opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 4 December 2024

1 December: John Banville profile | The Princess Casamassima review
2 December: Gulf Migrants in Malayalam Literature
3 December: Translation Prizes shortlists | Wolfson History Prize | Wingate Prize longlist | Best translations of 2024 ?
4 December: NYTBR's 'The 10 Best Books of 2024' | Kafka exhibit

go to weblog

return to main archive

       NYTBR's 'The 10 Best Books of 2024'

       The New York Times Book Review has announced its 10 Best Books of 2024 (presumably paywalled).
       I haven't seen any of these -- but will probably try to seek out Álvaro Enrigue's You Dreamed of Empires at some point.

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

---

       Kafka exhibit

       A new exhibit has just opened at the National Library of Israel -- Kafka: Metamorphosis of an Author, which runs through next June.
       One focus:

The exhibition will also trace the fascinating story of Kafka's estate and how his literary works were eventually published by his friend Max Brod. This story begins before Kafka's death and comes to a conclusion in 2019, when Israel's Supreme Court decided that Kafka's archive was a cultural asset that was to be deposited at the National Library of Israel.

       See also Benjamin Balint on Kafka's Last Trial, which covers that.
       See also Jessica Steinberg's report on the exhibit, Franz Kafka's papers metamorphose into National Library exhibit, in the Times of Israel.

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

       Translation Prizes shortlists

       The Society of Authors has announced the shortlists for eight of its translation prizes.

       Only three of the forty-one shortlisted titles are under review at the complete review:

• Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize
  • Robin Moger's translation of Iman Mersal's Traces of Enayat
  
  
• Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize:
  • David Boyd's translation of Oyamada Hiroko's The Factory
  • Kendall Heitzman's translation of Fujino Kaori's Nails and Eyes

       The winners will be announced 12 February 2025.

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

---

       Wolfson History Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Wolfson History Prize -- the "most valuable history-writing prize in the UK", paying out £50,000 -- and it is Shadows at Noon, by Joya Chatterji.
       This is one of those books that was published by a 'commercial' publisher in the UK (Bodley Head in hardcover; now in paperback from Vintage) but *only* by a university press in the US (Yale University Press); get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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

---

       Wingate Prize longlist

       They've announced the longlist for the 2025 Wingate Prize, " given to the best book, fiction or non-fiction, to convey the idea of Jewishness to the general reader" -- seven novels and seven non-fiction titles.

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

---

       Best translations of 2024 ?

       Steve Donoghue always offers a variety of best-of-the-year lists (and a few worsts, as well), and has now released his The Best Books of 2024: Literature in Translation.
       I can't really judge the quality here -- I've only seen a single one of these (On Leaders and Tyrants), and haven't gotten to it yet (though I expect to) -- but the list seems very classical-heavy, with only two of the books by actually living authors (and one of those books is about ... ancient Greece), and also very re-translation heavy: we've seen previous translations of practically all of these. Contemporary fiction ? Not a single title .....

       (If this had been a blind tasting, I would have sworn this list was made by Sam Tanenhaus -- the former editor of The New York Times Book Review who rarely deigned to allow reviews of translations of any sort to appear in its pages; if and when they did, chances were ridiculously good that it was either of a re-translation or a work by a Nobel laureate (we got one of those here, too).)

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

       Gulf Migrants in Malayalam Literature

       At New Lines Magazine Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil considers The Lives of Gulf Migrants in Malayalam Literature -- noting that Benyamin's "Goat Days marked a turning point in Malayalam literature, introducing a new way of speaking about the Gulf in Malayali society".

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

       John Banville profile

       In The Observer Tim Adams has a lengthy profile of the Man Booker-winning (for The Sea) author, in ‘I’m writing a memoir. It’s a pack of lies’: John Banville on a lifetime in books, bereavement, and the Irish love of words.
       He isn't very far with the memoir -- "only just 8,000 words" -- but I certainly like the set-up, much more interesting than your usual memoir:

The truth is I had two ideas for books: one was this autobiography, and the other an idea to write a book about the last man. You know: a pandemic, a bomb, whatever, it’s killed everybody, and there is one survivor and it just happens to be me. I thought at my age I wouldn’t get the two books done, so I combined them. The last man is now writing his autobiography. But of course it turns out he’s not the last – there’s a woman too. So they sort of stalk each other...

       His residency-gig at the Prado museum in the Writing the Prado-programme also sounds neat -- Olga Tokarczuk was the fellow in the spring, and Coetzee also had a go.

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

---

       The Princess Casamassima review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Henry James' 1886 novel, The Princess Casamassima.

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

previous entries (21 - 30 November 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