opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

       JCB Prize

       Via, I'm pointed to Jane Borges' piece in the Mumbai Mirror reporting that The JCB Prize is gone. What now ? as the leading Indian literary prize, the JCB Prize for Literature, has apparently been shut down (not that you can tell from their website, but they were never very good at keeping that up-to-date anyway).

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       Geoff Dyer Q & A

       At Interview has a Q & A with the author, in “Giving Up Is a Great Source of Happiness”: 30 Minutes With Author Geoff Dyer.

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       Society of Authors' Awards

       The Society of Authors has announced the winners of its many awards. with Winter Animals, by Ashani Lewis, winning both the Betty Trask Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award.

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       Twilight of Crooks review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Mwalimu Johnnie MacViban's Twilight of Crooks.

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       Deutscher Sachbuchpreis

       They've announced the winner of this year's German Non-Fiction Prize and it is a graphic work-- Die Frau als Mensch, by Ulli Lust; see also the Reprodukt publicity page.

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       Alfred Brendel (1931-2025)

       Alfred Brendel has passed away; see, for example, the obituaries at the BBC, The Guardian, and The New York Times (presumably paywalled).
       Best-known as a pianist, he also published many books -- including of poetry, with Phaidon bringing out a collected poetry-collection, Playing the Human Game; get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
       See also the Hanser author foreign rights page for information about more of his books. And Armin Thurnher's Der Übergänger -- see the Hanser foreign rights page -- also sounds like fun.

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       Jay Boss Rubin Q & As

       Euphrase Kezilahabi's Rosa Mistika officially came out yesterday -- and there are now some Q & A's with translator Jay Boss Rubin: at the Chicago Review of Books Ian J. Battaglia speaks with him, in The Translator’s Voice — Jay Boss Rubin on Translating Euphrase Kezilahabi’s “Rosa Mistika”, and at the Yale University Press site they have Realism and Rosa Mistika: A Conversation with Jay Boss Rubin.

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       In Basho's footsteps

       At The Mainichi they follow in the footsteps of Japanese literary scholar Keene's reflections on haiku rhythm, travels of Matsuo Basho.

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       The City review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Valerian Pidmohylnyi's 1928 classic, The City, now out in English in the Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature-series.

       The Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature-series is a relatively new one from the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute -- whose publishing arm was recently hard hit by the current American administration's massive NEH/NEA cuts; see e.g.. This will obviously have an impact on what and how much they can publish -- a great shame, because it is an excellent series bringing out significant works. (The City is the third work in the series reviewed at the complete review, and I hope to get to more.)

       (The City has also been published in German translation, by the admirable Guggolz Verlag -- and it's always well worth checking out what they're publishing.)

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       Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize, awarded for a: "book-length literary translations into English from any living European language" -- not at the official site(s) yet, last I checked, but see, for example, here -- and it is Jeffrey Zuckerman's translation of Adèle Rosenfeld's Jellyfish Have No Ears; see also the publicity pages from MacLehose Press and Graywolf Press.

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       Maurice Gee (1931-2025)

       New Zealand author Maurice Gee has passed away; see, for example, Philip Matthews' obituary at Stuff and Claire Mabey's tribute at The Spinoff.

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       Writing in ... Yemen

       At Orient XXI Ryan Al-Shibani finds: "the war in Yemen [...] has caused major upheavals in Yemeni cultural life, particularly in the literary sphere", in The Yemeni Crisis Forces a Literary Migration from Poetry.
       Apparently:

Against this backdrop, the novel began to assert itself as the dominant literary form. Instead of poetry -- which had long been Yemen’s preeminent art form -- the novel emerged as a suitable vehicle for confronting the social and psychological ruptures caused by war.

       Impressively:

From 2010 to mid-2022, 373 novels were published -- a figure three times greater than the total produced in all previous decades combined. In comparison, 189 short story collections and 40 collections of very short stories were published in the same period, indicating a clear shift toward narrative and its diverse forms.

       So apparently:

Overall, the novel today appears better equipped to capture the Yemeni moment and its intertwined complexities. Narrative has become a refuge for those fleeing war and displacement, a means of reconstructing self and memory in a fragmented world.

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       Arab literature

       At Atalayar Aya Aoulouhaj finds that: 'The quality of novels has declined due to the crisis in the Arab cultural business model', in Arab literature falls victim to overproduction.
       So, apparently:

Writers, publishers, literary critics and academics, and even Arab writing award academies have become embroiled in a model based on ‘goodwill’ and the perpetuation of personal, economic and political interests that affect the intellectual development of readers.

       And

Another reason is that the rigour of literary critics has also declined. Mohammed Saeed Ahjiuj complained that these experts no longer do their job, limiting themselves to purely propagandistic activities, thus affecting the development of the judgement of novice readers and the confidence of the more discerning.

       Well, thank god I'm no expert; I would feel very bad about affecting the development of the judgement of novice readers and the confidence of the more discerning .....

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       Molly Jong-Fast/Jay McInerney conversation

       At Interview Erica Jong's kid and the Bright Lights, Big City-author talk, in Molly Jong-Fast and Jay McInerney on the Price of Literary Immortality
       Ah, yes -- 'literary immortality' .....
       McInerney thinks that: "Henry Miller is still in the conversation" (though he doesn't mention whose ...), but:

It just seemed like Updike would never go away, but people don’t talk about him anymore. Literary immortality is a very strange, strange thing. Somebody from the BBC was asking me yesterday about John Dos Passos in the ’30s, when Fitzgerald couldn’t get arrested, Dos Passos was probably considered the great American writer, and now, nobody can even remember him. It’s a fleeting thing.

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       Tagore and Yeats

       In The Indian Express Aishwarya Khosla revisits: 'Irish Nobel laureate WB Yeats' complex relationship with Rabindranath Tagore, who he first hailed as a mystic sage and championed for the Nobel, only to later dismiss him for “wrecking his reputation”', in Tagore and Yeats: How a Nobel-winning friendship fell apart.

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       Women's Prizes

       They've announced the winners of this year's Women's Prizes in the two categories, fiction and non.
       The fiction-category winner is The Safekeep, by Yael van der Wouden.

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       Walter Scott Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and it is The Land In Winter, by Andrew Miller.

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       Translating Rosa Mistika

       At the Asymptote blog Jay Boss Rubin writes on When There's No Fog: Translating Euphrase Kezilahabi's Rosa Mistika -- recently reviewed at the complete review.

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       The Living and the Rest review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of José Eduardo Agualusa's The Living and the Rest, which is now also out in a US edition, from Archipelago (a UK edition of this translation came out in 2023).

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       Neustadt Prize finalists

       They've announced the nine finalists for the 2026 Neustadt International Prize for Literature -- each one chosen by one of the jurors.
       It's a very strong list, and works by a few of them are under review at the complete review:

• Yuri Andrukhovych
  • Дванадцять обручів
  • The Moscoviad
  • Perverzion
  • Recreations
  • Таємниця
• Elif Batuman
• Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
• Robert Olen Butler
• Safia Elhillo
• Mathias Énard
  • Compass
  • Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants
• Ibrahim Nasrallah
• Tawada Yoko
  • The Emissary (UK title: The Last Children of Tokyo)
  • Exophony
  • Facing the Bridge
  • Memoirs of a Polar Bear
  • The Naked Eye
  • Portrait of a Tongue
  • Time Differences
• Jesmyn Ward

       The winner will be announced 21 October.

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       Thomas-Mann-Preis

       The Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste has announced the winner of this year's Thomas Mann Prize, and it is Katja Lange-Müller; she'll get to pick up the prize on 13 November.
       Two of her works are available in English translation from Seagull Books; see also the foreign rights page from Kiepenheuer & Witsch.

       This €25,000 prize has a good list of previous winners, including Christa Wolf (2010), Lars Gustafsson (2015), Mircea Cărtărescu (2018), and Jonathan Franzen (2022).

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       Cats in Japanese fiction

       At Metropolis Jessie Carbutt considers the pressing question: Why Are There So Many Cats in Japanese Fiction ?
       Surely Sōseki's I am a Cat deserves more attention in any such overview .....

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       Nepali-Chinese literary exchange

       At Republica they report that 13 Nepali literary works to be translated into Chinese, reporting on a bilateral agreement between Nepal's Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation and China's National Administration of Press and Publication
       Along with the titles to be translated into Chinese:

13 Chinese books have been selected for translation into Nepali. These include Reading Guide for Xi Jinping Thought, Seventy Years of New China, The Origins of Chinese Civilization, and A Brief History of Ancient Chinese Architecture.

       Those lucky Nepali readers, finally getting access to the Reading Guide for Xi Jinping Thought .....

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       Wilde West review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Walter Satterthwait's 1991 novel, Wilde West -- yes, featuring Oscar Wilde on his 1882 US lecture tour.

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       Publishing in ... Israel (2024)

       The National Library of Israel has issued its 2024 Book Report -- the publishing-numbers for 2024.
        6,928 books were published in Israel in 2024 -- 548 of which dealt with the 7 October 2023 attacks (which seems like ... a significant percentage). 27 per cent of books published were works of fiction -- barely more than the 23 per cent that were 'Jewish studies', with children/YA books the thrid-largest category, with 17 per cent.
       90 per cent of books were in Hebrew -- and a mere 2 per cent were in Arabic (fewer than the 5 per cent in English ...).
       21 percent of books were works in translation -- a staggering 68 per cent from the English, followed by French (5 per cent) and German (3 per cent). About half of the works of prose fiction published were works in translation.

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       Frederick Forsyth (1938-2025)

       Author Frederick Forsyth -- best-known for The Day Of The Jackal -- has passed away; see, for example, the obituaries in The Guardian and at the BBC.

       I've only read The Day Of The Jackal -- many decades ago, but I was very impressed by itl see also the publicity pages from G.P. Putnam's Sons and Arrow, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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       George Szirtes Q & A

       At hlo there's a lengthy Q & A with George Szirtes: I saw myself as a Budapest tenement block in an English suburb. Lots of photographs as well.

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       The Book review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Stéphane Mallarmé's The Book -- the Sylvia Gorelick translation, published by Exact Change (whose books are, of course, always worth checking out).

       Those who find the 'text' too challenging might turn to Klaus Scherübel's take, at least for the bookshelf: as the Printed Matter page explains: "Note: This is a block of styrofoam with a dust jacket".
       Another fun-sounding variation is that conceived by Holly Cundiff, The Glorious Lie / The Glory of the Lie -- "A Card Game Inspired by Stéphane Mallarmé’s The Book". Appropriately enough: "The manner of playing the game is left open".
       (The book also features in Peter Cornell's The Ways of Paradise, which is what led me to cover it.)

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       Spanish literature of NYC

       At El País Andrea Aguilar reports on The Spanish literature of New York City, as this year's Madrid Book Fair has a focus on Nueva York en español: la luz del otro lado del Atlántico.

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       Сафран Q & A

       At Global Voices Filip Noubel has a Q & A with Сафран-founder Svitlana Pryzynchuk, discussing how A niche publisher is using Asian literature to bring Taiwan and Japan closer to Ukraine.

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       Премия «Дар»

       In The Kyiv Independent Kate Tsurkan writes on how Controversial Russian literature prize sparks debate on separating culture from war crimes -- the Dar Literary Prize, which: "supports new voices and the finest examples of independent contemporary Russian-language literature", founded by Maidenhair-author Mikhail Shishkin.
       Lots of impressive names associated with the prize -- including Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich, Tomas Venclova, and Lyudmila Ulitskaya -- and yet .....

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       Geoff Dyer Q & A

       At The Guardian this week's 'The books of my life'-column features Geoff Dyer: ‘I don’t go to books for comfort; I have a memory foam pillow for that’.
       Among his responses:

The book I came back to

I’ve reread The Names by Don DeLillo more than any other book. It remains a high point, not just in DeLillo’s career but in the history of the postwar novel.

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       Griffin Poetry Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's international Griffin Poetry Prize, and it is Psyche Running, Karen Leeder's translation of Durs Grünbein's texts, with the prize (of C$130,000) shared, with 60% going to the translator and 40% to the original author.
       See also the Seagull publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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       Translation Prize winners

       The winners of the French-American Foundation Translation Prizes have been announced, and at the French-American Foundation they have Interviews with the 2025 Translation Prize Finalists & Winners.
       The winner in the fiction category was Lazer Lederhendler's translation of Christophe Bernard's The Hollow Beast, see also the Biblioasis publicity page.

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       Theakston Old Peculier shortlists

       They've announced the shortlists for this year's Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and McDermid Debut Award.
       The winners will be announced 17 July.

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       Exophony review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Tawada Yoko's Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue, in Exophony, just out in English in the US, from New Directions (and coming soon in the UK, from Dialogue).

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       Edmund White (1940-2025)

       American author Edmund White has passed away; see, for example, the obituaries in The Guardian and The New York Times (presumably paywalled); see also the Lyceum Agency author page.

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       Salman Rushdie profile

       In The Observer Erica Wagner profiles the author, in Free speech, fiction and survival: my conversation with Salman Rushdie.

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       EstLit

       The Estonian Literature Centre has launched a new 'English-language magazine dedicated to showcasing Estonian literature', EstLit -- whereby: "The online edition is updated continuously throughout the year, while the print issue is published annually in the autumn".
       Looks like a promising start.

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       Lars Iyer Q & A

       Via, I'm pointed to David Southard's 13 Questions for Lars Iyer -- the Wittgenstein Jr-author -- at Books of Some Substance

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       A Fictional Inquiry review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Daniele Del Giudice's 1983 novel, A Fictional Inquiry, forthcoming -- though only in the fall -- in English, from New Vessel Press.

       The inquiry in question is, in no small part, into the (non-)writing life of Notes Without a Text-author Roberto Bazlen. (Though note also that a literal translation of the original Italian title of the novel would be ... 'Wimbledon Stadium'.)

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       Tom Comitta profile

       Tom Comitta's two-in-one of "The Most Wanted and Unwanted Novels", People's Choice Literature, is out today, and in The New York Times Elisabeth Egan profiles these Novels Inspired by Opinion Polls ? They’re Here, and They’re Weird (presumably paywalled) .
       Egan reports that:

The book was rejected by 50 publishers. One was interested in “The Most Wanted Novel” but balked at the package deal.

“I wrote to art galleries: Can we call this an art project and publish this as an art book?” Comitta said. “Nothing was working. Nobody would do it.”

       Eventually, Columbia University Press editor Philip Leventhal bought the book -- I wasn't aware of that at the time I reviewed the book, but he's also the one who commissioned my The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction -- see the Columbia University Press publicity page --, so he obviously has an excellent and discerning eye .....

       (Updated - 4 June): See now also 12 or 20 (second series) questions with Tom Comitta at rob mclennan's blog.

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       Maison des écrivains

       The French Maison des écrivains et de la littérature has apparently closed its doors, having run out of money; see, for example, the ActuaLitté report, Asphyxiée, la Maison des écrivains et de la littérature ferme ses portes.
       See also Michael Washburn, wondering two months ago Can Anyone Save the Mél ?

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       AI and writing

       In The Observer Vanessa Thorpe reports that The literary battle against AI is on: ‘Real words from real people are so much better’.
       She starts out describing a book conceived by -- but not actually ever written -- by generative AI, i.e. just the 'idea' of the novel. Similarly focusing on the generation of 'ideas', Nick Harkaway is later quoted as saying:

People keep saying it would be great for new ideas, but I have ideas coming out of my head. That is not the problem. The problem is execution, and it is not good at that. I am sure it would be good in biotechnology, but why are we using it for writing text? And it is also terrible for the planet, so we can’t use it at scale anyway.

       This hasn't been my (limited) experience: I don't know about coming up with 'ideas', but I've been very impressed by generative AI's generative execution -- what's generally considered 'creative writing'. (As far as dealing with factual information, generative AI seems far too ... generative to me, making up stuff (those infamous hallucinations -- not least the made up references (and books)); only when more or less limited to a text it's specifically been fed and asked to comment on or do something else with is it in any way reliable.) But as far as pure invention goes, and imitating specific styles, it does ... worryingly well. As also suggested by at least one person quoted in this article:

Ruth, her friend, admitted she had recently tried it to create a story for her grandson. “I used ChatGPT to turn it into a story in the style of Julia Donaldson and it was brilliant. I found it quite scary.”

       I don't know how, for example, parents can resist using generative AI to create bespoke -- even personalized -- stories for their kids.
       Indeed, surely written-to-order fiction is one of the great potentials of generative AI -- choose your own adventure indeed. What is most amazing/troubling about ChatGPT and the like is the ease with which it produces this stuff: if you don't like one version you can prompt it to make the changes you'd like and it does so practically instantly. And could do so endlessly.
       (Yes, there are (huge) costs to this -- but they're generally not borne by the user; much like private-automobile use, the personal benefit and lack of cost to the user outweigh all considerations of the incredible environmental damage the thing does.)
       I do find arguments/statements such as: "I would not like to discover that any emotional experience I was having while connecting with an author’s thoughts was not real" ... curious. Connecting with an author's thoughts ? 'Real' ?
       Another writer says: "I would never use AI prompts for any creative enterprise. It is completely counter to what we do as artists and it dehumanises creativity" .....
       As someone who is very text-focused -- i.e. not concerned with who the 'author' of a work is -- the arguments about the artificiality, as it were, of a work don't carry that much weight for me; I don't really get them. Quality is more of an issue -- but for much creative writing, like basic story-telling, generative AI really is good enough, just as for much translation generative AI or Google Translate is good enough (not 'literary' translation, but, really, for your basic pop thriller (or to read a news story in a foreign newspaper) it will usually do -- and if the AI has been trained specifically on similar books it can be pretty decent).
       Big issues remain -- notably that of copyright (not so much of the output but of the illegal use of copyrighted material as input) -- but the mass-use of generative AI to produce 'creative writing' -- fiction, poetry, drama -- seems absolutely inevitable to me, and the focus should be on the potential, and the consequences, of that.

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       Losing the rhyme

       The Economist finds that Rhyme, once in its prime, is in decline (paywalled).
       Remarkably:

In 1900, 80% of poems contained rhyme; today, only around 25% do. Numbers of rhymes fell too: at the start of the 20th century over 60% of lines rhymed; now under 5% do

       Presumably the sales of rhyming-dictionaries have fallen too .....
       They have quite a bit more to say about what poetry has become in modern times-- including finding that:

Look at a list of recent winners of any of the big poetry prizes and most will share three characteristics: you will not have heard of them; their poems will not rhyme; and they will have worked as poets in universities, peddling poetry as (partially) state-subsidised muses. This is poetry less as a paid-for product than as a literary utility: something that—like road surfacing or sewage disposal—is widely considered necessary for a civilised society but that no one wants to fork out for.

       Ouch.
       But in these times, maybe there will be resurgence of rhyming poetry ? Not human-texted but .....
       Generative AI is amazingly good at writing with certain constraints; presumably fed by great heaps of rhyming English poetry it can do a more than passable imitation of it. Feeding this The Economist article to ChatGPT I prompted it to write a sonnet in response; in a matter of seconds it spit out:

Certainly! Here's a rhyming Shakespearean sonnet in response to the essay above—a defense, lament, and quiet celebration of rhyme in the face of modern poetic trends:

Upon the Waning of the Rhyme

When rhyme was king, the common tongue would sing,
Its couplets danced in hearts and village square.
Now poems brood on death, on waste, on wing,
In lowercase, italics, and despair.

The bards of yore sold thousands in a day,
While modern verse is lectured, not recited.
We learned to strip the lark of all its play,
To show we’re grave, obscure, and uninvited.

Yet still the child delights in echo's chime,
And still the ear detects the rhyming thread;
Though scorned by prize, and deemed an antique crime,
It lingers, like a ghost not truly dead.

Let critics scoff, and let the trend depart—
The rhyme remains, tucked deep inside the heart.

       That doesn't seem half-bad to me. More terrifying is that ChatGPT also then said: "Let me know if you'd like a more humorous, satirical, or formal variation—I’d be glad to tailor it" -- as it could, of course, spit out endless new variations, essentially instantly. Hard for human poets -- university-affiliated or not -- to compete with that.

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       Daniel Kehlmann profile

       In In America, a German-Austrian novelist hears echoes of his father’s life under Nazism at Forward PJ Grisar profiles Daniel Kehlmann -- mainly about his G.W.Pabst-novel, The Director, now out in English.

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       Raymond Queneau

       At Mining the Dalkey Archive -- which you hopefully check out regularly -- Chad W. Post writes about: 'A literary treasure and seven categories introducing the works of an Oulipian master', in Where to Start with Raymond Queneau -- an extensive overview.

       Several works by Queneau are under review at the complete review:

• Children of Clay
• Exercises in Style
• The Flight of Icarus
• The Last Days
• We Always Treat Women Too Well
• Zazie in the Metro

       You can guess which are my favorites .....

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       New Story of the Stone review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of An Early Chinese Science Fiction Novel by Wu Jianren, New Story of the Stone, coming out from Columbia University Press.

       Yes, this is a sequel (of sorts) to Cao Xueqin's eighteenth-century classic, The Story of the Stone, one of the greatest of all novels. New Story of the Stone isn't anywhere in the same league -- little is -- but it is very good to see this in English, and it is also of interest as a novel of modern China, then (around 1900) and now.

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       James Tait Memorial Black Prizes

       They've announced the winners of this year's James Tait Memorial Black Prizes -- "presented by the University of Edinburgh since 1919" -- with both the fiction and the biography winner works in translation.
       The fiction prize went to My Heavenly Favourite by Lucas Rijneveld, in Michele Hutchison's translation; see also the publicity pages from Graywolf Press and Faber.

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       Shortlist: HKW International Literature Award

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Haus der Kulturen der Welt Prize for Contemporary Literatures in Translation, a leading German prize for a work in translation.
       The six titles were selected from 118 submissions translated from 29 languages; two of the shortlisted titles are translations from the English: Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience and Jesmyn Ward's Let Us Descend.
       The winner will be announced 17 July.

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       Shortlists: CWA Daggers

       The Crime Writers' Association has announced the shortlists for this year's CWA Daggers -- unfortunately not on one convenient single page at the official site (you have to click the various categories), but see, for example, the report at The Bookseller.
       The only title under review at the complete review is in the Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger-category: Sam Bett's translation of Otani Akira's The Night of Baby Yaga.
       The winners will be announced 3 July.

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

       Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938-2025)

       Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o has passed away; see, for example, the obituaries in The Star, The Guardian, and at the BBC.

       I was a great admirer of much of his work -- and his dedication to African languages, including in writing most of his later work in Gĩkũyũ.

       Several of his works are under review at the complete review:

• Birth of a Dream Weaver
• Decolonising the Mind
• Dreams in a Time of War
• Globalectics
• Matigari
• The Perfect Nine
• Wizard of the Crow

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

       Letterenfonds Vertaaltalent Prijs

       They've announced the winner of the first Letterenfonds Vertaaltalent Prijs, a €10,000 early-career Dutch translation prize, and it is translator from the Romanian (and German) Charlotte van Rooden.

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

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