opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 10 November 2024

1 November: Cundill History Prize | Warwick Prize shortlist | Dozakhnama review
2 November: Considering the Mao Dun Literature Prize
3 November: Profiles: Alan Bennett - Deborah Levy | A decade of Arno Schmidt: a centennial colloquy
4 November: Brother Anthony profile | Voss Literary Prize shortlist | Urdu Bazaar
5 November: Prix Goncourt (and Renaudot) | AI translation | Dinner Pieces review
6 November: Kids (not) reading in the UK | Prix Femina
7 November: Goldsmiths Prize | 'The Essay that Launched the Loebs' | Can Xue profile | Prix Médicis
8 November: Rushdie's The Satanic Verses not banned in India after all
9 November: Bayerischer Buchpreis | Q & As: Esther Kinsky - Wu Qi
10 November: Crossword Book Awards shortlists | Festival Neue Literatur | A City on Mars review

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       Crossword Book Awards shortlists

       They've announced the shortlists for this year's Crossword Book Awards, an Indian book prize with five categories, including for works in translation; see, for example, the Scroll.in report.
       The winners will be announced 8 December.

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

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       Festival Neue Literatur

       This year's Festival Neue Literatur -- "the first and only festival to spotlight German-language and American fiction together" -- kicks off tomorrow in New York, and while it's not a packed programme, with a limited number of events over three days, these might be of interest.
       The festival concludes on Wednesday, with the Friedrich Ulfers Prize ceremony -- awarded: "to a leading publisher, writer, critic, translator, or scholar who has championed the advancement of German-language literature in the United States" -- to editorial director of New York Review Books Edwin Frank, who has indeed done an excellent job of bringing a great deal of significant German literature into English, especially in the NYRB Classics series

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

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       A City on Mars review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of the collection of Kelly and Zach Weinersmith considering Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through ? in A City on Mars.

       This recently won the Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize.

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

       Bayerischer Buchpreis

       Clemens Meyer threw a hissy fit when he didn't win the German Book Prize a few weeks ago -- see my previous mentionk --, complaining especially about not being able to cash in. The Bavarian Book Prize doesn't pay out nearly as much -- only €10,000 --, and winning it won't make for anywhere near the same sales-bump but, at least, win he did, his Die Projektoren taking the fiction prize category; he can now pay down some of his tax-debts.
       Amusingly enough, one of the books Meyer beat out for the Bavarian Book Prize -- one of the other two finalists -- was the book that took the German Book Prize (from him, as he'd put it ...), Hey guten Morgen, wie geht es dir ? by Martina Hefter .....

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

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       Q & A: Esther Kinsky

       At hlo Stephanie Newman has a Q & A with the German author and translator, Esther Kinsky: When I came to Hungary in 2005, it was a post-traumatic society.
       Kinsky's Seeing Further is recently out in the UK from Fitzcarraldo Editions and just about out in the US from New York Review Books; get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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

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       Q & A: Wu Qi

       Issue 169 of Granta, devoted to China, is now out, and among the pieces is a Q & A with Wu Qi, The Rules of the Game, offering an interesting overview of literature and writing in contemporary China.
       Among his opinions:

I would say that the literature of the lower strata that is back in vogue in Chinese society today is much closer to social realism; that is to say, they are confronting and writing about the most brutal and unforgiving parts of Chinese society in the second half of the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty-first century, and illuminating the real price of the high-speed economic development of this period.

       And:

The avant-garde writers of the 1980s are now at the top of society politically, economically, and socially. They seem disconnected from this very new, very contemporary literature movement in China.

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

       Rushdie's The Satanic Verses not banned in India after all

       Salman Rushdie's notorious The Satanic Verses -- one of his better novels -- was banned in a number of countries, including in India, where in 1988 importation of the novel was prohibited (it was never published in India, so the import-prohibition made it impossible to (legally) obtain, a roundabout way of banning it). That ban has now been lifted because, hilariously, they couldn't find the paperwork: the High Court in Delhi issued their order (warning ! dreaded pdf format !), "declaring that the Petitioner may proceed to import the Book titled The Satanic Verses" because no one could find:

Custom Notification No. 405/12/88-CUS-III dated 05.10.1988 under the Customs Act, 1962 forwarded on 06.10.1988 to all State Govt./Union Territories for appropriate action under law to Ban the import of the Book titled The Satanic Verses diwdi direction issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs dated 10.11.1988

       Yes, despite being forwarded 'to all State Govt./Union Territories'. nobody could find a copy of it -- and: "In fact, the respondents have also been unable to produce/ file it before this Court".
       So the court concludes:

In the light of the aforesaid circumstances, we have no other option except to presume that no such notification exists, and therefore, we cannot examine the validity thereof and dispose of the writ petition as infructuous.

       Much ado about nothing, after all these years !
       Would that all book-bans could be dismissed so easily (though it should be noted that it took a while for them to resolve this "since its filing way back in 2019" .....)
       Now how about an Indian publisher actually publishing the book in-country ?

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

       Goldsmiths Prize

       They've announced that Parade, by Rachel Cusk, "has won the £10,000 Goldsmiths Prize for mould-breaking fiction".
       I haven't seen this yet, but see, for example, the publicity pages at Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Faber & Faber, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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

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       'The Essay that Launched the Loebs'

       At Antigone they publish W.H.D. Rouse's Machines or Mind ? -- "commissioned for the newly-founded Loeb Classical Library Series, of which he was an editor".
       Several Loeb titles are under review at the complete review.

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

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       Can Xue profile

       At The World of Chinese Dylan Levi King profiles Can Xue: The Experimental Voice of Chinese Literature.

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

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       Prix Médicis

       They've announced the winners of this year's prix Médicis, with the main prize going to Ann d'Angleterre by Julia Deck; see, for example, the Livres Hebdo report.
       See also the Seuil publicity page for Ann d'Angleterre; Deck's Viviane has been translated into English.

       The foreign novel prize went to the French translation of Tarántula, by Eduardo Halfon, while the non-fiction prize went the the third volume of Reiner Stach's Kafka-biography, published in English as: Kafka: The Early Years.

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

       Kids (not) reading in the UK

       The (British) National Literacy Trust has released its latest annual survey, Children and young people's reading in 2024 (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) -- based on 76,131 responses --, and many of the findings are not pretty, with the percentage of those: "aged 8 to 18 who enjoyed reading in their free time either very much or quite a lot" declining from 43.4% in 2023 to 34.6% in 2024 (it was as high as 58.6% as recently as 2016). The one-year drop-off was particularly strong among boys -- from 40.5% to 28.2% .....
       See also their summary of the report.

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

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       Prix Femina

       The dribble of French prize-announcements continues, now also with the announcement of the winners of the prix Femina in its various categories.
       Le rêve du jaguar by Miguel Bonnefoy -- which already won the Académie française's Grand Prix du Roman -- took the main prize, while the French translation of the Alia Trabucco Zerán novel published in English translation as Clean took the foreign novel category prize.
       See, for example, the Livres Hebdo report.

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

       Prix Goncourt (and Renaudot)

       They've announced the winner of this year's prix Goncourt, the leading French book prize, and it is Houris by Kamel Daoud; see also the Le Monde report by Gladys Marivat, Kamel Daoud wins Prix Goncourt literary award for 'Houris', and the Gallimard publicity page.

       They've also announced the winner of this year's prix Renaudot -- the number two prize, so to speak -- and it is Jacaranda by Gaël Faye, which was also one of the four finalists for the Goncourt (but only got one vote for it, versus six for the Daoud and two for Hélène Gaudy's Archipels). See also the Grasset publicity pages for Jacaranda.

       See also Angelique Chrisafis' report on how Two novels on impact of post-colonial conflict win key French literary awards at The Guardian.

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

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       AI translation

       As, for example, Ella Creamer reports in The Guardian, Dutch publisher to use AI to translate ‘limited number of books’ into English, as:

Veen Bosch & Keuning (VBK) -- the largest publisher in the Netherlands, acquired by Simon & Schuster earlier this year -- is “using AI to assist in the translation of a limited number of books”, Vanessa van Hofwegen, commercial director at VBK said.

       Van Hofwegen offers reässurances:

“This project contains less than 10 titles -- all commercial fiction. No literary titles will nor shall be used. This is on an experimental basis, and we’re only including books where English rights have not been sold, and we don’t foresee the opportunity to sell English rights of these books in the future,” she added.

       We are going to hear a lot more about this and about similar -- soon far more ambitious and far-reaching -- efforts. Translators will, of course, be up in arms, but ... well, good luck with that; the writing is on the wall -- and soon it will be everywhere.

       (Updated - 8 November): See now also the Open letter to Veen Bosch & Keuning in regards to the usage of AI to translate books into English language from the European Council of Literary Translators' Associations.

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

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       Dinner Pieces review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of the collection of Leon Battista Alberti's Dinner Pieces, recently out in two volumes in Harvard University Press' I Tatti-series.

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

       Brother Anthony profile

       In The Korea Times Kim Ji-soo profiles Brother Anthony, pioneer in Korean literature translation.
       Of course, Han Kang getting the Nobel Prize is discussed:

"Nobel is not for popularity or for beauty or for beautiful writing. It is more about trouble, contemporary anguish ... the Swedish people like that. Dark, anguished, problematic. Han Kang, that is what is she is writing about, human anguish and alienation, that's her thing," he said. "The Swedish Academy likes that but most people don't."

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

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       Voss Literary Prize shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Voss Literary Prize, an Australian best-novel award; unsurprisingly, Alexis Wright's Praiseworthy is one of the five finalists.

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

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       Urdu Bazaar

       Aishwarya Kumar and Abhaya Srivastava report on Fading literature: Delhi's famed Urdu Bazaar on last legs, as:

Today, streets once crowded with Urdu bookstores abuzz with scholars debating literature are now thick with the aroma of sizzling kebabs from the restaurants that have replaced them.

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

       Profile: Alan Bennett

       At The Guardian Mark Lawson profiles Alan Bennett at 90: ‘What will people think ? I don’t care any more’

       Among my most memorable theater-experiences is seeing Bennett in the original production of the Single Spies-double bill -- An Englishman Abroad (NT) and A Question of Attribution (NT).
       I also greatly enjoyed his The Uncommon Reader -- and much more of his work.

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

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       Profile: Deborah Levy

       At The Guardian Emma Brockes profiles Deborah Levy: ‘A writer’s career is choppy – I was 50 when I found success’.

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

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       A decade of Arno Schmidt: a centennial colloquy

       My centennial colloquy on the great Arno Schmidt appeared exactly ten years ago -- 3 November 2014 -- and I am pleased to see it's held up pretty well, including interest-wise -- someone bought a copy just a few days ago, bringing the total number of copies sold to 211. (My initial expectations/hopes had been to sell 150 copies, but it's proved to have a longer tail than expected -- I thought the US publication of Bottom's Dream would make for more interest and a bigger sales-bump than it then did, but instead sales have continued to sputter on at a consistently higher level than expected, year in and year out; yes, the numbers are trivial, but satisfying enough for me.)
       And while it can't (and isn't meant to) compete with Sven Hanuschek's biography, much less the master's own work (which you should, of course, read !), I think it's a decent (and pretty entertaining) introduction to the author -- a good-starting point for English-speaking readers curious about the author. (And I appreciate the reactions I've gotten to/for it (internationally, too).)

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

       Considering the Mao Dun Literature Prize

       At the China Books Review Dylan Levi King argues: Don't Write Off the Mao Dun Literature Prize in his useful overview, finding: 'Never mind the Booker, Pulitzer and National Book Award — China's Mao Dun Prize, despite its behind-the-times reputation, can shift the reading habits of a billion people'.
       As he notes, after all:

the Mao Dun Prize is the oldest extant mainland award, widely cited as the most prestigious, and comes with a check worth 500,000 RMB (about $70,000).

       King's interesting conclusion is that:

Yet the fact that the Mao Dun Prize is in danger of obsolescence is precisely why it is worth protecting. The expansion of the free market and new media has given cash and space to a wide range of writers, but it seems worthwhile to preserve what digital platforms and an IP-churning streaming industry cannot — namely, the sort of literary fiction that is quickly going extinct. It is important to consider that a Mao Dun Prize can push sales into the hundreds of thousands or millions. The CWA is an institutional relic, but, as a bulwark against the market, it safeguards a certain type of national intelligence.

Amid the vagaries of a frivolous market, in an age of decreasing readership, to write the typical “Mao Dun Prize novel” — historically-engaged realist books, epic in scope and ambitious in scale — has become unfashionable and increasingly unmarketable.

       One thing I take some issue with is his claim that:

The Mao Dun Prize’s obscurity in the English-speaking world makes sense. After all, it is not as if many of us follow the Akutagawa Prize, the Cervantes Prize or the Prix Femina.

       That's a weird trio of prizes to compare it to. The Cervantes Prize is a career-spanning author- (rather than book-) prize -- and while the prize may not be well-known in the English-speaking world, many of its winners are widely translated. The prix Femina is, let's face it, a second-tier French prize, and surely something like the Goncourt generally does get some decent US/UK attention. (A better comparison might be the similarly institutional Académie française-run Grand Prix du Roman -- though even though that doesn't get as much press attention abroad, many of its winners are translated into English (a dozen are under review at the complete review).) And, finally, the Akutagawa is surely one of the better-known foreign-language literary prizes and tends to get some international press coverage, and while your average reader might not be familiar with it, US/UK publishers certainly obviously are, as an incredible number of winners wind up being published in English (nineteen (!) of them are under review at the complete review, and I can barely keep track of the new ones coming out ...).

       (King also mentions that: "Apart from an anodyne bulletin on the English website of China Daily, coverage of last year's winners in languages other than Chinese has been all but nonexistent" -- though readers of this Literary Saloon were at least pointed to that bulletin, and indeed have been made aware of the goings-on around it by around a dozen mentions of the prize since 2005.)

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

       Cundill History Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Cundill History Prize -- paying out US$75,000 --, and it is Native Nations, by Kathleen DuVal; see also the Random House publicity page.

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

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       Warwick Prize shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, which includes two books by Nobel laureates (Han Kang and Nelly Sachs).
       Disappointingly, I haven't seen any of these.
       The winner will be announced 21 November.

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

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       Dozakhnama review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Rabisankar Bal's Saadat Hasan Manto/Mirza Ghalib-novel, Dozakhnama: Conversations in Hell.

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

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