opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 10 January 2024

1 January: Indian books in English translation, 2023 | 2024
2 January: 2024 translations from ... Arabic | Translations from Russian, 2023 | Empire V review
3 January: Nobel Prize in Literature, 1973 | Most Popular Reviews - 2023 | A Long Fatal Love Chase review
4 January: 'Most anticipated'-lists | Review copies in 2023
5 January: Bestselling in 2023 in the UK | Faux Library
6 January: The US bookmarket, 2023 | The German bookmarket, 2023 | Paul Yamazaki profile
7 January: Writers' reading resolutions | Godinom Marka Marulića | Tuttle Publishing profile
8 January: Translation from ... Korean | Forgottenness review
9 January: Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize | Bestselling in 2023 in ... the US | Joan Acocella (1945-2024)
10 January: Writers' Prize shortlists | 2023 in review at the complete review

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       Writers' Prize shortlists

       They've announced the shortlists for this year's The Writers' Prize -- most recently the Rathbones Folio Prize --, three titles in each of its three categories, fiction, non, and poetry.
       The category winners, and the overall winner, will be announced 13 March.

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

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       2023 in review at the complete review

       Here is the annual overview of the year that was at the site in numbers:

       In 2023, only 150 books were reviewed at the complete review, down from 165 in 2022. The total number of pages of the reviewed books was down significantly in 2023 -- 40,931, compared to 50,535 in 2022 -- as the average length of reviewed books was only 272.87 pages (2022: 306.27), which is still above the 250-page target. The median length of reviewed books was 234.5 pages.
       The longest book reviewed was 886 pages long, with only two more 750 or more pages in length. Six books were under 100 pages in length.

       The total number of review-words written was 174,443 -- down from 213,022 in 2022 --, with the average review-length down to a healthier average of 1163 words (2022: 1291).
       The median review-length was 1019 words, and the longest was 3268 words long, one of two reviews over 3000 words in length; there was again also one with 2999, one of 11 reviews over 2000 words.

       You can find the 50 most popular reviews, 2023 here.

       The five most popular author pages were the same as in 2022, albeit in different order:

1. Patrick White
2. Amélie Nothomb
3. Murakami Haruki
4. Annie Ernaux
5. Jonathan Coe

       Books originally written in 26 languages (including English) were reviewed in 2023 -- down from 34 in 2022,
       The top ten languages were:

• 1. English 45 (30.00 % of all books) (2022: 60)
• 2. German 19 (12)
• 3. French 18 (18)
• 4. Japanese 17.5 (14)
• 5. Spanish 10 (11)
• 6. Norwegian 7
• 7. Chinese 4
• -. Russian 4
• 9. Arabic 3
• -. Italian 3

       (There were fourteen languages which two books were originally written in -- up from only nine in 2022.)

       The count of which countries books/authors are from is, as always, less precise (and less interesting), but the leading countries-of-origin appear to be:

• 1. UK 20 (2022: 24)
• 2. Japan 17 (14)
• -. US 17 (25)
• 4. France 12 (12)
• 5. Austria 8 (5)

       The ratio of male-to-female authors was higher than usual (if still far too low), with reviews of 37 titles by women writers -- 24.67% -- two more than in 2022. 2023 was also the first year that an author identifying as neither male nor female figured in the count (though I may well have missed some in previous years).

       No books were rated "A+" or "A", with books rated over the range:

• A- 13 (2022: 21)
• B+ 61 (63)
• B 65 (69)
• B- 8 (5)
• -- 3 (5)

       As always, reviews of works of fiction dominated coverage, with reviews of 120 novels posted. With five story-collections and two novellas also reviewed, works of fiction accounted for 85% of all books reviewed.
       Only 12 works of general non-fiction were reviewed, down from 26 in 2023.

       Site traffic continued to rise through the early part of the year and was up 18.88% for the year -- though traffic was down, year-to-year, in the final months of 2023.

       There were visitors from 226 countries and territories in 2023 (2022: 229).
       The countries from which the most traffic came were:

1. United States (37.21%; 2022: 32.66%)
2. United Kingdom (9.83%)
3. India (9.28%)
4. Philippines
5. Canada
6. Australia
7. China
8. Germany
9. Netherlands
10. Nigeria

       These top ten remained the same as in 2022, with only the UK and India switching positions.

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

       Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, and it is Luke Leafgren for his translation of Mister N by Najwa Barakat.
       I have a copy of this, but haven't gotten to it.

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

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       Bestselling in 2023 in ... the US

       At Publishers Weekly Jim Milliot reports -- with numbers ! -- on the twenty-five bestselling titles in the US in 2023, in Women Ruled the 2023 Bestseller List.
       Eight titles sold over 1,000,000 copies, with two Colleen Hoover titles topping the list.
       I haven't seen any of the top 25 titles.

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

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       Joan Acocella (1945-2024)

       Joan Acocella, who wrote for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books has passed away; see, for example, the obituary (presumably paywalled) in The New York Times.

       The only one of her books under review at the complete review is Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism.

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

       Translation from ... Korean

       In The Korea Times Lee Gyu-lee speaks with Literature Translation Institute of Korea president Kwak Hyo-hwan, in Quality translation backs Korean literature's rise on global stage.
       Disappointing to hear that, despite all the success of LTI Korea: "it has faced a cut in its annual budget for 2024".

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

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       Forgottenness review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Ukrainian author Tanja Maljartschuk's Viacheslav Lypynskyi-novel, Forgottenness.

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

       Writers' reading resolutions

       At The Guardian they have eight authors' reading plans for 2024, in ‘I want some light in my life’: eight writers make their new year reading resolutions -- quite ambitious, in some cases.

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

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       Godinom Marka Marulića

       As Croatia Week reports, Year of Marko Marulić, father of Croatian literature, kicks off, as Croatia has proclaimed 2024 to be the Year of Marko Marulić, as it's the 500th anniversary of his death. (They also proclaimed 2021 the Year of Marko Marulić; maybe it went so well they were eager to repeat it as soon as possible.)
       For more on Marulića, see, for example, the post on Marko Marulić and the Croatian Latin Heritage at the British Library's European studies blog.

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

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       Tuttle Publishing profile

       In The Japan Times Elizabeth Beattie reports how Asia publishing mainstay Tuttle rides new wave of interest in Japan, profiling publisher Tuttle.
       Having been in business so long:

Nick Ward of Infinity Books, a Tokyo events space and secondhand bookstore, said that when the store acquires Tuttle books, they are often Japanese fiction classics from the '60s, '70s and '80s.

“Because they’re hard to get hold of ... they can go for silly prices sometimes, because people collect them or tourists want Japanese literature,” he said.

Ward said appetite for these English-language translations often outstrips stock.

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

       The US bookmarket, 2023

       At Publishers Weekly Jim Milliot sums up the American book market in 2023, in Print Book Sales Fell 2.6% in 2023.
       Eight titles sold more than a million copies, with adult fiction the only major category with an increase in unit sales -- even if it was only 0.8 per cent.
       Meanwhile, the mass-market paperback market continues to collapse -- it's down another 15.6 per cent.

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

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       The German bookmarket, 2023

       At Börsenblatt Christina Schulte sums up the German year in bookselling, in So hat der Buchhandel das Jahr 2023 abgeschlossen.
       Revenue was up 2.9 per cent -- but the trend over the course of the year has been downward.
       'Belletristik' -- basically, adult fiction -- showed the greatest increase over 2022 -- 7.4 per cent -- while audiobooks cratered, down 26.2 per cent.

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

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       Paul Yamazaki profile

       In the San Francisco Chronicle Rachel Howard profiles the City Lights bookseller, in ‘A legend in the literary world’ keeps S.F.’s City Lights shining.

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

       Bestselling in 2023 in the UK

       The Bookseller reports on the top 20 bestselling titles in the UK in 2023, and while that article appears to be paywalled the chart and numbers can be found at, for example, the Daily Mail -- here.
       The top-selling title was the 'Prince' Harry's memoir, with 706,978 copies sold. Two Richard Osman titles made the top five -- and only one Colleen Hoover title did, though she did figure three more times in the top twenty.
       I haven't seen any of these titles.

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

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       Faux Library

       In The Los Angeles Times Christi Carras writes about The fight to save Faux Library, Hollywood's top destination for fake books.

       God forbid the studios would have to go back to filming ... real books.

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

       'Most anticipated'-lists

       Several of the bigger 'Most anticipated' of the year lists are now out, including The Millions' Most Anticipated: The Great Winter 2024 Preview and Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2024 (230 books). And at Vulture they list 23 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2024.

       Meanwhile, via I'm pointed to this impressive overview at Plural, Veja mais de 400 livros que serão lançados no Brasil em 2024, from 56 publishers.

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

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       Review copies in 2023

       In 2023 I received 276 (print) review copies, down over 16 per cent from the 331 received in 2022. (I don't track e-review copies, as I almost never (find myself able to) review from that format and usually can't even bring myself to open one after I've downloaded it; no reviews at the complete review were based on e-copies in 2023 (three were in 2022).)

       By 31 December I had reviewed 75 of the 276 review copies received -- 27.17 per cent, just slightly above 2022's 26.59 per cent. (I of course continue to review books received in previous years -- 15 more 2022 titles in 2023, for example; one 2023 review was posted 3633 days (yes, ten years) after I received the review copy.)

       As usual, independent and university presses dominated, with the top eleven publishers providing review copies being:

• 1. Harvard University Press 26 (2022: 12)
• 2. New York Review Books 25 (30)
• 3. Dedalus 18 (19)
• 4. Europa Editions 14 (9)
• 5. Open Letter 13 (5)
• 6. Soho Press 12 (10)
• 7. Yale University Press 9 (9)
• 8. Oxford University Press 8 (7)
• -. And Other Stories 8 (8)
• -. McNally Editions 8 (0)
• -. Pushkin Press 8 (2)

       Review copies from the American 'big five' publishers were few and far between -- though since I track by imprint the totals are a bit misleading. Still, the numbers are pretty dismal: the leading big-publisher imprints were Penguin Classics (7), Farrar, Straus and Giroux (4), and Alfred A. Knopf (2). (I do note that independent and university presses continue to be much more receptive to specific review-copy-requests; with their enormous publicity machines, the big five tend to be very hit (often very helpfully) or miss, depending very much on whom one manages to contact.)
       Not getting a review copy doesn't mean I won't get to a title, but it does make it far less likely, at least in the near term; I do occasionally check out library copies of new titles (five in 2023, three of which I reviewed). I do purchase (many) books -- but generally used copies, i.e. older titles .....
       See also the index of all Books Received and Acquired in 2023.

       I am, of course, grateful for all the review copies I receive, and appreciate that publishers provide me with so many (but I miss the days when I saw more: 579 in 2012, 490 in 2013, 540 in 2014 ...).

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

       Nobel Prize in Literature, 1973

       As they do at the beginning of every year, the Swedish Academy has announced the opening of the latest bit from its archives, the records from fifty years ago. This year, that covers the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded in 1973 -- to Patrick White.
       The one document they release online is the nominations list -- of which authors were nominated, and by whom. The 1973 list (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) had a hundred and one names -- with nineteen nominated for the first time, including future winners Vicente Aleixandre (1977) and Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978), as well as Albert Cohen, Yaşar Kemal, and Henry Miller (!). There was also clearly a concerted effort on the part of many mainly American nominators to push Elie Wiesel's candidacy -- he received more than thirty nominations, a huge number in any year. (Wiesel never won the Literature Nobel, but was named the Peace laureate in 1986.)

       The range is fairly decent, with many other future winners also nominated (along with big names that never won, such as Borges and Nabokov), but the absence of any Japanese authors is striking. In fact, a quick scan suggests that after 1968, when Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, and Nishiwaki Junzaburō were nominated, with Kawabata taking the prize, the Academy felt they'd dealt with Japan and washed their hands of it: I can't find another nominee after that. (They also didn't seem to be able to or weren't interested in getting nominations from Japan -- those seem to be very few and far between as well; Kawabata, eligible as a former winner to nominate someone, apparently didn't in those years he could have, either.)
       [(Updated - 4 January): My scanning was too quick and sloppy: as a reader points out, Inoue Yasushi was nominated in 1969, and Itō Sei and Ishikawa Tatsuzō -- the first winner of the Akutagawa Prize ! -- were both (first-time) nominees in 1970 (and both nominations came from Japan). So the record is bad -- no nominees from 1971 onwards -- but not quite so bad as I had initially thought. And maybe 1974 will prove to have been a banner year, with the Swedish Academy getting back on the Japanese track !]
       (Russian-writing authors -- and Soviet Union-based nominators -- also seem to be missing after Solzhenitsyn's 1970 win.)

       Kaj Schueler has his annual deep-dive report into the newly-opened archive at Svenska Dagbladet -- paywalled, unfortunately, but one can make out that the other finalists that year were Saul Bellow, Yannis Ritsos, Anthony Burgess, William Golding, and Eugenio Montale, three of whom would go on to win the prize.

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

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       Most Popular Reviews - 2023

       The most-viewed reviews at the complete review in 2023 were:

1. Noli Me Tangere, José Rizal
2. Poor Things, Alasdair Gray
3. The Dilemma of a Ghost, Ama Ata Aidoo
4. El Filibusterismo, José Rizal
5. Basti, Intizar Husain
6. Three Days and a Life, Pierre Lemaitre
7. Voice of a Dream, Glaydah Namukasa
8. Grey Bees, Andrey Kurkov
9. A Play of Giants, Wole Soyinka
10. The Legends of Khasak, O.V.Vijayan
11. The 120 Days of Sodom, the Marquis de Sade
12. The Golden Fortress, Satyajit Ray
13. A Man's Place, Annie Ernaux
14. Death and the Penguin, Andrey Kurkov
15. Never, Ken Follett

       Only two titles reviewed in 2023 made the top 50 -- Bret Easton Ellis' The Shards (31st) and Rebecca Makkai's I Have Some Questions for You (34th) -- down from six in 2022 and eight in 2021.
       Turnover was also less than in previous years, with only 18 reviews that hadn't been in the previous top 50 making it in 2023; in 2022 there were 21, in 2021 23.
       Poor Things' leap into the top ten was all movie-related, of course -- film-tie-ins do boost review views greatly.

       See also all the top 50 reviews of 2023.

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

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       A Long Fatal Love Chase review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Louisa May Alcott's A Long Fatal Love Chase.

       Though written in 1866 -- before the success of Little Women -- this was only first published in 1995, getting quite a bit of attention at the time -- Stephen King reviewed it for The New York Times Book Review.
       Apparently, there have been several stabs at filming it -- see, for example, The Los Angeles Times piece on Strange Bidding -- but no one has seen it through yet.

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

       2024 translations from ... Arabic

       At ArabLit they preview Arabic Literature in English Translation: Forthcoming in 2024.
       Some promising-sounding titles here.

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

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       Translations from Russian, 2023

       Lizok's Bookshelf has the useful round-up of New Translations Published in 2023 from the Russian -- 32 titles.
       I've only reviewed one-and-a-half of these -- Mikhail Osorgin's The Riven Heart of Moscow just last week, and Andrey Kurkov's Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv, which I reviewed several years ago, based on the German translation.

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

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       Empire V review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Victor Pelevin's Empire V: The Prince of Hamlet.

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

       Indian books in English translation, 2023

       At Scroll.in they report how This reader compiled a list of 117 Indian books in English translation published in 2023, and they helpfully provide Chittajit Mitra's full list.
       Great to see how much is getting translated from Indian languages -- but disappointing how little of it makes it to the US/UK .....

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

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       2024

       A new year ! -- and., I suppose, a big one at the complete review, which will celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2024 -- on 5 April; mark your calendars !
       I'm not really sure how to mark that milestone, though it seems like something that should be celebrated. We'll see .....

       2023 was a somewhat slow and meh year, as I got to fewer books than I would have liked to -- only 150 reviews were posted, and none scored an "A+" or "A" rating (there was one of each in 2022).
       Traffic was up significantly at the site for the year as a whole, but Google's latest rejigging of their search results towards the end of the year saw pages listed much farther down among search results, leading to a swoon in traffic in November and especially December compared to 2022. I'll have final numbers and all the 2023 site statistics for you in a few days.
       I have grand but no specific ambitions for the year, though I fear that, for various reasons, the reviewing pace will be as sluggish as it was in 2022, i.e. closer to 150 reviews again than the 200 or so I'd like to manage. Looking ahead, no specific titles or authors stand out too much, but I should manage the usual wide range; I seem to be drifting increasingly away from contemporary coverage and will perhaps try to get to a few more new books.

       Looking up from my books, the global situation doesn't look all that promising in 2024 -- with the American presidential election season sure to be the loudest (and most drawn-out and annoying) distraction, and far too many on-going military conflicts the most dispiriting. At least the reading and reviewing provide some hold, if not the longed for real escapism.

       Here's hoping that we all can make the best of it, come what may ! I do wish you all a wonderful 2024 -- and, as always and in particular, a lot of good reading !

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

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