opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

11 - 20 April 2022

11 April: Hisham Bustani Q & A | Translation in ... India | Ivan Moscow review
12 April: Magnesia Litera | Q & As: Marjorie Perloff - Parul Sehgal
13 April: Cullman Center fellows | German Non-Fiction Prize longlist | Autumn Rounds review
14 April: Walter Scott Prize shortlist | UK trends ?
15 April: Literary Arts Emergency Fund | Writing in ... North Korea | With Open Eyes review
16 April: Translation from ... Korean | Best contemporary fiction ?
17 April: Vladimir Sorokin profile | The Dream review
18 April: Nepali literature
19 April: 'The Big Jubilee Read' | Translation from ... Hungarian into Gaelic | Kanazawa review
20 April: Jhalak Prize shortlist | 25 Years of Book Publicity in the US | Reading translated literature

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       Jhalak Prize shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Jhalak Prize, awarded for books in any genre published in the UK by British or British-resident writers of colour; see also the report at The Bookseller.
       The winners -- there's also a Children's and Young Adult Prize -- will be announced 26 May.

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

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       25 Years of Book Publicity in the US

       Publishers Weekly is celebrating its 150th anniversary with a wide variety of pieces, including now Sophia Stewart surveying Getting the Word Out: 25 Years of Changes to Book Publicity, showing just how much has changed -- from the time when print book review outlets were pretty much all there was to the current: "proliferation of publicity channels".
       A lot here on the appearance of 'literary blogs' -- "outlets for voicy, literary-minded young writers eager to share their opinions" -- and the rise of social media, 'Bookstagram', and, more recently, BookTok.
       Stewart notes that: "Today, most of the influential literary blogs of the 2000s are defunct"; of course, some of us less influential ones are still chugging along .....

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       Reading translated literature

       In The Harvard Crimson Eleanor M. Powell considers The Words We Lose: The Merits and Disadvantages of Reading Translated Literature.

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       'The Big Jubilee Read'

       Among the ways they're celebrating British Queen Elizabeth II's "record-breaking reign" is with The Big Jubilee Read -- featuring seventy titles, ten from each decade of her reign, from all across the Commonwealth.
       The emphasis is definitely on the Commonwealth, beyond England -- neither Amis makes the cut, for example. Meanwhile, not all the works were written in English: translations include from the Welsh -- Caradog Prichard's One Moonlit Night -- and also from the French -- Scholastique Mukasonga's Our Lady of the Nile.

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       Translation from ... Hungarian into Gaelic

       At hlo Christopher Whyte writes about Translating from Hungarian into Gaelic.
       Always interesting to hear of translations between *smaller* languages.

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       Kanazawa review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of David Joiner's Kanazawa, recently out from Stone Bridge Press. fcoom

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       Nepali literature

       In The Kathmandu Post Tulasi Acharya argues that: 'Doing the best translations of the best Nepali writing about the marginalised is a must', in considering The Nepali literary environment.
       Things have certainly improved since the not-too-distant past:

The 104-year-long Rana regime (1846-1951) prevented writers from writing for the laypeople, let alone the voices of the marginalised. Writing remained in praise of the Rana regime or the people in power. Literature became the genre belonging to the societal elite. Social change through writing was a far cry.

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       Vladimir Sorokin profile

       In The New York Times Alexandra Alter profiles Russian author Vladimir Sorokin, in He Envisioned a Nightmarish, Dystopian Russia. Now He Fears Living in One.
       Apparently, there are eight forthcoming translations of his work, on top of the titles already available; I look forward to getting to as many of these as possible.
       Three of his books are already under review at the complete review -- The Blizzard, Day of the Oprichnik, and Ice -- but of the works I've read, The Queue is still the stand-out.

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       The Dream review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Émile Zola's The Dream -- the most recent translation, by Paul Gibbard, published as part of the Oxford World's Classics-series.

       This is the sixteenth in the Rougon-Macquart series -- kind of an outlier, but apparently attracting more attention recently, as Gibbard's is already the third translation published in the twenty-first century.
       Widely considered the least Zola-esque in the series -- though there's definitely still quite a bit of his naturalism on offer here --, this is a strange little work, steeped also in the religious.
       For most of the novel, this isn't Zola at the height of his powers -- until the very end: the conclusion is one of the most well-executed I have ever come across; it's simply brilliantly done -- basically, a perfect ending, given everything that has come before. (It's all the more amazing because it's pretty clear, more or less, what will happen at the end -- and yet Zola still manages to make more of that than the reader could have expected.)

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       Translation from ... Korean

       In The Korea Times Park Han-sol argues: 'Translators' behind-the-scenes roles deserve wider recognition', finding that a: New generation of Korean literary translators brings more diverse voices to English market, speaking with translators Anton Hur and Lizzie Buehler.

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       Best contemporary fiction ?

       Looking back over roughly the past three decades, Tyler Cowen offers his selection of The best fiction in recent times at his Marginal Revolution weblog.
       Quite a few of these are under review at the complete review -- My Struggle one and two, His Dark Materials, Submission, The Three-Body Problem, The Savage Detectives, IQ84, The Museum of Innocence, Cryptonomicon, To the End of the Land, Cloud Atlas, and Disgrace -- and it's a pretty solid list. Of course, 'best' is always subjective .....
       Interesting, too, of course, to see the reader-comments, with a variety of hit and miss suggestions. (And I tend to agree with what seems like the majority: I found Liu Cixin interesting and *significant*, but, literarily, it's just not that good.)
       (See also the list of top-rated fiction at the complete review, which includes a few titles from the same span not on this list -- and there are certainly quite a few more which are not under review that one could make a good case for.)

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       Literary Arts Emergency Fund

       The National Book Foundation has announced that The Literary Arts Emergency Fund Awards $4.3 Million to Historically Under-Funded Literary Arts Field as it Faces Continued Financial Losses.
       The money is going to: "313 nonprofit literary arts organizations and publishers across the US"; lots of worthy publishers and organizations here.

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       Writing in ... North Korea

       The invaluable North Korean Literature in English weblog has a post on How to become a writer in North Korea -- an interesting glimpse at a literary culture which we see and know much too little about.

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       With Open Eyes review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Marguerite Yourcenar's Conversations with Matthieu Galey, With Open Eyes.

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       Walter Scott Prize shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction -- leaving only four titles in the running for the prize.
       The winner will be announced on 17 June.

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       UK trends ?

       In The Guardian Sarah Shaffi reports on What will we be reading next year ? Five biggest trends from the London book fair.
       Some of these are ... less worse than others. Still, I'm not sure how eager I am to see more than a few titles that fit in these categories .....

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

       Cullman Center fellows

       The New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers has announced its 2022 fellows.
       The fifteen fellows were selected from 356 applicants from 37 countries.
       The projects that are described sound fairly interesting.

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       German Non-Fiction Prize longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's German Non-Fiction Prize, eight titles selected from 244 submissions.
       The winner will be announced 30 May.

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       Autumn Rounds review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Jacques Poulin's 1993 novel, Autumn Rounds, recently re-issued by Archipelago Books.

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       Magnesia Litera

       Magnesia Litera is the leading Czech literary prize, and they've now announced this year's prizes, with Pavel Klusák's Gott: Československý příběh ('Gott: A Czechoslovak Story'; the 'Gott' of the title is singer Karel Gott) taking the top prize, book of the year; see also the Host publicity page.
       See also Ian Willoughby's Q & A with Klusák at Radio Prague International, Klusák’s Karel Gott: A Czechoslovak Story wins Magnesia Litera.
       Destrukce, by Stanislav Biler, was named best novel; see also the Druhé město publicity page. The best translation award went to the Czech translation of Jacek Dukaj's Lód; see also the Culture.pl information page.

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       Q & A: Marjorie Perloff

       At Tablet Jeremy Sigler has a lengthy Q & A with Marjorie Perloff, with much of the discussion about Wittgenstein, as her translation of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Private Notebooks 1914-16 is just out.
       I haven't seen Ludwig Wittgenstein's Private Notebooks 1914-16 yet, but I do hope to eventually; meanwhile see the Liveright publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org or Amazon.co.uk.

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       Q & A: Parul Sehgal

       At The Oxonian Review Zachary Fine has another Q & A in their "series of interviews with contemporary critics about criticism", An Interview with Parul Sehgal.

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       Hisham Bustani Q & A

       At the Middle East Research and Information Project Curtis Ryan has a Q & A with the The Perception of Meaning-author, in Not Lost in Translation -- An Interview with Jordanian Author and Activist Hisham Bustani.

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       Translation in ... India

       In the New Indian Express Sahana Iyer reports that 'lack of international awareness of what the Indian literary market offers and the inability of publishers to access these spaces and opportunities for international translation causes the trouble', in Trouble in the translation trail.
       Among the observations: historian and translator J Devika finds:

In literature, right now it is about rediscovering local idioms, dialects and I find it alarming that all this is being rendered into flat, standardised English. These local idioms are included in the text as a political act.

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       Ivan Moscow review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Boris Pilnyak's 1927 novel, Ivan Moscow, recently re-issued by Sublunary Editions.

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