opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 10 March 2021

1 March: New Latin American Literature Today | The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio review
2 March: Libris Literatuur Prijs shortlist | IPAF longlist | Disconnection review
3 March: The LA Times Book Prize finalists | Ockham NZ Book Awards shortlists | WORTMELDUNGEN-Literaturpreis
4 March: French books in the US - 2021 | Klara and the Sun review
5 March: Stella Prize longlist | Margaret Jull Costa Q & A
6 March: Melville House Q & A | 'Writers from the Other Europe' | The Orphanage review
7 March: Marieke Lucas Rijneveld | Self-publishing in ... Tamil
8 March: Wingate Literary Prize | Ciuleandra review
9 March: Frankfurt Book Fair plans | Hurdy Gurdy review
10 March: Lionel Gelber Prize shortlist | Jhalak Prize longlists | Used bookshops in ... Istanbul

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       Lionel Gelber Prize shortlist

       They've announced the five-title shortlist for this year's Lionel Gelber Prize, "a literary award for the world's best non-fiction book in English on foreign affairs that seeks to deepen public debate on significant international issues".
       Shortlisted titles include Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum -- who already won the prize in 2018 -- and Isolationism by Charles A. Kupchan.
       The winner will be announced next month.

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

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       Jhalak Prize longlists

       They've announced the longlists for this year's Jhalak Prize, celebrating: "books by British/British resident BAME writers" -- the main prize, in any genre, and the new Children's & YA prize.
       The shortlists will be announced on 13 April, and the winner on 25 May.

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

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       Used bookshops in ... Istanbul

       In Daily Sabah Matt Hanson writes on In a literary bind: Used bookshops in Kadıköy.
       Always love to see and hear about used bookstores -- browsing in which I have sorely missed --, even if I have no idea what stuff like this means:

The used bookshop, Sevgi, in that sense, is a free, public zone by which to realize the cusp where late modern thought crystallized into the postmodern. The moment, as it was analyzed and symbolized through different kinds of storytelling, discursive and metaphorical, could be said to have effected an attempt at psychological self-actualization on an international scale, toward a holistic embrace that includes all of collective memory.

       But kind of neat to see that this kind of stuff can get published in a newspaper.

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

       Frankfurt Book Fair plans

       The Frankfurt Book Fair has announced that they're planning on going ahead with an in-person fair this year, from 20 to 24 October -- noting also that the: "number of visitors will be monitored and adjusted based on the infection-control regulations in effect in October"; they've now opened registration. See also reports at The Bookseller and Publishers Weekly.
       Canada is the guest of honour this year; see also their official site, Singular Plurality.

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

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       Hurdy Gurdy review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Christopher Wilson new novel Hurdy Gurdy.

       It's a novel about the plague (Black Death) years but don't let that scare you off .....

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

       Wingate Literary Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Wingate Literary Prize, "awarded to the best book, fiction or non-fiction, to translate the idea of Jewishness to the general reader", and it is Yaniv Iczkovits' The Slaughterman's Daughter.
       This translated-from-the-Hebrew (by Orr Scharf) novel conveniently just came out in the US; see the publicity pages from Schocken and MacLehose Press, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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

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       Ciuleandra review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Liviu Rebreanu's 1927 novel, Ciuleandra, now in English, from Cadmus Press.

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

       Marieke Lucas Rijneveld

       International Booker Prize-winning Marieke Lucas Rijneveld author recently also garnered some attention for being selected to translate the poem Amanda Gorman performed at the 2021 American presidential inauguration, The Hill We Climb, and then turning down the commission after some controversy about the choice; see, for example, the Deutsche Welle report, Amanda Gorman's Dutch translator steps down.
       Rijneveld has now also addressed what happened in a poem of her own, published simultaneously in several different languages and publications: see the Dutch original, Alles bewoonbaar, in de Volkskrant, and Michele Hutchinson's English translation, Everything inhabitable, in The Guardian.

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

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       Self-publishing in ... Tamil

       In The Hindu Srinivasa Ramanujam reports on A new chapter: How self-publishing is gaining ground among Tamil authors -- surely a phenomenon that is going to spread, and possibly a boon to writers in 'smaller' languages (not that Tamil is particularly small ...).

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

       Melville House Q & A

       At the Literary Hub Corinne Segal speaks with publishers: 'Dennis Johnson and Valerie Merians on Risk, Change, and Making Mistakes', in: Interview with an Indie Press: Melville House.
       See also the Melville House site.

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

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       'Writers from the Other Europe'

       The Neglected Books Page reminds of Philip Roth and the “Writers from the Other Europe” Series -- a significant part of his legacy.
       Despite being a relatively small series, it was tremendously influential, and there are some great titles here; they're all worth picking up.

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

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       The Orphanage review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Serhiy Zhadan's The Orphanage, just out from Yale University Press in their Margellos World Republic of Letters-series.

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

       Stella Prize longlist

       They've announced the twelve-title strong longlist for this year's Stella Prize, a A$50,000 prize for: "the best book by an Australian woman, whether fiction or nonfiction".
       The shortlist will be announced 25 March.

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

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       Margaret Jull Costa Q & A

       It's nice to see The New York Times Book Review's 'By the Book'-series feature a translator this week(end), with ‘Her Prose Is Sometimes Poetry’: Why Margaret Jull Costa Loves Virginia Woolf.
       Among her responses:

What are the best books about translation you’ve read ?

I haven’t honestly read any. It feels too strange to be reading about something I’ve been doing practically every day for over 30 years. And I know this is heresy, but I’m not sure there’s that much to say. For me, translating is very much something you do, like writing.

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

       French books in the US - 2021

       The Cultural Service of the French Embassy now offer their annual overview of French titles published in the US, in French Books In The US: The 2021 Edition.
       They count 426 titles that will be translated from French to English and published in the United States in 2021 -- 107 works of fiction, 156 of non, 122 graphic novels, and 33 children's books; see also the full list of titles.

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

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       Klara and the Sun review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel, Klara and the Sun
       This one just came out on Tuesday but has already been reviewed all over the place; certainly one of the bigger 'literary' titles of the year, attracting a whole lot of attention.
       (Interesting to see relatively few mentions of Ian McEwan's artificial-intelligence-companion novel from 2019, Machines Like Me, as a point of comparison in the reviews so far.)

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

       The LA Times Book Prize finalists

       They've announced this year's The Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists.
       Quite a few categories here; the finalists under review at the complete review are: David Diop's At Night All Blood is Black (in the Fiction category, as the awards are open to books in translation such as this one) and Susanna Clarke's Piranesi (a finalist for the: Ray Bradbury Prize for science fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction).
       The winners will be announced on 16 April.

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

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       Ockham NZ Book Awards shortlists

       They've announced the shortlists for this year's Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, sixteen titles in the four categories.
       Three of the four fiction finalists -- and several titles in the other categories -- are from a single publisher; that should be at least somewhat troubling in any market -- but the juggernaut in this case is ... Victoria University Press. Yes, it's VUP that is: "Aotearoa New Zealand's leading publisher of new fiction and poetry".
       The winners will be announced 12 May.

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

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       WORTMELDUNGEN-Literaturpreis

       The WORTMELDUNGEN-Literaturpreis is a €35,000 prize for a critical short text, a maximum of twenty-five pages, either fiction or non. It has now been awarded for the fourth time -- to The Pine Islands-author Marion Poschmann, for her text Laubwerk -- ten pages which you can read in full (in German) here.
       The pay-out to word-count ratio surely makes this among the richest prose-awards, per word, out there.

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

       Libris Literatuur Prijs shortlist

       They've announced the six-title shortlist for this year's Libris Literatuur Prijs, the leading Dutch novel prize.
       Finalists include books by International Booker Prize-winning author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld -- currently also in the news for the to-do about her being commissioned to translate Amanda Gorman's work, and now withdrawing from the assignment; see, for example, the AP report --, Erwin Mortier, and eighty-year-old Jeroen Brouwers.
       The winner will be announced 10 May.

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

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       IPAF longlist

       They've announced the sixteen-title strong longlist for this year's International Prize for Arabic Fiction.
       The authors represent eleven different countries; several have had previous work translated into English.
       The shortlist will be announced 29 March, and the winner on 25 May.

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

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       Disconnection review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Claude Ollier's novel Disconnection, a relatively early Dalkey Archive Press title; impressively, their translation of this 1988 novel came out in 1989 already.

       Half of the narrative is a post-catastrophe tale of sorts -- shades of Guido Morselli's Dissipatio H.G., certainly in the feel of the story. And it all feels even more relevant today than back then.

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

       New Latin American Literature Today

       The February issue of Latin American Literature Today is now available online, with Albalucía Ángel as the featured author and quite a bit of Octavio Paz-coverage, among much else -- including the always interesting selection of book reviews.

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

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       The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Nobel laureate Luigi Pirandello's 1915 novel, The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio -- also published as Shoot ! --, recently re-issued by Dedalus.

       This translation is by C.K. Scott Moncrieff -- yes, the translator better known for doing Proust.

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

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