opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

       'Best Translated Book' longlist

       The 'Best Translated Book' 2008 longlist has now been posted at Three Percent (where you can also find additional background etc. information, and see also Carolyn Kellogg's interview with Chad Post at Jacket Copy). There are twenty-five titles, of which we have thirteen under review:

• The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
• Tranquility by Bartis Attila
• 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
• Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño
• The Waitress was New by Dominique Fabre
• The Darkroom of Damocles by Willem Frederik Hermans
• Homage to Czerny by Gert Jonke
• Detective Story by Kértesz Imre
• Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya
• The Lemoine Affair by Marcel Proust
• Camera by Jean-Philippe Toussaint
• Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra

       As one of the panelists I'll be reading the remaining finalists, and reviews of most of these should eventually also get posted.
       Among the striking things about the longlist are, of course the omissions; Chad listed a few honorable mentions yesterday, but more noticeable is the large geographic/linguistic blank areas -- most notably Far East Asia. Not a single Chinese, Japanese, or Korean title -- indeed, nothing from anywhere in Asia until we hit the Mediterranean ! (I lobbied for Beijing Coma by Ma Jian and Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan, but practically all these other titles appear to have had considerably stronger support -- and, after all, I haven't even managed to put reviews of either of those fat novels up.)
       Note also: only one Arabic title, and no Russian titles (the Serge is French). One African title.
       On a case-by-case basis much of this can be explained -- practically nothing in translation came out of Africa (or sub-continental Asia), the Russian and Japanese selections were arguably relatively weak (though I thought Lala Pipo was worth considering), etc. etc., but it still is fairly striking, if not outright shocking. (Especially from among the Arabic and Chinese titles, I'm surprised more didn't slip in.)
       Part of the problem is, of course, familiarity -- or the lack of it: I've read just over eighty of the eligible titles, and seen/have maybe fifty more. A couple that I haven't had access to I guessed would make decent selections -- Metropole has gotten great reviews, I have faith in Saramago -- but that still leaves a hundred which are more or less blanks to me (many of which have gotten essentially no review coverage, as far as I can tell). Even those I suspected I'd like if I could get my hands on a copy -- notably Pirouettes on a Postage Stamp by Bohumil Hrabal, Old Garden by Hwang Sok-yong, or The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin -- I had too little information about to make much of a case for. I imagine many of the other panelists were in a similar position (and I fear there were a handful of books which not one of us saw ...).
       Still, it's a fairly interesting list and -- leaving aside the elephant in the room (are there any doubts about which book will emerge top of the heap ? I mean, I can't commit my vote yet, since I haven't read all the titles and I'll have to revisit some I read a while back, but come on ...) -- it should make for some interesting discussion.

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       French flops ?

       Good to see that French efforts to emulate American-style book-marketing-campaigns based on personality rather than the books themselves fall about as flat as they do everywhere else: in Le Figaro Dominique Guiou reports on Le grand flop des coups médiatiques.
       There were several books this fall which were launched with great expectations and masses of media coverage, and which have now mightily underperformed:

Les livres lancés avec force effets d'annonce n'ont pas tenu leurs promesses. Loin s'en faut. Le tandem Houellebecq-Lévy n'a pas conquis les lecteurs malgré le plan média peaufiné par Flammarion. Idem pour Catherine Millet et Christine Angot. À l'heure des comptes, ces auteurs feront perdre de l'argent à leurs éditeurs respectifs, Flammarion et le Seuil. Les ventes de ces livres ne dépassent pas les 50 000 exemplaires. Un chiffre à faire pâlir d'envie la plupart des écrivains présents en cette rentrée littéraire mais qui, compte tenu des sommes engagées (tirages colossaux, à-valoir très élevés) se révèlent être des fiascos financiers.

       Yes, Jour de souffrance (get your copy at Amazon.fr), Catherine Millet's follow-up to the notorious The Sexual Life of Catherine M., and the publicity-stunt pairing of Michel Houellebecq and Bernard-Henri Lévy, resulting in Ennemis publics (get your copy at Amazon.fr), have sold in the 50,000 copy range -- but that's way less than was printed and the publishers took a bath on these.
       What's particularly noteworthy about these titles is that not only was the French press all over this stuff, but there were also a considerable number of articles in the US and UK press (and, indeed, even we got caught up in reporting on them ...).
       And, of course, also noteworthy is that what the publishers were pushing were the authors, not the books -- but French consumers appear to be at least somewhat discriminating and not ready to be so easily taken in and actually thought about what they were supposedly getting for their hard-earned euros -- and decided it was not worth it.
       A small victory for the written word over the cult of the personality.

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       Scandinavian crime fiction

       The BBC has brought three of Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander-novels to the small screen, with Kenneth Branagh as Wallander; see also Stephen Armstrong profiling Henning Mankell on Kenneth Branagh's Wallander in the Sunday Times a few weeks back.
       Now in The Independent Boyd Tonkin looks Beyond Mankell: our fiends in the north.
       He thinks:

Now we can realistically expect that Henning Mankell's beyond-genre novels will pick up a substantially enhanced UK readership.

       And he also has a look at some of the other leading writers of the unstoppable Scandinavian crime fiction flood.

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       'Best Translated Book' countdown

       Sometime today they'll list the longlist for the 'Best Translated Book' at Three Percent; we have thirteen of the twenty-five longlisted titles under review and will have our comments tomorrow [[updated] see here].
       See also the list of a few titles that fell just short, in Chad Post's The Honorable Mentions -- we had two of these under review (The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante and To Siberia by Per Petterson).

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       NYTBR top ten

       The New York Times Book Review has released its list of The 10 Best Books of 2008; the only title we have under review is Roberto Bolaño's 2666.
       Note also, as GalleyCat has: Alfred A. Knopf got a whole lotta love from the NYTBR here .....

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       The Rest is Noise takes Guardian first book award

       As Charlotte Higgins reports, Resounding Guardian first book award victory for The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross' much-praised book.

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       FSG to publish Sorokin's День опричника

       In The New York Observer Leon Neyfakh reports that After Years of Patience, FSG Finds a Vladimir Sorokin Book They Want to Publish in English, as:

Mr. Stein told Media Mob, with FSG planning to publish a short volume tentatively titled A Day in the Life of an Oprichnik in the near future.

       That would be День опричника; see also the Literary Agency Galina Dursthoff information page (and note how many languages it has already been translated into ...).
       The only Sorokin title we have under review is Ice.

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       The Vampire of Ropraz review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is our review of Jacques Chessex's novella The Vampire of Ropraz.
       Swiss author Chessex took the prix Goncourt in 1973 but is practically unknown in English; unfortunately for him, this work doesn't quite fit in the current vampire-craze. But this book has sold something like 100,000 copies in France ...... (It also only came out last year -- a very fast turnaround time to get an English translation out.)

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       The rush for Le Clézio

       The Nobel ceremonies are coming up shortly, with literature prize winner Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio scheduled to give his Nobel lecture -- titled: 'Dans la forêt des paradoxes' -- on Sunday, 7 December, at 17:30 p.m. (CET).
       We rarely have words of praise for publishers, much less the big American houses, but we were pleasantly surprised -- and quite impressed -- when Simon & Schuster got us a copy of their reprint edition of The Interrogation in time for all the excitement. The official publication date in 9 December, but Amazon is already shipping copies (get yours at Amazon.com -- and see also the S&S publicity page). A good-looking hardback (though truly just a reprint), and certainly the title -- his debut -- we were most curious about. Look for our review (along with that of The Prospector) soon.
       Admittedly, it was then deflating to see how much further ahead the UK publishers are with the reprints of that old batch of Le Clézio novels, with Penguin beating the Americans to The Interrogation punch not only by a week or two -- get your copy at Amazon.co.uk or see their publicity page -- but managing to bring it out in paperback, and both Penguin and Vintage bringing out pretty much the whole English-translation backlist (though admittedly in their rush they don't seem to have made all of them available yet). So you can already (or at least soon) find:

• The Book of Flights -- get your copy at Amazon.co.uk, or see the Vintage publicity page
• War -- get your copy at Amazon.co.uk, or see the Vintage publicity page
• The Giants -- get your copy at Amazon.co.uk, or see the Vintage publicity page
• Fever -- get your copy at Amazon.co.uk, or see the Penguin publicity page
• The Flood -- get your copy at Amazon.co.uk, or see the Penguin publicity page
• Terra Amata -- get your copy at Amazon.co.uk, or see the Penguin publicity page

       (Penguin also needs to work on those publicity pages -- in a twist from the usual they only list the translators' names, not the author's (and searching for "Le Clézio" won't lead you to most of these titles ...).)
       We hope American publishers follow suit, soon -- but at least they got The Interrogation out in pretty good time.

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       Favourite Obscure Books

       In The Village Voice authors recommend their Favorite Obscure Books (continued on a second page).

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       New Words without Borders

       The December issue of Words without Borders is now available, dedicated to 'The Home Front'.

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       Telegraph dumps literary editor

       Ben Dowell reports in The Guardian that Literary editor Sam Leith becomes latest Daily Telegraph redundancy:

Leith was told of his redundancy today and left the building immediately after nearly 10 years on the paper, according to TMG insiders.

His departure comes after TMG management told staff on Thursday that it was seeking 50 redundancies across its editorial operations before Christmas.

       It will be interesting to see how this affects what has been the pretty decent books coverage at The Telegraph, though the immediate impact won't be obvious (this being the time of year when books coverage everywhere seems limited largely to 'best of'-lists and pretty much anyone can run the section ...).
       Leith is still listed as one of the Paper Tiger-bloggers -- and, unfortunately, there have been no posts about his dismissal there yet.

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       NYC events: 2666 discussion

       As Bud Parr notes at the Words without Borders weblog, This Thursday: Francisco Goldman and Natasha Wimmer on Bolaño's 2666:

Novelist Francisco Goldman and translator Natasha Wimmer will discuss Roberto Bolaño's 2666 this Thursday at Idlewild Books in New York City. Brought together as part of the Words Without Borders "Conversations on Great Contemporary Literature" series, there are not too many people who could carry a more interesting discussion on Bolaño's masterwork.

       That's 4 December, at 19:00 -- and Bud is probably right: this sounds very promising.

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       NYC events: Asian American Literary Awards

       The Asian American Writers' Workshop present the Annual Asian American Literary Awards on 8 December, with a VIP Reception 18:00-19:30 at Deutsches Haus at NYU and then the awards ceremony at Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Film Center at NYU (36 East 8th Street) from 19:30 to 21:00:

The winner of the Asian American Literary Award for Fiction is Mohsin Hamid for The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Harcourt). The winner of the Asian American Literary Award for Nonfiction is Vijay Prashad for The Darker Nations (New Press). The winner of the Asian American Literary Award for Poetry is Sun Yung Shin for Skirt Full of Black (Coffee House Press).

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       New European Union prize for literature ?

       There's a press release out, but precious little information. Still, apparently there's a New European Union prize for literature, as:

The European Commission is launching a new European Union prize for contemporary literature. The aim is to put the spotlight on the creativity and diverse wealth of Europe’s contemporary literature, to promote more circulation of literature within Europe and encourage greater interest in non-national literary works. The first edition of the Prize will be awarded in autumn 2009.

       And:

The European Prize for contemporary literature will consist of a prize for emerging talents in the field of contemporary literature (fiction) from each of the participating countries in 2009, 2010 and 2011 respectively. The aim of the prize is to attract a wide audience of European citizens, to discover new emerging talents and promote their work, especially in countries outside their own. The prize will be a starting point for intercultural dialogue and a way to bring together cultural actors from the book sector from across Europe.

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       Literary Translation review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is our review of A Practical Guide by Clifford E. Landers to Literary Translation.

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       Nordic Council Literature Prize nominees

       Each Scandinavian country (and a few semi/autonomous regions) gets to nominate one local fiction title and one local poetry title for the Nordic Council Literature Prize, which has a pretty good track record; the nominations for the 2009 prize have now been announced, with the winner to be chosen 3 April 2009.
       Not many familiar names here, except for one -- Norwegian Per Petterson, whose Jeg forbanner tidens elv is in the running.
       Aschehoug Agency helpfully have an information page for the book, whose title they translate as 'I Curse the River of Time'. It's already picked up the 2008 Brage Prize for Best Novel -- and English-language rights have been sold to Graywolf (US) and Harvill Secker (UK). And you can click through for a: "brochure with sample translation and a presentation of Petterson's work" .
       (Pretty decent presentation of a title to whet the appetites of foreign publishers, no ?)
       They do make one mistake on the publicity page, claiming the protagonist, Arvid Jansen, previously appeared in Out Stealing Horses; they mean In the Wake, of course -- and we're very eager to see this chapter of his life, regardless of whether or not it picks up this particular prize as well.

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       Best books: FT selections

       At the Financial Times -- which, we remind you, has a surprisingly strong books section -- they look back at The reading year with all sorts of best-of lists in a lot of categories. The only ones of real interest (to us): their Critic’s choice selections, by reviewers such as A.S.Byatt and Fay Weldon, and their Fiction list.

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       Best books: Jessa Crispin's foreign picks

       Bookslut Jessa Crispin offers her selection of the Best Foreign Fiction Of 2008 at NPR -- though she seems a bit torn between foreign and foreign-language (i.e. translated) fiction, as a vast amount of 'foreign' fiction (from the UK, Ireland, India, etc. etc.) published in the US is, after all, written in English (and much less is published that is translated from other languages). She opts for four translated titles, and throws in Kieron Smith, boy by James Kelman with the observation that: "Glasgow-born Booker Prize–winning novelist James Kelman's prose occasionally feels like it needs a translator."
       (See also our reviews of Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos, 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, and The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante; we hope to get to Metropole (if we ever get our hands on a copy).)

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       Aura Estrada Prize

       The AFP report that Three Nobels launch prize for Spanish-language woman writers.
       The Aura Estrada Prize does sound worthy -- though the eligibility requirements are somewhat limited:

The Aura Estrada Prize will be awarded biannually to a female writer, 35 or under, living in Mexico or the United States, who writes creative prose (fiction or nonfiction) in Spanish.

       As the AFP report notes:

Due to taxation concerns, the prize will only be awarded to women living in the United States and Mexico, "but since many young people from Colombia, Argentina and other Latin American countries study there, the prize is somehow open to all," said Estrada's widower, Franscisco Goldman.

       We have no idea how that will work out ... (and: taxation concerns ?!??).
       The official application process hadn't been posted yet, last we checked, but presumably will be soon.

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       December/winter issues

       Among the online publications with December and winter issues now out: The Quarterly Conversation and Open Letters. Well worth your while -- and both tackle 2666.

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       I Spit on Your Graves review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is our review of Boris Vian's I Spit on Your Graves.
       As far as the best story behind a book, this is certainly up there: published in 1946, Vian claimed it was a translation of an American book that couldn't be published in the US (and he even went so far as to publish an English translation to prove his claim ...), and it became a sensational bestseller (over half a million copies sold by 1950). They made a film of it in 1959 and Vian keeled over at a screening of the flick, dead at thirty-nine .....

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        Henry Hitchings profile

       In the Independent on Sunday Suzi Feay talks to 'Lexical wizard Henry Hitchings on the crazy history of our language' in A way with words.
       Hitchings took the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize with The Secret Life of Words last week; see the Farrar, Straus and Giroux publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. (Note also that Amazon.co.uk finds 'Customers buy this book' most frequently with ... the DVD of Mamma Mia ! -- what's that about ?)
       See also the sampler, A-Z of English words with surprising origins at The Telegraph (though these aren't the most surprising of examples ...).
       See also our review of Hitchings' Dr.Johnson's Dictionary (published in the US as Defining the World).

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       Winter issue of The Threepenny Review

       A very limited part of the Winter issue of The Threepenny Review is available online -- but it includes Javier Marías' Interpreters of Lives.

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       SA literary journals

       In the Mail & Guardian Percy Zvomuya finds Expanding literary horizons in South Africa, as:

Unlike in the West, where many works of fiction first see the light of day in literary journals, most of our local works appear in book form first. This may change with the launch in the past year of two literary journals, Wordsetc and Baobab.

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       NY indies

       In New York Boris Kachka and Brian Raftery find that: 'For customizing your reading, nothing beats the neighborhood shop', in The Curated Bookshelf -- and:

"Independent stores are where innovation lies," says Kent Carroll of Europa Editions. "They can still make best sellers [like Europa’s Elegance of the Hedgehog]. The chains didn’t come onboard until after the fact."

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       Swedish Academy vacancy

       The eighteen-member Swedish Academy decides who gets the Nobel Prize in literature, so when a seat opens up, it's news: Sten Rudholm, the longest serving (and, narrowly, oldest) member, occupying chair number one (see his official page) has passed away at the age of ninety. See, for example, the AP reoprt at the IHT, Swedish Academy member Rudholm dies at age 90 -- where academy secretary Ulrika Kjellin notes:

Rudholm did not attend the academy's meetings in recent years, but "he was still active and worked until the end."

       With one other seat still vacant, the Academy has a chance to freshen things up: as is, nine still sitting members were born before or in 1933 (i.e are 75+). We're still wondering why Lars Gustafsson doesn't have a seat .....

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       Lire's 20 best

       French magazine Lire present what they think are Les vingt meilleurs livres de l'année (i.e. top twenty books of the year), in a variety of categories. Yasmina Khadra's Ce que le jour doit à la nuit tops their list, but they also find Zone by Mathias Enard (which, you'll recall, Open Letter recently won the US rights for) the Révélation française 2008 -- and Christoph Ransmayr's novel in verse, La montagne volante, (which we'll be reviewing sooner or later) one of the best foreign novels.

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       Murakami film

       Murakami Haruki's story, 'All God's Children Can Dance' (which you can find in the collection After the Quake), has been made into a movie by Robert Logevall (see the IMDb page) and, as we learn from De Papieren Man, has premiered in the Netherlands. No word as to any US theatrical release we could find.

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       Perez-Reverte has no regrets

       In the Latin American Herald Tribune Ana Mendoza reports that: Perez-Reverte Says He Wouldn't Change A Single Line Of His Pathbreaking Novel, The Club Dumas, as he complains:

"The band of idiots who were holding literature hostage had made readers desert and only heroes like (Spanish novelists) Juan Marse and Eduardo Mendoza maintained those subtle but still firm ties with literature that told you things," the writer said.

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       The Paris Enigma review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is our review of Pablo De Santis' The Paris Enigma.

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       More best books selections

       The Sunday Times offer their Christmas Books Special 2008, where they list their 'best books' in various categories. Most of these are worthless (wine books ?), but at least they do do the only thing that should count, fiction -- claiming it was A year of fantastic fiction. They name A Mercy by Toni Morrison 'the Sunday Times novel of the year' -- but then they also consider Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger commendable, so this is definitely a list that can't be taken all too seriously .....

       More interestingly, Ginny Hooker compiles 'Season's readings' at The Guardian, as "writers and politicians pick the best of 2008": see pages one, two, three, and four. (We know that sites are desperate to artificially inflate their page-view totals by spreading their articles out as thinly as possible, but come on, you have to have a view-on-one-page-option ... !)

       (Updated - 30 November): See now also Here are the ones they just couldn't put down, as The Observer "asked a mix of public figures, Observer critics and people on the street to tell us which books thrilled them most this year".

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       Pamuk's library -- again

       The 18 December issue of The New York Review of Books has some interesting articles, including Sarah Kerr on The Triumph of Roberto Bolaño (in which she reviews 2666).
       Of particular interest: Orhan Pamuk's My Turkish Library -- except that it looks terribly familiar. Indeed, while not identical, the vast bulk of it could be found a month ago in The Guardian, in The collector.

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       German critics' December recommendations

       The December SWR-Bestenliste, where 30 German literary critics select the books they most highly recommend, is out. Denis Johnson tops the list -- but note that his feeble 51-point total means that, according to the points-system they use, possibly as few as 4 of the 30 critics thought he rated a mention .....

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       Kieron Smith takes Saltire Society award

       Kieron Smith, by James Kelman, has taken the Saltire Society's Scottish Book of the Year award (not that that information was available at the official site yet, last we checked ...). See, for example, Phil Miller's report in The Herald, Kelman takes top literary prize as Saltire awards get boost.
       The book just came out in the US; get your copy at Amazon.com (or also at Amazon.co.uk).

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       Premio Cervantes goes to Juan Marsé

       Juan Goytisolo only got the Premio Nacional de las Letras Españolas (see our previous mention), and it's Juan Marsé who takes the biggest of the Spanish-language author prizes this year, the Premio Miguel de Cervantes -- "el máximo reconocimiento a la labor creadora de escritores españoles e hispanoamericanos cuya obra haya contribuido a enriquecer de forma notable el patrimonio literario en lengua española"; see, for example, the AP report by Daniel Woolls, Spanish novelist Juan Marse wins Cervantes Prize.
       None of his books appear to have been published in the US in the past quarter of a century, but at least in the UK a couple of Nick Caistor translations have come out in the past few years, most recently Shanghai Nights (get your copy at Amazon.co.uk) and also Lizard Tails (get your copy at Amazon.co.uk).

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       Turkish openings ?

       They note in Hurriyet that:

Turkish universities offer in-depth knowledge of long-extinct civilizations of Sumerian, and Hittite culture, but none as yet has a department devoted to Kurdish and Armenian languages, or Hebrew.

       But now, apparently, Kurdish, Armenian to be taught at university. Sounds good (and about time ...) to us.

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       The Private Patient review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is our review of P.D.James' latest Adam Dalgliesh mystery, The Private Patient, now out in the US, too.

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       Best/notable books 2008: TLS Books of the Year (selection)

       The TLS publish a selection from this year's choices of the TLS Books of the Year recommendations. With a good mix of selectors and brief explanations, it's usually one of the better lists; we'll probably have more to say once we see the full list (in the print edition).

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       Best/notable books 2008: NYTBR Notable Books

       The New York Times Book Review has published (online) its 100 Notable Books of 2008-list, selected "from books reviewed since Dec. 2, 2007, when we published our previous Notables list".

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       Makanin's Асан is this year's Большая книга

       As Lizok's Bookshelf reports, Vladimir Makanin's Асан ('Asan') has won the Russian Большая книга ('Big Book') prize. There's tons of Russian-language coverage, but so far nothing in English; quite a few of Makanin's books have been translated (and see, for example, Harvey Pekar's MetroActive review of the volume containing Escape Hatch and The Long Road Ahead), so it's quite possible that this will make it into English ... eventually.

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       Multilingualism

       Eurozine has several pieces on multilingualism, including Clarisse Herrenschmidt's The Tower of Babel does not exist, in which she: "considers the mixed blessings of global English and suggests playing a game to overcome the barriers of language", and Edouard Glissant on Cultural journals and Europe.

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       Goytisolo gets Premio Nacional de las Letras Españolas

       Juan Goytisolo has been awarded the Premio Nacional de las Letras Españolas; see also Juan Goytisolo Wins Spain's National Prize for Literature at the Latin American Herald Tribune.

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       Rushdie and Saviano in Stockholm

       As Karl Ritter reports for the AP, Writers Rushdie, Saviano discuss death threats in Stockholm (at the Swedish Academy) -- and:

Besides death threats from zealots and mobsters, writers Salman Rushdie and Roberto Saviano said Tuesday that questions about their integrity hurt the most.

       And, not surprisingly, as The Local reported, Security high for visit of Rushdie and Saviano.

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       Bad sex winner

       They've announced the winner of the Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award -- though not yet at the official site, last we checked. But Alison Flood reports in The Guardian that Rachel Johnson 'honoured' to win Bad Sex award.
       Perhaps most disturbing:

She received a plaster foot -- intended to be an abstract representation of sex, according to Fleming

       (Which makes us wonder what the hell we're missing .....)

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       Brenner-novels reviews

       The most recent additions to the complete review are our reviews of Wolf Haas' Simon Brenner novels:

1. Auferstehung der Toten
2. Der Knochenmann
3. Komm, süßer Tod
4. Silentium !
5. Wie die Tiere
6. Das ewige Leben

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       Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's new 'business' model

       As widely reported, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (the recently consolidated Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt) have figured out a new way of being publishers: they're not acquiring any new manuscripts/books. As Rachel Deahl reports at Publishers Weekly, HMH Places "Temporary" Halt on Acquisitions.
       She quotes Josef Blumenfeld, "v-p of communications" :

"In this case, it’s a symbol of doing things smarter; it’s not an indicator of the end of literature," he said. "We have turned off the spigot, but we have a very robust pipeline."

       Come on ! If you've stopped acquiring you might as well close shop right there and then.
       (As for symbols of doing things that definitely don't sound smarter, having a "v-p of communications" would be pretty high on our list of those.)

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       John Llewellyn Rhys Prize

       As Alison Flood reports in The Guardian, there was a Rare victory for non-fiction book in John Llewellyn Rhys prize, as The Secret Life of Words by Henry Hitchings became the first non-fiction work to take the prize (which: "rewards the best work of literature (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama) by a UK or Commonwealth writer aged 35 or under") in six years. No word yet at the official site, last we checked .....

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       Aravind Adiga (not) in Germany

       The Germans are all abuzz about recent Man Booker winner Aravind 'The White Tiger' Adiga cancelling his tour of the German-speaking countries. Some ten days ago Julia Kospach interviewed him in the Frankfurter Rundschau, and he told her that he wasn't eager to go in the first place, because when he was a student in England he visited Germany and they constantly made complications for him, because they held him to be an illegal immigrant. He split after three days, and his interest ever to return to Germany or Austria was, he said, absolutely zero -- "I think I won't for the rest of my life."
       Now Oliver Jungen talks to him in the FAZ and he sort of clears things up. For one, he has nothing against Austria ..... As to Germany ... well, already as a teenager he had wanted to travel there, and he had already read: "Goethe and Heine, Thomas Mann and Robert Musil, Benjamin and Kafka, but also Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer" ("As a teenager", Jungen cruelly reminds his readers ...) And in 1998 he went, but he had so many problems (in Eisenach and Erfurt -- everyone's first stops ....) that he turned straight back.
       Jungen also asks him about the use of the epistolary form in his novel, and how Adiga thinks Wen Jiabao would have reacted to the letter(s) -- but Adiga says they weren't "really actual letters, that Balram was more talking to himself aloud" (not, as Jungen notes, that anything like that is clear in the book itself ...).

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       Wolf Haas event reminder

       A reminder that at the austrian cultural forum in New York tonight at 18:30 Wolf Haas will be in conversation with local barkeep M.A.Orthofer (with Dominic Cuskern and translator Stephanie Gilardi reading from two of his works). (If you'd like to attend note that admission is free but reservations are necessary; Call (212) 319 5300 ext.222 or email reservations@acfny.org )

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