opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 10 November 2022

1 November: Warwick Prize longlist | US v. Bertelsmann SE & Co.
2 November: Nordic Council Literature Prize | Sarah Maguire Prize | Friedrich Ulfers Prize
3 November: Writers' Trust of Canada Awards | The Tattoo Murder Case review
4 November: Prix Goncourt | Graeme Macrae Burnet Q & A
5 November: Machine literary translation | Novelist as a Vocation review
6 November: Q & A: s: Irene Vallejo - Joshua Cohen - Pedro Almeida Maia
7 November: Georg-Büchner-Preis acceptance speech | Prime Minister's Literary Awards shortlists
8 November: Reading in the ... GDR | European book locales
9 November: Scotiabank Giller Prize | Constantijn Huygens-prijs | Grand prix de littérature américaine | The Last Samurai reviews
10 November: NIF Book Prize shortlist | Geetanjali Shree profile

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       NIF Book Prize shortlist

       The New India Foundation has announced the shortlist for this year's Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize, awarded for: "the best non-fiction book on modern / contemporary India"; see, for example, the Scroll.in report.
       There are five titles left in the running; the winner will be announced on 1 December.

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

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       Geetanjali Shree profile

       In The Korea Times Park Han-sol profiles Tomb of Sand-author Geetanjali Shree, in International Booker Prize-winning 'Tomb of Sand' breaks down borders, celebrates plurality

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

       Scotiabank Giller Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Scotiabank Giller Prize, a leading Canadian fiction prize, and it is The Sleeping Car Porter, by Suzette Mayr; see also the Coach House Books publicity page.

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

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       Constantijn Huygens-prijs

       They've announced the winner of this year's Constantijn Huygens Prize, a leading Dutch author prize, and it is Marion Bloem.
       Only one of her books -- The Cockatoo's Lie -- appears to have been translated into English; see also the Dutch Foundation for Literature information page.

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

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       Grand prix de littérature américaine

       They've announced the winner of this year's Grand prix de littérature américaine, a French prize for the best book by an American author translated into French, and it is Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr; see, for example, the Livres Hebdo report.

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       The Last Samurai reviews

       The most recent additions to the complete review are my reviews of Helen DeWitt's 2000 novel The Last Samurai -- and Lee Konstantinou's The Last Samurai Reread, just out from Columbia University Press.

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       Reading in the ... GDR

       The Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung has a new exhibit, Leseland DDR, about reading in the German Democratic Republic -- and at Deutsche Welle Rayna Breuer discusses it, in: Disney was immoral: What was read in the GDR.

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

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       European book locales

       Via I'm pointed to this new Casino.at *study* of Die beliebtesten Buch-Schauplätze in Europa -- the most popular settings for books in Europe.
       They apparently went nation by nation, determining which locale in each was the most popular, with London the most popular city-setting among books set in England (18.78 per cent), Rome the most popular in Italy (15.48 per cent), etc.
       Yes, capitals dominate ..... But in some countries fiction apparently isn't that capital-centric -- only 4.89 per cent of books set in Hungary are apparently set in Budapest.
       A bit -- or rather, a lot -- more information about the data sets here would be very helpful, but still: of some interest.

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

       Georg-Büchner-Preis acceptance speech

       Over the weekend Emine Sevgi Özdamar picked up this year's Georg Büchner Prize, the leading German-language author prize, and her acceptance speech is now also available online.

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

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       Prime Minister's Literary Awards shortlists

       They've announced the shortlists for this year's Prime Minister's Literary Awards, a leading Australian literary prize.
       There are thirty shortlisted titles, five in each of six categories, selected from a total of 545 entries.

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

       Q & A: Irene Vallejo

       In The Guardian John Self has a Q & A: with the author of Papyrus, Philologist Irene Vallejo: ‘Alexander the Great’s library was the first step towards the internet’.

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

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       Q & A: Joshua Cohen

       At The New York Review of Books Daniel Drake has a Q & A with The Netanyahus-author Joshua Cohen, in The Gods of Chaos and Stupidity.

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

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       Q & A: Pedro Almeida Maia

       In the Portuguese American Journal Carolina Matos has a Q & A with Almeida Maia: One of the most compelling Azorean writers of his generation.
       Matos suggests: "Never before so many books have been published in the Azores, about the Azores by Azorean authors", but very little of it has made it into English so far.

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

       Machine literary translation

       Via I'm pointed to this recent study of Exploring Document-Level Literary Machine Translation with Parallel Paragraphs from World Literature (warning ! dreaded pdf format !).
       Gotta love the opening:

     Literary translation is a culturally significant task, but it is bottlenecked by the small number of qualified literary translators relative to the many untranslated works published around the world.

       Would that the small number of qualified translators were the only bottleneck .....
       Trying to utilize machine translation (MT) to help things along is, of course, a reasonable idea -- but it doesn't quite seem up to the task yet. Not entirely surprisingly they conclude:

A human evaluation experiment with professional literary translators reveals that commercial-grade MT systems are too literal in their translations and also suffer from discourse-level errors.

       Of course, these are things they can work on -- though it may be (quite) a while until MT gets closer to the mark.

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

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       Novelist as a Vocation review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Murakami Haruki's Novelist as a Vocation, finally also available in English.

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

       Prix Goncourt

       They've announced the winner of this year's prix Goncourt, the biggest of the French literary awards, and it is Vivre vite by Brigitte Giraud, which won by a vote of five to ... uh, five for Giuliano da Empoli's Le mage du Kremlin after fourteen rounds of voting ..... (Jury president Didier Decoin apparently unilaterally broke the tie.) See for example the report by Constant Méheut in The New York Times, Brigitte Giraud Wins Goncourt Prize With Tragic Novel of Loss and the RFI report, Story of personal tragedy wins France's prestigious Goncourt literature prize.
       See also the Flammarion publicity page for Vivre vite.

       After the Goncourt, they also announced the winner of the prix Renaudot, and it is Performance, by Simon Liberati; see also the Livres Hebdo report, as well as the Grasset publicity page.

       None of Giraud's books appear to be available in English yet, but Liberati's Anthology of Apparitions is.

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

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       Graeme Macrae Burnet Q & A

       At CrimeReads Lily Meyer "talks with the Booker-nominated author about his new mystery, Case Study", in Graeme Macrae Burnet on Writing Comedy, Crime, and Characters with Divided Selves.

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

       Writers' Trust of Canada Awards

       They've announced the winners of the Writers' Trust of Canada Awards, including of the C$60,000 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, which went to Some Hellish., by Nicholas Herring; see, for example, the CBC report.

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

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       The Tattoo Murder Case review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Takagi Akimitsu's classic 1948 mystery, The Tattoo Murder Case, recently re-issued by Pushkin Press (as The Tattoo Murder).

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

       Nordic Council Literature Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Nordic Council Literature Prize, the leading Scandinavian literary prize, and it is the first three volumes of Solvej Balle's septology -- yes, another Nordic septology ... -- Om udregning af rumfang; see also, for example, the Danish Arts Foundation information page for volume three.

       Balle's According to the Law: Four Accounts of Mankind has been translated into English, and I've long hoped to come across a copy; get yours at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. But with this win we should be seeing more of her work in English -- this prize has a very good track record, and quite a few winning titles are under review at the complete review.

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

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       Sarah Maguire Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation -- though not yet at the official site, last I checked ... --, a: "biennial award for the best book of poetry in English translation by a living poet from beyond Europe", and it is Kareem James Abu-Zeid's translation of Exhausted on the Cross, by Najwan Darwish; see, for example, Lauren Brown's report in The Bookseller.
       See also the New York Review Books publicity page for Exhausted on the Cross.

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

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       Friedrich Ulfers Prize

       This year's Festival Neue Literatur in New York is coming up -- yeah, no information at the official site yet ... -- and as part of that they will also be handing out this year's Friedrich Ulfers Prize, awarded: "to a leading publisher, writer, critic, translator, or scholar who has championed the advancement of German-language literature in the United States".
       That will take place 14 November at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, along with the panel discussion on 'Express Yourself: Why Writers Write'.
       The Friedrich Ulfers Prize this year goes to Riky Stock, the Managing Director at NorthSouth Books and former longtime director of the German Book Office New York (which became Frankfurt Book Fair New York), where she did indeed played a huge role in advancing German literature in the US.

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

       Warwick Prize longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, fourteen titles selected from 138 submissions (warning ! dreaded pdf format !). (Yes, this prize admirably reveals all the titles that are in the running -- something that all literary prizes should do.)

       Only three of the longlisted titles are under review at the complete review:

• The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft
• Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki, , translated by Karen Van Dyck
• Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree,, translated by Daisy Rockwell

       The shortlist will be announced in a few weeks; the winner will be announced 24 November

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

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       US v. Bertelsmann SE & Co.

       Big publishing news: Judge Florence Pan has ruled in US v. Bertelsmann SE & Co., blocking the merger between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster; see, for example, the Reuters report by Diane Bartz, U.S. judge says Penguin Random House book merger cannot go forward and Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth A. Harris' report in The New York Times, Judge Blocks a Merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. (The full order was not immediately released.)

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

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