opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

21 - 30 April 2023

21 April: The Austrian Riveter | April Asymptote | Punctuation
22 April: Orðstír Prize | Chinese rural literature
23 April: LA Times Book Prizes | A Woman of the Future review
24 April: CWA Daggers longlists | Stay This Day and Night With Me review
25 April: Chico Buarque (finally) picks up Prêmio Camões | Fake Hitler diaries to German Federal Archive
26 April: A golden age of literary criticism ? | Cristina Rivera Garza and Velia Vidal Q & A
27 April: Neustadt Prize jury | Women's Prize shortlist | Republic of Consciousness Prize | The Rope Artist review
28 April: Alberto Manguel's Sebald Lecture | Preise der Leipziger Buchmesse | EBRD Literature Prize finalists | RSL Ondaatje Prize shortlist
29 April: New World Literature Today | Baillie Gifford 'Winner of Winners' Award | Edgar Allan Poe Awards
30 April: Murakami at Wellesley | Reading in ... Ukraine

go to weblog

return to main archive

       Murakami at Wellesley

       In The Wellesley News Micol J. Zhai reports that Haruki Murakami spends a year at Wellesley College.
       Interesting to hear that: "This past semester, Murakami has been leading a faculty seminar on what his fiction says about gender".

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

---

       Reading in ... Ukraine

       Charlotte Higgins reports that ‘Like reading under the covers’: books flourish in blackout-hit Ukraine.
       Good to hear new bookshops are popping up.

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

       New World Literature Today

       The May-June issue of World Literature Today, featuring a section on 'The Future of the Book' and a lot more -- including the always interesting extensive book review section --, is now available.

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

---

       Baillie Gifford 'Winner of Winners' Award

       They've announced the winner of the 'Winner of Winners' Award of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction -- long known as the Samuel Johnson Prize -- and it is James Shapiro's 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare.

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

---

       Edgar Allan Poe Awards

       The Mystery Writers of America have announced the winners of this year's Edgar Allan Poe Awards, "honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2022".
       Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka won for best novel.

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

       Alberto Manguel's Sebald Lecture

       Alberto Manguel's Sebald Lecture, Notes on the Art of Translation, which he delivered on 23 March, is now available to watch on YouTube. No transcript yet that I can see, unfortunately, however .....

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

---

       Preise der Leipziger Buchmesse

       The Leipzig Book Fair is on now, and they've now announced the three Prizes of the Leipzig Book Fair.
       The fiction winner is Unser Deutschlandmärchen, by Dinçer Güçyeter; see also the mikrotext publicity page.
       The translation winner is Johanna Schwering, for her translation of Aurora Venturini's Las primas -- which, conveniently, is just out -- as Cousins -- in the UK from Faber and due out shortly in the US, from Soft Skull Press; get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org or Amazon.co.uk.

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

---

       EBRD Literature Prize finalists

       They've announced the three finalists for this year's EBRD Literature Prize
       The only title under review at the complete review is The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, in Jennifer Croft 's translation.
       The winner will be announced on 15 June.

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

---

       RSL Ondaatje Prize shortlist

       The Royal Society of Literature has announced the shortlist for this year's RSL Ondaatje Prize, awarded: "for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, evoking the spirit of a place".
       The only one of the five remaining titles under review at the complete review is The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka.
       The winner will be announced on 10 May.

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

       Neustadt Prize jury

       They've announced the jury for the 2024 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
       Each of the nine jurors will nominate an author -- the pool from which the winner will then be chosen. They will announce the finalists next month, and will vote on the winner in October.
       Perhaps noteworthy: eight of the nine jurors are women.

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

---

       Women's Prize shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction.
       Six titles are left in the running; the winner will be announced on 14 June.

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

---

       Republic of Consciousness Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses, and it is Dead Ink Books for Missouri Williams' The Doloriad; see also their publicity page.

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

---

       The Rope Artist review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Nakamura Fuminori's latest, The Rope Artist.

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

       A golden age of literary criticism ?

       At Vinduet Ryan Ruby considers: 'Today, criticism is being practiced and received as an artform in its own right. What makes this possible, and can it last ?' in A Golden Age.

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

---

       Cristina Rivera Garza and Velia Vidal Q & A

       At The Oxonian Review Georgina Fooks speaks with the two authors 'about their respective encounters with institutional archives, memory, and history', in The Afterlife of Things: An Interview with Cristina Rivera Garza and Velia Vidal.

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

       Chico Buarque (finally) picks up Prêmio Camões

       As I mentioned four years ago, they announced that Chico Buarque was to receive the 2019 Prêmio Camões de Literatura, the leading Lusophone author prize -- but only now has he been able to pick it up.
       As Catarina Demony and Miguel Pereira report for Reuters, Brazilian legend Buarque receives prestigious literary award ... four years late, as: "When Buarque won, [then President Jair] Bolsonaro refused to sign the award diploma, delaying the ceremony".
       What a pathetic piece of shit -- and good on now-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for coming to the ceremony in Portugal.

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

---

       Fake Hitler diaries to German Federal Archive

       The German Federal Archive isn't known as a repository for works of fiction, but one of the more famous recent ones is now headed there as, as their official press release has it, Bertelsmann Will Hand Over Forged “Hitler Diaries” to German Federal Archives. Sixty (fake) volumes !
       For more on this sorry fraud, see, for example, Silke Wünsch on How a German magazine fell for fake Hitler diaries at Deutsche Welle.

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

       CWA Daggers longlists

       The (British) Crime Writers' Association has announced the longlists for this year's CWA Daggers -- unfortunately not in just one neat list: you have to click each of the cartegories.
       The longlist for the Dagger for Crime Fiction in Translation includes three titles under review at the complete review:

• The Anomaly , by Hervé Le Tellier
• Lady Joker, by Takamura Kaoru
• The Tattoo Murder, by Takagi Akimitsu

       The shortlists will be announced 12 May, and the winners on 6 July.

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

---

       Stay This Day and Night With Me review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Belén Gopegui's Google-novel, Stay This Day and Night With Me, recently out from City Lights.

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

       LA Times Book Prizes

       They've announced the winners of this year's Los Angeles Times Book Prizes
       The fiction prize went to Solenoid, by Mircea Cărtărescu (which I should be getting to at some point).

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

---

       A Woman of the Future review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of David Ireland's 1979 novel, A Woman of the Future.

       This was the third of his novels to win Miles Franklin Literary Award, and the first published in the US -- and it doesn't look like any of his other works found a US publisher. Certainly an author whose work deserves to be better-known beyond Australia.
       Text has reïssued this (and several more of his works) in their Text Classics-series.

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

       Orðstír Prize

       They've announced the winners of this year's Orðstír Prize, a biennial pirze for translators from Icelandic.
       The prize was announced at this year's Reykjavik International Literary Festival -- noteworthy also because it was awarded by the Icelandic president, a nice show of support and recognition of the importance of translation and translators.

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

---

       Chinese rural literature

       At CGTN Jianhua Li wonders Could Chinese rural literature conquer the West ?
       It would of course be great to see more of it in translation, but I think I am not going out on a limb when I say: no.

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

       The Austrian Riveter

       The European Literature Network has now published The Austrian Riveter: Writing from Austria (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) -- a very impressive 232 pages of material.

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

---

       April Asymptote

       The April issue of Asymptote is now up -- the usual great variety, and a lot of it.

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

---

       Punctuation

       At Phys.org they provide a good overview of a recent paper looking at Universal versus system-specific features of punctuation usage patterns in major Western languages [$], in Punctuation in literature of major languages is intriguingly mathematical.
       The study is based on: "240 highly popular literary works written in seven major Western languages", which seems like a fairly small pool, but still ....
       Among the interesting conclusions: "the language characterized by the lowest propensity to use punctuation is English, with Spanish not far behind; Slavic languages proved to be the most punctuation-dependent".

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

previous entries (11 - 20 April 2023)

archive index

- search the site -

- return to top of the page -

© 2023 the complete review


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