opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 10 December 2023

1 December : Vassilis Vassilikos (1933-2023) | Fürstinnen review
2 December : Translation Prizes shortlists | Hsu-Tang Library Q & A | Upcoming Japanese translations
3 December : Latest Litprom-Bestenliste | Skeletons in the Closet review
4 December : Taiwanese literature in translation | Newton's Brain review
5 December : FT Business Book of the Year | Frankfurt Book Fair 2027 Guest of Honor
6 December : WLT's '75 Notable Translations 2023' | John Dos Passos Prize | Nobel Prize lecture in literature | The Emperor of China in a House of Ill Repute review
7 December : Whiting Grants | Jeffrey Angles Q & A | Shanghai International Online Literature Week
8 December : Jon Fosse on 'A Silent Language' | Benjamin Zephaniah (1958-2023) | Reading in ... Romania | Irish Book of the Year | White Shadow review
9 December : Scotland's National Book Awards | Diagram Prize | Publishing translations in ... Sweden
10 December : Jalal Al-e Ahmad at 100 | May-Brit Akerholt profile | Olivia Laing and M. John Harrison conversation | Shubeik Lubeik review

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       Jalal Al-e Ahmad at 100

       They celebrated the centenary of Iranian author Jalal Al-e Ahmad a week ago and the Tehran Times reports that Jalal Al-e Ahmad's 100th birthday celebrated in Tehran.
       It's his wife, Island of Bewilderment-author Simin Daneshvar, who is probably better-known among English-speaking readers, but quite a bit of his work is also available in translation -- and several of his works are under review at the complete review:

• By the Pen
• The Israeli Republic
• Lost in the Crowd
• The School Principal

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

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       May-Brit Akerholt profile

       At The Guardian Xenia Hanusiak profiles one of Jon Fosse's translators, May-Brit Akerholt -- who has translated: "34 of his plays, three books of poetry, two novels and his essays" (e.g. An Angel Walks Through the Stage) --, in ‘I cried, I danced to Springsteen’: in Australia, a Nobel laureate’s translator celebrates their win.

       Meanwhile, at El País Sergio C. Fanjul has a Q & A with the Nobel laureate, Jon Fosse, winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature: ‘I prefer to live in the most boring way possible’.

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       Olivia Laing and M. John Harrison conversation

       At Granta they have Olivia Laing and M. John Harrison In Conversation on the commodification of the imagination.

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       Shubeik Lubeik review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Deena Mohamed's Shubeik Lubeik -- published in the UK as Your Wish Is My Command because ... publishers .....

       This was recently awarded the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, which is why I picked it up. But I'm afraid I still don't get (or at least get that much out of) 'graphic novels'.

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

       Scotland's National Book Awards

       They've announced the winners of this year's Scotland's National Book Awards.
       Martin MacInnes' In Ascension was named the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year.

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       Diagram Prize

       As Tom Tivnan reports, Matthew F. Jordan's Danger Sound Klaxon ! has won The Bookseller Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year.

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       Publishing translations in ... Sweden

       Via I'm pointed to Jana Rüegg's doctoral thesis, Publishing Translations: Flows, Patterns, and Power-Dynamics in the Swedish Book Market after 1970 (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) -- starting in 1970, as the book-market was deregulated then..
       Among her conclusions:

The publishing trajectories of the 45 selected Nobel Prize laureates highlight general patterns in the Swedish book market, i.e. that small publishing houses have become increasingly more important for translated high prestige literature, and the diminishing importance of medium-sized publishers.

       I suspect the story is similar in other nations/markets as well.

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

       Jon Fosse on 'A Silent Language'

       This year's Nobel laureate in Literature, Scenes from a Childhood-author Jon Fosse, gave his Nobel lecture, A Silent Language, yesterday; you can also (re)watch it here.

       Meanwhile, in The New York Times Alex Marshall reports how Jon Fosse Wants to Say the Unsayable.
       Among the quotes:

Sarah Cameron Sunde, an artist based in the United States who has translated Fosse’s plays into English and directed several of them in New York, said that the American audience’s lack of recognition for Fosse could be explained, perhaps, by his frequently morbid subject matter: His writing often features characters wracked by loneliness, desperate for connection and contemplating the end, and many of his plays involve suicide. “Everyone is very afraid of death over here,” she said.

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       Benjamin Zephaniah (1958-2023)

       British author and performer Benjamin Zephaniah has passed away; see, for example, obituaries at the BBC, The New York Times, and The Guardian.

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       Reading in ... Romania

       At the LRB blog Paula Erizanu wonders Why don't Romanians read more ? as:

More than half of Romanians haven’t read a book in the past year, according to the National Statistics Institute. There are about 25 million Romanian speakers in the world, compared to ten million Hungarians, but the average print run for a Hungarian novel is three thousand, while for a Romanian novel it’s less than half that.

       (I haven't been able to find the INS report.)
       As she notes:

The outdated school curriculum is one answer. There are sixteen writers on the national curriculum for the baccalaureate exams and they are all dead, white and male. The most recent, Marin Sorescu, was born in 1936 and died in 1996. When contemporary writers visit schools, especially in rural areas, some students are surprised that living authors even exist.

       Not an ideal situation .....

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       Irish Book of the Year

       They've announced the winner of this year's An Post Irish Book of the Year, selected from the six awards category winners, and it is The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

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       White Shadow review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of the second in The Barrøy Chronicles by Roy Jacobsen, White Shadow.

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       Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grants

       They've announced the ten winners of this year's Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grants, awarded to: "writers in the process of completing a book of deeply researched and imaginatively composed nonfiction" -- and paying out a healthy US$40,000 apiece.
       Some intriguing-sounding projects, I suppose.

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       Jeffrey Angles Q & A

       Via I'm pointed to Rex Bowman's Q & A with the translator of The Thorn Puller at Great Lakes Review, Hiromi Ito and Jeffrey Angles: When a Great Writer Meets a Great Translator.
       Among much else, Angles suggests: " one voice which really ought to be heard in the twenty-first century is that of the ecocritical writer Michiko Ishimure"; among her (few) works available in English is Lake of Heaven; see the Lexington Books publicity page or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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       Shanghai International Online Literature Week

       Reporting on the Shanghai International Online Literature Week, Zhu Shenshen reports Chinese online literature finds fame and fortune on a global scale at Shine, and in the South China Morning Post Ben Jiang finds Generative AI translation lifts overseas sales of Chinese online literature industry: report.
       Apparently:

AI has improved translation efficiency by more than 100 times and cut costs by over 90 per cent, according to China Literature, which said it had been increasing investments in the technology since earlier this year to improve its internal translation workflow.

       He does note: "Not all readers were impressed, though", but, oh yeah, we're goiing to be seeing a whole lot more of this.

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

       WLT's '75 Notable Translations 2023'

       World Literature Today has announced its 75 Notable Translations 2023 -- always a good overview of many of the translations that appeared in the past year.
       Only seven of them are under review at the complete review .....

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

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       John Dos Passos Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's John Dos Passos Prize, awarded to: "a talented American writer who experiments with form, explores a range of voices and merits further recognition", and it is Patricia Engel.

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

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       Nobel Prize lecture in literature

       Jon Fosse will give the Nobel Prize lecture in literature tomorrow, at 17:00 CET; you can watch it live here, or then read it here.

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

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       The Emperor of China in a House of Ill Repute review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Songs of the Imperial Visit to Datong by Pu Songling, his novel The Emperor of China in a House of Ill Repute.

       This is one of the first five volumes in the Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature from Oxford University Press -- and the one I was most curious about. Pu Songling is a well-known author, and quite a bit of his work is available in translation (well, mainly Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio), but this was entirely new to me -- and a neat little discovery.

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

       FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year

       They've announced (ridiculously apparently paywalled) the winner of this year's FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year, and it is Right Kind of Wrong, by Amy Edmondson -- subtitled The Science of Failing Well in the US and Why Learning to Fail Can Teach Us to Thrive in the UK.
       See also the publicity pages from Cornerstone Press or Atria Books, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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       Frankfurt Book Fair 2027 Guest of Honor

       The Frankfurt Book Fair has now announced their 2027 Guest of Honor -- though not yet at their official site, last I checked, but see, for example, the Chilean culture ministry press release or the Börsenblatt report.
       Chile will be Guest of Honour -- following Italy (2024), the Philippines (2025), and the Czech Republic (2026).

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

       Taiwanese literature in translation

       At Taiwan News Sean Scanlan reports on how an International forum promotes translations of Taiwanese literature, reporting on a recent National Museum of Taiwan Literature international forum; see also the official (Chinese) press release.

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

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       Newton's Brain review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of A Romanetto by Jakub Arbes, Newton's Brain, in a new translation.

       This 1877 work is one of two just about out from Jantar in their new 'Historical Science Fiction'-series, which looks very promising.

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

       Latest Litprom-Bestenliste

       The latest Litprom-Bestenliste, a quarterly German list of the best new publications in translation from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Arabic-speaking world, has released its Winter 2023/2024 selection.
       Always interesting to see what gets translated in other languages -- including, here, several titles not (yet) available in English.

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

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       Skeletons in the Closet review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Jean-Patrick Manchette's Skeletons in the Closet, now out in English from New York Review Books.

       This was also made into a film, in 1981 -- Pour la peau d'un flic, both directed by and starring Alain Delon.

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

       Translation Prizes shortlists

       The Society of Authors has announced the shortlists for next year's Translation Prizes -- 50 shortlisted works, for eight prizes.

       I am shocked how few of these I've seen -- but a few of the shortlisted titles are under review at the complete review:

• The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize (for translations from the Japanese):
  • All The Lovers In The Night by Kawakami Mieko, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd
  • Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight by Onda Riku, translated by Alison Watts
  
  
• The Schlegel-Tieck Prize (for translations from the German):
  • Siblings by Brigitte Reimann, translated by Lucy Jones
  
  
• Scott Moncrieff Prize (for translations from the French):
  • The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier, translated by Adriana Hunter
  
  
• The TA First Translation Prize
  • Awake by Harald Voetmann, translated by Johanne Sorgenfri Ottosen

       The winners will be announced 7 February 2024.

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

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       Hsu-Tang Library Q & A

       The Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature is the impressive new series from Oxford University Press, offering: "bilingual editions of literature from the Zhou Dynasty to the end of Imperial China in 1911"; I have the first five volumes -- and have already reviewed one of them, Master Incapable, with more to follow.
       At MIT News Peter Dizikes now has a Q & A with the series' founding editor-in-chief: 3 Questions: Wiebke Denecke on a landmark project for Chinese literature.
       As she notes: "It is a great moment for world literature".

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       Upcoming Japanese translations

       There's a helpful list of 2024 New and Upcoming Japanese Fiction Releases at Alison Fincher's Read Japanese Literature.
       Quite a few things to look forward to -- including new works by Ogawa Yoko (Pantheon; August, 2024), Akutagawa Prize-winners by Tanaka Shinya (Cannibals: Honford Star, March, 2024) and Toh EnJoe (Harlequin Butterfly: Pushklin Press, February, 2024) and the second part of Kyokutei Bakin's Eight Dogs, or "Hakkenden" (Cornell University Press, February, 2024).

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

       Vassilis Vassilikos (1933-2023)

       Greek author Vassilis Vassilikos, best known for Z, which was filmed by Costa-Gavras, has passed away; see, for example, the ekathimerini.com report.
       Several of his works are available from Seven Stories Press.

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

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       Fürstinnen review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Eduard von Keyserling's 1917 novel, Fürstinnen.

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

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