opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

21 - 31 May 2024

21 May: NSW Premier's Literary Awards | Europese Literatuurprijs longlist | Fantômas review
22 May: International Booker Prize | Prix Orange du livre en Afrique | Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize shortlist | Kate Briggs Q & A
23 May: Society of Authors Awards shortlists | Sergio Ramírez profile | Reminiscences of a Student's Life review
24 May: Dublin Literary Award | Princess of Asturias Award
25 May: Walter Kappacher (1938-2024) | The Noh Mask Murder review
26 May: 'Wahon' | Amit Chaudhuri Q & A
27 May: Orwell Prize finalists | The Singularity review
28 May: Eliot Weinberger profile
29 May: Lyrikpreis Orphil | Samantha Schnee Q & A | Prix Les Lorientales finalists
30 May: Caja de las Letras | Prix Jean d'Ormesson | Central and Eastern European literature abroad
31 May: HKW International Literature Prize shortlist | Debut novels

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       HKW International Literature Prize shortlist

       The Haus der Kulturen der Welt has announced the shortlist for its International Literature Prize, awarded to: "an outstanding work of contemporary international literature that has been translated into German for the first time"
       The one translation from English is James, by Percival Everett.
       The winner will be announced 5 July.

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

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       Debut novels

       In Esquire Kate Dwyer considers Why Are Debut Novels Failing to Launch ?
       Apparently, also: "BookTok -- er, TikTok -- is still considered the au courant emergent platform" .....

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

       Caja de las Letras

       At Euronews Jonny Walfisz offers a look at 'Caja de las Letras': Inside an old Madrid bank vault full of literary treasures, as the Cervantes Institute in Madrid is housed in an old bank and they've converted the vault into a Caja de las Letras -- which you can visit virtually by following that official link (recommended !).
       I wasn't aware of this, and it's pretty cool:

Among the 1,700 drawers of the old safe, there is Nicanor Parra's typewriter, José Saramago's phone book, a bowler hat belonging to musician Joaquín Sabina, the Nobel medal for Medicine won in 1906 by Ramón y Cajal, a broken brass bracelet that belonged to Elena Poniatowska's father and, above all, many books, drafts and manuscripts, some of them unpublished.

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       Prix Jean d'Ormesson

       They've announced the winner of this year's prix Jean d'Ormesson, the anything-goes prize where the jurors get to pick which books are considered for the prize (and can pick any book, from any time), and it is Proust, roman familial, by Laure Murat; see, for example, the Livres Hebdo report.
       Despite being a 'roman familial', this won the non-fiction prix Médicis -- the prix Médicis essai -- last year.
       Murat lives in the US -- she teaches at UCLA. See also the Laffont publicity page for Proust, roman familial.

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       Central and Eastern European literature abroad

       In the Kyiv Post Beata Stasińska looks at how Europe's Literature on the Edge Breaks Into the Mainstream (or doesn't ...).

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

       Lyrikpreis Orphil

       The city of Wiesbaden has announced the winner of this year's Lyrikpreis Orphil, a €10,000 poetry prize, and it is Franz Dodel for the 'endless' haiku-poem he has been writing since 2002, Nicht bei Trost.
       So far eight volumes have been published (by Edition Korrespondenzen) -- but you can read the whole thing online (on a convenient single page !), and follow as it continues to be updated. An interesting project.

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       Samantha Schnee Q & A

       At The Berliner Alexander Wells has a Q & A with Words Without Borders founder Samantha Schnee: “It’s like going to the gym for your brain”.

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       Prix Les Lorientales finalists

       They've announced the five finalists for this year's prix Les Lorientales

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

       Eliot Weinberger profile

       In the new Harper's Wyatt Mason writes 'On Eliot Weinberger', in The Scavenger of History.
       Among Mason's pronouncements: "the best brief book on translation, hors catégorie, is Eliot Weinberger’s Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei"
       Weinberger is certainly always worth reading.

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

       Orwell Prize finalists

       The Orwell Foundation has announced the finalists for this year's Orwell Prizes in their four categories: Political Writing, Political Fiction, Journalism, and Reporting Homelessness.
       The Political Fiction finalists include books by Percival Everett, Hisham Matar, and Adam Thirlwell. I haven't seen any of these.
       The winners will be announced 27 June.

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       The Singularity review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Dino Buzzati's 1960 science fiction novel, The Singularity, out in a new translation from New York Review Books.

       It's very contemporary title -- it was previously translated (back in 1962) as Larger than Life -- is a fitting one, and the novel is timely; I wonder if OpenAI etc. will learn anything from it ..... (One of the best sentences/ideas in it: "Language is the worst enemy of mental clarity".)

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

       'Wahon'

       At nippon.com Itakura Kimie offers “Wahon”: The History of the Japanese Book and: 'how they changed over the centuries as technology advanced and the reading public expanded'.

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       Amit Chaudhuri Q & A

       At Shelf Awareness they have Reading with ... Amit Chaudhuri, the Sojourn-author.
       Among his responses:

Book you're an evangelist for:

I'm an evangelist for the modernist experiment and avant-garde play to be found in literatures in the Indian languages of the late 19th and 20th centuries. Engaging with them -- and their counterparts in other locations in the world (Japan, for instance) -- might rescue modernism from its currently fossilized incarnation, where it's mainly available to us as European "heritage," like the paintings in the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower.

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

       Walter Kappacher (1938-2024)

       Sad to hear that author Walter Kappacher has passed away; see, for example, the obituary by Paul Jandl in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
       Kappacher was awarded the biggest German author-prize, the Georg-Büchner-Preis, in 2009 -- and I was honored to be on the jury for the 2020/2021 ACFNY Translation Prize which we awarded to Georg Bauer for his translation of Kappacher's Palace of Flies.
       See also the information page at Agentur Poppenhusen.

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

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       The Noh Mask Murder review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Takagi Akimitsu's The Noh Mask Murder, now available in English from Pushkin Press.

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       Dublin Literary Award

       They've announced the winner of this year's Dublin Literary Award, and it is Solenoid, by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated by Sean Cotter (who gets a solid cut of the prize-money).
       See also the Deep Vellum publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk. (Pushkin Press will be publishing a UK edition in a couple of weeks.)
       I do have this, but shamefully have not yet gotten to it.

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

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       Princess of Asturias Award

       They've now announced the winner of this year's Princess of Asturias Award for Literature, and it is Ana Blandiana. (Persepolis-author Marjane Satrapi was announced as winner in the Communication and Humanities category a few weeks ago; winners in a few more categories will be announced in the coming weeks.)
       Several of Blandiana's works have been translated into English -- including the collection of Five Books published by Bloodaxe; see their publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk

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

       Society of Authors Awards shortlists

       The Society of Authors Awards has announced the shortlists for their various prizes.
       The winners will be announced on 20 June.

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

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       Sergio Ramírez profile

       The Havana Times has a profile of the Divine Punishment-author -- and former Nicaraguan vice president --, in Sergio Ramirez: “I Live in Nicaragua Through Literature”.

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       Reminiscences of a Student's Life review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Jane Ellen Harrison's Reminiscences of a Student's Life.

       This was originally published in 1925, by Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press, and has now been re-issued by McNally Editions.

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

       International Booker Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's International Booker Prize, and it is Kairos, by Jenny Erpenbeck, in Michael Hofmann's translation.
       The prize has been awarded in this form -- for a novel in translation -- since 2016, and on this ninth try: "Michael Hofmann becomes the first male translator to win".
       See also the publicity page for Kairos from New Directions and Granta, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk. (The US paperback edition conveniently came out just last week.)
       (Updated - 24 May): see now also Lisa Allardice's profile in The Guardian, ‘It was high time I told our stories’: Jenny Erpenbeck on her International Booker winner Kairos.

       (Several works by Erpenbeck are under review at the complete review -- e.g. Visitation -- but I haven't seen this one.)

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

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       Prix Orange du livre en Afrique

       They've announced the winner of this year's prix Orange du livre en Afrique -- awarded to a book written in French by an African writer and published by an Africa publisher -- and it is Le psychanalyste de Brazzaville, by Dibakana Mankessi; see, for example, the Jeune Afrique report.
       See also the Les Lettres Mouchetées publicity page; I hope to see this eventually -- perhaps in translation ?

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

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       Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize, awarded: "for book-length literary translations into English from any living European language".
       I have several of these, but have not yet reviewed any.
       The winner will be announced next month.

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

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       Kate Briggs Q & A

       At Words without Borders Lauren Goldenberg has a Q & A with the The Long Form-author, in “A Hidden but Necessary Labor”: Kate Briggs on Translation and Parenthood.

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

       NSW Premier's Literary Awards

       They've announced the winner's of this year's NSW Premier's Literary Awards, a leading set of Australian literary prizes -- though finding all the winners at the official site is terribly cumbersome, so check out, for example, the Books + Publishing overview.
       The Sitter by Angela O'Keeffe took the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, while She Is the Earth, by Ali Cobby Eckermann, won the Indigenous Writers' Prize as well as the overall Book of the Year award.

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

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       Europese Literatuurprijs longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Europese Literatuurprijs, the leading Dutch prize for a (European) work in translation.
       The only one of these works under review at the complete review is Jon Fosse's A Shining; other longlisted titles include books by Ismail Kadare, Olga Tokarczuk, Ian McEwan, and Michel Houellebecq. Three of the fourteen titles are translations from the English.
       The shortlist will be announced 26 June.

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

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       Fantômas review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain's classic Fantômas.

       The review was posted only ... 6380 days after I received my review copy of this one -- a good reminder to publishers and publicists that even if I haven't gotten to their book(s) yet, I may well ... eventually.

       And a Fantômas review also lets me point to a local favorite, by Julio Cortázar -- Fantomas versus the Multinational Vampires.

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

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