opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

21 - 30 June 2025

21 June: Translation from ... Hong Kong | At the Louvre review
22 June: Gertrud Leutenegger (1948-2025)
23 June: Book Arsenal report | George Szirtes film-profile | Authors' 'perfect holiday reading'
24 June: Livres en folie | The Questions of Milinda review
25 June: EBRD Literature Prize | Shortlists: Europese Literatuurprijs - Miles Franklin | International Booker Prize judging panel
26 June: New World Literature Today | Orwell Prizes
27 June: Hidden Heroes review
28 June: Académie française palmarès | Geoff Dyer Q & A | Nobel laureate named to Académie française | Richard Flanagan Q & A
29 June: Pak Kyongni finalists | Hemang Ashwinkumar on translation
30 June: Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis | Tash Aw Q & A | Solidaridad Bookshop for sale | The World's Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant review

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       Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis

       They held the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize -- the German-language read-in-front-of-a-jury prize -- and they've announced the winning text, DA STA (warning ! dreaded pdf format !), by Natascha Gangl.
       With an opening line of: "Wou g'heastn du hi ?" non-native speakers might find it ... challenging.

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

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       Tash Aw Q & A

       At Scroll.in Chaitanya Srivastava has a Q & A with the author, mainly about his new novel The South, in: ‘Silences reveal as much as noise’: Malaysian writer Tash Aw on his new coming-of-age novel.

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       Solidaridad Bookshop for sale

       The Solidaridad Bookshop in Manila, founded by Sin-author F. Sionil José 59 years ago, is up for sale; see, for example, Angeli Ruth R. Acosta's report in The Varsitarian, F. Sionil José’s Manila bookshop up for sale.

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       The World's Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Liza Tully's The World's Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant, coming out shortly.

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

       Pak Kyongni finalists

       I missed this last week, but they've announced the three finalists for this year's Pak Kyongni Prize, and they are: Salwa Bakr, Amitav Ghosh, and John Banville; see Hwang Dong-hee's The Korea Herald report.
       This author prize has been awarded since 2011, and it has a solid list of previous winners.
       The winner will be announced in September.

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

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       Hemang Ashwinkumar on translation

       At The Wire Hemang Ashwinkumar writes on English and a Translator's Shame.

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

       Académie française palmarès

       The Académie française has announced (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) its (many) palmarès -- 71 'distinctions', with Akira Mizubayashi being awarded the Grand Prix de la francophonie and Alice Kaplan getting the Grande médaille de la francophonie.

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       Geoff Dyer Q & A

       At the New Left Review's Sidecar Leo Robson has a lengthy Q & A with Geoff Dyer, in Theory in the Air.

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

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       Nobel laureate named to Académie française

       They've elected a new 'immortel' to the Académie française -- though perhaps not one most will have read anything by: it's Alain Aspect, who shared the 2022 Physics prize with John F. Clauser and Dance of the Photons-author Anton Zeilinger.
       Aspect's Einstein and the Quantum Revolutions recently came out in English -- see the University of Chicago Press publicity page --; I have a copy and do hope to get to it soon.
       Aspect won the election for fauteuil 22 overwhelmingly, with sixteen votes, the two other contenders each only receiving a single vote.

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

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       Richard Flanagan Q & A

       This week's 'The books of my life'-column features the Gould's Book of Fish-author, in Richard Flanagan: ‘When I reread Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop it had corked badly’.
       Among his responses:

The book or author I came back to

When I was young, Thomas Bernhard seemed an astringent, even unpleasant taste. But perhaps his throatless laughter, his instinctive revulsion when confronted with power and his incantatory rage speak to our times.

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

       Hidden Heroes review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of a new Anthology of North Korean Fiction, Hidden Heroes.

       We get a ton of stuff from South Korea now, but still far too little from the North, so it's good to see a bit more -- though of course my preference would be for novels, rather than stories.
       Meanwhile, don't forget the invaluable (if too rarely updated) North Korean Literature in English weblog.

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       New World Literature Today

       The July/August issue of World Literature Today is now out, with a focus on 'Gaza Voices' and a section devoted to 'Guadalupe Nettel: The 2025 Puterbaugh Fellow'.
       And, of course, there's the Book Review section.

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

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       Orwell Prizes

       They've announced the winners of this year's Orwell Prizes -- though not yet at the official site, last I checked, but see, for example, the report in The Guardian.
       Heart, Be at Peace, by Donal Ryan, took the Political Fiction Book prize; see also the publicity pages from Penguin and Viking, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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

       EBRD Literature Prize

       The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has announced the winner of its Literature Prize -- and it is Sons, Daughters by Ivana Bodrožić, in Ellen Elias-Bursać's translation; see also the Seven Stories publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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

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       Shortlist: Europese Literatuurprijs

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Europese Literatuurprijs, a literary prize for the best European novel in Dutch translation.
       The winner will be announced 3 September.

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

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       Shortlist: Miles Franklin

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Miles Franklin Literary Award, a leading Australian novel prize.
       The winner will be announced 24 July.

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

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       International Booker Prize judging panel

       They've announced the judging panel for the 2026 International Booker Prize, with Natasha Brown chairing the panel that also includes Marcus du Sautoy, Sophie Hughes, Troy Onyango, and Nilanjana S. Roy.

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

       Livres en folie

       Given what one hears about the situation in Haiti I did not expect they'd be holding book fairs but in The Haitian Times Juhakenson Blaise reports that Haitians pack Livres en Folie as PM vows security, again -- featuring more than 1,100 titles.
       Lots of pictures, too.

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

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       The Questions of Milinda review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of a new translation of Milindapañha, in Harvard University Press' Murty Classical Library of India-series, The Questions of Milinda.

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

       Book Arsenal report

       In the Kyiv Post Death and the Penguin-author Andriy Kurkov reports on the recent Book Arsenal, 'Ukraine's largest book festival', in Literature and Crowd Censorship.
       The crowd censorship refers to the pulping of the entire print run (of 30,000 copies) of Sophie Lark's Brutal Prince, as Kurkov finds:

It is now the patriotic book bloggers and activists who decide which books are allowed onto the book market.

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

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       George Szirtes film-profile

       Ath hlo they introduce Literature Comes Home: A Film on George Szirtes -- and you can see the film on YouTube as well.

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

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       Authors' 'perfect holiday reading'

       At The Guardian they have a selection of My perfect holiday reading, by Bernardine Evaristo, David Nicholls, Zadie Smith and more.

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

       Gertrud Leutenegger (1948-2025)

       Swiss author Gertrud Leutenegger has passed away; see, for example, the report at Tagesspiegel.
       None of her work appears to have been translated into English, but see the Suhrkamp foreign rights author page for infrmation about some of them.

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

       Translation from ... Hong Kong

       In the South China Morning Post's PostMag, Karen Cheung finds: "much has changed over the past 10 years: demand for translated literature is booming and acclaimed publishers are picking up more works by Chinese-language writers from Hong Kong", in reporting on A new generation of translators bringing Hong Kong literature to the world.

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

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       At the Louvre review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of the recent collection of Poems by 100 Contemporary World Poets, At the Louvre.

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

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