opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 10 March 2023

1 March: PEN/Nabokov Award | First Blood review
2 March: IPAF shortlist | New Murakami novel | Sachin Ketkar Q & A
6 March: PEN America Literary Awards | NSW Premier's Literary Awards shortlists | Maryse Condé profile | Translations from ... Lao | The Birthday Party review
7 March: Libris Literatuur Prijs shortlist | Ghosts in Princeton review
8 March: American Academy of Arts and Letters literature awards | Women's Prize for Fiction longlist | Doktor Wassers recept review
9 March: EU Prize for Literature nominees | New Zealand Book Awards shortlists | Maigret e il caso Simenon review
10 March: Joyce Carol Oates Prize finalists | Bertolt-Brecht-Preis | Baillie Gifford Prize 'Winner of Winners' Award shortlist | The Netanyahus | Vito von Eichborn (1943-2023)

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       Joyce Carol Oates Prize finalists

       New Literary Project has announced the five finalists for this year's Joyce Carol Oates Prize, a US$50,000 prize awarded to : "a mid-career author of fiction who has earned an extraordinarily distinguished reputation and garnered the widespread appreciation of readers"
       No work by any of the five is under review at the complete review, I'm afraid.
       The winner will be announced next month.

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

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       Bertolt-Brecht-Preis

       They've announced the winner of this year's Bertolt Brecht Prize, a (more or less) biennial, €15,000 author prize, and it is Kruso-author Lutz Seiler.
       Previous winners include Atlas of an Anxious Man-author Christoph Ransmayr (2004), Ingo Schulze (2013), The Eighth Life (For Brilka)-author Nino Haratischwili (2018), and Grime-author Sibylle Berg (2020).
       Seiler gets to pick up his award on the perhaps less than ideally chosen 20 April.

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

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       Baillie Gifford Prize 'Winner of Winners' Award shortlist

       The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction has announced the shortlist for its 'Winner of Winners Award' -- crowning: "the best work of non-fiction from the last 25 years, recognising the outstanding work of all previous 24 prizewinners" (all the more confusing as for most of its existence the prize was known as the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction).
       The winning title will be announced on 27 April.

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

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       The Netanyahus

       In The Harvard Gazette Danna Lorch reports on a recent event where Joshua Cohen spoke with James Wood about his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Netanyahus.
       Among the titbits of interest:

He told Wood that 24 publishers rejected the manuscript before it was accepted by New York Review Books.

       (Ah, yes, the American publishing world .....)
       Also:

While some other people were iterating sourdough recipes during the COVID-19 lockdown, he was pounding out this book. “Everything was just very depressing, so I wrote what I thought was just a completely pointless book,” he said.

       (Of course, if that was the sales pitch -- it's: "a completely pointless book" -- you can sort of understand the 24 publishers who passed on it .....)

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

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       Vito von Eichborn (1943-2023)

       German publisher Vito von Eichborn has passed away; see, for example, Jan Wiele's obituary in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
       As founder of Eichborn (now part of Bastei Lübbe, which I still can't wrap my head around) and savior of Hans Magnus Enzensberger's (et al.) Die Andere Bibliothek he was an important figure in German literary publishing; his most recent undertaking appears to have been Vitolibro.

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

       EU Prize for Literature nominees

       The European Union Prize for Literature has announced its nominees for the 2023 prize.
       This prize rotates through 41 countries, with batches of 13 or 14 books by emerging fiction writers competing against each other, year by year. Titles from thirteen countries are matched up this year -- and it's great to see these include ones from too-little-seen national literatures, including Armenia, Cyprus, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Montenegro.
       In earlier years, this prize had national committees pick a winning book for each country -- making for a lot of prizes. Now there's only one -- but it' still a bit sad that the winning book will be selected by this process:

The seven members of the European jury will now read excerpts from all the nominated books and make their choice in the upcoming month to award one EUPL Prize winner for this edition, together with recognising five special mentions.

       Excerpts ! (And presumably quite a bit will also depend on the translations .....)
       Still, the whole prize set-up is a nice idea -- especially that:

All nominated authors will be continuously promoted on a European stage, aiming to reach a wider and international audience, as well as connect with readers beyond their national and linguistic borders.

       The winner will be announced on 28 April.

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

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       New Zealand Book Awards shortlists

       They've announced the shortlists for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, the leading New Zealand book prize.
       The winners will be announced 17 May.

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

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       Maigret e il caso Simenon review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Maurizio Testa's Maigret e il caso Simenon.

       I am kind of surprised that the rather controlling Simenon-estate didn't fight the use of his famous character, but there's even a French translation of this, so I guess they were okay with it.

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

       American Academy of Arts and Letters literature awards

       The American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced the eighteen winners of its 2023 literature awards.
       These include the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, awarded: "to a young writer of considerable literary talent for a work published in 2022" (going to Anna Deforest for A History of Present Illness) and the John Updike Award, awarded: "for a writer whose work has demonstrated consistent excellence" (going to Hernan Diaz).

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

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       Women's Prize for Fiction longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction -- sixteen novels left in the running.
       The shortlist will be announced on 26 April, and the winner on 14 June.

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

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       Doktor Wassers recept review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Lars Gustafsson's Doktor Wassers recept.

       This was the last of his novels published during his lifetime -- but he apparently continued with Doctor Wasser, who also features in a posthumously published work.

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

       Libris Literatuur Prijs shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Libris Literatuur Prijs, the leading Dutch novel prize.
       The winner will be announced on 8 May.

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

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       Ghosts in Princeton review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Daniel Kehlmann's Kurt Gödel-play, Ghosts in Princeton.

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

       PEN America Literary Awards

       A bit late to this (and everything else -- internet set-up issues have been problematic, and look to be so for a few more days ...), but they've announced the winners of this year's PEN America Literary Awards.
       Percival Everett's Dr. No won the big-money PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, while Tiffany Tsao's translation of Budi Darma's People from Bloomington (which I have but haven't gotten to) took the PEN Translation Prize.

       (Updated - 7 March): impressively the awards (ceremony) gets coverage even in Vanity Fair (Inside the “Oscars for Books,” the PEN America Literary Awards) and Town & Country (Inside the 2023 PEN America Literary Awards).

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

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       NSW Premier's Literary Awards shortlists

       They've announced the shortlists for this year's NSW Premier's Literary Awards, selected from 856 entries; for a more convenient overview, see the Books+Publishing report.
       The winners will be announced on 22 May.

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

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       Maryse Condé

       In The New York Times Anderson Tepper profiles the author, in (the presumably paywalled ...) Maryse Condé, at Home in the World.

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

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       Translations from ... Lao

       Three books translated from Lao ! Alas, not into English, but rather, as Yang Yang reports in China Daily, Lao books translated into Chinese.
       Hopefully some day we'll see a bit more Lao literature available in English, too .....

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

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       The Birthday Party review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Laurent Mauvignier's The Birthday Party, recently out from Fitzcarraldo Editions (in the UK) and Transit Books (US), in Daniel Levin Becker's translation.

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

       IPAF shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's International Prize for Arabic Fiction -- six titles by authors from six countries.
       The only author with a book reviewed at the complete review is Miral al-Tahawy -- Blue Aubergine.
       The winner will be announced on 21 May.

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

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       New Murakami novel

       Japanese publisher Shinchosha has now revealed the title of the forthcoming (on 13 April) Murakami Haruki novel, and it is 街とその不確かな壁 ('The City and Its Uncertain Walls'); see also, for example, the AP report by Mari Yamagucji, Murakami's 1st novel in 6 years to hit stores in April..
       It's apparently a fat one -- Amazon.co.jp lists it at 672 pages -- so it'll probably take even longer than usual to get an English translation -- figure on two or three years.

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

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       Sachin Ketkar Q & A

       At Words without Borders Jenny Bhatt has a lengthy Q & A, Into English: Sachin Ketkar on Bilingual Translation.
       Kelar is: "a scholar of Gujarati and Marathi literature [and] translates from Gujarati into English and from Marathi into English".

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

       PEN/Nabokov Award

       They've announced the winner of this year's PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, and it is Vinod Kumar Shukla.
       See, for example, his books at HarperCollins (India), and Vidyan Ravinthiran on Dreaming the World: Vinod Kumar Shukla's Extraordinary Sentences in The Georgia Review.

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

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       First Blood review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Amélie Nothomb's 2021 prix Renaudot-winning novel about her father, First Blood, coming in English from Europa Editions.

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

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