opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 10 December 2021

1 December: WLT's 100 notable 2021 translations | NYTBR top 10 | Foreign Policy favorites | Coming in 2022: translations from the Arabic
2 December: Marie-Claire Blais (1939-2021) | Finlandia Prize | Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize | FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year | The Women Are Up to Something review
3 December: Cundill History Prize | New Latin American Literature Today
4 December: Diagram Prize | Prix Fu Lei | The Last One review
5 December: Icelandic Literary Prize shortlists | Nagaland Literature Festival | Saudi Translation Forum
6 December: Getz Pharma Library of Urdu Classics | More best books | Borges and the Literary Marketplace review
7 December: Nobel ceremonies | No more Litera Prize | From translator to politician
8 December: '200 Books That Shaped 200 Years of Literature' | Crediting translators | Judith Schalansky Q & A | Sheikh Zayed 'Literature' longlist
9 December: French best of 2021 lists | Samar Yazbek Q & A
10 December: Best books of 2021 lists | Best 21st century literary journalism books ? | Marek Šindelka Q & A

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       Best books of 2021 lists

       Some more best of 2021 compilations:

        - In The White Review their: "editorial team, contributors and friends of the magazine reveal the books they've been reading and revisiting in 2021" in their Books of the Year.
       These personal selections at least tend to be more varied than the institutional ones, and this extensive selection certainly has a lot of variety.
       Among the responses: Barley Patch-author Gerald Murnane's:

I’m the daddy of all eccentrics. All I read nowadays are books from my horse-racing library, most of which books date from the twentieth century, and books from my Hungarian library, the latest being FÜGGETLEN EMBEREK, a Magyar translation of INDEPENDENT PEOPLE, by Halldor Laxness.

       (He's apparently not taking the piss here -- he really does read Hungarian; see The Angel’s Son: Why I Learned Hungarian Late In Life in the Hungarian Review.)

        - The Best of Books 2021:: This Year's Top Picks From Foreign Affairs Reviewers.

        - Tor.com Reviewers' Choice: The Best Books of 2021.

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       Best 21st century literary journalism books ?

       At GQ they "canvassed dozens and dozens of American journalists" to come up with a list of The 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century.
       Amazingly, two of these titles are under review at the complete review:

• 8. The Adversary, by Emmanuel Carrère
  
  
• 21. One of Us, by Åsne Seierstad

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       Marek Šindelka Q & A

       As part of Radio Prague International's 'Czech Books You Must Read'-series Brian Kenety and Ian Willoughby now have a Q & A about Marek Šindelka’s epic ‘monster’ Aberrant, award-winning ‘anabasis’ Material Fatigue.
       See also the review of Aberrant at the complete review.

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       French best of 2021 lists

       Best of the year lists aren't as widespread abroad as they are in the US/UK, but there are some -- including the recent lists from French periodicals Lire and Le Point.
       Neither is freely accessible at the respective sites, but Livres Hebdo has both lists in full: Les 100 livres de 2021 selon "Lire magazine littéraire" -- in multiple categories -- and Les 30 livres de l'année 2021 selon Le Point.

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       Samar Yazbek Q & A

       At PEN Transmissions Will Forrester has a Q & A, The Epoch of Human Shame: An Interview with Samar Yazbek -- the Syrian author of Planet of Clay.

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       '200 Books That Shaped 200 Years of Literature'

       "The Center for Fiction opened its doors in 1821 as the Mercantile Library of New York", and to celebrate their two hundred year anniversary they have put together a list of 200 Books That Shaped 200 Years of Literature -- and:

The resulting 200 books shifted what types of fiction got read and written, launched or served as turning points for particular genres, opened the doors for whose work could be published, changed the rules of what we could write about and how we could write about it, inspired feverish searches for “the next” of their kind, or affected societal change far beyond the world of literature.

       Always a fun kind of exercise -- leaving, of course, a lot to debate, too.
       The list leans heavily on books written in English -- though at least it doesn't limit authors to a single entry, as such lists often do, and several have more than one title on the list. But still -- no Balzac ? No Thomas Mann ? No Roberto Bolaño ? And since this is list of books that shaped literature, some more genre-works surely belong: they have an Agatha Christie but no Raymond Chandler. There's no Jules Verne. Etc.
       (Overall, the list is stronger with the more recent books than the early ones. But there's also some carelessness, like the list beginning with Pride and Prejudice -- fitting in the 200-year-span here because they ascribe a first publication date of 1832 to it, which is ... not correct -- or misspellings of names such as Edgar Allan Poe and George Eliot (which, confusingly, is both spelled correctly (once) and incorrectly (twice)).)

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       Crediting translators

       Weighing in on the why-aren't-translators'-names-always-on-the-book-cover debate Kira Josefsson considers What's So Hard About Crediting Translators ? at Vulture.

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       Judith Schalansky Q & A

       Via I'm pointed to Alexander Wells' Q & A with Judith Schalansky: "History is never complete" at Exberliner.
       They mainly speak about her An Inventory of Losses; I haven't seen that one yet, but her The Giraffe's Neck is under review at the complete review.

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       Sheikh Zayed 'Literature' longlist

       They've announced the fifteen-title strong longlist for the literature category of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award, "One of the Arab World's most prestigious and well-funded prizes", as they put it.
       Thirteen of the titles are works of fiction, while two are poetry. They were selected from 852 (!) submissions.

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       Nobel ceremonies

       The Nobel Prize ceremonies are off-site this year (again) -- so Abdulrazak Gurnah had to settle for: "a lunchtime ceremony Monday at the Swedish ambassador’s grand Georgian residence in central London"; see Jill Lawless and Seth Borenstein's AP report, Nobel Prizes awarded in pandemic-curtailed local ceremonies.
       You can watch Gurnah's Nobel lecture live tomorrow here -- and then read it here.

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       No more Litera Prize

       The Litera Prize was a leading Georgian literary prize -- but it's now been undone; see the report at Agenda.ge, Culture minister: Litera Prize will not be resumed after ministry "did everything" to save contest.

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       From translator to politician

       What career opportunities are there for translators, beyond writing and academia ? Well, the soon-to-be German minister for economy and climate shows that, as Philip Oltermann puts it in The Guardian, one can go, like Robert Habeck: from translating English verse to German high office.
       Yes, (co-)translate Ted Hughes and you too may have a future in government !

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       Getz Pharma Library of Urdu Classics

       Maybe not the catchiest of names, but the new Getz Pharma Library of Urdu Classics sounds like a very promising venture, as:

Each year twelve titles, comprising six Urdu classical texts and their English language translations, will be published in the series

       In The News on Sunday Mariam Zia has a Q & A with Musharraf Ali Farooqi about it (and more), in ‘We don’t tell a story in isolation; we’re connected to an ancient storytelling tradition’.

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       More best books

       The Guardian now has The best books of 2021, chosen by our guest authors -- a lot of well-known names among them.

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       Borges and the Literary Marketplace review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Nora C. Benedict on How Editorial Practices Shaped Cosmopolitan Reading, in Borges and the Literary Marketplace.

       There are several Borges titles under review at the site -- and quite a few about Borges and his writing; indeed, about no other author is there as much secondary literature under review. (The reviews -- of both the works by and about Borges -- aren't very popular, however.)

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       Icelandic Literary Prize shortlists

       They've announced the shortlists for this year's Icelandic Literary Prize in the three categories -- fiction, non, and children's fiction.
       Forlagið Rights Agency has more information about the nominated titles which they represent -- and conveniently they represent the three most intriguing-sounding fiction finalists: books by Arnaldur Indriðason and Hallgrímur Helgason, who both have had several titles translated into English, as well as the six-author Olía, which definitely sounds the most interesting.
       The winners will be announced at the end of January or in early February.

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       Nagaland Literature Festival

       The Morung Express reports on the recently concluded Nagaland Literature Festival, in ‘Nagas are making good progress in literature’.

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       Saudi Translation Forum

       In Arab News Rashid Hassan reports on the recent Saudi Translation Forum: Language plays ‘crucial role’ in shaping society.

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       Diagram Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year, and it is Is Superman Circumcised ? The Complete Jewish History of the World's Greatest Hero, by Roy Schwartz; see also the McFarland publicity page.

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       Prix Fu Lei

       As Xu Qin reports at Shine, Women translators grab Prix Fu Lei honors -- prizes for the best translations of French work into Chinese.
       Interesting to see that the essay category got so many more entries (35) than the literature (fiction) one (12).
       The translation of Marcus Malte's The Boy won the literature prize; it is also available in English -- see the Restless Books publicity page.

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       The Last One review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Fatima Daas' The Last One, just out from Other Press.

       This won this year's Prize for Contemporary Literature in Translation awarded by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt -- the leading German prize for a work in translation.

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       Cundill History Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Cundill History Prize -- at US$75,000, apparently: "the largest reward for a work of non-fiction in English" -- and it is Blood on the River: a Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast, by Marjoleine Kars.
       See also the New Press publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or pre-order your copy at Amazon.co.uk (as it is only coming out in the UK next summer).

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       New Latin American Literature Today

       The November issue of Latin American Literature Today is now available -- and it's the fifth-anniversary issue.
       As always, lots of good material - and don't forget the extensive book review section.

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       Marie-Claire Blais (1939-2021)

       Canadian author Marie-Claire Blais has passed away; see, for example, Deborah Dundas in the Toronto Star on Quebec writer Marie-Claire Blais, once the enfant terrible of French Canadian fiction, has died at the age of 82.
       You may recall Pasha Malla wondering in The New Yorker not too long ago: Will American Readers Ever Catch on to Marie-Claire Blais ? (I suspect her death will not change this situation much.)
       See also the Blais titles available from House of Anansi.

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       Finlandia Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Finlandia Prize, the leading Finnish literary prize, and it is Jukka Viikilä's Taivaallinen vastaanotto; see also the Otava publicity page.

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       Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize, awarded: "for the best non-fiction book on modern/contemporary India published in the previous year", and it is Dinyar Patel's biography of Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism; see also Dinyar Patel's report at Scroll.in as well as the Harvard University Press publicity page for Naoroji.

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       FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year

       They've announced the winner of this year's Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year, and it is This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends, by Nicole Perlroth; see also the official book site or the Bloomsbury publicity page.

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       The Women Are Up to Something review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Benjamin J.B. Lipscomb on How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics, in The Women Are Up to Something, just out from Oxford University Press.

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       WLT's 100 notable 2021 translations

       They've now posted World Literature Today’s 75—Make That 100—Notable Translations of 2021 -- upping the usual 75 to a round 100 this year.
       As always, this list makes for a decent overview of much of the best that's been translated this year -- though quite a bit also gets overlooked: just among recent releases I note that Willem Frederik Hermans' A Guardian Angel Recalls, Hervé Le Tellier's prix Goncourt-winning (surely that's notable ?) The Anomaly, Pierre Senges' Ahab (Sequels), and Mario Vargas Llosa's Harsh Times all don't make the list. Neither does the recent National Book Award for Translated Literature winner, Elisa Shua Dusapin's Winter in Sokcho. Or, for example, The Membranes, by Chi Ta-wei -- certainly one of the works in translation published in 2021 that most impressed me.
       (Meanwhile, I'm not sure about the inclusion of titles that will only be available in the US next year, such as Olga Tokarczuk's The Books of Jacob -- though of course the heads-up can't hurt.)

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       NYTBR top 10

       The New York Times Book Review has announced their 10 Best Books of 2021.
       (Recall that these are selected from their 100 notable books of the year -- which, in turn, are selected from the books they've reviewed; a fairly limited pool.) If they haven't reviewed it, they didn't consider it.)
       Two of the titles are under review at the complete review -- the two translated titles:

• The Copenhagen Trilogy, by Tove Ditlevsen
  
  
• When We Cease to Understand the World, by Benjamín Labatut

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       Foreign Policy favorites

       At Foreign Policy they round up 'some of our favorite reads this year', in The Best Books We Read in 2021.

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       Coming in 2022: translations from the Arabic

       At Arablit they've put together a nice list of what's Forthcoming 2022: Arabic Literature in English Translation
       Quite a bit to look forward to here -- not least, new titles by Ibrahim al-Koni, Sonallah Ibrahim, and Reem Bassiouney.

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