opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

22 - 30 November 2021

22 November: Prix du livre européen | David Godine Q & A | European Literature Night | Boardman Tasker Award
23 November: NYTBR 100 Notable Books of 2021 | Japanese fiction in translation
24 November: Jan Michalski Prize | Banipal Prize shortlist | Whitbread Costa Book Awards shortlists | Mark McGurl Q & A | Franziska Linkerhand review
25 November: Warwick Prize | HWA Crown Awards
26 November: Mario Vargas Llosa, immortel | African literary prize-success
27 November: Translating from and into Armenian | Tata Literature Live! Literary Awards
28 November: Q & As: Lydia Davis - Damon Galgut
29 November: Almudena Grandes (1960-2021) | Translation NFTs ? | The Night Will Be Long review
30 November: Royal Society Science Book Prize | Scotland's National Book Awards | Q & As: Mohamed Mbougar Sarr - Emma Ramadan - Tim Mackintosh-Smith | Evaristo to head Royal Society of Literature

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       Royal Society Science Book Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Royal Society Science Book Prize, and it is Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures, by Merlin Sheldrake; see, for example, The Bookseller report.

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

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       Scotland's National Book Awards

       They've announced the winners of this year's Scotland's National Book Awards
       The fiction winner is Duck Feet, by Ely Percy, while Douglas Dunn won the Lifetime Achievement Award.

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       Q & A: Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

       At Deutsche Welle Georges Ibrahim Tounkara has a Q & A with this year's prix Goncourt-winning author, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr: Reinventing Africa.

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       Q & A: Emma Ramadan

       At Public Books Jocelyn Frelier has a Q & A, “Between the Experiment and the Essence”: Emma Ramadan Talks Translation.

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       Q & A: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

       At Qantara.de Elisabeth Knoblauch has a Q & A with Arabist Tim Mackintosh-Smith, whose: 'latest book -- Arabs -- reveals how linguistic developments helped and hindered the progress of Arab history', "Reading Arabic is a bit like playing chess".

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       Evaristo to head Royal Society of Literature

       They've announced that Booker-winning author Bernardine Evaristo is to be the next president of the Royal Society of Literature, taking over from current president Marina Warner; see also, for example, Harriet Sherwood's report in The Guardian.

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

       Almudena Grandes (1960-2021)

       Spanish author Almudena Grandes has passed away; see, for example, the EFE report at La Prensa Latina.
       Several of her works have been translated into English: The Ages of Lulu and The Wind from the East (from Seven Stories), as well as The Frozen Heart (all three from Weidenfeld & Nicolson) -- the latter touted as: "the Spanish Dr Zhivago", for what that's worth.

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       Translation NFTs ?

       Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are all the rage, and at Japan Today they report that World's first NFT of a Japanese novel with English translation hopes to provide profitable opportunity for translators
       Interestingly:

(T)wo English versions of the NFT novel, translated by two different translators, are being released on OpenSea simultaneously.

       They suggest:

This project may be a step towards further growth in Japanese novels and literature, encouraging talented translators to work more on Japanese literature by compensating them through the NFT system as their work is worth, and not just solely relying on publishers.

       'Not just solely relying on publishers' sounds promising, but I don't know if this will really catch on. Still, certainly a story worth following.

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       The Night Will Be Long review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Santiago Gamboa's latest, The Night Will Be Long, just out in English from Europa Editions.

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       Q & A: Lydia Davis

       In The Observer Anthony Cummins has a Q & A with Lydia Davis: ‘I write it the way I want to write it’.
       The occasion is the upcoming publication of her Essays Two, focused on translation; I haven't seen this one yet, but see the publicity pages at Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Hamish Hamilton, or pre-order your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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       Q & A: Damon Galgut

       At Deutsche Welle Manasi Gopalakrishnan has a Q & A with the Booker Prize-winning author, in 'African writing is vibrant and living': Damon Galgut.
       As to the consequences of winning such a big prize, Galgut notes many of the positives, and that:

All of these are obviously very welcome for any writer; they're kind of a writer's dream. But they also come, as I say, with an intense level of interest and attention, which is focused on the writer rather than the work, and that is not always easy to deal with.

       He also welcomes the attention African writers have gotten recently, especially in terms of literary-prize wins -- and also hopes that: "that maybe some African governments will take it seriously too, and invest in support of and attention to their own artists".

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

       Translating from and into Armenian

       In The Armenian Mirror-Spectator Artsvi Bakhchinyan has a Q & A with Anna Maria Mattaar: Translating from Armenian into Dutch and vice versa.
       Always good to see translation between 'smaller' languages -- and not, for example, via English ... -- and neat to see it going both ways -- though she notes:

Now I translate more into Armenian, because there is more demand in Dutch literature here in Armenia than that of Armenian literature in the Netherlands. There are no other translators of Armenian fiction in the Netherlands. The biggest problem there is the publishing houses that do not want to publish Armenian literature.

       Disappointing to hear -- there's far too little Armenian literature available in any European language .....
       (And I wish she'd have revealed what the 900-page novel she is translating from Dutch into Armenian is.)

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       Tata Literature Live! Literary Awards

       They announced the winners of this year's Tata Literature Live! Literary Awards last week, an Indian prize awarded in six categories (including one for publisher of the year -- HarperCollins Publishers India this year).

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

       Mario Vargas Llosa, immortel

       Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa is an immortel ! -- i.e. he has been elected to the Académie française, taking his seat on fauteuil 18.
       He received 18 out of 22 votes (which included two non-votes) in the first and only round of voting -- a stunning election-result; usually these elections go through several rounds, and it's almost unheard of, even in the final instance, to get that high a percentage of the votes. He was also elected despite technically being too old; since 2010 elected members are supposed to be under 75. Clearly, they really wanted him on board (and he presumably really wanted to join the gang -- for the habit vert and épée, I suspect ...).)
       Vargas Llosa is also unusual in being a non-francophone foreigner. There are other foreign and foreign-born immortels, such as Maurizio Serra, but they all at least also write in French; Vargas Llosa does not.

       By the way, those habit-verts aren't off the rack -- there's even a tailor who specializes in them.

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       African literary prize-success

       As has been widely noted, many of the leading literary prizes this year have gone to authors with strong connections to Africa; at France 24 they now have the AFP report that looks at Why Africa is dominating literary prizes in 2021.
       Among the observations:

What might explain the burst of European interest is that Africa looks increasingly like a testing ground for problems that may soon affect us all.

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

       Warwick Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, and it is Jackie Smith's translation of Judith Schalansky's An Inventory of Losses.
       I've been curious about this one but haven't seen it yet; see also the publicity pages from New Directions and MacLehose Press, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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       HWA Crown Awards

       The Historical Writers' Association has announced the winners of this year's HWA Crown Awards, "celebrating the best historical writing of the year, fiction and non-fiction".
       The HWA Gold Crown Award -- the fiction prize -- went to The Unwanted Dead by Chris Lloyd.

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

       Jan Michalski Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Jan Michalski Prize for Literature, "awarded for a work of fiction or non-fiction, irrespective of the language in which it is written", and it is the collective work OST: Letters, Memoirs and Stories from Ostarbeiter in Nazi Germany.
       See also the Granta publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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       Banipal Prize shortlist

       They've announced the five-title shortlist for this year's Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation
       The winner will be announced 12 January.

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       Whitbread Costa Book Awards shortlists

       They've announced the shortlists for the Whitbread Costa Book Awards, four titles in each of the five categories.
       I haven't seen any of these.
       The category-winners -- announced on 4 January -- will then compete for the top prize, to be announced 1 February.

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

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       Mark McGurl Q & A

       Mark McGurl's Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon recently came out, and at Jacobin Alex N. Press now has a Q & A with him, Amazon Is Reshaping Contemporary Literature.

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

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       Franziska Linkerhand review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Brigitte Reimann's classic novel, Franziska Linkerhand.

       Surprisingly, this novel -- first published posthumously in 1974, in both the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, and very popular in both -- has not yet been translated into English. It is among the best-known -- and best -- works to come out of East Germany -- up there with Irmtraud Morgner's The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice, Christa Wolf's They Divided the Sky (previously translated as Divided Heaven), and Ulrich Plenzdorf's The New Sorrows of Young W. --, even as an uncut/uncensored version was only finally published in 1998. (I read the edited version back in the early 1980s and even as such it is a very impressive work -- but I am pleased to have finally seen the uncut version.)
       Seagull has brought out two volumes of her diaries -- I Have No Regrets and It All Tastes of Farewell --, which give a good sense of her and her work, but this of course is something entirely different (and greater).

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

       NYTBR 100 Notable Books of 2021

       The editors of The New York Times Book Review have released their 100 Notable Books of 2021 list. (Recall that this list is selected from the titles reviewed (or soon-to-be-reviewed) in the NYTBR -- a decent-sized pool of books, but far from all the worthy ones out there.)
       Last year they had an impressive eleven titles in translation on the list; this year they are down to five.
       Seven of the titles are under review at the complete review:

• Chronicles From the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, by Wole Soyinka
• The Copenhagen Trilogy, by Tove Ditlevsen
• Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Morning Star, by Karl Ove Knausgaard
• The Netanyahus, by Joshua Cohen
• The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich
• When We Cease to Understand the World, by Benjamín Labatut

       One book I'm very surprised was not included is Richard Zenith's Pessoa (which was reviewed in both The New York Times and The New York Times Book Review), which was certainly one of the most impressive books I read this year (and I am no great fan of biographies).

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       Japanese fiction in translation

       At NBC Victoria Namkung reports Move over, Murakami: Female authors drive growing interest in Japanese novels -- noting that:

Ten years ago, only a handful of books written by Japanese women were published in English, but of the 34 titles translated from the Japanese in the last two years, 28 were by women.

       Quite a few of the novels mentioned in the article are under review at the complete review.

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

       Prix du livre européen

       The prix du livre européen is yet another best European book prize, awarded since 2007, and they've now announced this year's winner, Christos A. Chomenidis' Νίκη; see also the publicity pages from Πατάκη and Viviane Hamy.
       It beat out two other finalists, books by Slobodan Šnajder (Doba mjedi) and Kjell Westö (Tritonus) -- neither of which seems to be available in English translation yet either.

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       David Godine Q & A

       At the Boston Globe Mark Shanahan has a Q & A with David Godine about ‘Godine at Fifty’ and the press he founded to publish ‘books that matter for people who care’
       Though he sold Godine last year, and is now: "totally removed" from the publishing house, it obviously retains his strong personal imprint.
       My favorite observation:

We were not heavily engaged in the 21st century or where it was going

       Obviously, their Georges Perec-list alone makes them much-admired hereabouts (most of those are under review at the complete review), but there are a lot of other treasures here; among recent publications, I think especially Aleksandra Lun's The Palimpsests deserves more attention and readers than it got.

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

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       European Literature Night

       If you're in New York City tonight, they're holding European Literature Night 2021, "a presentation of 11 books from 10 European countries" -- a neat event, in a neat venue.
       Two of the titles being presented are under review at the complete review:

• The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma, by Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz
• Jokerman, by Stefan Kutzenberger

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

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       Boardman Tasker Award

       They've announced the winner of this year's Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature, and it is Emilio Comici: Angel of the Dolomites, by David Smart; see also the Rocky Mountain Books publicity page.

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

previous entries (11 - 19 November 2021)

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