opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

21 - 31 December 2024

21 December: Barry Malzberg (1939-2024) | Arabic literature in English translation | Physics and fiction | About End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland
22 December: Michel del Castillo (1933-2024) | Joan Aiken profile | Barack Obama's top books of 2024
23 December: Crime novels for Christmas | Swedish Academy prizes | Constant Reader review
24 December: Bestselling authors in ... France | No more Book Post in India
25 December: Dante Q & A | The last 100 reviews
26 December: M.T.Vasudevan Nair (1933-2024) | Literary tourism in ... Portugal
27 December: Bapsi Sidhwa (1938-2024) | The Steel Crocodile review
28 December: Abdulrazak Gurnah profile | Coming in 2025
29 December: More books coming in 2025 lists | The Propagandist review
30 December: Yamasaki Toyoko profile | Deutscher Krimipreis
31 December: Best Spanish-language books of the 21st century ? | Most-donated at Oxfam | Prize-winning and bestselling in Japan in 2024

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       Best Spanish-language books of the 21st century ?

       At The Conversation España they put together a list of Los mejores libros en español del siglo XXI -- the best Spanish-language books of the twenty-first century.
       They don't rank them, but do note that there were a pretty much consensus top three -- Roberto Bolaño's 2666, Irene Vallejo's Papyrus, and Mario Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat.
       Several of the other titles are also under review at the complete review -- see the indices of Spanish and Latin and South American Literature under review.

       Meanwhile, at People, 'In celebration of our 50th year, we're looking back at some of our favorite reads over the decades' -- in: PEOPLE Picks the Best Books of the 2000s, Including by Anthony Bourdain and Margaret Atwood.

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

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       Most-donated at Oxfam

       British charity Oxfam has announced that Richard Osman tops Oxfam chart as most-donated author of 2024 as charity celebrates record-breaking book sales.
       More impressive: "sales of books at Oxfam have been higher than ever -- growing by £1m for a second year in a row and making over £21 million".
       Unfortunately, they do not provide actual donation/sales numbers for the various titles and authors.

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       Prize-winning and bestselling in Japan in 2024

       At nippon.com Takino Yūsaku offers a useful run-down of Japan's Prizewinning Books of 2024 -- offering also a list of the six bestselling works of fiction last year.
       (Nipan has a more detailed breakdown of the year's bestsellers (for the period November 22, 2023 through November 19, 2024) -- including overall as well as fiction.)
       Three of the top four fiction titles are by Uketsu -- and one of these, Strange Pictures, is scheduled to appear in English in a few weeks -- see the HarperVia publicity page -- and it'll be interesting to see how the work of this 'mysterious YouTuber' (see his channel -- it has 1.7 million subscribers ...) will do in the US.

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       Yamasaki Toyoko profile

       At nippon.com Takino Yūsaku profiles Yamasaki Toyoko: Exploring the Author’s Grand Works and Profound Social Influence on the occasion of her centenary.

       University of Hawaiʻi Press has brought out several of her works in English, but only Two Homelands appears to be in print. (I have her Bonchi but haven't gotten around to reviewing it yet.)

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       Deutscher Krimipreis

       They've announced the winners of this year's German Mystery Prize, with Thomas Knüwer's Das Haus in dem Gudelia stirbt taking the domestic category -- see the Pendragon publicity page -- while Jake Lamar's 2001 novel If 6 were 9, only now translated into German, won in the international category.

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       More books coming in 2025 lists

       Some more lists of books coming in 2025:

• From Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Pope Francis: the books to look forward to in 2025 - an extensive list from The Guardian
  
  
• 10 books we're looking forward to reading in 2025 in Ireland, at RTÉ
  
  
• Literary lineup in India, in The Telegraph

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       The Propagandist review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Cécile Desprairies' The Propagandist -- recently out from New Vessel Press in the US (and coming to the UK in ... May).

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

       Abdulrazak Gurnah profile

       In the Khaleej Times Anand Raj OK profiles the author, in ‘Literature shows human experience is shared’: Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah.
       Regarding whether winning the Nobel Prize has impacted his work, Gurnah says:

“It definitely hasn’t. I’m still like, here, sitting at my desk. I’m looking at the screen and trying to organise what’s going on in my head to put it there. I can’t tell the computer, ‘Hey, listen, do you know who I am?’ It won’t obey. I still have to write and do the work and do the thinking. So, no, it hasn’t. The work remains the same, and the labour of it remains the same.”

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       Coming in 2025

       Quite a few 'most anticipated' and the like lists are already out -- including:

• The 39 Most Anticipated Books of 2025 at Time
  
  
• The Best Books of 2025 at Vogue
  
  
• PEOPLE's Most-Anticipated Books of 2025 at People
  
  
• The 25 Most Anticipated Books of 2025 at Oprah Daily

       It's perhaps a reflection of the readership of these publications -- or a sign of the (coming) times ? --, but the proportion of female to male authors is quite remarkable here -- only two of the twenty-five books on the People list are authored by men, for example.

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

       Bapsi Sidhwa (1938-2024)

       Parsi-Pakistani-American author Bapsi Sidhwa has passed away; see, for example, Anwar Iqbal's report in Dawn, Renowned author Bapsi Sidhwa passes away at 86.
       Several of her books are available from Milkweed.

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       The Steel Crocodile review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of D.G.Compton's 1970 novel, The Steel Crocodile (published in the UK as The Electric Crocodile).

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

       M.T.Vasudevan Nair (1933-2024)

       Malayalam-writing author M.T.Vasudevan Nair has passed away; see, for example, the BBC report. and Udbhav Seth on Literary giant ‘with his no-nonsense insistence on free speech’ – who was M T Vasudevan Nair in The Indian Express.

       The only one of his books under review at the complete review is Bhima, but several more are available in English translation and I do hope to get my hands on some of them.

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       Literary tourism in ... Portugal

       They recently held LiterÁREA -- the first 'Festival of Literary Tourism in Alentejo and Ribatejo' -- and as The Portugal News now reports in Literary tourism, they're trying to build on that, as 'Alentejo and Ribatejo Tourism makes investments in a network of literary hotels'.
       They may be hoping for a bit much, but at least they have grand ambitions:

The goal is to take the 16 literary tours that are already available "to the commercialisation level".

       And there are some promising avenues here:

We are going to create a network with a constant annual program, with links to gastronomy and the theme of wine

       Yes, I think embracing/pushing the theme of wine might help a lot .....
       In any case, good to see they're running with the local literary angle -- it would be nice to see this spread to other places as well.

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

       Dante Q & A

       At npr Andrew Limbong speaks with Dante-translators Michael Palma (The Divine Comedy; Liveright) and Joseph Luzzi (Vita Nuova; Liveright), and if nothing else, one can certainly appreciate the title of the report: There's a new translation of Dante's 'The Divine Comedy.' Why ?

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       The last 100 reviews

       Another 100 reviews down, so it's time for the next overview of the most recent batch of 100 reviews -- 5201 through 5300.

       - It's been a slow year, for various reasons, and the last 100 reviews were posted over 302 days -- far slower than the previous 100, which only took (a still long) 240.
       The average reviewed book was 256.5 pages long, down a bit from the previous 100, where the average was 264.1 pages.
       There also weren't any really long books reviewed this year -- only three had more than 600 pages, and the longest one had 674; another four had over 500 pages. Eight books had less than a hundred pages -- the shortest only 53.

       - The last 100 reviews were 100,471 words long, down some from the previous 111,208 -- making for the shortest average review-length in a while. The longest review was 3122 words long, while three more were over 2000 words long; the shortest came in at 240 words.

       - Reviewed books were originally written in 22 different languages (including English), with English again the most popular language, with 27 titles. French was the next most-popular, with 17, followed by Japanese (13) and Spanish (9). The Japanese total pushed it back up into fourth place on the all-time list, ahead of German (it will stay there for a while, but German (4 reviewed in this batch of 100) will roar back in the years to come).
       No new languages were added; the total number of languages represented remains 85. (See also the updated full breakdown of all the languages books under review were originally written in.)
       As far as nations authors came from -- a more imprecise measure -- the UK topped that list with 16, while only 8 of the authors were from the US; Japan was the second-most popular country of origin, with 13.

       - Male-written books continued to be in the (super-)majority, but at least over a quarter of the books reviewed were written by women -- 26.5. The historic sexist average of written-by-women titles under review has now crept up just a bit more, to ... 17.46.

       - One book was rated 'A' -- a new translation of Alejo Carpentier's classic, The Lost Steps -- and eight more rated an 'A-'. Exactly half the books -- 50 -- were rated 'B' -- and there was a 'C' given out this time too, to (the English edition of) Martin Mittelmeier's Naples 1925

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       Bestselling authors in ... France

       This spring Clément Solym reported at ActuaLitté that Guillaume Musso, indétrônable -- that Guillaume Musso, with, at the time, the top two bestselling titles in France, was 'un-dethronable' as the bestselling author in the country -- but, as the year draws to a close, he follows up and finds that a British author is set to beat out longtime French-market dominators Guillaume Musso and Joël Dicker, in Cette romancière britannique dépasse les ventes de Musso et Dicker.
       That author is Anna Stuart, whose Midwife-novels -- Auschwitz ! Berlin ! -- are apparently on course to outsell the French standard-bearers' in 2024.

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

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       No more Book Post in India

       Many postal services have special rates for the mailing of books -- but not India, not any more. As Manish Modi reports in The Free Press Journal, it's: The End Of An Era: India Post Abolishes Its Book Post Service, as:

On December 18, 2024, India Post arbitrarily discontinued its 'Book Post' service, shocking book lovers and the entire book industry.

       Apparently:

Yet, without any discussion, warning, or stakeholder consultation, the government abruptly eliminated this option. Last week, the RBP category was silently removed from the postal software at midnight, catching even postal employees off guard.

       Yes, the official page at the India Post site is gone; see, however, the archived page.

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

       Crime novels for Christmas

       At The Guardian Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Mick Herron, and others recommend ‘Perfect for winter nights’: the best crime novels to read at Christmas.

       One more to add to the list is Frédéric Dard's Bird in a Cage.

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

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       Swedish Academy prizes

       The Swedish Academy is best-known for deciding who gets the Nobel Prize in Literature every year, but they also hand out a lot of other prizes, including at the end of the year. They had their annual big festive gathering a few days ago -- see the official report -- and also announced the winners of several prizes, including the Gerard Bonniers pris (Marie Lundquist, who gets SEK300,000), the Bellmanpriset (Nils-Åke Hasselmark; SEK250,000), the Kellgrenpriset (Inger Johansson; SEK200,000), and the Kungliga priset (Jan Stolpe ; SEK100,000).

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       Constant Reader review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of The New Yorker Columns 1927-28 by Dorothy Parker, Constant Reader, recently out from McNally Editions.

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

       Michel del Castillo (1933-2024)

       Spanish-born French-writing author Michel del Castillo has passed away; see, for example, Philippe-Jean Catinchi's obituary in Le Monde.

       His early work was consistently translated into English, but he seems to have fallen out of favor and not much of his work is readily found in English nowadays.

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

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       Joan Aiken profile

       At The Guardian Amanda Craig profiles ‘One of the most beloved writers of all time’: the genius of Joan Aiken at 100 -- though with a focus on her works for younger readers.

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       Barack Obama's top books of 2024

       Former US president Barack Obama has revealed his Favorite Books of 2024.
       No word yet from the current office-holder, or the coming one.

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

       Barry Malzberg (1939-2024)

       American author Barry N. Malzberg has passed away; see, for example, the report at Locus.

       Only three of his books are under review at the complete review, but I have, and should be getting to, more:

• The Destruction of the Temple
• Gather in the Hall of the Planets (writing as: K. M. O'Donnell)
• The Remaking of Sigmund Freud

       (Updated - 25 December): See now also Jeet Heer on Novelist on a Deadline: Barry Malzberg, 1939-2024 at The Nation.

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

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       Arabic literature in English translation

       At The New Arab Sarah Shaffi considers The lack of Arabic literature in English translation (and why it matters)

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

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       Physics and fiction

       At Aeon Joshua Roebke finds: 'By testing the boundaries of reality, Spanish-language authors have created a sublime counterpart to experimental physics', in Laboratories of the impossible.

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

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       About End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland

       There's an interesting titbit about Jay Rubin's recently released re-translation of Murakami Haruki's classic novel, End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland, in Kris Kosaka's review in The Japan Times:

Although the novel is definitely a fan favorite, this new translation was not actually intended for commercial distribution.

“When Murakami asked me to do it, he took me by surprise,” Rubin says. “But we were not thinking of a publication. He was thinking of the opening of the new Haruki Murakami Library in Waseda (University). He wanted me to produce an uncut translation that could be on file there, and I thought that was a fine idea.”

       Which helps explain why Rubin's Afterword is dated 22 October 2021, long before it was finally published.

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

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