opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 2 November 2024

1 November: Cundill History Prize | Warwick Prize shortlist | Dozakhnama review
2 November: Considering the Mao Dun Literature Prize

go to weblog

return to main archive

       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 -

---

       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 -

---

       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 -

previous entries (21 - 31 October 2024)

archive index

- search the site -

- return to top of the page -

© 2024 the complete review


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