opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

       'Japan's macabre literati'

       At The Japan Times Mike Fu reports on how Japan's macabre literati go global.
       I don't know that this is really anything new -- Suzuki Koji (Ring, etc.), anyone ? -- but, yes: "the latest wave of genre fiction comes as a counterpoint -- and perhaps a complement -- to the highly marketable “healing fiction” segment that has shaped perceptions of Japanese literature" (recently).
       Uketsu (Strange Pictures, etc.) is the prime example here -- and:

[Alfredo] Fee, of HarperVia, sees Uketsu and his contemporaries as part of that broader shift. The darker books, he says, have “broken from the popular trend of healing fiction and yet the books remain approachable, familiar.” He hopes the accessibility might entice readers who first encountered Japanese literature through cozier fare.

       Also rating a mention, if not quite a fit: Nishizawa Yasuhiko's The Man Who Died Seven Times.

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       三國遺事 translation

       In The Korea Times Park Jin-hai profiles Remco Breuker, as Dutch scholar completes landmark translation of Samguk Yusa, as:

Unlike previous English translations, this edition was painstakingly translated in full directly from the original text, which is primarily in classical Chinese, with some elements of "hyangchal" -- an archaic writing system that used Chinese characters to represent vernacular Korean. The new book has over 2,000 footnotes, reflecting modern scholarship.

       Frits Vos' translation, 'revised, supplemented, and annotated by Remco E. Breuker and Boudewijn Walraven', was published by the University of Hawaiʻi Press, as Vestiges of the Three Kingdoms of Ancient Korea -- see their publicity page -- and, as Breuker explains:

"'Samguk Yusa' is written 99 percent in classical Chinese and one percent in Old Korean poems, preserved through Hanzi phonetics," Breuker, 54, said during an interview with the Korea Times at a cafe in Seoul on July 28. "Older translations were not annotated like this. More importantly, they were translations of translations. If you want to make a proper translation, it needs to be from the original."

       Interesting, too:

Beyond its academic significance, [Breuker] stressed the book remains an important work within contemporary Korean society. "It is a living text; it still matters," he observed. "Almost every year, new translations into Korean appear because people look at the text to decide what their ancestors were like and what the future should look like."

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       Art Spiegelman profile

       At The Guardian Sophie McBain has a lengthy profile of Art Spiegelman: ‘The US needs a counter-revolution’..
       Among the fun details:

There is a mural painted by the cartoonist Gary Panter on the living room wall, and another just above their bed, painted to replace a set of bookshelves that collapsed on to the couple when they were asleep, breaking Mouly’s nose and prompting a big book clear out. “Is this book worth dying for ?” Spiegelman says they asked of themselves, a more hardcore alternative to Swedish death cleaning, but even so there are full bookshelves in every room, and pieces of art and curios everywhere.

       'Is this book worth dying for ?' seems a very good rule of thumb regarding book-keeping; I am in the process of stocking many, many shelves but am rather embarrassed by how many books I am coming across for which the answer is emphatically: 'Yes'.

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       List of French literary prizes

       At ActuaLitté they have put up a handy Liste des prix littéraires français et francophones.
       Limited information -- though more can be found if you click the 'our articles on'-link at each entry -- but a handy overview of the many, many French and francophone prizes, including the quirky ones.

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       Los sorias preview

       Long championed by/at The Untranslated, Alberto Laiseca's Los sorias (see also the publicity pages from Ediciones Simurg and Editorial Barrett) is scheduled to be published by Deep Vellum in Max Lawton's English translation in the spring of 2029, and at the Buenos Aires Herald Agustín Mango previews the coming attraction, in ‘Los Sorias’: the legendary Argentine book that remains a secret abroad.
       The author's approach certainly sounds intriguing:

“My work is delirious realism,” Laiseca once stated in an interview. “I’m very much a realist, too, but not in the way Émile Zola or the Soviets might have been. What I want to do with the distortions of delirium is precisely to highlight parts of reality that are rarely seen. That’s what realism is for.”

       There's also the promise, in the novel, that:

Characters marooning in these three states include philosophizing vagabonds, magicians, zombies, robots, and a host of demonic creatures spawned by a force of absolute evil dubbed Anti-Being.

       So, something to look forward to.

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       Writers on John McGahern

       Eamon Maher has been: "reading letters McGahern received from fellow Irish writers that are held within his literary archive" and quotes from some of these in reporting in the Irish Times on The Writer’s Writer: A dive into John McGahern’s literary archive shows his huge impact.
       I'm not sure letters to the author are the best way to judge what they thought of his writing -- though these are certainly something widely held in high regard.

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       Andrew Bergman mysteries review

       The most recent additions to the complete review are my reviews of two novels by Andrew Bergman featuring his PI Jack LeVine::

• The Big Kiss-Off of 1944
  
  
• Hollywood and LeVine

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       John Crowley (1942-2026)

       American author John Crowley has passed away; see, for example, the obituary (presumably paywalled) in The New York Times or the Locus notice.

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       Publishing and AI

       Another take, this by Cameron Pugh at the Christian Science Monitor, as to how Caught in the backlash over AI, book publishers face mounting questions.
       Interesting point, that:

Controversies over AI use have struck the publishing industry amid ballooning work and thinning staff. The number of books released by publishing houses in the United States increased by 10% between 2022 and 2025, according to data obtained by Publishers Weekly, rising to 642,242. Yet the number of book publishing jobs fell by 28% between 1987 and 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

       Presumably, too, increased use of AI for tasks menial and otherwise at publishing houses will see an even greater reduction in the number of book publishing jobs .....

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       Uses for AI in ... China

       In the South China Morning Post Meredith Chen reports on How AI is helping to open a new chapter for ancient Chinese literature.
       Digitization certainly seems useful -- see the site she mentions, Shidian Guji -- but as to the LLMs processing and analyzing works: associate professor from the Department of Chinese and History at City University of Hong Kong Tsui Lik-hang notes:

Classical Chinese is especially exposed: unpunctuated, unreferenced, deliberately subtle, often obscure and vast in the amounts of texts. Meaning frequently depends on recognising what is being quoted and why.

       Theoretically, this is something that LLMs could be *good* at, but I suspect it will be a while before they get an adequate handle on it.

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       Arthur C. Clarke Award

       They've announced the winner of this year's Arthur C. Clarke Award, and it is When There Are Wolves Again, by E.J. Swift; see also the Arcadia publicity page.

       Nice touch: the prize money is £2026 -- an amount raised every year since 2001 (though, I note, at less than the rate of inflation ...).

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       Bugadze novel not allowed in prison

       JAM news reports that Lasha Bugadze becomes first modern Georgian writer whose book was barred from being sent to prison, as prison authorities did not allow the latest novel by the The Literature Express-author, დამკვირვებელი, to be sent to a prisoner.
       In the US, of course, prison censorship is widespread -- many, many books are denied prisoners --, but apparently in Georgia: "the penitentiary code contains no provision explicitly banning fiction from being brought into prisons", so the situation is unusual there.
       Of course it's also of interest because the book itself sounds intriguing -- see also the Sulakauri publicity page -- and it would be great to see this (and, indeed, much more Georgian fiction ...) available in translation. (See also the limited amount under review at the complete review.)

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       Serbian novels

       At НИН, Luka Mičeta has a lengthy Conversation with Gojko Božović: ten novels that best reflect the Serbs and Serbia, and while it cuts off rather abruptly (maybe they want you to register to read the rest ?) there's a lot here, and some good suggestions -- not least, the great Meša Selimović's Death and the Dervish.

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       Deutscher Buchpreis longlist

       They've announced -- yes, even with a press release in English -- the longlist for this year's German Book Prize, the leading German novel prize (basically: the German imitation-Booker).
       Twenty titles, selected from 205 considered (meaning the jury called in 25, since apparently only 180 were submitted).
       It doesn't look like many of the authors with longlisted titles have published much in English translation; Ingo Schulze appears to be the author who is presumably best-known in the US/UK.

       I haven't heard much about the longlisted titles; the one I have been curious about is by the lone longlisted Austrian author, Elias Hirschl's Schleifen -- see also the Zsolnay foreign rights page. Sounds philosophically fun -- Vienna Circle !

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       Prime Minister's Literary Awards shortlists

       They've announced the shortlists for this year's (Australian) Prime Minister's Literary Awards, "the richest literary prize in the nation".
       Five finalists in each of the six categories, selected from 673 entries.
       The winners will be announced 10 September.

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       Yamazaki Nao-Cola reviews

       The most recent additions to the complete review are my reviews of two short novels by Yamazaki Nao-Cola:

• Beautiful Distance
  
  
• Don't Laugh at Other People's Sex Lives

       These came out in English in the spring in the UK, from Daunt Books -- to not much notice, it seems -- and are forthcoming in the US at the end of next month, from SJP Lit; I wonder whether the Sarah Jessica Parker-imprimatur will make for more coverage/attention there.

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       No posting tomorrow

       Just a heads-up, that there will be no posts tomorrow, as the movers are finally bringing my (many boxes of) books, which will keep me ... busy. Here's hoping they all fit .....

       You can still think of and celebrate the Literary Saloon, however -- tomorrow is the twenty-fourth anniversary of the weblog, added to the site (which was started in 1999 ...) and with posting starting on 11 August 2002.

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       AI and publishing

       At The Substack Post John Paul Brammer, Kathleen Schmidt, and Lincoln Michel discuss, at some length, An author's $2 million book deal was pulled over suspected AI use. Where does publishing go from here ? with Danya Issawi -- yet more (and, yes, also more of the same) on this fun question.
       Among the observations -- this by John Paul Brammer:

I don’t think the average person needs to be reading Proust in their spare time or whatever, but the fact that the people in our culture who should be discerning readers are being proven time and again to be undiscerning makes me worried about the future of literature. AI is only accelerating and revealing it.

       But there's also the delusional (here Lincoln Michel):

I’m not sure most people in publishing have studied LLM tics and learned to spot it. They have, perhaps naively, relied on the integrity of the author they work with. You can learn how to spot this stuff, not in every case but in many.

       I'm sorry, but anyone who thinks you can 'learn how to spot this stuff' is just (dangerously) kidding themselves; yes, LLMs have had tell-tale giveaways and much AI-generated writing easily fails any basic smell test, but LLMs are also only getting *better* (and will continue to do so) and anyone using them who puts a bit of effort into can (already) get output that is impossible to distinguish from solely-human-written text. (That said, I'm fully on board with: "I expect publishers will be doing LLM training at some point. Hell, probably everyone (annoyingly) who deals with text or images of any kind in any field will need it" -- that's the side you have to tackle this issue from.)

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       Didier Decoin (1945-2026)

       French author and screenwriter Didier Decoin has passed away; see, for example, the franceinfo report.

       His John l'enfer won the prix Goncourt in 1977, and he was later both secretary-general and then president of the Académie Goncourt.
       His work has not been widely translated into English -- The Case Against Love and The Office of Gardens and Ponds appear to be the extent of it. Somewhat surprisingly, his Goncourt-winner does not appear to have been translated -- despite being set in New York; see also the Seuil publicity page.

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       Ursula Hegi (1946-2026)

       German-born American author Ursula Hegi has passed away; see, for example, the obituary in The New York Times (presumably paywalled).
       See also the author page at Simon & Schuster, with links to information about her various books.

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       Late Fame - the film

       They've adapted Arthur Schnitzler's novel Late Fame for a movie of the same name, directed by Kent Jones and starring Willem Dafoe; see, for example, the Magnolia Pictures publicity page.
       This has been floating around for a while -- it was playing in Vienna when I came here two months ago -- but apparently has just been released in the US; among the review, see those at:

• AV Club
• Deadline
• The New York Times (presumably paywalled)
• RogerEbert.com
• Time

       Also: The Guardian reviewed it last year (a film festival showing).
       Very positive reviews, pretty much all around.

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       Hotlist longlist

       For the German Hotlist competition: "All German-language independent publishing houses are invited to submit one book regarded as one of the best of their current catalogue", and 205 did this year -- all of which you can find (after annoyingly clicking back and forth and through -- come on, people, just post a simple one-page list ...) here, and they've now announced the thirty finalists, which the public can now vote on. (Only three of the ten finalists will be decided by this public vote, the prize-jury fills out the other seven places .....)
       Both the list of submissions -- annoying though it is to navigate ... -- and the thirty longlisted titles make for a neat overview of what independent German-language publishers are publishing; among the longlisted titles are Dubravka Ugrešić's Fox, as well as books by Paul Éluard, Lídia Jorge, and Tierno Monénembo.
       Readers can vote through 4 September; the winner will be announced 9 October.

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       Graphic fiction in ... Australia

       At The Conversation the research team Folio considers: Friday essay: is there a great Australian graphic novel ? -- an interesting overview.

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       Publishing advances

       This week's academic scandal -- or at least the one that's been getting the most attention --, the one at Cambridge University that has now led to the professor in question stepping down from his position, comes with a well-timed publishing kicker, as a book by him -- a memoir, though with a co-writer -- is scheduled to come out shortly, from Simon & Schuster -- see their publicity page --, with Ella Creamer and Lanre Bakare now reporting at The Guardian that the (ex-)academic/author: "claimed he was paid “1.4 million” for his forthcoming memoir detailing his extraordinary backstory"
       He: "did not specify whether the 1.4m figure was in pound sterling or US dollars" but, hey, either way ..... Meanwhile: "Simon & Schuster did not respond to a request to comment on the sum", so we can't be sure as to the accuracy (also, how much his co-writer got), but, despite all the controversy and fuss: "Simon & Schuster US told the Guardian on Thursday night it was “proceeding with the publication [...] as planned”".
       Meanwhile, Creamer and Bakare also get some back-of-the-envelope maths regarding the project:

One senior publisher said it was an utterly mad number, but that “madness sometimes happens”, so it was conceivable. They said a book such as ***’s would normally be expected to sell about 5,000 copies, so with £2 of royalty per copy, that equates to an advance of £10,000, not 1.4 million dollars or pounds.

       (As I have often noted, I am completely baffled by the 'business' of publishing -- but, hey, given the controversy maybe this will sell like hotcakes.)

       Of course, the only thing that could improve this story is if it turns out that the memoir was AI-generated, too; given its 'substance' -- there seem to be some, um, 'hallucinations' to the author's whole life/story -- that might actually be a selling-point and lead to higher sales. Though I am afraid I don't see any way for Simon & Schuster to get back their investment (other than the priceless publicity being associated with a project like this generates ?).

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       The Studio review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of John Gregory Dunne's account of The Studio -- the studio in question being Twentieth Century Fox, anno 1967.

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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 Fierceland, by Omar Musa; see also the publicity pages from Penguin Books Australia and Penguin Random House SEA.

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       '50 Best 21st Century Thrillers' ?

       Why provide actual content when lists are so much more fun ? The New York Times' book coverage is running with them -- now out: The 50 Best Thrillers of the 21st Century (presumably paywalled), as voted on by: "291 crime novelists, editors, booksellers, librarians and other book lovers".

       A few are under review at the complete review:

• 4. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
• 6. My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite
• 9. Slow Horses, by Mick Herron
• 13. Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson
• 23. The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
• 28. The Perfect Nanny, Leila Slimani

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       AI v. human 'creative' writing ...

       In an already much-reported-on story -- see e.g. coverage at The Guardian and the BBC -- in a new article at Judgment and Decision Making Sydney Sears and Deena Skolnick Weisberg explore Bot or not: Can people tell the difference between stories written by a human or by an AI system ? and find ... umm, not so much.
       Unsurprisingly: "our participants displayed a bias against AI, rating stories more favorably if they had been told they were written by a human" -- but the fun part here was that part of the study was that readers were sometimes lied to as to whether or not a story was AI- or human-written, and: "Participants were no better than chance at differentiating between the human-written and AI-generated stories".
       Among the interesting findings:

Although self-reported expertise with fictional literature did not relate to accuracy, we found evidence that self-reported expertise with AI systems did positively relate to participants' performance on our task.

       Maybe something for publishing 'professionals' (who presumably profess an 'expertise with fictional literature') to think about when they claim to be able to identify AI-generated writing .....
       Of course, the other fun take-away, and what most of the coverage focuses on is that in the one study: "people tended to rate AI-generated stories more favorably than human-written stories" (and the authors find: "people actually prefer AI-generated stories while believing that these stories are worse"). Yes, this is just one study (though also: yet another), and a small sample, but still .....
       So, yes, this is just a (relatively) small study and the results are not somehow overwhelming, but I note that: AIs are going to get better (much, much better) and would suggest that any hopes of keeping them from swamping the creative field(s) are hopeless. (Also: I'm pretty sure at some point publishers will realize where things are headed (and how cheap content-creation is using LLMs ...) and jump aboard the bus and leave authors by the side of the road and in the dust .....)
       Yes, writers (and publishers) still have that bias against AI going for them for now, but how long will that hold ?

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       Gaelic Literature Awards shortlists

       The Gaelic Books Council has announced the shortlists for this year's Gaelic Literature Awards
       There are seven categories, including two for unpublished manuscripts.
       The winners will be announced 15 September.

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       Chuck Palahniuk profile

       At El País Laura Fernández has a profile of the author, in Chuck Palahniuk: ‘Transgressive literature in the U.S. ended with 9/11, when we all became terrorists’ -- itself an interesting thesis.
       He also suggests:

Today, horror is the only genre that allows for transgression; it’s the only one that can reflect on what we’re experiencing, while attacking it at the same time

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       Paul Celan review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Anna Arno's biography, Paul Celan: A Life, now out in English, from Harvard University Press.

       (As longtime readers know, I regard Celan as one of the three greatest twentieth-century German poets, alongside Rilke and Brecht.)

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       Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival preview

       The Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival will take place at the end of the month, and while there's apparently nothing up about it yet at the Inizjamed site, at the Times of Malta Emma Mattei spoke to artistic director Leanne Ellul and festival coordinator Jean Paul Borg 'on their origins and the ideas shaping this year's programme', in A literary festival, unbound
       Seven writers from six countries will be featured, and it looks fairly promising.

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       AI and translation

       Another take/look, this one from the Philippines, as Mye Mulingtapang considers Can AI translate literature ? Why human translators still matter at ABS-CBN, speaking specifically with local translator Kristian Sendon Cordero.

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       MFAs !

       At The Guardian Madeleine Dunnigan tackles at some length (and based also on personal experience) the always fun topic of ‘I want to be ripped to shreds’: writers flock to MFAs -- but does it breed elitist literature ?

       I'll only say that I love the picture they cruelly put at the top of the article -- 'A School of the Museum of Fine Arts student works on writing in a tree in Boston, Massachusetts'.

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       Monika Helfer (1947-2026)

       Austrian author Monika Helfer has passed away; see, for example, the orf report or the statement from publisher Hanser.

       Bloomsbury recently brought out two of her books in English, Last House Before the Mountain and Library for the War-Wounded; see their author page.

       See also the Hanser foreign rights page for more information about some of her books. (They refer to her as 'Monika Helfer-Köhlmeier' there, though that's not how they print her name on the books; she was the wife of well-known author Michael Köhlmeier.) There's also additional (German) information at the Hanser author page.

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       Merve Emre Q & A

       At Kill Your Darlings Suzy Garcia has a Q & A with the critic, in Merve Emre Has Her Eye on Australia.
       Among the reveals:

I don’t own a television, and the last movie I saw in a theatre was Midsommar in 2019.

       And, of course, quite a few (Barley Patch-author) Murnane-mentions.

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       Posthumous publishing

       Another article about the publishing of works after an author's death, this time with a focus on kids' books: at USA Today Clare Mulroy reports that 'Experts say posthumous publishing may signal economic hardship for the industry, but it's also a way for book heirs to continue a family legacy', in Posthumous publishing may signal hard times and a need for nostalgia. Is it ethical ?
       I'm not sure about it signaling 'economic hardship for the industry' -- surely, publishers have always been eager to throw whatever they can on the market, milking an author (and/or the author's name) for all it's worth -- but some interesting color and examples here. And numbers: "More than 800 million Dr. Seuss books have been sold, with 10 million out the door each year, according to Random House Children's Books" !
       And some fun quotes about the whole posthumous publishing debate -- and all without mentioning Kafka/Brod. But, hey: "There are no standardized ethics" !

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       Book-destroying to feed AI

       There have been quite a few articles about mysterious large-scale purchases of used books, with the apparent purpose of the purchases being to 'feed' (i.e. 'train') LLMs, with the books then destroyed, and at The Guardian Stephanie Convery now offers another look, in ‘More than just objects’: Australian booksellers raise alarm over ‘horrific’ destruction of rare titles to feed AI.
       While I really, really do not like what's happening -- the pulping of books (large-scale though it is, for other reasons, in any case) kills me, plus this sort of practice raises the price of used books, which I find very annoying -- I did have to giggle at the framing here, complete with big photograph of a '400-year-old document recording a Spanish Inquisition exorcism at the Antiquariat Forum BV and Inlibris stall at the 2026 Rare Book Fair' at the head of the piece: that is not the kind of book that is getting bought up, much less pulped. More typical are orders such as the grab-bag mentioned at the end of the article: "a 1970s manual on soil mechanics was bought alongside a 2010 book called Born to Thunder: Champions of New Zealand Cycling, a collection of Early Australian Poetry (1982), and a local history of the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn".
       Still, this is not a good thing, and if this sort of framing helps increase public outrage and opposition, I'm fine with that .....

       (Meanwhile, see also Samantha Cole's report at 404 on ISBNdb beating a hasty retreat ("We've removed a recent landing page, "Printed Books Sourcing for Your AI LLMs Dataset Needs." It was part of exploring demand, and we've chosen to pivot away from that direction" ...) after all the bad press they were getting for jumping on this train, in Company Offering Printed Books to Train AI Stops After 404 Media Coverage. Though I am afraid that won't stop the general practice.)

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       Yet another AI-use to-do

       Another case of a work of fiction being bought for a huge sum ("an offer for more than $2m [...] as part of a 14-way auction") and then being ditched by the publisher because of suspicions of AI-use is making the rounds and I can't resist a few comments.
       In The Guardian Emma Loffhagen sums up what seem to be the basics here -- and quotes the author:

He said the novel had “passed through first readers, second readers, editors, and acquisitions teams at numerous publishing houses ... If the manuscript had shown genuine signs of being generated by AI, it is difficult to believe that every one of those experienced professionals would have failed to notice.”

       The faith in 'experienced professionals' is endearing in its naïveté -- has he met people working in publishing ? -- but the larger point is the problematic one: sure, we've all come across internet slop -- usually some summary news article or maybe opinion piece -- that we can identify as having been AI-generated, but I'm sorry, 'genuine signs of being generated by AI' is a tall, tall order and anyone who thinks they can always or even often recognize it, or that there are people (or AI programs) that can, is deluding themselves -- already now, and certainly in the future. Other than authors literally leaving tell-tale signs in their manuscripts -- forgetting to delete the prompts they used (it happens, apparently) -- it's very hard to identify with any certainty; among the worst things about all this concern about AI-use in writing is that writers worry about their writing resembling AI-generated writing and trying to change it to avoid that -- no em-dashes ! no lists of threes, etc. Come on, people !
       (For now I have no concerns about anyone ever suspecting that my writing here at the complete review and this Literary Saloon (or, for that matter, my fiction, such as in my novel Salome in Graz) is AI-assisted -- stylistically, I have an awful lot of tics and idiosyncratic quirks -- but given how much and often LLMs are hoovering up my words (the overwhelming majority of traffic to the site now is clearly from AI bots that are simply copying all the material) they can probably already do a convincing imitation, if any thought it was worth their while.)
       As I've often noted, I don't really get this focus on authorship, when it is surely the text that matters, regardless of how it is produced. (Yes, I recognize there are great problems with the use of LLMs, including how they rely on a huge body of other people's work to function in the first place, as well as all sorts of environmental and other concerns, but it seems to me that in these debates the outrage is focused almost entirely on the ideas of 'authenticity' and 'authorship', and I find it difficult to understand why these are so important.) I have read several works of 'popular fiction' in the past year where I have actually wished the author had turned to AI, at least for some of the editing of the prose (having mostly given up on human editors ever stepping in); it couldn't have made things worse .....
       (The 'authorship' question/issue is, admittedly, of some additional interest in this particular case, since, as the author notes, his is (yet another) high profile case where the author in question is ... not white; it's hard not to suspect that that played some role in how all this unfolded.)
       The use of AI in non-fiction and relying on it for 'facts' seems to me to be a genuine and much greater problem (much as I love and value fiction, facts matter, in a whole different and important way), and I certainly believe that lawyers who cite non-existent cases or scientists who refer to non-existent articles and studies should be severely sanctioned, but as far as fiction goes -- surely anything goes, as long as the final product, the text, justifies it. (I initially was not particularly bothered by Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk admitting that she used AI -- but almost cried when she 'explained': “I make use of artificial intelligence on the same principles as most people in the world – I treat it as a tool that allows faster documenting and checking of facts.” Dear, god, people, please, please do not think AI can be relied on to 'check facts'.)
       In any case, it's fun to see how publishing is 'dealing' with this whole issue -- one that is certainly not going away. The flood of poorly done AI-generated crap on Amazon is only the tip of the iceberg; as tools are refined and the product/output gets better 'writing' (and publishing) will certainly soon look very different.

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

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       Murder at The Flea Club review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Matthew Head's 1955 novel, Murder at The Flea Club.

       This is the fourth in his quartet of novels featuring Dr.Mary Finney; nothing special -- but it does leave me curious enough about the other three, which are set in the then-still Belgian Congo, where Head (actually: John Canaday) spent some time in the 1940s. (Canaday went on to become a long-time art critic at The New York Times, by the way.)

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

       Nunez on Woolf / Ridgway on Beckett

       At Publishers Weekly Nick Hilden has Q & As with two authors about literary influence -- Sigrid Nunez on Virginia Woolf and Keith Ridgway on Samuel Beckett.

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

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       South Korean literature in ... Turkey

       At Korea JoongAng Daily they report that Turkish readers write history as K-literature translation tops best sellers in 2025 as, impressively:

"Turkey is Europe's most enthusiastic market for Korean literature," Hong Soon-chul, the head of literary rights agency BC Agency, said. "Three universities, including Ankara University, have even established dedicated programs to train translators of Korean literature."

       Some numbers, too:

A total of 66 Korean literary works were translated into Turkish between 1993 and 2025. Of those, 52 were published between 2017 and 2025.

       Always good to see more translation between such languages. (Though of course it would be interesting to hear/compare how much Turkish literature is being translated into Korean .....)

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

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       Cundill Prize longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Cundill History Prize -- "The world's leading prize for a work of history written or translated into English", awarded for a work demonstrating: "excellence across the prize's guiding criteria: craft, communication, and consequence"
       Fifteen titles, selected: "from almost 400 submissions from across the world".

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

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       Grand Prix de Traduction finalists

       Atlas (the Association pour la promotion de la traduction littéraire) has announced the seven finalists for this year's Grand Prix de Traduction Amédée Pichot, a leading French prize for a translation of a 'remarkable work of contemporary fiction'.
       Noteworthy: none of the seven finalists are translations of a work written in English.
       The past three winners have been translations of Mircea Cărtărescu's Theodoros (2025), Stefano d'Arrigo's Horcynus Orca (2024), and Dubravka Ugrešić's Fox (2023), which is pretty impressive; indeed, the list of winners overall is consistently very strong.

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       Hyphen

       I mentioned this when it was still in the works, but now the new publication Hyphen has launched -- the first issue: "featuring work in seven languages by 17 writers and 11 translators, with Marathi as the Language in Focus". Looks promising !
       At South First Ashutosh Kumar Thakur writes about the magazine and the launch, in Hyphen and the dream of a shared Indian literature -- suggesting that:

Hyphen aims to be much more than a new literary journal. It is an attempt to reshape the ecology of Indian literature itself. It invites readers to imagine India’s many literatures not as isolated traditions but as parts of a shared intellectual landscape connected through translation, curiosity and conversation.

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

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       Reacher

       Season four of Prime Video's adaptation of Lee Child's long-running Jack Reacher series of novels is set to become available 12 August, and they've now also announced details about season five -- see, for example, the report at The Hollywood Reporter.
       I mention both because the books they are each based on are under review at the complete review: season four is based on Gone Tomorrow, and season five on Make Me.

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

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       Emily Wilson Q & A

       With a new Odyssey-film out, Emily Wilson -- who, among other things, has translated Homer's epic -- is getting some attention, especially since she reviewed the new film version, at considerable length (4234 words, as the webpage helpfully points out) at the London Review of Books, a take (and, basically, take-down) which has itself been much-discussed.
       At npr they apparently had her on for a radio Q & A; you can listen to the whole 43 minutes (as the webpage helpfully points out) there, but they also have a written summary and her answers to some of the questions, at 'Odyssey' translator Emily Wilson says Nolan shouldn't have written the movie himself. It sounds like the whole thing -- which thankfully doesn't just focus on the film -- would be worth listening to (but some of us don't have anywhere near the patience for that sort of thing; too bad there's no full written transcript).

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

       Booker Prize longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Booker Prize, the leading English-language novel prize.
       Thirteen titles -- and, amazingly, one is actually under review at the complete review: The Palm House, by Gwendoline Riley.

       The shortlist will be announced 22 September, and the winner on 9 November.

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

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       Korean literature abroad

       The Literature Translation Institute of Korea has announced its latest tally of the past five years, 2021 to 2025, of South Korean book sales abroad and, as The Korea Times' Hankook Ilbo report sums up, World embraces Korean literature, with 3.58 mil. copies sold overseas over 5 years.
       The numbers the past two years have been amazingly steady, overseas sales of South Korean titles reaching 1,197,557 copies in 2025, just a bit more than the 1,197,329 in 2024.

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

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