opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

11 - 20 August 2022

11 August: Houshang Ebtehaj (1928-2022) | The Oxford Brotherhood review | Two decades of the Literary Saloon
12 August: The dictator novel | American war on books ?
13 August: Salman Rushdie assaulted | Murakami in ... Yoruba
14 August: The Cabinet review
15 August: Partition literature | Salman Rushdie recovering | The Backstreets review
16 August: Reading suggestions | Three Assassins reviews
17 August: International Booker Prize judges | The future of literary festivals ?
18 August: Online fiction in ... China | Grove Atlantic Q & A
19 August: Prix Ivoire finalists | Shanghai Literature Museum | The Night Will Have Its Say review
20 August: English literature A-levels | The Rose review

go to weblog

return to main archive

       English literature A-levels

       They've announced this year's A-level results in the UK, producing lots of data -- including what the most popular subjects are.
       Shockingly, English literature -- the sixth most-popular subject as recently as 2018 -- has swooned out of the top ten, down to twelfth; it was ninth just last year. Meanwhile, sociology -- tenth in 2017 -- is now fifth, while perennially popular psychology is still in second place.
       See, for example, This year's A-level results in England explained in five charts.

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

---

       The Rose review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of some 1950s science fiction by Charles L. Harness, The Rose.

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

       Prix Ivoire finalists

       They've announced the six finalists for the prix Ivoire pour la Littérature Africaine d’Expression Francophone, selected from 37 submissions from 12 countries; see, for example, the report at ActuaLitté.
       The winner will be announced 26 November.

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

---

       Shanghai Literature Museum

       They've begun work on an ambitious new Shanghai Literature Museum; see, for example, Yang Jian's report at Shine, Literature museum to highlight city's proud art heritage.
       Looks like they'll have quite a lot of space.
       The museum is scheduled to open in 2024.

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

---

       The Night Will Have Its Say review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Ibrahim al-Koni's The Night Will Have Its Say, just out from Hoopoe Fiction.

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

       Online fiction in ... China

       At SupChina Jin Zhao looks, at some length, at China's sprawling world of web fiction, as: "China is producing and consuming the largest amount of web fiction in the world".
       Zhao suggests:

Governed by the rule of the market, supported by the largest pool of human resources in the world as well as data-driven digital technologies, web fiction has become a gigantic content laboratory in China, where stories and elements of stories are created and tested by hundreds of millions of humans again and again for years on end. The result ? Some of the most pleasurable, commercially successful, and/or addictive texts we have ever seen in the Chinese language.

       See also my reviews of Michel Hockx's Internet Literature in China and Megan Walsh's The Subplot.

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

---

       Grove Atlantic Q & A

       At Edelweiss Gabriella Costa has an Interview with a Publisher: Grove Atlantic on Publishing Literature in Translation, with responses from Peter Blackstock, Amy Hundley, and Katie Raissian.
       Grove Atlantic of course publishes a wide variety of interesting literature in translation.

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

       International Booker Prize judges

       They've announced the judges for the 2023 International Booker Prize, the leading English-language prize for a work of fiction in translation by a living author (and translator); see also the official press release (warning ! dreaded pdf format !).
       The judges are:

• Leïla Slimani (chair) -- the author of, among others, The Perfect Nanny (published in the UK as Lullaby)
• Uilleam Blacker
• Parul Sehgal
• Frederick Studemann
• Tan Twan Eng -- the author of, among others, The Garden of Evening Mists and The Gift of Rain

       The prize is now also open for submissions.
       The longlist will be announced next March.

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

---

       The future of literary festivals ?

       In The Guardian Sarah Shaffi considers: Are literary festivals doomed ? Why book events need to change.
       Certainly the suggestion of having weekend or day passes rather than only individually ticketed events sounds like a good idea.

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

       Reading suggestions

       At The Guardian they: "asked 14 writers, editors and publishers to tell us their current favourites from around the world", in Page turners: the most exciting new fiction from Africa, Latin America and south Asia.

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

---

       Three Assassins reviews

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Isaka Kotaro's Three Assassins, now also out in a US edition.

       The big-budget movie version of Isaka's Bullet Train recently came out; this novel is an earlier one.

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

       Partition literature

       At The Wire they have a useful list of books, in The Pain of Partition, as Seen in the Literature of Many Languages.

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

---

       Salman Rushdie recovering

       It's good to hear that author Salman Rushdie is recovering from the recent assault on him.
       There continues to be lots of coverage and commentary; see now also:

• Authors on the Salman Rushdie attack: ‘A society cannot survive without free speech’ at The Guardian
  
  
• Where Salman Rushdie defied those who would silence him, today too many fear causing offence by Kenan Malik in The Observer
  
  
• Amitava Kumar’s open letter to Hadi Matar: You have failed — we are all returning to Rushdie’s words at The Indian Express

       And, from a while back, see my review of Kenan Malik's From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy.

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

---

       The Backstreets review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of A Novel from Xinjiang by Perhat Tursun, The Backstreets -- a rare translation from Uyghur.

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

       The Cabinet review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Kim Un-su's The Cabinet.

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

       Salman Rushdie assaulted

       As widely reported and condemned, some piece of shit assaulted and seriously injured author Salman Rushdie yesterday at an event at the Chautauqua Institution.
       There's a great deal of coverage of this -- see, for example, live updates at The New York Times and The Guardian, or Nitish Pahwa's Q & A with Nader Hashemi at Slate, Why the Attack on Salman Rushdie Is So Shocking.
       Leaving aside his significance as an author, Rushdie has long been a leading torchbearer for free speech, and I have great respect and admiration for his words and actions in support of it over all these years.

       (Several Rushdie titles are under review at complete review -- though none from his most formidable period (the decade that saw Midnight's Children, Shame, and, yes, The Satanic Verses) --; see, for example, his memoir, Joseph Anton.)

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

---

       Murakami in ... Yoruba

       At Leadership they have a piece on Translating Murakami To Yoruba: Challenges And Place of African Languages In Global Translation Literature – Tubosun.
       Somewhat disappointing that the translation appears to be of the English translation, but still .....
       And good to hear from translator Kola Tubosun:

     Many Nigerian writers works are published in English only, which is kind of crazy. Chimamanda Adichie, Helon Habila and many others, have their works translated to many languages but they don’t have them translated in their own indigenous languages. Part of my task is to make sure it changes going forward. We can expand their readership and empower our own languages to survive into the next generation.

       Sounds good.

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

       The dictator novel

       With a new translation of Miguel Ángel Asturias' El Señor Presidente just out -- as Mr. President, by David Unger; see the Penguin Classics publicity page -- Graciela Mochkofsky writes on The Timely Return of a Dictator Novel at The New Yorker.
       She quotes A Thousand Deaths Plus One-author Sergio Ramírez:

A new batch of dictator novels is coming, he told me. These days, “We all have our ‘Señor Presidente.’ ”

       I haven't seen this translation of the novel yet, but I hope to; meanwhile, get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org or Amazon.co.uk.

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

---

       American war on books ?

       At Salon Amanda Marcotte sums up the current sad state of affairs, in Republican war on books: They don't just want to control your body — next up, your mind.
       Not exactly a new story in the US, but still worth noting.

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

       Houshang Ebtehaj (1928-2022)

       Iranian poet Houshang Ebtehaj has passed away; see, for example the reports at AP news and the Tehran Times.
       He published under the name of 'Sayeh' -- so also the one collection available in English, The Art of Stepping Through Time; get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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

---

       The Oxford Brotherhood review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Guillermo Martínez's The Oxford Brotherhood.

       This novel has a Lewis Carroll sub-plot -- the brotherhood of the title is the (fictional) Lewis Carroll Brotherhood, a variation on the Lewis Carroll Society -- as the original Spanish title, Los crímenes de Alicia, suggests. Other translations also opted for the more direct Carroll-connection -- Der Fall Alice im Wunderland; I delitti di Alice -- but apparently the thinking was that 'Oxford' plays better in the US/UK market. The UK edition at least puts a Carroll photograph on the cover; the US edition is all Oxford .....

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

---

       Two decades of the Literary Saloon

       The complete review was started in 1999, and this Literary Saloon opened in 2002 -- on this date, as a matter of fact, making it twenty years old today.
       The bigger site-anniversary will follow in a couple of weeks -- probably around the beginning of October, when the complete review reaches 5000 titles under review, but two decades of this is something too, isn't it ?
       Good to see that even after all this time there are still some readers interested in what gets posted here. It still seems to serve a purpose, so you can expect things to continue much the same at least a while longer.

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

previous entries (1 - 10 August 2022)

archive index

- search the site -

- return to top of the page -

© 2022 the complete review


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