opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

       Winter Kills review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Richard Condon's 1974 thriller Winter Kills.

       (The New York Times Book Review reviewer -- Leo Braudy -- found it: "a triumph of satire and knowledge, with a delicacy of style that puts Condon once again into the first rank of American novelists"; I assure you: no no, no.)

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

       Book Arsenal festival report

       The International Book Arsenal Festival ran 28 to 31 May in Kyiv, and at The Ukrainian Weekly Roman Tymotsko reports on "Ukraine's most prominent literary and publishing event and one of the largest cultural festivals in Eastern Europe", in Book Arsenal draws 27,000 visitors as Ukraine's literary community gathers amid ongoing war.
       Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, director general of Mystetskyi Arsenal, noted:

Air raid alerts, of course, added complications and interrupted several important events. But we understand that these are the realities of organizing a festival during wartime, and we are grateful to all participants and visitors who quickly and calmly moved to shelters and then returned again and again to continue the festival

       [Updated: 8 June] See now also Charlotte Higgins on Air-raid alerts and frontline memoirs: Kyiv hosts literary festival amid war at The Guardian.

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       Readers' top 100 novels

       The Guardian recently selected The 100 best novels of all time and now they've collected the votes of readers -- some 3000 apparently weighing in -- as well and offer Readers' top 100 novels of all time.

       I have no idea what top-100 variation they'll come up with next, but, no doubt, of list-making there will be no end .....

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       Caroline Bicks Q & A

       At Harvard Magazine Olivia Farrar has a Q & A with the Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King-author, with the ... provocative headline Shakespeare and Stephen King Have a Lot in Common.
       Bicks mentions, incidentally:

Like most educators, though, I've noticed a marked decline in my students' attention spans and confidence when it comes to creating their own ideas and writing them down.

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       Thirst for Love review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Mishima Yukio's 1950 novel, Thirst for Love.

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       Marjane Satrapi (1969-2026)

       Marjane Satrapi, best-known for her Persepolis graphic works, has passed away; see, for example, reports at Le Monde, The New York Times (presumably paywalled ?), and The Guardian.

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       Griffin Poetry Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Griffin Poetry Prize, a leading international poetry prize paying out a generous C$130,000 to the winner, and it is Night Watch, by Kevin Young; see also the publicity pages from Alfred A. Knopf and Jonathan Cape.

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       Literary Arts Fund grants

       The newly formed Literary Arts Fund, stepping in where the US government stepped out, has announced the winners of its first batch of grants -- US$7.7 million in unrestricted grants doled out to 40 organizations and publishers.
       They include the tally:

In the past year alone, according to data collected in the Fund’s grant application process, the 40 inaugural grant awardees -- more than half of which have annual budgets below $1,000,000 -- supported upwards of 10,000 individual authors of creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry through their programs and publications. They presented 5,909 writers at events, hosted 590 writers at residencies, awarded 421 writers financial prizes, and published 2,141 writers in books and literary magazines, among other activities -- reaching over 9,000,000 readers and audience members in person and online.

       Great to see the support.

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       Publishing in ... Luxembourg

       At RTL Bea Kneip reports that, after thirty-three years Publishing house Op der Lay is closing its doors.
       As Kneip notes, Op der Lay has had: "An impressive track record for a small publishing house". (Though presumably it's hard to be or find a big publishing house in Luxembourg.)

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       Premio Strega finalists

       They've announced the six finalists for this year's Premio Strega, the leading Italian literary prize -- with I convitati di pietra by Michele Mari (see also the Einaudi publicity page) getting the most votes (280) among the longlisted titles (yes, all sorts of folks get to vote for this -- 2031 were submitted).
       There are six finalists this year, rather than the usual five because the Premio Strega rules say that if none of the five top vote-getters is published by an "editore medio-piccolo" (a 'mid- to small-sized publisher') then the book from one with the most votes gets to join the top five as a finalist; as it happens, Vedove di Camus by Elena Rui, published by mid- to small-sized L'orma (see their publicity page) came in sixth in the voting anyway, and is now one of the finalists.

       Among the authors with shortlisted books, Michele Mari is presumably the best-known in English; And Other Stories has published two of his books. Matteo Nucci's Plato-novel probably stands a good chance of getting translated, too -- see the Einaudi publicity page --; he's translated Plato's Symposium (see the Einaudi publicity page, making for some decent bona fides.

       The winner will be announced 8 July.

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       RSL Ondaatje Prize

       The Royal Society of Literature has announced the winner of this year's RSL Ondaatje Prize -- awarded: "for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, evoking the spirit of a place" -- though not yet at the official site (which is ... not very good at keeping pace with the latest news/announcements ...); it is A House for Miss Pauline, by Diana McCaulay; see, for example, the report in The Gleaner.
       See also the publicity pages for A House for Miss Pauline from Dialogue Books and Algonquin Books.

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       Like a Cat Loves a Bird review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of James Bailey on The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark, in Like a Cat Loves a Bird.

       This is yet another of these books that was published by a big *commercial* publisher in the UK -- Hachette UK imprint Sceptre -- and is coming out (next week) from a university press in the US (Princeton University Press).

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       Carol Shields Prize for Fiction

       They've announced the winner of this year's Carol Shields Prize for Fiction -- celebrating (very generously, with a payout to the winner of US$150,000): "creativity and excellence in fiction by women and non-binary writers in Canada and the United States" -- and it is Hellions by Julia Elliott; see also the Tin House (now a Zando imprint) publicity page.

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       Borges, back in print

       The original Spanish edition of Adolfo Bioy Casares' monumental Borges has long been out of print and hard to find -- but, via, I am pointed to the great news at La Nacion that Reeditarán el “Borges” de Bioy Casares, en versión definitiva y ampliada, en dos tomos.
       Okay, the two-volume aspect is a bit disappointing, but otherwise this is awesome: definitive and expanded !
       (A (delayed) English translation of this is forthcoming from New York Review Books -- see their publicity page -- but not a full one of the definitive and expanded version, I fear: yes, in a single, handy volume, but it sure sounds like it will be (considerably) abridged. Still, something to look forward to.)

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       Translation in ... India

       At The Federal Pramila Krishnan reports on Why literary tanslators feel their work is finally getting its due in India, speaking with translators Malini Sheshasri and Shubhashree Desikan.

       AI-translation also gets addressed -- with the interesting observation that:

Seshadri pointed out that AI systems require extensive linguistic databases containing not only vocabulary but also usage patterns, idioms and cultural references.

While English-language datasets are relatively large, many Indian languages still lack comparable resources.

As a result, literary translation between Indian languages and English is likely to remain a human-driven endeavour for the foreseeable future.

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       Nádas awarded Orden Pour le mérite

       Hungarian author Nádas Péter has been awarded the German Orden Pour le mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste, a German honor awarded since 1842 to both Germans and foreigners who have made great contributions to the arts or sciences (the 'peace class' of the honor, to complement the 'military honor'-track, awarded since 1740 (and, after 1810, exclusively for military achievements)); the members elect who gets to join them.
       An interesting history -- click 'EN' to read it in English -- including:

In 1933, the year the Nazis came to power, the Order Pour le mérite was worn by, among others, the Jewish physicist Albert Einstein, the communist artist (and first woman elected to the Order) Käthe Kollwitz, and the artist and writer Ernst Barlach, whose works were branded „degenerate“ by the Nazis. With such members, the Order hardly suited the new regime. Although the Order’s international renown saved it from being abolished outright, a prohibition on electing new members was designed to let it die out.

       Odd, however, that a German honor has a (half-)French name .....
       See also the hlo report, Péter Nádas Awarded Germany’s Highest Honour (qualified slightly in the article itself to: "the highest honour that the Federal Republic of Germany can bestow for services rendered to the common good"). (The article also notes: "The award does not come with a monetary prize".)

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       EU Prize for Literature

       They've announced the winner of this year's European Union Prize for Literature -- the peculiar prize which rotates in a triennial cycle through the the EU countries (for this one only titles from Armenia, Croatia, Czechia, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Sweden were eligible) -- and it is Mariborská hypnóza, by Dora Kaprálová.
       I'd like to like this prize more, but when they can't even be bothered to mention the name of the winning title in the press release announcing the winner ...... (Yes, you can see it in the picture; still .....)
       See also the Větrné Mlýny publicity page for Mariborská hypnóza.

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       Mario Praz

       At meer Emanuela Borgatta Dunnett considers Why no one writes like Mario Praz anymore -- suggesting that: "Prazian prose requires a patient, cultivated reader willing to lose themselves in references, silences, and shadows".
       Always good to see a Praz-mention: The Romantic Agony certainly made a great impression on me as a teen; is it really out of print ? (Mine is a late-70s reprint of the 1970 second edition from Oxford University Press.) Obviously, his Salomé-discussion was one of the significant seeds planted for my own Salome in Graz.
       And while I haven't seen it yet, it seems clear that any Rome-visit must include a visit to the Casa Museo Mario Praz (more pictures here). (Not sure I'd want to live in that *style* -- and where are all the books ? (Yes, a couple of shelves full -- but still .....))

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       L'impossible retour review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Amélie Nothomb's (briefly-)back-to-Japan novel from 2024, L'impossible retour -- not yet available in English.

       (This is the twenty-ninth work by Nothomb under review here.)

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       Culture in ... Georgia

       At voxeurop Archil Kikodze 'reflects on what it means to tend a culture under siege -- and watch Europe become a myth just as his fellow citizens reach for it', in Mussolini in Tbilisi -- A tale of today's Georgia.
       Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2018, Georgia briefly managed a greater presence on the international publishing stage, but, as the state of the Georgian National Book Center suggests, they haven't been doing much in a while. A shame -- an interesting literature -- see the few titles under review at the complete review --, much more of which deserves to be translated; Dalkey Archive Press brought out a batch a while back -- and kudos to Dedalus, who continue to publish some.

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       Arabic literature in ... Poland

       The Warsaw International Book Fair ran 28 to 31 May, with the Emirate of Sharjah as Guest of Honour, and at The National Saeed Saeed now reports on How Arabic language and literature took root in Poland over a century.

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       Latin American writers and India

       At Scroll.in Laura Erber writes on Cecília Meireles, Octavio Paz, Julio Cortázar: Latin America’s literary encounters with India -- finding:

India was not their elsewhere -- it was another version of their here, and it obliged them to confront their own Latin American self-image.

       Several of the authors' India-related books are under review at the complete review: In Light of India and A Tale of Two Gardens by Paz, and Cortázar's From the Observatory.

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       'Literary chic'

       At Elle (India) Anoushka Madan explores Why Is Everyone Suddenly Dressing Like They Read Books ?
       I did not know it was possible 'dress like you read books', and find no correlation between my reading and what I wear, but, hey, if: "Books have become fashion objects in their own right" -- well, there are worse things, right ?
       And good to know (I guess ?) that:

Literary chic is not confined to minimalism or muted dressing. Someone can wear a sequinned dress, archival designer pieces or maximalist styling and still participate in this performance through references and attitude alone. The goal is not to look quiet. It is to look culturally fluent.

       But, yes, little surprise to the conclusion: "Ultimately, literary chic is not really about books".

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       AI translation ...

       Well, if it's newspaper-article-worthy presumably at least that means it's not (yet) commonplace, as, at The New Indian Express, they tout: First fully AI-translated Kannada book released. But presumably it won't be the last .....
       A fancy release -- "The book was unveiled at a function held at Jagannatha Centre for Art and Culture" -- with an MP playing along.
       And:

The Kannada translation was produced using Bengaluru-based startup NAAV AI’s TransLit technology, which significantly reduces the human effort required for editing and proofreading.

       Great .....

       (Gotta love that the page presenting this technology features a picture of leather-bound antique books. AI-generated, of course, and floating around elsewhere on the internet, including here (and used by other *publishers* as well).)

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       Plutarch Award

       The Biographers International Organization has announced that Gertrude Stein, by Francesca Wade, has won the 2026 Plutarch Award -- "the only international prize of its kind" -- for the best biography of 2025.

       See also the publicity pages at Scribner and Faber, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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       'Literary ballet' ?

       They're performing Kenneth MacMillan's Manon at the Vienna State Opera, and in the programme-booklet they write about "Manon" as a literary ballet (as also, apparently, it is: "one of the canonical works of literary ballet").
       An interesting exercise, I suppose:

Literary ballet should therefore be understood as a specific form of choreographic adaptation, in which a source text composed in language is translated into a primarily non-verbal, body-based system of signs. The semantic structure of the literary text is not reproduced, but transformed into a new aesthetic order constituted by movement, music, space and light. The challenge facing every choreographer is to create narrative, psychological and affective dimensions tangible without resorting to language -- a complex undertaking.

       Still, I think I'll be sticking to the printed texts.

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       Spy Story review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Len Deighton's 1974 novel, Spy Story.

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       James Tait Black Prizes

       They've announced the winners of this year's James Tait Black Prizes -- "the UK's longest running literary award"(awarded since 1919) -- in its two categories, fiction and biography -- despite some controversy, as there is an ongoing industrial action at the University of Edinburgh; see, for example, Catriona Stewart's report in The Scotsman, UK's oldest literary prize to be awarded in defiance of university marking boycott.
       On the Greenwich Line by Shady Lewis, translated by Katharine Halls, won the fiction category; see also the Peirene publicity page.

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       Irish Novel of the Year

       They've announced the winner of this year's Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, and it is Thirst Trap, by Gráinne O'Hare; see also the publicity pages from Picador and Crown.

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       Turið  Sigurðardóttir Translation Prize

       The American-Scandinavian Foundation has added another to their impressive roster of translation prizes, the Turið  Sigurðardóttir Translation Prize, honoring the best translation from a work of Faroese (!) or Icelandic literature into English.

       Coïncidentally, TraLaLit has just posted a (German) Q & A on the Große kleine Sprache Färöisch.

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       Chinese genre fiction abroad

       Xinhua reports that a Growing potential unfolds for Chinese genre fiction in overseas market.
       Among the observations:

Zheng Lei, deputy director of the International Department of the China Writers Association (CWA), said genre fiction has become one of the brightest spots in the overseas promotion of contemporary Chinese literature. With strong plots, high readability and themes that resonate with readers worldwide, genre fiction also faces relatively less loss in cross-language translation, he added.

       (Meanwhile, at the CWA site they also report 新时代军事文学创作推进会在京举行; I wonder whether they'll also be touting that abroad.)

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       Climate Fiction Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Climate Fiction Prize -- the second time it's been awarded --, and it is Hum, by Helen Phillips; see also the publicity pages at Atlantic Books and Scribner, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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       St. Petersburg International Book Fair

       They recently held the St. Petersburg International Book Fair, and in The Moscow Times they report on it, in Pro-War Books, Bomb Checks and Z-Poetry Reign at St. Petersburg's Literary Fair.
       One employee from "one of St. Petersburg's oldest independent bookstores" sums up: "It’s the s***iest festival. It’s all about the state agenda".
       It sounds like it was ... missable.

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       Seven review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Joanna Kavenna's Seven: or, How to Play a Game Without Rules -- out already in the UK, and coming to the US 14 July.

       (Yet another title for my second-favorite site-index, Titles beginning with numbers: (0 through a billion).)

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       AI and writing in ... China

       At China Daily Rya Zhu considers When literature meets AI.
       Much the same points as are made elsewhere -- and many will agree with the Chen Qiufan quote: "AI is an extremely powerful engine of mediocrity"

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       Publishing in ... Qatar

       QNA reports that Officials, Publishers, Authors to QNA: Qatar's Cultural Scene Supportive for Young Authors -- spearheaded by the (Ministry of Culture-affiliated) Qatari Forum for Authors
       Support and an attempt to foster a literary culture is always good to see -- and it's amusing/revealing to note several mentions of authors being encouraged to read (e.g. Executive Director of HBKU Press Bachar Chebaro: "stressed how crucial reading is for any successful writing project, adding that authors cannot build a genuine experience without broad exposure to various forms of knowledge and literary and intellectual trends, with reading enhancing style and helping create a deeper and more mature creative experience").

       Meanwhile, QNA also reports on a recent 'Future Writers' programme for students ("projected as a pioneering national platform to explore literary talent") -- although it: "focused on promoting the Qatari identity in the participating literary works" .....

       Maybe we'll eventually see some more Qatari fiction in translation ?

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       Sunday Times Literary Awards longlists

       They've announced the longlists for this year's (South African) Sunday Times Literary Awards in its two categories, fiction and non.

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       'BookTok's critical values'

       Via I am pointed to Selen Ozturk's piece on 'BookTok's critical values' at The Point, Common Readers -- Ozturk finding:

What’s new is that now the reader’s appraisal of the work, regardless of its ambition, caves into their emotional response to it. On BookTok, evaluation is testimony: the reader’s response to a book isn’t evidence in service of a judgment, it is the judgment.

       (I am intrigued by the whole 'BookTok' concept/phenomenon, but still haven't found the patience to take/find the time to watch such online video-soliloquies/rants, just as I haven't for listening to 'podcasts'; all I find time for is good (?) old-fashioned text. Still, the medium and message(s) surely can't be ignored.)

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       Returning to regularly scheduled programming

       Things have been a bit slow at the complete review for a while now as I have been in the process of a transcontinental relocation -- I and/as the site am now based in Austria -- but things should slowly be getting back to normal (i.e. the way things used to be), with a steady and once again slightly more frequent drip of reviews, as well as hopefully daily posting at this Literary Saloon.
       The time-zone change does, however, change the scheduling of posting; not quite sure where I will land on that, but I am afraid the convenient old schedule -- where US readers could find the latest before going to bed, and European readers woke up to the day's posts -- is no longer feasible; indeed, the time of posting at the Literary Saloon has/will probably shift by some twelve hours or so. I hope this doesn't irritate readers who have gotten used to the old schedule too much, but it can't be helped -- but at least the content/offerings should remain much the same.
       (For what it's worth, I'm finding the adjustment very irritating.)

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       Siegfried Lenz Preis

       The Siegfried Lenz Stiftung has announced the winner of this year's Siegfried Lenz Prize, and it is Norbert Gstrein.

       The Siegfried Lenz Prize is a biennial author prize paying out a generous €50,000 that has been awarded since 2014; all the previous winners have been foreign authors (such as Amos Oz (2014), Julian Barnes (2016), and Lyudmila Ulitskaya (2020)); Gstrein is the first German-writing author to win this German prize.
       Several of Gstrein's books have been translated into English -- though the most recent seems to have been almost a decade back, A Sense of the Beginning; see also the MacLehose publicity page.
       See also the Hanser foreign rights page for his most recent novel, Im ersten Licht -- English-language rights apparently not yet sold -- with links to information about some of his other titles as well.

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       HKW Internationaler Literaturpreis shortlist

       I missed this last week, but the Haus der Kulturen der Welt has announced the shortlist for its Internationalen Literaturpreis, a leading German prize for a contemporary literary work in translation (with the author of the winning work to receive €20,000 and the translator of the winning work €15,000).
       Only one book is a translation from English -- of V. V. Ganeshananthan's Brotherless Night -- with the others translations from: Araabic, Belarusian, Dutch, Farsi, and Hungarian; it looks like an interesting selection.
       The winner will be announced 3 July.

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       Q & A: Gioconda Belli

       AFP has a Q & A with the author, 'They're afraid': Nicaraguan writer Gioconda Belli on fighting censorship, as her latest novel, Un silencio lleno de murmullos (see also the Seix Barral publicity page) -- "It's a novel about the relationship between a mother and a daughter, but it's also a novel about disillusionment" -- has been censored in her homeland.

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       Q & A: Vivek Shanbhag

       At Scroll.in they have a lengthy excerpt of Parul Sehgal's Q & A with the Ghachar Ghochar-author, in ‘You must, in some sense, go mad with literature’: Writer Vivek Shanbhag -- the full interview published in the volume Taste; see the Juggernaut publicity page.
       Among the interesting bits:

I write in Kannada, which is not my mother tongue. My mother tongue is Konkani. [...] Today, Konkani is written in five scripts. No other Indian language has this distinction. Speech is mutually intelligible, but writing is not. That in itself is a powerful metaphor for the community’s worldview.

So, there were multiple worlds. At home, we spoke Konkani, but outside, Kannada. Every outside experience, when brought back home, had to be translated. This act of translation was constant, sometimes involving the direct borrowing of Kannada words and phrases. The borders between languages were porous. It sounds romantic now, but at the time, it felt completely natural.

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       Orbital review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Samantha Harvey's Booker Prize-winning novel, Orbital.

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       Sophie Kerr Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Sophie Kerr Prize at Washington College -- the " largest literary award for a college student" in the US (and, I presume, anywhere else), paying out an impressive US$86,702 this year -- and it is Jaya Basu, whose portfolio included: "poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and playwriting, and explored the forces of attraction that govern the universe and act on all bodies".

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       Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and Lin King Q & As

       As I noted earlier this week, Taiwan Travelogue won the International Booker Prize, and it's good to see quite a few Q & A's and profiles of author Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and translator Lin King, including:

• International Booker Prize winner Yáng Shuāng-zi: ‘We still live under a colonial regime’ by Tobias Grey at the Financial Times (presumably paywalled)
• ‘I refuse to be a second-class citizen in my own land’: Taiwanese International Booker winner Yáng Shuāng-zǐ by Emma Loffhagen at The Guardian
• International Booker winners Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and Lin King on queerness, translation and Taiwan’s future by Ellen Peirson-Hagger at The Observer
• ‘Taiwan Travelogue’ writer hopes book sparks dialogue at the Taipei Times
• ‘China constantly brainwashes us’: The superstar novelist fighting for Taiwan by Claire Allfree at The Telegraph (presumably paywalled)

       And see also the summary-report, with the winners remarks at the ceremony, at (UK) publisher And Other Stories' site.

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       Dublin Literary Award

       They've announced the winner of this year's Dublin Literary Award -- "the world's largest prize for a single novel published in English" -- and it is Gliff, by Ali Smith.
       See also the publicity pages from Penguin and Vintage, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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       Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize shortlist

       They've now announced the shortlist for this year's Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize.
       Awarded to translations "published for the first time in print form in the United Kingdom in the year 2025", the only shortlisted title under review at the complete review is Susan Bernofsky's translation of Tawada Yoko's The Naked Eye.
       The winner will be announced 13 June.

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       Society of Authors' Awards shortlists

       The Society of Authors has announced shortlists for five of its awards -- with Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah in the running for the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize -- "awarded to a UK or Irish writer, or a writer currently resident in those countries, for a novel focusing on the experience of travel away from home " -- for his Theft.
       The winners (and those of several more of their awards) will be announced 18 June.

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       'New books in Hungarian'

       At hlo they have their regular feature of 'New Books in Hungarian' -- covering spring, 2026 this time.
       Always interesting to see what domestic literature is being published in other languages.

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

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       Prix Jean d'Ormesson

       One of my favorite French literary prizes is the anything-can-be-nominated-for-it prix Jean d'Ormesson -- though in recent years the jurors (who do the nominating) have stuck more to recently-published works; so also this year, with the just-announced winner La Rosa Perdida by Christopher Laquieze; see the Livres Hebdo report; see also the JC Lattès publicity page for the book.
       (At least among the longlisted titles this year was a new Theodor Fontane-translation, as well the (also new) collection of all of Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares' co-written work, Œuvres complètes à quatre mains; see also the Éditions Seghers publicity page.).

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       Q & A: Eduardo Halfon

       At the World Literature Today blog Anderson Tepper has Manipulating Memory: A Conversation with Eduardo Halfon -- mainly about Halfon's recent novel, Tarantula (whereby he notes that the English one: "is like the tenth or twelfth translation" -- as some wariness continues to hold much of the US/UK publishing world back from jumping on translations before seeing how the work fares elsewhere, in other translations).
       Interesting also to hear that he's stayed in Berlin -- living in Wannsee ("So I'm almost at ground zero for my books").

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

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       Q & A: Emma Ramadan

       At the Asymptote blog Xiao Yue Shan has On Self-Enrichment: An Interview with Emma Ramadan on Translating Emma Tholozan's Self-Worth; see also my review of the novel.

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

       International Booker Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's International Booker Prize, and it is Taiwan Travelogue, by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, in Lin King's translation.

       (This also already won the (American) National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2024, so this isn't a huge surprise.)

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

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       Miles Franklin longlist

       They've announced the ten-title-strong longlist for this year's Miles Franklin Literary Award, the leading Australian novel prize.

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

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       Sally Rooney Q & A

       At The Guardian Samir Eskanda has a Q & A with Sally Rooney on a new Hebrew translation of Intermezzo: ‘The Israeli culture sector is complicit in apartheid’ -- and at +972 Haggai Matar explains We’re publishing Sally Rooney in Hebrew, in line with BDS. Here’s how and why.

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       I'm out of here ...

       Well, the US, that is: after living here more on than off for over five decades I am relocating back to the homeland.
       Not much should change at the complete review -- does it ever ? -- though I'll have to figure out the sourcing of review-copies, which might have some effect on what gets reviewed. (Certainly, for example, you can expect more reviews of German -- and likely French and Dutch -- titles, including more that haven't been translated into English.)
       It'll take me a bit to settle in -- and for my trove of books being shipped over to arrive and get unpacked -- but mostly things should move ahead here as always, if a bit more slowly for a while.


       (Yes, that's me in 1969/70, sometime shortly after first arriving in the US.)

       (For what it's worth, my departure was not precipitated by the current administration and its actions -- I would have left, regardless (and would have done so earlier, had that been possible), and had no regrets in any case; still, current circumstamces certainly didn't make staying any more tempting. Not that the domestic Austrian political situation is much more heartening .....)

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

       Premio Strega Europeo

       They've announced the winner of this year's Premio Strega Europeo, the leading Italian prize for a European narrative work in translation, and it is the Italian translation of La llamada, by Leila Guerriero; this is apparently forthcoming in English, in Megan McDowell's translation, as The Call (from Knopf in the US and Pushkin Press in the UK); see also the Indent Literary Agency information page.
       It is a work of non-fiction -- the story of Silvia Labayru.
       It has received lots of critical praise -- and also won, for example, the French prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger last year.

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

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       NSW Literary Awards

       They've announced the winners of this year's NSW Literary Awards -- "the richest and longest running state-based literary awards in Australia" -- with The Immigrants by Moreno Giovannoni taking the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction; see also the Black Inc. publicity page.
       Näku Dhäruk by Clare Wright won both the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction and the overall Book of the Year prize.

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

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       Andrew Gallix Q & A

       At 3:AM Gerry Feehily has Ulysses with Finnegans Rising: An Interview with Andrew Gallix -- mainly about Gallix's new novel Loren Ipsum; see also the Dodo Ink publicity page.

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

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