opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 10 February 2023

1 February: PEN Translates winners | NBCC Awards finalists | Folio Prize shortlists
2 February: Ockham New Zealand Book Awards longlists | Gina Apostol on José Rizal | Deceit review
3 February: Libris Literatuur Prijs longlist | Victorian Premier's Literary Awards | Siblings review
4 February: Wingate Prize shortlist | Publishing Hindi literature
5 February: Classics at the Bodleian Library | Forthcoming Murakami novel
6 February: Barbara Zitwer profile | New York Nocturne review
7 February: Russian books (not) in Ukraine | The Family Idiot (Abridged Edition) review
8 February: Kawakami Mieko profile | PEN/Faulkner Award longlist | Gerhard Wolf (1928-2023) | Seconds review
9 February: Translation Prizes | Iran's Book of the Year Awards | Translating People from Bloomington
10 February: Mario Vargas Llosa at the Académie française | Korean diaspora literature | Translating Japanese literature | The Hive review

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       Mario Vargas Llosa at the Académie française

       Mario Vargas Llosa was elected an immortel at the Académie française quite a while back, and finally formally installed in fauteuil 18 last week -- and yesterday he gave his acceptance address, which you can find in full here (warning ! dreaded pdf format !).
       Among much else, he suggests:

Le roman sauvera la démocratie ou s’abîmera avec elle et disparaîtra.

[The novel will save democracy or will be wrecked along with it and disappear.]

       Who am I to disagree with a Nobel laureate (and, now, immortal) ? (Actually, I disagree with quite a bit of what MVL has had to say, but I'm on board with his high estimation of literature, and the novel in particular.)

       See also, for example, the France24 report, Nobel Prize-winning Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa joins Académie Française.

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

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       Korean diaspora literature

       In The Korea Herald Hwang Dong-hee reports that: "Seoul Selection publishes six-volume series of English translations of works by Japanese Korean and Chinese Korean writers", in Korean diaspora literature revisited.
       Some interesting-looking titles here.

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

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       Translating Japanese literature

       The Yomiuri Shimbun reports that Japan to Promote Its Literature by Boosting Translator Training, as:

The government is planning to promote Japanese novels, essays and other literature by cherry-picking translators and providing them with high-end skills.

       Cherry-picking !
       Well, money probably can't hurt .....

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

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       The Hive review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of a new translation of Nobel laureate Camilo José Cela's novel, The Hive, coming shortly from New York Review Books.

       This is the first translation of the complete and uncensored text, and thus quite an event. Still, NYRB will be hard-pressed to compete with the reach the paperback edition of the old one (may have) had: Cela reports in one of his Prefatory Notes included with the book:

Signet Books in New York printed seven hundred thousand copies of their cheap edition at 35¢ a pop

       Yes, the claim has to be taken with a grain of salt (or more), and the idea that they printed seven hundred thousand copies doesn't mean they sold anywhere near that many, but, still ... wow. Recall that apparently only twelve books sold more than 700,000 copies in the US in all of 2022. And this was decades before Cela took the Nobel Prize (which, let's be honest, also did not make him a household name).
       I first thought that maybe the paperback edition came out on the back of the success of The Family of Pascual Duarte, but the Kerrigan translation only came out a decade later (with John Marks' earlier translation, as Pascual Duarte's Family, apparently never even being published in the US, nor making much of a mark). In fact, the Signet edition came out only a year after the hardcover edition of The Hive -- so that must have done reasonably well, and somebody clearly thought a cheap, pocket-book edition was going to sell like hotcakes; even if they only printed one-tenth the amount Cela claims, that's a lot of books. (I do have my suspicions that all this did not work out quite as hoped for .....)
       I imagine New York Review Books would be thrilled if this sold seven thousand copies .....

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

       Translation Prizes

       They've announced the winners of this year's Society of Authors' Translation Prizes

       The only winning title under review at the complete review is Damion Searls' translation of Where You Come From by Saša Stanišić, winner of the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for translation from German. (The runner-up of that prize is under review as well: Steph Morris' translation of Brigitte Reimann's It All Tastes of Farewell.)

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

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       Iran's Book of the Year Awards

       They've announced the winners of this year's Iranian Book of the Year Awards, in a lot of categories; see also the Tehran Times report.
       The novel prize was shared by صور, by Hossein Ali Jafari -- see also the Soroush publicity page -- and عزرائیل 1 : کهنه سرباز by Nima Akbarkhani -- see also the Ketabestan publicity page. (I don't think we're likely to see either of these in English translation any time soon.)

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

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       Translating People from Bloomington

       In the Sydney Review of Books Tiffany Tsao writes about When We Became the People from Bloomington, about translating Budi Darma's People from Bloomington, recently out from Penguin Classics; see their publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org or Amazon.co.uk.
       I have this but have struggled with it -- it's a story collection .....

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

       Kawakami Mieko profile

       In The New York Times Magazine Joshua Hunt wonders: 'Will the Japanese novelist Mieko Kawakami's stark explorations of class translate to American readers ?' in ‘Breasts and Eggs’ Made Her a Feminist Icon. She Has Other Ambitions.
       Apparently:

What Kawakami wants, however, is to confound expectations by writing books that are at times provocatively against type, as if to prove that there is no category that can contain her.

       Her four works translated into English are under review at the complete review, including Breasts and Eggs
       And with Knopf bringing out her next novel, maybe they'll also publish the book of hers I am most eager to see, her book-length interview with Murakami Haruki -- whom they also publish --, みみずくは黄昏に飛びたつ; see also the Shinchosha publicity page.

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

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       PEN/Faulkner Award longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, "America's most prestigious peer-juried literary prize".
       Ten titles are left in the running, selected from 512 (!) eligible novels and short story collections; I haven't seen any of these.

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

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       Gerhard Wolf (1928-2023)

       Gerhard Wolf -- best known as Christa's husband, but also author and editor of a heap of books -- has passed away; see for example the notice from his publisher, Aufbau.

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

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       Seconds review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of David Ely's 1963 novel, Seconds -- famously also made into a film in 1966, directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Rock Hudson.

       Also of note: it's available in a mass-market edition -- and priced under US$5.00 (4.99), which is not something you see often anymore.

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

       Russian books (not) in Ukraine

       Reuters reports that Ukraine withdraws 19 mln Russian, Soviet-era books from libraries.
       Yes, "Some Ukrainian-language books from the Soviet era are also written off".

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

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       The Family Idiot (Abridged Edition) review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of An Abridged Edition of Jean-Paul Sartre's The Family Idiot: Gustave Flaubert, 1821-1857, abridged by Joseph S. Catalano, just out from the University of Chicago Press.

       The complete version of this -- five volumes in the English translation -- is one of my literary white whales, but between trying to find a copy and making my way through the 2800+ pages, well, I haven't conquered it yet -- so I was particularly intrigued by this. Not least because of the sheer audacity of the undertaking -- the abridgement is radical, after all, cutting some nine-tenths of the original.

       (I've read a ton of Sartre -- all the plays, most of the fiction, lots of the non-fiction, even The Freud Scenario (see the Verso publicity page) -- but I'm always astonished by how much more of his work there is still to get to.)

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

       Barbara Zitwer profile

       In The Korea Times Jack Lau profiles the head of the Barbara J. Zitwer Agency, in US literary agent reflects on personal journey to discover Korea in new book.
       Among her observations:

Zitwer blamed "old, big Korean publishers" for slowing Korean literature from reaching a foreign readership because they do not understand or wish to work with global publishing norms and insist on their ways. For that, authors from South Korea have lost out on opportunities for their works to be published or even adapted for the screen.

       Quite a few of the works she has represented are under review at the complete review.

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

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       New York Nocturne review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Walter Satterthwait's New York Nocturne: The Return of Miss Lizzie.

       This came out in German a decade before it was published (in 2016) in the original English -- not the first of Satterthwait's novel to go that route; Perfection did, too.
       Walter Satterthwait did publish quite a lot -- including the Joshua Croft-series -- and is a relatively well-known mystery writer, so I was surprised to see that there is no (English) Wikipedia page for him -- the highest-profile English-writing author I think I've come across without one. (There are, however, German and French Wikipedia pages for him.)

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

       Classics at the Bodleian Library

       At Antigone Classics Librarian for the Bodleian Library in the University of Oxford Charlotte Goodall looks back at Tempora Mutantur: Two Decades as a Classics Librarian.

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

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       Forthcoming Murakami novel

       Japanese publisher Shinchosha has announced that there is a new Murakami Haruki novel due out -- but beyond the publication date of 13 April there's not much information about it yet, not even the title.
       The reports about it are corrspondingly thin, but see, for example, those in The Japan Times and at Asahi Shimbun.

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

       Wingate Prize shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Wingate Prize, "given to the best book, fiction or non-fiction, to translate the idea of Jewishness to the general reader".
       The shortlist consists of four works of fiction and three of non.
       Two of the works are under review at the complete review: The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk and The Memory Monster by Yishai Sarid.
       The winner will be announced on 12 March.

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

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       Publishing Hindi literature

       At mint lounge Aditya Mani Jha looks at how English publishing in India is finally discovering the world of Hindi literature.
       Among the observations:

Things are improving, broadly speaking, but the rate of growth is still relatively small. Penguin acquired the legacy Hindi publisher Hind Pocket Books in 2018. Other publishers are also amping up their Hindi output, slowly but steadily. Is it too much to hope for, the notion that Hindi and English publishers would work in tandem in the near future, releasing bilingual editions, perhaps embarking on joint editorial sessions ?

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

       Libris Literatuur Prijs longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Libris Literatuur Prijs, a leading Dutch literary prize.
       There are eighteen titles left in the running -- selected from 235 submitted titles. (Yes, admirably they reveal what all the titles in the running are -- unlike most English-language book prizes, which outrageously insist on keeping secret what titles were actually considered for the prize. Why can't you do this, The Booker Prizes ? Look how easy it is !)
       The shortlist will be announced on 6 March, and the winner of 8 May.

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

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       Victorian Premier's Literary Awards

       They've announced the winners of this year's Victorian Premier's Literary Awards -- "which includes Australia's single richest literary award".
       Jessica Au's Cold Enough for Snow won both the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Prize for Fiction. This came out from New Directions in the US and Fitzcarraldo Editions in the UK (and Giramondo in Australia), as the first winner of The Novel Prize.

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

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       Siblings review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Brigitte Reimann's 1963 novel Siblings, the first of her works of fiction to be translated into English -- just out in the UK from Penguin Classics and out in the US next month from Transit Books. (It's also out in a new German edition.)

       At Deutsche Welle Elizabeth Grenier now also writes about how Cult East German novelist now published in English.

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

       Ockham New Zealand Book Awards longlists

       They've announced the longlists for this year's Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, with 44 titles longlisted in the four categories, selected from 191 entries.
       The shortlists will be announced 8 March, and the winners on 17 May.

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

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       Gina Apostol on José Rizal

       At the Los Angeles Review of Books The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata-author Gina Apostol writes on Let the Knife Speak: On José Rizal.
       She suggests:

The Dutchman Multatuli and Brazil’s Machado de Assis are his nearest confreres, but as an experimental novelist making political art in his colonizer’s tongue, he is Original Gangster: sui generis, perhaps because he so adamantly centered himself, his being Filipino -- that is, an artist of many worlds and tongues.

       (See also reviews of, for example, Multatuli's Max Havelaar and Machado de Assis' The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas.)
       Reviews of Rizal's Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo are consistently among the most popular at the complete review -- though the novels are still far too little known and read outside of the Philippines.

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

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       Deceit review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Yuri Felsen's 1930 novel, Deceit.

       This came out from Prototype in the UK last year, and is now out from Astra House in the US.

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

       PEN Translates winners

       English PEN has announced the latest PEN Translates winners -- grants for translations awarded for 15 titles from 14 countries and 10 languages.
       Certainly some promising-sounding titles to look forward to here.

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

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       NBCC Awards finalists

       The National Book Critics Circle has announced the finalists for its 2022 awards -- five books each in six categories.
       One title in the Fiction category is under review at the complete review -- Kawakami Mieko's All the Lovers in the Night -- as are two finalists for the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, in Jennifer Croft's translation, and Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov, in Boris Dralyuk's translation.
       The winners will be announced on 23 March.

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

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       Folio Prize shortlists

       They've announced the shortlists for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2023 -- five titles in each of the three categories, fiction, non, and poetry.
       The category winners and Book of the Year will be announced 27 March.

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

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