Dutch critics' favorites | The Orlando Trilogy reviews
30 December: 2021 translations from ... the Japanese | Bookselling in ... Paris
31 December: Reading Luxembourg | What Bangladeshi writers read in 2020 | The Employees review

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       Reading Luxembourg

       At Delano Jess Bauldry writes about how they're Turning the page for Luxembourg literature, as the Agence Luxembourgeoise d'Action Culturelle's Reading Luxembourg-initiative tries to get the word out about Luxembourg literature -- written in French, German, and Luxembourgish. Translation grants are available, so that might help convince foreign publishers .....
       Always good to see sites like this promoting local literatures -- though of course the number (and kind) of countries that can pay for these is limited .....
       For a brief overview of literature from Luxembourg, see this short history.

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

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       What Bangladeshi writers read in 2020

       In The Daily Star Shah Tazrian Ashrafi and Towrin Zaman "asked some of the prominent writers and academics from Bangladesh about the books they most enjoyed in 2020", and collect the answers in “What I read in 2020”: Writers Select
       Always interesting to see, especially the local selections.

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       The Employees review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of A workplace novel of the 22nd century, Olga Ravn's The Employees, recently out from new publisher Lolli Editions.

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       2021 translations from ... the Japanese

       At Metropolis Jessica Esa suggests 5 (Translated) Japanese Novels to Read in 2021.
       I am looking forward to these -- but the translation from the Japanese I most looking forward to is Mizumura Minae's An I-Novel, coming in March; see also the Columbia University Press publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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       Bookselling in ... Paris

       In The Guardian Jon Henley reports on how Through gilets jaunes, strikes and Covid, Paris's 400-year-old book stalls fight to survive.

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       Deutscher Krimipreis

       They've announced the winner (and two runners-up) in each of the two categories of the German Mystery Prize, awarded for the thirty-seventh time this year.
       The German winner is Zoë Beck's Paradise City; see also the Suhrkamp foreign rights page.
       The international winner is Denise Mina's Gods and Beasts -- with Kim Young-ha's Diary of a Murderer the second runner-up.

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       Dutch critics' favorites

       At NRC they have no less than twenty-four of their reviewers each name their top five titles for the year -- making for a big collection of de beste boeken van 2020.
       (Some books do get mentioned by more than one critic, so the full list isn't quite 120 titles strong, but it's a lot of books -- including several that have not yet been translated into Dutch.)

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       The Orlando Trilogy reviews

       The most recent additions to the complete review are my reviews of the three volumes of Isabel Colegate's The Orlando Trilogy:

1. Orlando King
2. Orlando at the Brazen Threshold
3. Agatha

       These books -- first published between 1968 and 1973 -- were recently republished in an omnibus edition by Bloomsbury -- somewhat confusingly, under the title: Orlando King -- so the trilogy is again readily available.

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       Coming in 2021

       A steady stream of previews of books to look forward to in the coming year have been appearing, with Alex Preston now writing in The Observer on Fiction to look out for in 2021.
       Other previews already out include:

• The 21 Most Anticipated Books of 2021 at Time
• 55 of the Most Anticipated Books of 2021 at Oprah
• At The Scotsman they have both Allan Massie's 2021 Arts Preview: The Year Ahead in Books and Stuart Kelly on the year ahead in books
• The 30 Most Anticipated SFF Books of 2021 by Christina Orlando at Tor.com

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       'Mining the Dalkey Archive'

       This sounds promising: Chad W. Post is starting a: "Literary history and analysis of Dalkey Archive Press's catalog" at Mining the Dalkey Archive.
       No question, Dalkey has a rich -- and, I'm pretty sure, often entertaining (at least from a distance ...) -- history, so this should be fun.

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       Samuel R. Delany Q & A

       At The Collidescope Ben Shore offers Squicky Clean: An Interview with Samuel R. Delany.
       Good to hear that, in response to the question: What is a novel you think deserves more readers ? his answer includes:

I've mentioned The Sot-Weed Factor to you a couple of times. As well, there are the wonderful Patrick White novels, Voss, Riders in the Chariot, The Aunt's Story ... Somebody first recommended him to me on my first trip to Greece, and a few years later, he got his Nobel Prize in 1973, but I still don't think he's anywhere near as widely read as he should be.

       Agreed !

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       Top 10s in ... India

       The Hindu now offers its list of the Top 10 fiction books of 2020, while in the Deccan Herald Madhavi S. Mahadevan and P.S.Nissim each list their ten Best Indian reads of 2020.

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       '50 best new books on China'

       Via I'm pointed to Manya Koetse's list of 50 of the Best New Books on China for the Holidays and Winter 2020/2021 at What's on Weibo.
       It includes some fiction; certainly an interesting variety.

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       Barry Lopez (1945-2020)

       American author Barry Lopez has passed away; see, for example, Amy Wang's report in The Oregonian, Barry Lopez, award-winning and influential Oregon author, dies at 75.
       I haven't read any of his work; see also his official site.

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

       Ernst Weiss

       Good to see Ernst Weiss profiled, by Moshe Zimmermann in Haaretz, in the slightly confusingly titled The Doctor Who Treated Hitler's Hysterical Blindness. (Weiss was also a doctor, and he wrote a book about a doctor who treated Hitler, but he didn't treat Hitler.)
       As Zimmermann notes, Weiss' work was highly regarded by many of the authors of his time, but he has not been widely translated into English -- or Hebrew, as: "it wasn't until 2019 that one of his novels was translated into Hebrew". Indeed, it's interesting to hear that much significant German literature of the Nazi and leading-up-to-Nazi era has only recently been translated into Hebrew: Anna Seghers' Transit in 2013 and Ödön von Horváth's Youth Without God in 2017, for example.

       Archipelago brought out his excellent Georg Letham a decade ago -- see their publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk -- and several of his other works have been translated, though the only two under review at the complete review haven't: Die Feuerprobe and Der Gefängnisarzt. (Long a great admirer of his work, I read practically all of it before I started the site.)

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       Heisei fiction

       At nippon.com Richard Medhurst offers a quick overview of Heisei Fiction: Japanese Writers of 1989-2019 -- with many of the works he mentions under review at the complete review.

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       Jack, the Lady Killer review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of H.R.F. Keating's Jack, the Lady Killer -- a mystery-in-verse !

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

       Translating from ... Bhojpuri

       Gautam Choubey's recent translation of Pandey Kapil's 1977 novel Phoolsunghi -- see also the India Hamish Hamilton publicity page -- is apparently the first of a novel from the Bhojpuri, and at Firstpost Aarushi Agrawal now has a Q & A with the translator, in The world of Pandey Kapil's Phoolsunghi: Gautam Choubey on translating the novel, Bhojpuri literary culture
       One hopes the novel will also be more readily available in the US/UK at some point -- and that we might see some translations of more recent Bhojpuri works.

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       Brief Lives of Idiots review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Ermanno Cavazzoni's 1994 collection Brief Lives of Idiots, just out in English, from Wakefield Press.

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       Athens Prize for Literature

       They've announced the winners of this year's Athens Prize for Literature, a leading Greek literary prize with two categories: best Greek novel and best foreign novel; as usual Theodoros Grigoriadis has the run-down at his weblog, including the shortlists.
       Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive was named the best foreign novel -- beating out Houellebecq's Serotonin, Kike Ferrari's Like Flies from Afar, and DeLillo's Zero K, among others.
       The Greek novel award went to Οδός Οφθαλμιατρείου, by Evangelos Avdikos (Ευάγγελος Γ. Αυδίκος).

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       Most-read PW reviews

       At Publishers Weekly they lave a list of The Most-Read Book Reviews of 2020 at PW.
       Given that they review a huge chunk of the books that come out each year -- more, I suspect, by a considerable margin, than practically any other publication -- this is fairly interesting to see.
       Not all too unsurprisingly: I haven't seen, much less reviewed, any of these (and honestly, I hadn't heard of some of them ...).

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

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       Éric Chevillard roundtable

       At the Los Angeles Review of Books Daniel Levin Becker, Michelle Kuo, and Jeremy M. Davies discuss Exploding Clichés: On Éric Chevillard's Versatile Prose.

       Several Chevillard-titles are under review at the complete review:

• The Author and Me
• Demolishing Nisard
• Prehistoric Times

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

       PEN America Literary Awards longlists

       PEN America has announced the longlists for the 2021 PEN America Literary Awards.
       Quite a few categories here -- including the PEN Translation Prize; two of the longlisted titles here are under review at the complete review: Our Riches by Kaouther Adimi, in Chris Andrews' translation, and The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree, by Shokoofeh Azar.
       The finalists in all the categories will be announced in February.

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

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       New World Literature Today

       The Winter 2021 issue of World Literature Today is now out -- with sections on: 'Ismail Kadare: Laureate of the 2020 Neustadt Prize' and 'Contemporary Hebrew Literature', as well as the usual other material.
       Along with the extensive book review section, enough great material to keep you busy over Christmas.

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

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       Dutch writers' 2020 most significant reads

       At NRC Michel Krielaars asks 20 schrijvers over het belangrijkste boek van 2020 -- twenty prominent writers on their most signifcant reads of 2020, which includes books old and new (and, somewhat confusingly, some of the authors mentioning each other's books ...).
       Quite a variety -- with Gerbrand Bakker selecting the fourth volume of J.J.Voskuil's Het Bureau-series, Het A.P. Beerta-Instituut. I have the first four volumes of this seven-volume epic -- the first in German, the rest in Dutch -- and really think I have to get started on this .....

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       Bestselling in ... Iran

       Ahmad Parhizi writes for AFP -- here at Barrons -- that Foreign Authors Top Sellers With Literature-loving Tehran Women -- as:

"Iranian women read more, translate more and write more. In general, they are more present in the book market than men," said Nargez Mossavat, editorial director of Sales publishers.

       Always interesting to see what's popular in other markets.

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       Gulliver's Voyage to Phantomimia review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of A transcreation by Douglas Robinson of Volter Kilpi's Gulliver's Voyage to Phantomimia, recently out from admirably enterprising Zeta Books.

       Twenty-five years ago Kai Laitinen wrote On not translating Volter Kilpi in Books from Finland, and he certainly seems a challenging author; good to see at least some of his work now available, after a fashion, in English. Let's hope there will be more.

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       The Novel Prize shortlist

       The Novel Prize is a new biennial prize: "for a book-length work of literary fiction written in English by published and unpublished writers around the world", jointly run by independent publishers from three continents -- New Directions, Fitzcarraldo Editions, and Giramondo -- and they've now announced their first shortlist, selected from close to 1500 submissions.
       The winner will be announced in February 2021, and published in early 2022.

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

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       Shen Congwen profile

       At SupChina Alex Colville writes on Modernizing tradition: Shen Congwen and his literary classics, profiling the author.

       The only book of his under review at the complete review is Border Town.

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

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       Dakshin Literary Festival reports

       At the New Indian Express' Edex Live there are some reports on the Dakshin Literary Festival, including Bidushi Das on Things will get lost in translation, we are not ethnographers: Krishna Manavalli at Dakshin Literary Festival and Parvathi Benu reporting that We do not have enough good translators to make Malayalam literature go global: Benyamin
       You can also watch the entire panel on Translation and the Indian gene -- the subject of the first report -- on YouTube.

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

       Top 21st century books ?

       At La Vanguardia Jorge Carrión has a stab at the popular exercise of determining what might be the top books of the twenty-first century -- taking a year-by-year approach --, in 21 libros para el XXI -- complete with 'affinity'-selections.
       Not sure about the year-by-year approach, but at least it is a pretty broad variety, in several respects.

       Similar exercises can also be found in:

• The 21st Century's 12 greatest novels (BBC, 2015)
• A Premature Attempt at the 21st Century Canon (Vulture, 2018)
• The 100 best books of the 21st century (The Guardian, 2019)

       And the Czech publication A2 also devoted an issue to the Literární kánon 21. století in 2018 -- to which I also contributed a piece.

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

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       Translation in ... India

       In the Deccan Herald Karthik Venkatesh makes the case that: 'It would not be an exaggeration to say that for the Indian publishing industry, 2020 is not so much the year of the pandemic as it is of translations', in Gained in translation.

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

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       Never Go Back review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of the eighteenth Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child, the 2013 Never Go Back.

       This book had the misfortune to become a Tom Cruise-vehicle, but readers shouldn't hold that against it -- just avoid the movie. It's a solid snow-day read.

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

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