opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

       Jan Michalski Prize semi-finalists

       They actually announced this a couple of weeks ago, but apparently not very loudly -- I haven't seen mention of it anywhere, but the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature has announced its second selection -- five titles left in the running,
       Titles still up for the prize include On the Calculation of Volume (I) by Solvej Balle and books by Pierre Bayard, Lydia Davis, and Guadalupe Nettel.
       They'll presumably announce three finalists before they get around to declaring a winner.

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       Death and the Gardener review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Georgi Gospodinov's latest novel, Death and the Gardener -- already out in the UK, and coming to the US in early October.

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       Jantar Publishing Q & A

       At Radio Prague International Ian Willoughby has a Q & A with Michael Tate on Czech roots, Prague -- and the serendipitous birth of Jantar Publishing.

       Several Jantar titles are under review at the complete review -- e.g. Jan Křesadlo's GraveLarks -- and I certainly expect to get to more.

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       Nicholas Clapp (1936-2025)

       As Mike Barnes reports in The Hollywood Reporter, Nicholas Clapp, Documentarian and Author Known as a “Modern-Day Indiana Jones,” Dies at 89.

       One of his works is under review at the complete review -- Sheba: Through the Desert in Search of the Legendary Queen.

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       Butter review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of A Novel of Food and Murder by Yuzuki Asako, Butter.

       I finally got my hands on a (library) copy of this, and, as I mention in the review, it's a welcome change from the usual contemporary Japanese fare found in translation (mysteries; fiction with quirky/fantastical elements; slim Akutagawa Prize-winners).
       (Among the rare other recent offerings in this category is Matsuie Masashi's The Summer House (published in the UK as Summer at Mount Asama, because ... *sigh*), but, if not quite as polished, Yuzuki's novels offers considerably more to chew on, as it were.)

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       PRH UK Library and Archive

       At the BBC Mousumi Bakshi reports on the Penguin Random House UK Library and Archive, in 'Books are for everyone': Inside Penguin's hidden archive -- with pictures, too.

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       Lambda Literary Awards finalists

       They've announced the finalists for this year's Lambda Literary Awards in its 26 categories, selected from 1,339 submitted titles.
       The winners will be announced 4 October.

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       Booker Prize longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Booker Prize -- thirteen books, selected from 153 submissions, including one by an author who has won the prize before (Kiran Desai).
       Several of these have not yet been published, or been published in the US, yet, but I haven't seen any of them.
       The shortlist will be announced on 23 September, and the winner on 10 November.

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       Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels

       They've (finally) announced who will be getting this year's Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, and it is Karl Schlögel.
       Several of his works have been translated into English, including The Scent of Empires (publicity page), Moscow, 1937 (publicity page), and most recently, The Soviet Century (publicity page); his American Matrix is apparently forthcoming (also from Polity) in English; meanwhile, see the Hanser foreign rights page.
       He gets to pick up the prize on 19 October.

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       Héctor Abad Q & A

       At Worldcrunch Edu Galán has a Q & A with the The Joy of Being Awake-author Héctor Abad, in “I Thought I Had Died, Too”: A Colombian Author Reckons With Survivor’s Guilt.

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       Cundill History Prize longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Cundill History Prize, a US$75,000 prize awarded: "to a book that demonstrates excellence across the prize's guiding criteria: craft, communication, and consequence".
       Fifteen titles, with the shortlist to be announced in September.

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       Nobel Prize in Literature betting

       This year's Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced 9 October -- and while there's not much betting on it (yet ?), there are odds up at Betus: twenty-four possibilities, including ... Taylor Swift.
       More interesting, however, is that Kalshi, one of the (relatively) new prediction markets, also offers ... position-taking opportunities on the prize. Not so much interesting for only having ten possible choices but because, unlike the betting shops, this market allows you to take a position on an author not winning the prize -- and there's money here for the taking, since one of the options they offer (as I write this, and surely not for much longer ...) is Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who -- being deceased -- can't win the prize. But a 'No' option on him only costs $0.93 -- a $100 stake paying out $108 (before fees). Not a great return, but, hey, it's free money -- there's no way Ngũgĩ can be awarded the prize.
       (I hope whoever takes advantage of this opportunity -- and someone surely will -- takes them for as much as possible.)
       Meanwhile, Kalshi admirably also reveals how much money has been bet -- staked -- so far on the potential winner (and non-winners) of the prize, and it's .... $5116.00.

       Post-Dylan, I've had trouble working up much interest in the run-up to the prize, but if you want to follow or engage in discussion, the Nobel Prize in Literature 2025 Speculation thread at the World Literature Forum is presumably the place you want to go; they're up to 957 engagements, last I checked.

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       Censorship in ... Russia

       In The Guardian Anna Aslanyan reports how Russia has also declared war on literature. Look at what's happening and be warned -- noting that: "The result of Russia's latest assault on free speech is a book industry in turmoil".

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       Writing in ... Saudi Arabia

       At Arab News Hajjar Al-Qusayer reports on how Young Saudi authors reshape Kingdom's literary landscape.
       Author Linah Alshaalan is quoted as saying:

Now, to write anything, if you just have a concept or an idea, you can just feed it into the AI and see it more fleshed out. It helps people. But a good author that cares about their own integrity would probably not rely on it too much

       Not too much ......

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       JHUP AI-licensing

       As, for example, Ellie Wolfe reports at The Baltimore Banner, Johns Hopkins University Press will license its authors' books to train AI models.
       Authors do: "have until the end of August to opt out of the licensing agreement" -- and: "Hopkins Press did not share which large language model company it will sign the contract with, and did not detail how much money it will receive from the deal"
       And:

Though there won't be a large financial gain for individual books -- authors are expected to earn "modest" returns of less than $100 per title per license -- the cumulative revenue would be "meaningful" for the university press and its mission, Pope wrote in the message.

       Given the ... modesty of the *gain*, I'm curious why any author would sign away these rights; I hope we learn what percentage of the press' authors (and then those at other presses considering similar arrangements) go along with this sort of thing.

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       საბა awards shortlists

       They've announced the shortlists for this year's Saba literary awards, the leading Georgian literary awards -- not yet at the official site, alas, but the Georgia Today report has .. the names of the authors, if not the works .....
       However, the longlists (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) are online, from which we can figure out that, for example, the finalists for the novel-prize are:

• ბედნიერება by Shota Iatashvili
• ელი! ელი! by Nodar Ladaria (publicity page)
• ნებადართული ჯადოქრობა by Irakli Metreveli (publicity page)
• ლეთარგია by Nino Ortega Chincharauli (publicity page)
• ტანჟერული სიზმარი by Mikheil Tsikhelashvili (publicity page)

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       New Asymptote

       The July issue of Asymptote is now up -- including a section on: 'What AI Can't Do'.
       Enough reading material to keep you covered for the weekend.

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       Miles Franklin Literary Award

       They've announced the winner of this year's Miles Franklin Literary Award, the leading Australian novel prize, and it is Ghost Cities, by Siang Lu; see also the University of Queensland Press publicity page.

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       PEN Translates grants

       English PEN has announced its latest batch of PEN Translates grants -- 14 titles translated from 13 languages -- as well as two PEN Translates x SALT grants.
       A good-looking though European-language-heavy list -- there are two translations from Arabic and an anthology that includes texts translated from Mapuche and Quechua, but still ..... (The two PEN Translates x SALT works -- awarded for South Asian Literature in Translation -- are at least from Urdu and Hindi.)

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       cake & prostheses review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of a collection of mini dramas and short prose by Gerhard Rühm, cake & prostheses, out from Twisted Spoon Press.

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       Nigeria Prize for Literature longlist

       The Nigeria Prize for Literature rotates through four categories, and this year it's the turn of novels again and they've now announced the longlist for this year's prize -- not yet at the official site, because god forbid that would be up-to-date, but see, for example, the report in The Guardian (Nigeria).
       Eleven titles are in the running, including novels by Uwem Akpan and Chika Unigwe, selected from a record 252 entries.

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       'African literature ecosystem'

       At okayafrica Nelson C.J. finds: 'The late 2000s to late 2010s were an era of vibrant publications, literary prizes, and the emergence of incredible literary talents. All that has been replaced with a loss of community and dwindling literary spaces' in considering: The African Literature Ecosystem Used to Be Unstoppable. What Went Wrong ?

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       First Novel Prize longlist

       The Center for Fiction has announced the longlist for their First Novel Prize, awarded for a debut work of fiction by a US author -- 29 titles selected from 185 submitted titles.

       Granted, many of these titles apparently haven't been released yet, but I haven't seen, much less read a one of these .....

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       'Books by the metre'

       In The Guardian Lucy Knight reports on how: ‘Look how well-read I am!’ How ‘books by the metre’ add the final touch to your home – or your image.
       Yes:

In an age of constant scrolling, there is social capital to be gained by simply looking as if you are a cultured person who listens to music on vinyl and reads lots of books. And creating an aesthetically pleasing bookshelf is now easier than ever, thanks to an increase in booksellers who trade in “books by the metre”.

       Not a new story/subject, but ... *sigh*.

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       The Pearlsong review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of The Pearlsong -- a short hymn found in (very few of the manuscripts of) the apocryphal Acts of Thomas, presented in a trilingual edition (Syriac, ancient Greek, and English) with a great deal of supporting material.

       This is the first volume in the new Texts and Translations of Transcendence and Transformation-series from the Center for the Study of World Religions / Harvard University Press (forthcoming volume four will cover: Cannabis in Arabic Verse and Prose). Admirably, too, the book is freely available (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) in an open-access digital format.

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       Vladimir Sorokin Q & A

       At The Paris Review blog The Netanyahus-author Joshua Cohen talks with Blue Lard-author Vladimir Sorokin, in The Guts of the Russian Brontosaurus-Cow: A Conversation with Vladimir Sorokin -- specifically about his The Sugar Kremlin, forthcoming in English from Dalkey Archive Press; see their publicity page.

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       Ten years of 'Literary Activism'

       At Scroll.in they have: 'Writers Charles Bernstein, Jonathan Cook, Laetitia Zecchini, and Saikat Majumdar on what ‘Literary Activism’ means to them', in ‘A new route for thinking’: Four writers on ten years of Amit Chaudhuri’s ‘Literary Activism’.

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       Ingvar Ambjørnsen (1956-2025)

       Norwegian author Ingvar Ambjørnsen, best known for his novel Elling (or, in Norwegian, his series of four novels around the character Elling; only the first volume appears to have been translated into English), has passed away; see, for example, the AP report and publisher Cappelen Damm's note.
       See also the Cappelen Damm Agency author page for English-language information about him and his many works.

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       One Shot review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Lee Child's One Shot -- the ninth Jack Reacher novel (and the thirteenth under review here).

       And, yes, this was the basis for the 2012 film, Jack Reacher -- featuring the ludicrously miscast Tom Cruise in the title role, but also ... Werner Herzog.

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       Tractatus shortlist

       The Philosophicum Lech awards an annual €25,000 prize for a philosophical essay, the Tractatus, and they've now announced this year's shortlist; not at the official site, last I checked, but see, for example, the Börsenblatt report.
       The winner will be announced in September.

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       Hotlist finalists

       They've announced the thirty finalists for this year's Hotlist, a German prize where all independent publishers are invited to subit a single title -- 184 did this year.
       It makes for an interesting selection, and overview of recent German publishing.

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       Theakston awards

       They've announced the winners of this year's Theakston awards, with Hunted, by Abir Mukherjee, winning the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year.

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       Boris Akunin sentenced in absentia

       Popular Russian author Boris Akunin has been sentenced, in absentia, to fourteen years in jail; see, for example, the report in The Moscow Times.
       Hey, the prosecution had apparently asked for an eighteen year sentence .....
       Aside from the jailtime: "A judge ruled to ban him from operating websites for four years after his release".
       Akunin presumably wasn't going to head back to Russia anytime soon anyway, but this certainly makes any return even less likely.

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       The Girl with the Golden Eyes review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Honoré de Balzac's The Girl with the Golden Eyes -- this translation recently re-issued by New York Review Books.

       (The translation was originally published in 1998; several more have appeared since then; one can see the appeal of it for translators.)

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       HKW Internationaler Literaturpreis

       HKW Haus der Kulturen have announced the winner of this year's International Prize for Literature, a leading German prize for a translation of a contemporary work, and it is the German translation of Autobiography of Death by Kim Hyesoon; see also the publicity pages from And Other Press and New Directions, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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       Cynthia Ozick Q & A

       In the Jewish Review of Books Abraham Socher has a Q & A with the author, in Story Evades Cogitation: An Interview with Cynthia Ozick.
       Among Ozick's responses:

I can't and won't reread: What's done is done. Print is writing's final fate; but it's also true that nothing written counts as done -- fully consummated -- until it lands in print.

       As longtime readers know, I'm a huge fan -- and almost all of Ozick's work is under review at the complete review.

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       Wales Books of the Year

       They've announced the winners of this year's Wales Books of the Year, with Carys Davies' Clear winning both the English-language fiction prize as well as being named Wales Book of the Year.
       Gwenno Gwilym's V + Fo took the Welsh-language fiction award.

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       New RSL Fellows

       The Royal Society of Literature has announced the induction of twenty-eight new Fellows and eight new Honorary Fellows.

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       Akutagawa prize(less)

       They award the two most prestigious Japanese book prizes, the Akutagawa and the Naoki, twice a year -- but apparently this summer-session's finalists were all duds: it's happened before -- most recently apparently in 1998 -- and, as The Mainichi reports, this year again there were No wins in 2 prestigious Japanese literary awards, 1st in 27 yrs.

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       Taiwan Literature Awards

       The National Museum of Taiwan Literature announced the winners of this year's Taiwan Literature Awards, awarded in nine categories; see also the article in the Taipei Times, Winners of Taiwan Literature Awards announced.
       Chen Long-ting won the Taiwanese-language novel prize with Kéⁿ-kui.

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       Genjipoems.org

       This looks like a great new resource: as Alene Bouranova writes at The Brink, The World’s First Novel Has Romance, Tragedy, Adventure. Now, After 1,000 Years, The Tale of Genji’s Poems Have Joined the Digital Age, reporting on the launch of an: "interactive digital database of all 795 poems featured in The Tale of Genji" -- genjipoems.org.
       Each of the poems is presented in the original Japanese as well as five translations.

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       Japanese fiction in translation

       At Prospect Susie Mesure reports on how: 'Translated Japanese fiction is suddenly booming in the west. We spoke to publishers, editors and translators to discover why', in Rising sun.
       A solid overview -- though noting also that:

The twin pillars of comfort and crime are driving the boom, with an emphasis on the former: books about cats, cafés and bookshops dominate the bestseller lists for novels in translation from Japanese

       The closing observation by Morgan Giles seems, alas, all too likely:

“I hope that a combination of translators pursuing their own aesthetic tastes and publishers taking more note of what the buzz is in Japan will lead to a new golden era of weird, wonderful Japanese fiction in translation showcasing the many underexamined sides of its society,” says Giles. “But it will probably just be more cats.”

       Many of the Japanese works mentioned here are under review at the complete review.

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       Claus Peymann (1937-2025)

       Theater director Claus Peymann -- most notably at the Viennese Burgtheater and at the Berliner Ensemble -- has passed away; see, for example, the obituary at ORF.
       He staged many of the premieres of Thomas Bernhard's play; see also Bernhard's Claus Peymann Buys Himself a Pair of Pants and Joins Me for Lunch (mostly paywalled) at n+1.

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       Freudenheim Translation Prize

       The Jewish Literary Foundation has announced the new Freudenheim Translation Prize, recognizing: "outstanding books that explore Jewish themes, history, identity or culture -- or are of significant interest to Jewish and wider audience", with the (£3,000) prize going to the translator of the work.

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       Georg-Büchner-Preis

       The German Academy for Language and Literature has announced the winner of this year's Georg Büchner Prize, the leading German-language author prize, and it is Ursula Krechel.
       Not much of her work has been translated into English, but there's a bilingual edition of her Voices from the Bitter Core from Host Publications; see also their publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
       She gets to pick up the prize on 1 November.

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       Banned in DoDEA schools

       At Military.com Rebecca Kheel reports Here Are the 596 Books Being Banned by Defense Department Schools -- though in fact the books are not listed there, but there is a link to the Memorandum Order (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) where they are listed.
       For some reason the DoDEA was reluctant to release this list -- it took this court order.
       The list is fairly predictable: anything LGBTQ- or gender-related -- right up to Virginia Woolf's Orlando, sigh --, anything race-related, and ... some AP psychology guides.
       Dear god .....

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       The Highest Exam review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li, with Claire Cousineau, on How the Gaokao Shapes China, in The Highest Exam, coming from Harvard University Press.

       (I have and have long been meaning to review Ichisada Miyazaki's China's Examination Hell: The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China -- see the Yale University Press publicity page -- which looks like it would make a nice complementary volume to this.)

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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.

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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.

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       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 .....

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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.

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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.

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       '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.

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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.

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       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.”

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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.

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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.

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       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).

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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 -

       PEN Pinter Prize

       English PEN has announced that Leila Aboulela has been awarded this year's PEN Pinter Prize, awarded: "to a writer resident in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, the Commonwealth or former Commonwealth who, in the words of Harold Pinter’s Nobel speech, casts an ‘unflinching, unswerving’ gaze upon the world, and shows a ‘fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies’"

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

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       Serge review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Yasmina Reza's novel Serge, due out in English next month, from Restless Books.

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

       Upcoming books

       The Literary Hub recently published their Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025, Part Two, and now The Millions has their Great Summer 2025 Book Preview, with: "just over 100 titles".

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

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© 2025 the complete review


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