opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

11 - 15 July 2025

11 July: The German book market, 2024 | Fanny Howe (1940-2025)
12 July: Mizumura Minae profile | C.M.Naim (1936-2025) | Fish Letters review
13 July: 'The African Book Industry' | Mulk Raj Anand profile
14 July: Ocean Vuong Q & A | Goffredo Fofi (1937-2025) | The Laboratory review
15 July: Dayton Literary Peace Prize finalists | Martin Cruz Smith (1942-2025)

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       Dayton Literary Peace Prize finalists

       The Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation has announced (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) the finalists for its awards, honoring: "writers whose work demonstrates the power of the written word to foster peace", in its two categories, fiction and non -- six titles each
       Percival Everett's James is among the fiction finalists .....
       I haven't seen any of these.

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

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       Martin Cruz Smith (1942-2025)

       Gorky Park-author Martin Cruz Smith has passed away; see, for example, the obituary in The Independent.
       I enjoyed Gorky Park when it came out, but haven't read any of the later Arkady Renko-novels; the last, Hotel Ukraine, apparently only came out recently.

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

       Ocean Vuong Q & A

       At The Times of India Sneha Bhura has a Q & A with Ocean Vuong: Indian students are struggling with visas but the most exciting literature will come from them.
       Vuong says of his latest novel, The Emperor of Gladness: "The book is an epic of interiority. An epic that doesn't go anywhere".
       Among the questions also: the now surely inevitable one about AI .....

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

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       Goffredo Fofi (1937-2025)

       Italian intellectual Goffredo Fofi has passed away; see, for example, the ANSA obituary and The Legacy of Goffredo Fofi at il Messaggero.

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

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       The Laboratory review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore's 'last novel', The Laboratory.

       Translated by the indefatigable Arunava Sinha, this is the first book published under his new imprint, Chowringhee Press, offering 'Translations from India' -- a promising-looking venture.

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

       'The African Book Industry'

       They launched this a couple of weeks ago, but it's only come to my attention now: UNESCO has released a substantial new report on The African Book Industry: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities for Growth (warning ! dreaded pdf format !).
       There's a lot of information here -- including details about the situation in each African country, including the number of titles published in each country, the number of bookstores, and the number of public libraries.
       The thorough report offers a very useful overview; it's well worth downloading.

       This also gives me opportunity to remind you of the invaluable source of books from Africa, the African Books Collective.

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

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       Mulk Raj Anand profile

       At Scroll.in Pushpesh Pant profiles Mulk Raj Anand and his imagination of global resistance against caste, colonialism, propaganda.

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

       Mizumura Minae profile

       In The Japan Times Hanako Lowry profiles the A True Novel- author, in Between reality and fiction: A summer’s day in Karuizawa with Minae Mizumura (possibly paywalled ?).
       Disappointingly:

Though she considers her latest novel to be her final work of fiction, Mizumura says she is now focusing more on the act of writing memoirs — a natural shift in Japanese literary tradition, she notes, for writers who reach a certain stage.

       (That latest novel is 大使とその妻; see also the Shinchosha publicity pages for volumes one and two.)
       Interestingly:

“I am sure AI will write wonderful stories in the future,” Mizumura says, pausing a moment before continuing. “I am glad I am shifting to memoir and writing my life’s stories as AI cannot write them with the same humanity.”

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

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       C.M.Naim (1936-2025)

       Urdu scholar C.M.Naim has passed away; see, for example, One of Urdu's Greatest Scholars, C.M. Naim, Passes Away and Narendra Pachkhédé on C. M. Naim and the Many Lives of Urdu, both at The Wire.

       I would really love to see his Urdu Crime Fiction, 1890-1950: An Informal History; see the Orient BlackSwan publicity page.

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

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       Fish Letters review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of a collection of stories by Goderdzi Chokheli, Fish Letters, now out from Dedalus.

       Always good to see more translations from Georgian -- though Dedalus seems to be the only publisher currently doing this.

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

       The German book market, 2024

       As Christina Schulte reports at Börsenblatt, Die offiziellen Zahlen für den Buchmarkt 2024 sind da, as the German numbers for 2024 are in.
       Turnover was up 1.8 per cent -- with Belletristik (basically trade fiction), which made up 36.6 per centof the market, up 4.3 per cent. Imterestingly, backlist titles (titles first published more than twelve months ago) made up 57 per cent of sales. Meanwhile, the number of new titles published dropped another 3.1 per cent, to 58,346. (As recently as 2019 70, 395 new titles were published.)
       The percentage of titles that were translations increased from 14.5 per cent to 15 per cent.
       The number of book-buyers decreseased 2 per cent, with the only age groups with an increase in book-buyers those aged 16 to 19 (up an impressive 9.6 per cent) and 20 to 29 (up 7.7.per cent).

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

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       Fanny Howe (1940-2025)

       American author Fanny Howe has passed away; not much coverage yet, but the Boston Globe has a (paywalled) report.

       See Q & As with Howe at Bomb, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, and The White Review

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

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