opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

11 - 20 March 2021

11 March: Women's Prize for Fiction longlist | Translation from the ... Tulu
12 March: EBRD Literature Prize longlist | National Museum of Korean Literature competition | Noli Me Tangere review
13 March: Sahitya Akademi Awards
14 March: Seagull Books profile | Mona review
15 March: OCM Bocas Prize longlist | Writing in ... Jamaica
16 March: Kazim Ali Q & A | 'Translating the Dictionary'
17 March: French-American Foundation Translation Prize finalists | The Slaughterman's Daughter review
18 March: Sami Rohr Inspiration Award for Fiction | 'Encounters with Polish Literature' | Edition 69 review
19 March: Touring the Land of the Dead review
20 March: Less-known Irish books | Q & As: The New Press - Yaniv Iczkovits - Marie NDiaye

go to weblog

return to main archive

       Less-known Irish books

       In the Irish Times Martin Doyle has: "many of Ireland's leading writers champion a treasure that deserves to be unburied", in The great Irish books you may never heard of.
       A wide-ranging selection, and certainly quite a few titles of interest.

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

---

       Q & A: The New Press

       At the Literary Hub Corinne Segal has the latest installment of their series, Interview with an Indie Press: The New Press.
       The New Press has long had an impressive list, including a lot of good fiction in translation -- including quite a few works by Jean Echenoz (e.g. Piano), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (e.g. The Perfect Nine), and Alain Mabanckou (e.g. The Death of Comrade President).

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

---

       Q & A: Yaniv Iczkovits

       I reviewed Yaniv Iczkovits' The Slaughterman's Daughter a few days ago, and now Bram Presser offers The Infinite Optimist: A Conversation with Yaniv Iczkovits at the Jewish Book Council.
       Interesting to hear:

I rewrote the end of the book after initially writing a pessimistic ending. Fanny resisted that ending and I didn’t want to get into trouble with her. She was right. She didn’t want to end like Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, even though that might very well have been the case for a woman like Fanny at that time.

       Also:

Each of the characters is challenging other characters to see dimensions of reality that, until now, they were blind to. But the resistance to these new perspectives is not easy to break, and this is why everything goes wrong for everyone in this novel.

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

---

       Q & A: Marie NDiaye

       At The White Review Aurélie Maurin has an Interview with Marie NDiaye.
       Several of NDiaye's works are under review at the complete review -- including the one she calls: "the most autobiographical text I've ever written, despite all the inventions", Self-Portrait in Green.

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

       Touring the Land of the Dead review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Two Novellas by Kashimada Maki, Touring the Land of the Dead.

       The title piece was awarded the 2012 Akutagawa Prize, as this prize continues to be one of the leading feeders of new Japanese fiction for US/UK publishers. See also the other Akutagawa winners under review at the complete review.

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

       Sami Rohr Inspiration Award for Fiction

       To mark the 15th anniversary of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature they created a new prize, the Sami Rohr Inspiration Award for Fiction -- apparently an author prize to go with the book prize -- and they've now announced the winner of the inaugural prize: it is Nicole Krauss.
       She will receive the US$36,000 prize at a virtual ceremony in June -- presumably at the same time the (still undetermined) book prize winner is honored.

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

---

       'Encounters with Polish Literature'

       The Polish Cultural Institute New York is presenting a monthly series of Encounters with Polish Literature this year, hosted by David A. Goldfarb, with the first two episodes already available for viewing. Each episode has him: "in conversation with an expert on that author or book or movement in Polish literature", and it's a great line-up -- both of subject-matter and experts.
       At A&S News Sarah MacFarlane now reports on how A&S alumnus David Goldfarb explores Polish literature in talk-show style video series.

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

---

       Edition 69 review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Edition 69 -- three works from the 1930s, by Vítězslav Nezval, František Halas, and Jindřich Štyrský.
       Twisted Spoon Press first published this on 2004, and they came out with a new edition last year.

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

       French-American Foundation Translation Prize finalists

       The French-American Foundation has announced the finalists for this year's Translation Prize -- the 34th time they are awarding the prizes.
       There are five finalists in each of the two categories, fiction and non; the only title under review at the complete review is Chris Andrews's translation of Kaouther Adimi's Our Riches (published in the UK as A Bookshop in Algiers).
       The winners will be announced on 3 June.

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

---

       The Slaughterman's Daughter review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Yaniv Iczkovits' The Slaughterman's Daughter.

       This just won 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 while it's been out for a while in the UK (and Canada), it only came out in the US a few weeks ago.

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

       Kazim Ali Q & A

       At Firstpost. Chintan Girish Modi has a Q & A: 'Translation is the deepest kind of reading': Kazim Ali on working with Ananda Devi's poetry, relationship with languages, as Kazim Ali's translation of Devi's When the Night Agrees to Speak to Me recently came out; see also the Harper Collins India publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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

---

       'Translating the Dictionary'

       At Words without Border's WWB Daily weblog Janet Hendrickson writes about Translating the Dictionary, an interesting-sounding exercise where she translated a 1611 Spanish dictionary. As she notes:

The translation is unconventional in that I also erased most of the book to make a series of prose poems from it, in a volume much shorter than the original: forty-eight pages of text.

       Her version is titled Treasure of the Castilian or Spanish Language; see also the New Directions publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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

       OCM Bocas Prize longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, three titles each in the three categories (fiction, non, and poetry); on 28 March they will announce the winner in each category, with that trio then the finalists for the overall prize, which will be announced 24 April.
       Five of the nine authors of the longlisted titles are from Trinidad and Tobago, including Monique Roffey, who won the prize in 2013.

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

---

       Writing in ... Jamaica

       In Travel + Leisure Isis Semaj-Hall reports on how Jamaica's Rich Literary Legacy Is Finally Getting the Global Recognition It Deserves.

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

       Seagull Books profile

       In The Hindu Tabish Khair writes about Conversations across cultures: The politics of translation and Seagull Books, noting the leading role Seagull Books has taken regarding works of translation outside the US and UK, as:

(T)o the best of my knowledge, Seagull Books is possibly the only Third World publisher with such a serious list of directly contracted translations from other world languages into English. Even more important, it does not publish translations for a South Asian readership alone; there are others doing that. Seagull is distinctive because it selects and commissions translations directly, and then publishes and markets them for both the South Asian and the global market. This totally reverses the usual flow of literature.

       And he's certainly right when he notes: "The Seagull list is impressive." Quite a few Seagull titles are under review at the complete review -- but unfortunately I've seen regrettably few over the past few years.

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

---

       Mona review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Pola Oloixarac's Mona, just out in English.

       This is yet another in a long line of literary conference/festival novels, with the usual eclectic (and ripe for satire) cast of gathered authors (though in this case there's also more to it).

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

       Sahitya Akademi Awards

       They've announced the winners of the 2020 Sahitya Akademi Awards, a leading Indian literary prize, noteworthy for awarding prizes to works in all 24 official Indian languages (though four of the prizes -- for works in Malayalam, Nepali, Odia, and Rajasthani -- will only be announced later); see the official press release (warning ! dreaded pdf format !), where you can also find all the shortlisted titles. (These 2020 prizes are for works published between 2014 and 2018.)
       Among the prize-winning works, four were novels -- including the Sanskrit winner, by Mahesh Chandra Sharma Gautam -- and there were also two plays and one work of epic poetry.
       The English-language winner was Arundhathi Subramaniam's poetry collection When God is a Traveller, which Bloodaxe published in 2014; see also the publicity pages from Bloodaxe and Harper Collins (India), or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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

       EBRD Literature Prize longlist

       The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has announced the ten-title-strong longlist for this year's EBRD Literature Prize, which: "celebrates the very best in translated literature from the nearly 40 countries where the Bank invests".
       I've only seen two of these -- the Perisic and the Zabuzhko -- but there are several more I am certainly eager to see.
       The shortlist will be announced 3 May.

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

---

       National Museum of Korean Literature competition

       They're building a new National Museum of Korean Literature and they've now launched the design competition for the building, a US$40,000,000 project. So if you have any design ideas, why not submit them ? You have until 31 May .....

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

---

       Noli Me Tangere review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of José Rizal's classic, Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not).

       This is definitely an overdue review -- I reviewed the sequel more than a decade ago. I am surprised, given the historical and local significance of the novel -- it is the Philippine classic -- that this doesn't seem to have been more widely reviewed, despite two new translations coming out in English over the last quarter of a century.
       Rizal also features in Gina Apostol's The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, recently out in a US edition -- another reason to cover the book. (The Apostol also hasn't gotten the attention it should yet .....)

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

       Women's Prize for Fiction longlist

       They've announced the sixteen-title strong longlist for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction.
       The only longlisted title under review at the complete review is Susanna Clarke's Piranesi.
       See also judge Nesrine Malik in The Guardian, writing on how: I used to think fiction was indulgent. Judging the Women's prize reminded me it is essential.
       The shortlist will be announced 28 April.

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

---

       Translation from the ... Tulu

       In The Hindu they report that the English translation of 50 Tulu short stories released -- the 544-page collection Heartbeats.
       This is certainly good news -- but I also like how they're keeping count of what's available in English: this is the seventh volume of translations from the Tulu by K.Chinnappa Gowda and B.Surendra Rao, and:

With this, 2,100 pages of different forms of Tulu literature, translated by the two scholars, are now available for reading in the universal language.

       It's not yet listed at the Manipal Universal Press site, but some of the other translations are; see, for example, the publicity page for Sati Kamale.

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

previous entries (1 - 10 March 2021)

archive index

- search the site -

- return to top of the page -

© 2021 the complete review


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