opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

11 - 20 December 2024

11 December: WLT's 75 Notable Translations of 2024 | Translation in ... Iran | FT Business Book Prize | Gordon Burn Prize longlist | Booker Prize judges | Han Kang's Nobel diploma
12 December: Naguib Mahfouz Medal | '100 Notable African Books of 2024' | Context Collapse review
13 December: Prix des cinq continents finalists | Hanser archive | Murakami and the 'I's - 私 / 僕 | Kafka translations | Jacques Roubaud homage
14 December: Larry McMurtry Literary Center | Runaway Horses review
15 December: Pulping books in ... France | 'Typeset Hopes and Dreams' exhibit
16 December: Winston Churchill literary revival ? | Japanese literature in the 2020s | Salome in Antwerp
17 December: NBCC Fiction Award longlist | Bhuchung D. Sonam Q & A | Mishima Yukio/Donald Keene exhibit | A Perfect Day to Be Alone review
18 December: Best of the year in ... Spain | New World Literature Today
19 December: Sahitya Akademi Awards | Willis Prize | 'Most Scathing Book Reviews'
20 December: Gregg Barrios Prize longlist | Translations from the ... Arabic, 2024 | The Suicides review

go to weblog

return to main archive

       Gregg Barrios Prize longlist

       The National Book Critics Circle has been announcing the longlists for its awards this week, and they've now also announced the twelve-title-strong one for the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize.
       Noteworthy that only a third -- four -- of the titles are works of fiction, while half (six) are nonfiction (along with two works of poetry).
       Two of the titles are under review at the complete review -- A Muzzle for Witches by Dubravka Ugrešić and Traces of Enayat by Iman Mersal; I only have a (physical) copy of one more of these and haven't seen the rest.

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

---

       Translations from the ... Arabic, 2024

       At ArabLit they have A Look Back: Arabic Literature Published in Translation in 2024.

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

---

       The Suicides review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Antonio Di Benedetto's 1969 novel, The Suicides, finally coming out in English next month, from New York Review Books.
       This is the third in his 'Trilogy of Expectation', all now out from NYRB.

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

       Sahitya Akademi Awards

       The Sahitya Akademi has announced (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) its annual awards, in twenty-one languages (with the Bengali, Dogri, and Urdu winners to be announced later). Eight of the winners were poetry, and only three were novels.
       The English-language winner is Spirit Nights, by Easterine Kire; see also, for example, the publicity pages from Simon & Schuster India and Barbican Press.

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

---

       Willis Prize

       Yale Library has announced a new, biennial literary prize, the Patricia Cannon Willis Prize for American Poetry for a book published in the prior two years that "represents the highest achievement in the field of American poetry"; it pays out US$25,000.
       The first prize will be awarded in late January.

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

---

       'Most Scathing Book Reviews'

       At Book Marks they collect The Most Scathing Book Reviews of 2024 -- always good fun.

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

       Best of the year in ... Spain

       There are quite a few big Spanish best-of-the-year lists now out -- led by El País' Los 50 mejores libros de 2024 (presumably paywalled).
       Their top three are:

1. La llamada by Leila Guerriero (Anagrama)
2. La península de las casas vacías by David Uclés (Ediciones Siruela)
3. Theodoros by Mircea Cărtărescu (see e.g. here and here)

       Sally Rooney's Intermezzo only came in at 47, but several translations from English made the top ten:

• 7. Baumgartner by Paul Auster
• 9. Biography of X by Catherine Lacey
• 10. James by Percival Everett

       The only other title under review at the complete review comes in at 44 -- On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) by Solvej Balle.

       El Mundo offers top-twenty lists in different categories, including: Los mejores libros de 2024: las 20 mejores novelas en español (with Los Escorpiones by Sara Barquinero (Lumen) topping the list; it's number five on the El País list) and a translated-fiction list, Los mejores libros de 2024: las 20 mejores novelas extranjeras (topped by Joyce Carol Oates' Butcher).

       El Diario offers a list of Los 20 mejores libros de 2024 -- ten each of fiction and non.

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

---

       New World Literature Today

       The January/February issue of World Literature Today is now out, with a focus on 'Ananda Devi: 2024 Neustadt Prize Laureate'.
       And, as always, there's the extensive book review section.

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

       NBCC Fiction Award longlist

       The National Book Critics Circle is revealing the longlists for its awards for the first time, and they have now announced the ten-title-strong longlist for its fiction award.

       The longlist for the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize will be announced 19 December.

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

---

       Bhuchung D. Sonam Q & A

       At the Journal of Tibetan Literature they have an Interview with Bhuchung D Sonam.

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

---

       Mishima Yukio/Donald Keene exhibit

       Gakushuin Women's College currently has an exhibit on the friendship between Mishima Yukio and Donald Keene, and at Book and Film Globe Michael Washburn has a lengthy overview of it, in Yukio Mishima and Donald Keene, Together Again.

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

---

       A Perfect Day to Be Alone review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Aoyama Nanae's A Perfect Day to Be Alone, already out in the UK, and coming from Other Press in the US in February.

       This is the twentieth Akutagawa Prize-winning novel under review at the complete review -- and they keep coming; another one should be up soon .....

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

       Winston Churchill literary revival ?

       In the Sunday Times Johanna Thomas-Corr reports that:

The sprawling literary estate of Britain’s great wartime prime minister is getting a new lease of life thanks to a private equity-backed media company.

       Yes, the (many, many) works of Winston Churchill -- who was, after all, awarded the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature ("for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values") -- may well soon be coming to bookstores near you -- and, hey, given that even the Collected Works are apparently hard to come by (and in any case problematic -- see here), maybe we should be ... thrilled ?
       The private equiteers behind it are Portland Literary (touting themselves as: "Long term guardians of exceptional literary works"), who formed a PLC a couple of months ago, Portland Churchill Ltd. and are now apparently raring to go:

     “Churchill wrote dozens of volumes of non-fiction,” says Josh Grabiner. “We are excited at the opportunity of helping to bring new readers to his body of work.”

       I suspect it will take quite a lot 'to bring new readers to his body of work', but who knows ? After all, Portland Literary takes: "a holistic approach to bodies of literary work to maximise long-term royalty streams through investment, development and thoughtful management", so how could they fail ?
       They even have ... ideas:

They haven’t ruled out children’s comic books of Churchill’s work or even video games or virtual reality experiences.

       Personally, I'd rather see a revival of the other Winston Churchill -- a bestselling writer in his day; see e.g. -- but I guess he doesn't have the ... name recognition ? he once had.

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

---

       Japanese literature in the 2020s

       In The Japan Times Mike Fu finds Women are writing a new chapter in Japanese literature in the 2020s -- with a useful "year-by-year round-up of prizewinning books and personal favorites" at the end.

       Many of the mentioned titles and authors are under review at the complete review.

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

---

       Salome in Antwerp

       My novel Salome in Graz dwells extensively also on the Richard Strauss opera -- the title referring to the 1906 Austrian premiere thereof -- and so I keep an eye out for contemporary performances and interpretations, and see that from 18 December through 18 January the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen has a new production playing at the Opera Antwerpen.
       They write that director Ersan Mondtag:

focuses on the political thriller in Strauss' breathtaking work. He sees parallels between the historical Herod, vassal of the Roman Empire, and contemporary dictators such as Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko. They are completely dependent on a higher power to maintain their rule. However, revolutionary forces are intent on a total destruction of Herod's decadent empire ...

       Not the usual take -- most focus on Salome, after all, and I'm afraid my novel doesn't tackle the 'political thriller' angle much either .....

       The opera will be staged: "With Dutch and English surtitles" -- and one of the fun titbits you can learn about in my novel (or, well, here) is: Oscar Wilde's play on which the opera is closely based was famously written in French, with the English translation then ascribed to Lord Alfred Douglas -- but that English translation was not the first translation of the play; the first translation was the one into Dutch. (All of these -- and many more -- are much-discussed in my novel, which is also very much about translation.)

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

       Pulping books in ... France

       At ActuaLitté Antoine Oury has a lot of the numbers in looking at the most recent statistics regarding French book returns, in Livres invendus : un taux de retour de 22 % et 25.000 tonnes pilonnées as the volume of unsold books increased from 19.3% in 2021-2022 to 22% in 2023.
       That amounts to 41,000 tons of returned books in 2023, of which 25,000 were pulped.
       Also: in 2023 457 million copies of 36,819 new titles were released
       Among the interesting statistics: the average book-weight increased from 384 grams to 408.

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

---

       'Typeset Hopes and Dreams' exhibit

       The National Museum of Taiwan Literature has an exhibit running through 2 March, Typeset Hopes and Dreams: Exhibition on Contemporary Czech Literature; see also Shelley Shan's Taipei Times article, NMTL hosts Czech exhibit.
       Apparently: "Many of items in the exhibition are displayed in Asia for the first time, including Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal's typewriter" -- how can one resist ?

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

       Larry McMurtry Literary Center

       In The Dallas Morning News Joyce Sáenz Harris reports on how Larry McMurtry’s Archer City bookstore will become a literary center as the Archer City Writers Workshop recently bought Larry McMurtry's bookstore and established the Larry McMurtry Literary Center -- and:

an energetic group of bookish folks has just completed moving 80,000 of McMurtry’s books across Archer City’s South Central Avenue, from Booked Up No. 2 to Booked Up No. 1. They plan to turn No. 1 into the Larry McMurtry Literary Center

       It all sounds quite promising.

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

---

       Runaway Horses review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini's Runaway Horses, coming in English early next year from Bitter Lemon Press.

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

       Prix des cinq continents finalists

       The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie has announced the ten finalists for the 2025 prix des cinq continents de la Francophonie -- selected from 129 entries.
       The winner will be announced 20 March 2025.

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

---

       Hanser archive

       The German literary archive at Marbach has announced the acquisition of the publisher Hanser's archive, another major publisher that joins their already voluminous holdings -- this one consisting of some 2500 archive-boxes.

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

---

       Murakami and the 'I's - 私 / 僕

       At The Conversation Gitte Marianne Hansen considers Haruki Murakami and the challenge of translating Japanese’s many words for “I” -- specifically in his new novel, The City and its Uncertain Walls but also in End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland -- noting that:

Early Murakami works often show significant consciousness regarding the choice of first-person pronouns, especially when the text involves multiple narrative layers.

       As Hansen points out:

Without alternative options for “I”, translators from Japanese to English have had to think carefully about how to re-create the distinctiveness of first-person voices and their respective worlds.

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

---

       Kafka translations

       In this week's Times Literary Supplement Ian Ellison reviews (paywalled) Dix versions de Kafka by Maïa Hruska, writing:

Maïa Hruska unravels the intricate backstories of ten of the earliest translations of the work of Franz Kafka out of its original German and into other languages; and the book is an elegant reflection on how the act of translation itself brings about Kafkaesque diversions.

       See also the Grasset publicity page as well as this (French) Q & A at Radio Prague International.
       This sounds fascinating; I hope to get to see it soon -- and that it makes it into English soon as well. (Hruska apparently works for The Wylie Agency (and is also listed as a client), so it wouldn't be surprising to see this picked up by a large publisher.)

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

---

       Jacques Roubaud homage

       At Le Nouvel Obs they print the Oulipo's homage to the recently deceased Jacques Roubaud (see my previous mention), in Jacques Roubaud, de l’Oulipo, excusé pour cause de décès, par l’Oulipo.
       A nice piece -- and hard to argue with the concluding words:

Il faut lire JR, tout JR.

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

       Naguib Mahfouz Medal

       The American University in Cairo Press has announced the winner of this year's Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, and it is ميكروفون كاتم صوت ('Muted Microphone') by Mohammed Tarazi; see also the Arab Scientific Publishers publicity page.
       He will get a cash prize, as well as: 'a trophy and an English translation of his work, published under AUC Press's renowned fiction imprint, Hoopoe';

       The award was announced, as it is every year, on Mahfouz's birthday -- and his works are, of course, also always worth turning to; see the many under review at the complete review.

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

---

       '100 Notable African Books of 2024'

       At Brittle Paper they have a useful list of 100 Notable African Books of 2024

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

---

       Context Collapse review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of A Poem Containing a History of Poetry by Ryan Ruby, Context Collapse.

       A verse-essay ! With footnotes ! (152 of them !) With a Bibliography ! (Thirteen pages worth !) So, obviously the kind of think I am intrigued by.

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

       WLT's 75 Notable Translations of 2024

       They've announced World Literature Today's 75 Notable Translations of 2024 -- an always useful overview of many of this year's significant translations into English.
       A lot of these are under review at the complete review; among the titles I'm surprised are missing are Augusto Monterroso's The Rest is Silence (just out yesterday !) and both new Murakami-translations (The City and its Uncertain Walls and End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland).

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

---

       Translation in ... Iran

       A fascinating piece by Amir Ahmadi Arian in the new Yale Review explores the question: 'Was Iran's most famous translator secretly its most prolific author ?', as Arian goes In Search of Zabihollah Mansouri -- making the case: "that blurring the boundary between translation and authorship is sometimes a good thing, and that we should leave room for unorthodox philosophies of translation".
       Mansouri lived 1897 to 1986, and was a prolific -- but also apparently very *free* -- translator, with Arian noting:

The central question of Mansouri's career, though, is this: What, exactly, was that contribution ? It certainly wasn't providing Iranian readers with accurate translations of Western texts.

       (Another article on Mansouri, by Kambiz Mahmoodzadeh and Mahdi Vahedikia, seems to also get at the gist: Zabihollah Mansouri and the Enigma of Pseudotranslating (abstract; article not freely accessible).)
       But, after all, as Arian points out:

Throughout history, many translators have concerned themselves more with broadening the horizons of their native tongue or lucidly communicating ideas they themselves found helpful than with faithfully translating a given text.

       (Longtime readers of the site know, of course, where on the furthest edge of the spectrum regarding this debate I stand .....)

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

---

       FT Business Book Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award, and it is Supremacy, by Parmy Olson.
       I haven't seen this yet, but see the publicity pages for St. Martin's Press and Macmillan Business, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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

---

       Gordon Burn Prize longlist

       New Writing North has announced the longlist for the 2025 Gordon Burn Prize, open to books in all genres and recognizing: "exceptional writing which has an unconventional perspective, style or subject matter and often defies easy categorisation"
       The winner will be announced 6 March 2025.

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

---

       Booker Prize judges

       They've announced the judges for the 2025 Booker Prize.
       Roddy Doyle will chair the judging panel, and the other judges are: Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Sarah Jessica Parker, Chris Power, and Kiley Reid.

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

---

       Han Kang's Nobel diploma

       They had the big Nobel Prize ceremony (and then banquet) yesterday, with the laureates receiving their medals and diplomas -- including, of course, Literature-laureate Han Kang:


       I don't know why the Literature laureates in the past few years haven't gotten the illustrated diplomas that everyone else gets (and they used to); see the Nobel site's gallery for a lot of samples. (Even Dylan got a picture on his.)

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

previous entries (1 - 10 December 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