opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

       Hamid Ismailov Q & A

       At Russia beyond the Headlines Phoebe Taplin reports that Uzbek writer popularizes Russian literature in London in her Q & A with Hamid Ismailov.
       His most recently translated book is the 'reality novel' A Poet and Bin-Laden, which: "combines documentary, poetry and fiction". I actually have a copy, so I do hope to get a review up; meanwhile, see the Glagoslav publicity page, or get your copy from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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       Martin Amis profile

       Brooklyn, he finds, is: "rather embarrassingly civilised", and he's "too old for Manhattan" -- "It's just too noisy, too quick". So says Martin Amis, in a nice long Financial Times profile by Martin Dickson.
       He also: "don't mind saying a bit" about his work in progress. (Does he ever mind saying a bit, or a lot, about anything ?)
       It's: "set in an unnamed Auschwitz" -- and, well, at this point in his career one can no longer be sure about anything he writes, but maybe it holds some promise.

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       Publishing books from abroad - new approaches

       A few days ago E.J. Van Lanen, of the newly founded Frisch & Co., posted a piece explaining Why I Publish Ebooks, or the Future of Literary Translation, suggesting that the e-format might be a promising approach to dealing with some of the issues that plague getting books in translation published in English. It's a quite detailed post, and well worth your attention, both for its discussion for the traditional US (print) model of publishing translations -- often necessitating reliance on outside funding, which comes with its own set of issues (boy, does it ever) -- as well as in considering the possible advantages (and disadvantages) of e-publishing. (Among the interesting/amusing points: his sums as to the costs of e-publishing a book differ ... shall we say: markedly from those of traditional print publishers, who have been moaning for years (in explaining their pricing) that it's not (much) cheaper to do it that way than it is in print.)

       Frisch & Co. aren't the only experimenters; Le French Book, for example, is:

a digital-first publisher that brings France's best crime fiction, thrillers, novels, short stories, and non-fiction to new readers across the English-speaking world. If we love it, we’ll translate it.

       I'm not sure that 'best' is the right word for the books in their (initial) selection, but 52 serial shorts-concept -- which involves authors with some name-recognition, such as Yann Queffélec, Tatiana De Rosnay, Didier Van Cauwelaert -- sounds like a good lead title and sampler.

       Meanwhile, mega-bestselling French author Marc Levy has never really caught on English (see my review of All Those Things We Never Said), but e-publisher Versilio have now brought out a whole batch of his books in translation, almost all just in e-formats.

       A few weeks ago, Gabe Habash and Jim Milliot wrote about how International Titles Finding New Ways into the U.S., which is also worth a closer look. E-books are one part of it; another interesting approach is foreign publishers not looking to sell foreign rights, but rather publishing translations themselves -- mainly in e-formats. But even some English-language publishers are having a go at foreign markets -- Australian Text is apparently bringing the wonderful-sounding Text Classics stateside -- damn, I want to see those books !

       (I take this opportunity also to remind you of longtime local favorite, the African Books Collective, which basically takes advantage of print-on-demand to make a wide variety of African publications readily available abroad.)

       Frisch & Co. kindly sent me their first offering, the good-looking Anatomy of a Night by Anna Kim -- see their publicity page -- but I have to admit I still have the damnedest time reading e-books, much preferring to pick up the printed books scattered and piled all around me. I can see the appeal of the format (and the reading devices), but I haven't been won over yet -- in fact, I can still barely stand them.

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       Diplomat, Actor, Translator, Spy review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Bernard Turle's Diplomat, Actor, Translator, Spy, yet another beautiful little volume in the Cahiers Series.

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       Man Booker International Prize to Lydia Davis

       Yesterday they announced that Lydia Davis wins the Man Booker International Prize 2013, as she becomes the fifth winner of this biennial would-be Nobel alternative, awarded: "to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language".
       What stands out immediately, of course, is that this is now the third time in a row that the prize has gone to a North American author (after Alice Munro in 2009 and Philip Roth in 2011), and that four of the five prizes have gone to English-writing authors (longtime -- nearly a quarter of a century -- US resident Chinua Achebe took the prize in 2007, and only Ismail Kadare bucked what became the trend, in 2005). Obviously, written-in-English fiction has a home field advantage, exacerbated by the fact that there have never been clear guidelines as to who should be eligible -- recall that in 2005 judge Alberto Manguel 'lamented' that they couldn't consider the likes of Peter Handke, António Lobo Antunes, Michel Tournier, and Christa Wolf, among others, because not enough of their books were available in English (see my previous mention), yet this year authors such as Marie NDiaye and Intizar Husain made the cut, more than two of either's books in English translation you're unlikely to find in any bookstore in the continental US (or insular Britain).
       I think Davis is a fine choice, but the Man Booker International Prize obviously has a serious identity problem on its hands. This choice already makes it hard for them to keep their international credibility, at least internationally; one more time down this road and they'll lose any remaining credibility -- which isn't the kind of pressure that should be hovering over any literary prize. For all the whingeing that goes on about the Nobel-awarding Swedish Academy and its predilection for obscure, non-North American authors: from abroad, this has got to look considerably worse.

       It was an interesting group of finalists, with seven of the ten authors with books under review at the complete review -- though not, regrettably, Lydia Davis (though I am a fan). I guess I really will have to finally get around to putting up a review of the marvelous The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis -- but go ahead and get your copy first (really -- it's worthwhile); see the Picador publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

       Note also that the winner's name was leaked -- a Times of India report (since removed, but originally here; remnants visible here) had the report about three hours before the official announcement -- I'm curious to hear what happened there.

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       Edinburgh World Writers' Conference speeches

       The Guardian prints an edited version of Atiq Rahimi's keynote speech to the Edinburgh World Writers' Conference which I mean(t) to point you to -- but they note that 'the full transcripts of all the speeches' are available at the Edinburgh World Writers' Conference site and I can't believe I've never seen this trove.
       Yes, there's not just Rahimi's speech in full but, for example, all the keynote speeches on The Future of the Novel, and sure I'd like to comment on the Rahimi and some of the others but who cares what I have to say -- if you haven't seen this stuff just dive in there -- a holiday weekend is approaching in the US, right ? well, this seems a good site to explore in that time -- I think that's what I might be doing.

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       Sayed Kashua profile

       Via I'm pointed to Debra Kamin's report in The Tower, which claims that The Greatest Living Hebrew Writer Is Arab.
       No, it's not an exposé revealing that, say, Amos Oz is actually Arabic (whatever that might mean ...); rather, she's making the claim for ... Sayed Kashua.
       Second Person Singular-author Sayed Kashua is certainly an interesting young writer (emphasis on the young -- he has three books under his belt, but writing-wise still a long way to go), but let's be clear: he's not anywhere near the top of the Hebrew-writing pantheon. Like nowhere close (there are a lot of really good Hebrew-writing authors.)
       Still, I do really like hearing this:

I have a very strange feeling that my fourth novel will start in Hebrew, and then it will turn into a mix of Hebrew and Arabic, and it will end with Arabic.

       That could be something .....

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       Writing in ... Egypt

       In Haaretz Zvi Bar'el reports (a bit melodramatically ?) that Egypt's songs of revolution have given way to a literature of despair.
       A lot of the article focuses on the to-do around minister of culture Alaa Abdel-Aziz, rather than 'the literature of despair' (which I'd love to hear more about ...).

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       Don Segundo Sombra review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Ricardo Güiraldes' 1926 Argentine classic, Don Segundo Sombra: Shadows on the Pampas.
       This is one reason I love going to used bookstores -- for finds like this. I paid a dollar for this 1948 volume (list price: one shilling and sixpence). Back then it was the first book by a Latin American author to make the Penguin Books paperback series (as volume 638). Nowadays -- well, you can find it if you seek it out, but otherwise you're unlikely to stumble across it.
       Sure, it's not a book you need to stumble across -- but it's an interesting and not insignificant work, and certainly anyone who reads Argentine fiction should be familiar with it (as all the authors of those books they're reading are).

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       Top ten Spanish novels since 2000 ?

       Via The Modern Novel weblog (which I hope you're following -- lots of good foreign literature coverage to be found across the site) I find the results of ABC's experts'-poll of las mejores novelas españolas desde 2000 -- the best Spanish novels since 2000. (It seems pretty clear to me that this is a poll of the best Spanish (as opposed to Spanish-language) novels -- and it would be pretty outrageous if it weren't (quite a few Latin American novels strike me as obviously superior to some of this stuff) -- the confusion presumably arising from the presence of we-all-know-he's-Peruvian-right-? Mario Vargas Llosa atop the list. But Vargas Llosa has been a Spanish citizen since 1993, and they clearly have no problem claiming him as one of their own; longtime Spanish resident Roberto Bolaño, who surely might have placed a book or two on any Spanish-language list, on the other hand is ignored.)
       A surprising number of these books are under review at the complete review (and The Infatuations would be ... if I could get my hands on a copy):

• 1. The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
• 3. Your Face Tomorrow by Javier Marías (only the first volume under review at this time)
• 4. Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas
• 5. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
• 7. Cold Skin by Albert Sánchez Piñol
• 8. Montano (Montano's Malady) by Enrique Vila-Matas

       (And while this Chirbes title isn't under review, others are.)
       Needless to say -- I disagree with the experts.

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       Early Man Booker Prize judging report

       As they begin to beat the drum for the 23 July 2013 longlist announcement of the Man Booker Prize -- or pettily try to steal the thunder from today's Man Booker International Prize announcement ... -- The Independent offers Natalie Haynes: Confessions of a Booker judge, as she relates what it's like wading through all the submitted titles.
       First off: the piece does contain some actual news, as Haynes reveals that there are apparently 150 titles in the running this year (submissions plus called-in titles). Judges have done a poor job in recalling the precise number over the years, but they're usually not too far off the mark in their public pronouncements, and 150 would be more than usual. Still, it's probably best to wait for official confirmation regarding this number -- poor form, by the way, that the official site doesn't have more frequent news-updates providing this sort of information.
       Haynes mentions what is truly outrageous about the prize, too -- but does so unquestioningly:

It robs you of the chance to talk about books, too: I'm not allowed to tell you which books have been submitted for the prize, so I can't discuss them with anyone but my fellow judges.

       Why isn't she allowed to tell ? Why don't they publish the full list, so that we can tell whether they're actually dealing with what might be the cream of the crop, or whether in fact the publishers have offered up their Man Booker-flavoured (or so they think and hope) dregs.
       As I repeat every year: it's impossible to take a literary prize seriously if they don't tell you who is actually in the competition. (And given the Man Booker's ridiculously limiting submission options this is a much bigger issue and problem with this prize than with most.)
       Haynes says:

The question I am most frequently asked about prize judging is, "How do you read all those books ?" In close second place comes, "Where the hell do you put them ?"

       But really the only question should be: what are the books ? (followed, I suppose, by: Why can't you tell us ?)
       Clearly the judges have been instructed to present the Man Booker as open-to-everything so that those annoying genre discussion don't flare up again (though they presumably will, once the longlist is revealed), and so Haynes claims:

And the Booker is a broad church. We've been sent thrillers, love stories, family sagas, war novels, spy novels, detective novels and sequels (another consequence of the second Mantel victory ?).

       It would sound more convincing if we were told the actual titles -- many a dryly super-'literary' novel can have elements that might be described as thriller-like, or contain a love story of sorts .....
       Just tell us what the damn books are already.

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       PalFest 2013

       PalFest 2013 -- the Palestine Festival of Literature -- runs 23 through 30 May
       Among the participating writers from outside the region are China Miéville and Gillian Slovo, and M. Lynx Qualey, of the weblog Arabic Literature (in English) is also participating -- and will presumably be reporting extensively at her site.

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       Korean writers abroad

       In The Korea Times Chung Ah-young reports on Korean young writers trying to make it to global scene, as:

Han and Hae were among 38 writers who have been sent to overseas residence programs supported by the LTI since 2003. They have been dispatched to some 20 regions in the United States, Germany, Spain and France. The writers are supposed to participate in various events to promote Korean literature and build up friendships with foreign writers.

       It's an interesting approach -- I wonder how it will work out.
       See also the (limited selection of) Korean literature under review at the complete review.

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       Solstice and Other Poems review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Poems in Occitan by Aurélia Lassaque, Solstice and Other Poems.
       Occitan -- yes, that's the lenga d'òc (i.e. langue d'oc).

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       Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2013

       They've announced that Gerbrand Bakker's The Detour (published in the US as Ten White Geese), translated by David Colmer, has won the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. (Interestingly, the Readers' Prize and the shadow iffp selection both went to other books.)
       Ten White Geese (i.e. the US edition of The Detour) only came out in the US in 2013, so it wasn't eligible for the most recently (just a few weeks ago) awarded Best Translated Book Award (for 2012 titles), but will certainly be in the running next year.
       In 2010 Bakker won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for The Twin, so he already has two of the major English-language international book awards under his belt -- impressive (though two other author have also managed this particular double: Orhan Pamuk and Per Petterson (the latter with the same book)).

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       The Hanging Garden review

       Last year was the Patrick White centenary, and among the highlights surrounding that was the posthumous publication (in Australia and the UK) of a novel he had begun in 1981 but left unfinished.
       Now Picador has brought out a US edition (as a beautiful little (i.e. appropriately -- more mass-market than trade -- sized) French-flapped paperback original) of The Hanging Garden -- and my review of it is the most recent addition to the complete review.
       It got good but not great critical attention in the UK (a lot of papers skipped it), but it's great to see that US coverage begins with a bang: apparently the cover-review of the coming (26 May) issue of The New York Times Book Review will be John Sutherland's take on the novel.
       (White has been critically and, especially, popularly neglected in recent years, and only a few of his titles are still in print (barely any in the US) -- but it wasn't always quite like that: recall that even something like The Twyborn Affair had been reviewed in, of all places, People (!) back in the day.)
       As longtime readers know, I'm a huge fan of White -- a batch of nine reviews (rather thin ones, I'm afraid) of White titles were among the first fifty-odd to appear on the site, more than 14 years ago (yes, back in April 1999), and almost all of his work is now under review (I'm saving up The Tree of Man, for a last hurrah -- and I still need to get my hands on a copy of Happy Valley).
       Unfinished and posthumous it may be, but The Hanging Garden is well worth your attention.

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       China and India to trade classics

       Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has been visiting India, and this has led to a variety of protocols, agreements, and 'memoranda of understanding' getting signed, as the two nations try to work more closely together in a number of areas.
       There's exciting stuff like 'coöperation in the field of sewage treatment' (something we certainly want the two most populous countries in the world to coöperate on) and 'coöperation in the field of water efficient irrigation'
       The one I'm most curious about, however, is number six: the "Memorandum of Understanding [...] on Cooperation in Mutual Translation and Publication of Classic and Contemporary Works".
       Yes, this:

MoU provides for a Joint Working Group that will coordinate translation and publication of 25 books of Classic and Contemporary Works of each side over a period of 5 years in to Chinese and Indian languages respectively.

       I'd love to see the list of books each side submits -- but regardless of the exact titles, it sounds like a very worthy undertaking (and maybe the start of something even bigger and better ?). Translation -- and cross-cultural exchange --, after all, is always something good.

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       'First Editions, Second Thoughts' auction

       Tomorrow 21 May at Sotheby's in London, at 19:30, there will be An auction of fifty contemporary first edition books, annotated by their authors, with all proceeds benefiting English PEN .
       Check out all the lots -- some great stuff here -- and if you're in London you can view the items before the sale, today and tomorrow.
       See also the Sotheby's official page.

       (Updated): See now also Rick Gekoski's helpful Notes on PEN's annotated first edition auction in The Guardian.

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       Soyinka Q & A

       SaharaReporters has a Q & A with Wole Soyinka -- mainly about Chinua Achebe.
       Interesting stuff, including his early doubts about the Heinemann African Writers Series (whereby Sri Lanka might not be the best example -- given how little-known Sri Lankan literature remains abroad, a series might have been damn helpful ...).
       Of course the Nobel comes up, too -- which Soyinka won and Achebe didn't. As I noted a few days ago, the Swedish Academy has just settled on the five finalists for this year's prize. As a laureate, Soyinka can submit a name each year -- not that he gives much away here:

As a 'club member,' however, I can nominate, and it is no business of literary ignoramuses whom, if any, I do nominate. My literary tastes are eclectic, sustainable, and unapologetic.

       That sounds promising, at least.

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       Sjón reviews

       Telegram Books have been publishing Icelandic author Sjón's books in the UK for a while now, and now he finally gets the proper treatment in the US as well, as Farrar, Straus and Giroux brought out a trio of his novels last week; two of them are the most recent additions to the complete review:

• The Blue Fox
• The Whispering Muse

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       Helen Garner on literary prizes

       In The Australian they have an adapted version of Helen Garner's keynote speech last month at the inaugural Stella Prize, the new Australian literary prize that only considers works by women -- though in speaking about The losing game of writing books to win Garner's focus isn't on the women-only aspect as instead she talks more generally:

about the bizarre effects of prizes on people's idea of their own worth, and about the undeniable fact that every girl who writes needs a bucket of cash to be thrown over her at least once in her life, so she can soldier on, and even feel for a while that it's been worth the torture.

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       Sunday Times Fiction Prize longlist shortlist

       I missed this last week, but they've announced the longlist for the (South African) Sunday Times Fiction Prize -- where, unusually for a literary prize, once again: "A large number of books on the longlist this year are crime novels".
       Among the authors of note with books on the 31-title-strong longlist are: Michiel Heyns, Nadine Gordimer, Imraan Coovadia (with the wonderfully titled The Institute for Taxi Poetry -- which I'd love to see), and Andre Brink.

       (Updated): This is one fast-paced literary prize: even as I originally posted this, they'd already announced the shortlist.

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       Étonnants Voyageurs

       They're holding this year's 'Festival international du livre et du film' Étonnants Voyageurs this weekend -- and that's a pretty fine and packed list of participants they have there.

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       Nobel Prize in Literature watch: it's down to five

       The 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature will only be announced in October, but previously the Swedish Academy -- who select the winner -- had revealed that 195 eligible names were submitted for consideration, of which 48 were first-timers (see my previous mention). Now, as they've tweeted:

5 candidates have been selected for 2013 #NobelPrize in #Literature according to Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy.

       The permanent secretary, Peter Englund, goes into a bit more detail at his weblog, Att vara ständig -- and apparently the five names have only been submitted; it's not entirely final until the last session before the summer at the end of the month.

       A couple of observations here:

        - No, they don't reveal the names. Not until fifty (and a half) years from now. In fact, they try very hard to keep them secret.

        - As I've repeatedly stressed: you have to be in it to win it -- or to make the shortlist. Which is easier said than done. There's a lot of Nobel/Swedish Academy bashing that misses this point.
       Consider, for example, Forged-author Jonathon Keats' recent Wired piece, Don't Hate Google for Reader - Award It the Nobel Prize for Books [sic]. He begins:

When the Nobel Prizes launched in 1901, possible choices for the award in literature, bestowed upon a living writer to honor their entire life's work, included such historical titans as Leo Tolstoy, Edith Wharton, and Henry James.

       The thing is, as a search for the 1901 nominees shows, Tolstoy, Wharton, and James were not among the names submitted to the Swedish Academy for consideration -- while eventual laureate Sully Prudhomme was nominated by three individuals (including a University of Uppsala professor), as well as a whole gang of French academicians -- i.e. he had a lot of support.
       This is relevant, because easy as it is for outsiders to say authors X,Y, and Z are obviously the most deserving, someone still has to nominate them for them to (possibly) make the final cut. So, for example, the information that this year the Swedish Academy tried to reach out to more African academics in the nominating procedure might suggest that there's a higher-than-usual chance of African names appearing in the pool the finalists were selected from. On the other hand, less well-known writers from less widely translated languages -- especially authors not in official favor (in a lot of these countries official writers' bodies do the nominating) -- are disadvantaged.

        - The only author whose nomination has widely (and controversially) been acknowledged is Paul Goma, his name submitted by the Writers' Union of Moldavia; see, for example, the Mediafax report -- and e.g. the Times of Israel report, Author accused of anti-Semitism nominated for Nobel. (His nomination can't just be dismissed out of hand as (noxious) political posturing, either: he doesn't stand much of a chance of winning -- after Herta Müller, it's unlikely another Romanian dissident would get the prize so soon -- but he's not just some two-bit hack (and he had very good dissident cred back in the day); among his books available in English is My Childhood at the Gate of Unrest (published by Readers International); (try to) get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.)

       In any case, now that the list is down to a manageable five, things get more interesting. The Swedish Academy members, who will be reading up on the finalists, will try to be careful, but it's probably pretty hard for all of them to cover their reading-tracks convincingly: it seems pretty clear, for example, that Mo Yan's name cropped up more last summer than they would have liked (which is why he found himself a betting favorite right from the start of last year's Nobel betting-season).
       The fact that a finalist or two or all five are identified only gets us so much closer to the actual winner -- who they only decide on in late September/early October, after all, but it's nice to be able to narrow the list down .....
       I wonder whether Swedish bookshops (or the various European Amazons -- surely some of the finalists' books will have to be ordered from abroad, as it's unlikely they have all been translated into Swedish) are tracking bigger orders to the Academy or the members ..... And a closer translation-watch is probably also called for: the Academy is apparently willing to commission translations of untranslated works, so if a translator from some obscure language suddenly has a big hush-hush project going .....

       At this point, the fact that they're down to five names doesn't get us (immediately) any closer to figuring out who the likely winner is (or, indeed, who is left in the running). Will Chinua Achebe's passing and the nominations from more African academics nudge them towards some continental names -- perennials like Nuruddin Farah or Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (or, dare I hope, someone like Ayi Kwei Armah) ? Did someone remember to nominate The Colonel-author Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, whose work-available-in-translation may have finally hit the critical level where he can't readily be overlooked any longer ? Will they toss it at Philip Roth, now that the old man has promised not to write any more books ?

       Here's hoping Swedes everywhere (and anyone in places where these academicians vacation) are keeping a close eye on the reading material the Swedish Academicians are lugging around ..... Sightings and gossip are always welcome here, too, if you have any to offer .....

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       Philip Gabriel translating the new Murakami novel

       In the Asahi Shimbun Mariko Nakamura reports that When it comes to publishing Haruki Murakami in English, nothing is lost in translation, revealing that Philip Gabriel:

is now translating Murakami's latest best-seller, Shikisai o Motanai Tazaki Tsukuru to, Kare no Junrei no Toshi [色彩を持たない多崎つくると、彼の巡礼の年] (Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage).

       And:

He plans to complete the translation by the year-end, with publication expected in 2014.

       Also:

"It is a very realistic book, like Norwegian Wood," Gabriel said in an e-mail interview. "To me, it seems more serious, even somber, compared to some of his other novels, but one ultimately that is hopeful."

       Don't worry, Murakami's other translator, Jay Rubin hasn't been forgotten, and he:

is currently translating Murakami's Ozawa Seiji-san to, Ongaku ni Tsuite Hanashi o Suru [小澤征爾さんと, 音楽について話をする] (Talking with Seiji Ozawa about music), which was published in 2011.

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       Self-publishing in ... India

       In the Times of India Parinatha Sampath reports that Now, authors prefer to be in control of their stories, as in India too authors are taking the self-publishing route.
       Here, too, authors already complain:

Publishers do avoid taking a risk with anything that is considered 'non-commercial'

       As I noted yesterday, one of the just-announced Commonwealth Prize regional winners also self-published; I find it hard not to see the increasing success many self-published writers are finding a sign that publishers are falling down on the job.

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       Hassan Blasim-avatars

       In Al-Ahram Weekly Youssef Rakha considers The four avatars of Hassan Blasim.
       See also my review of Blasim's The Madman of Freedom Square.

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       The Islands review-overview

       The most recent addition to the complete review is a review-overview of Carlos Gamerro's The Islands -- a novel with some appeal, but one that ultimately just wore me down.

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       Women in translation

       At the Words without Borders Dispatches weblog Alison Anderson wonders Where Are the Women in Translation ? noting that for translated works women authors are under-represented even more than the abysmal VIDA count has for reviews (and bylines, etc.) in general:

Twenty-six percent, however, is just an average I have chosen from my informal and hardly exhaustive or scientific survey into the percentage of women authors published in translation in a given year. (If anyone would like a more precise breakdown of the numbers, please contact me.)

       As I've noted many times previously, female authors are grossly under-represented among authors reviewed at the complete review -- historically (and pretty consistently) barely over 15 per cent of all reviewed titles are by female authors. (Yes, the most recently added review is of a book by a woman; yes, two of the past three added reviews are by women -- but look at say the last thirty or so titles and you're right back at that historic average .....)
       As Ruth Franklin noted on the subject in A Literary Glass Ceiling ? at The New Republic two years ago, one of the reasons for less reviews of books authored by women is simply because there are less of them to review -- maybe not across the board, but among the books considered by them (and me). So, for example, she found independents clearly under-publish women:

Graywolf, with 25 percent female authors, was our highest-scoring independent. The cutting-edge Brooklyn publisher Melville House came in at 20 percent. The doggedly leftist house Verso was second-to-last at 11 percent. Our lowest scorer ? It pains me to say it, because Dalkey Archive Press publishes some great books that are ignored by the mainstream houses. But it would be nice if more than 10 percent of them were by women.

       (I note that Dalkey Archive is one of the publishers who have put out the most books under review at the complete review -- well over 100 (and, yes, there's probably something sexist about my reviewing so many of their books ...).)
       Interestingly, this seems a particular issue with works in translation -- leading back to Anderson's question. Indeed, as I mentioned when I first mentioned Franklin's piece, some independents do even worse than the ones she looked at -- including, shockingly, translation-specialist Archipelago: a quick count suggests that out of 88 titles in their catalog only seven are authored by women (and four of those are by the same author, Magdalena Tulli). Another newer translation-focused publisher is Open Letter, and while at 12 out of 50 it scores considerably better, that (women still come in as authors of less than a quarter of all titles) still doesn't really impress.

       This seems to be a really deep-rooted problem/issue, and publishers really might want to look into this: I note, for example, that of the sixteen just announced 2013 English PEN grants for translation (see also below) two are anthologies, thirteen of the to-be-translated books are by men, and one is by a woman (Julia Franck). Seriously folks ? (Note that female translators, on the other hand, are very nicely represented.)

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       English PEN awards for translation

       English PEN has announced its 2013 awards for promotion (of five translated titles) and for translation (sixteen titles).
       Some promising-looking stuff here -- and, of course, I'm thrilled to see another book by The Colonel-author Mahmoud Dowlatabadi forthcoming in translation.

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       Prizes: Commonwealth Prize regional winners

       They've announced the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize and Commonwealth Short Story Prize regional winners.
       Disappointingly, the book prize has become solely a first book prize; impressively, one of the regional winners is a self-published work (good for them for being open to them).
       The stories will apparently be published online by Granta starting 27 May.
       The overall winners, selected from these finalists, will be announced 31 May.

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       Prize: Caine Prize shortlist

       The shortlist for the Caine Prize for African Writing -- another short story prize -- has been announced; all the finalist-stories can be read on the site (albeit only in the dreaded pdf format).
       While the shortlist was selected from 96 entries from 16 African countries (far too few !), an amazing four of the five finalists are Nigerian authors. Certainly, the Nigerian scene is a particularly vibrant one -- still, that's a shocking imbalance.
       But I must say I was impressed that one of the stories was originally published in the Journal of Progressive Human Services (print subscription pricing (for three issues a year): $140.00).

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       Literary Miniatures review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Florence Noiville's collection of Literary Miniatures, just out from Seagull Books.

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       Q & A: Alain Mabanckou

       At AfricanBookClub.com Hadrien Diez has a Q & A with Franco-Congolese Novelist Alain Mabanckou On African identity and the Difficulty of Defining an "African literature".
       His Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty is just out in English -- but only in the UK; see the Serpent's Tail publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.co.uk.

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       Q & As: Man Booker International Prize finalists

       The winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize will be announced 22 May, and in The Guardian they are running brief Q & As with the finalists -- five yesterday, with the other five to follow today [Updated: and, indeed, here are the other five].

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       The Lairds of Cromarty review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Jean-Pierre Ohl's The Lairds of Cromarty -- apparently now out in the US, too.
       This is yet another Dedalus title that seems to have gotten practically no review attention -- I'm mystified why the UK print media is ignoring so many of their titles.

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       Prize: 'The Ottaway' (for Promotion of International Literature)

       Words without Borders has announced that Drenka Willen to receive first James H. Ottaway Jr. Award for the Promotion of International Literature (which they're apparently hoping (?) will become known as 'the Ottaway'); it will be awarded at the Words without Borders tenth anniversary gala, on 29 October.
       It's great that they've established this award, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt editor Willen certainly is a worthy winner.

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       Prizes: American undergraduate writers' prizes

       They'll be announcing the "largest undergraduate literary prize in the nation" (the US, that is -- though in fact it seems to be the biggest in the world) -- worth a cool $61,192 this year (up from $58,274 last year) -- today, Washington College's Sophie Kerr Prize.
       They announced the five finalists earlier this month. They're all English majors, and the portfolio of one includes: "an excerpt from a screenplay about a man who accidentally discovers photographs of Sigmund Freud dressed in women's clothing".
       [Updated - 15 May]: And now they've announced that Tim Marcin took the prize. (No, he wasn't the guy with the Freud screenplay.)

       At $61,192 the Sophie Kerr is, of course, not to be outdone -- but the University of Texas at Austin tried, or at least tried to steal some of the thunder, by annoucing yesterday that English Senior Wins $50,000 Keene Prize for Literature. Okay, the Keene is only: "one of the world's largest student literary prizes" -- but it's still good money (and the runners-up do better, since: "An additional $50,000 will be divided among three finalists").
       I have no idea about the winner's actual talents, but, man, has she racked up the honors. Leaving aside the Keene:

She is also a recent recipient of the George H. Mitchell Undergraduate Award for Academic Achievement, sharing the $25,000 top prize. Last year, she received the Roy Crane Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in the Literary Arts, the Ellen Engler Burks Memorial Scholarship, the Bailey Prize in Poetry, and the James F. Parker Prize from the English Department. For her work on her senior thesis, a study of the poet Frank Stanford, Noble won a Rapoport-King Scholarship.

       I wouldn't worry too much about her future .....

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       BNU's International Writing Center

       At Beijing Normal University they've officially opened an International Writing Center (国际写作中心); see the official press release (sorry, Chinese); I haven't been able to find a departmental page/listing at the BNU site yet.
       Nobel laureate and Sandalwood Death-author Mo Yan is apparently the director; see, for example, the Xinhua report Mo Yan heads alma mater's writing center. He thinks it's time to encourage undergraduates to write (creatively) as well; no word yet whether remunerative American-style undergraduate writing prizes (see above) are in the works to add encouragement .....

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       Goethe in translation

       Via I find Raymond Sokolov's On Goethe in Translation at the Best American Poetry weblog.
       As he suggests:

Goethe in translation is a radically diminished author.

       And, yes, the sublime 'Über allen Gipfeln/ist Ruh' readily makes that clear.
       As Sokolov notes, even Goethe's best-known works are hardly read in the English-speaking countries nowadays. The shame of it, too, is that there's so much to Goethe, beyond just the most obvious (Werther, Faust, and some of the poems) -- huge chunks of his collected works (over forty volumes and somewhere north of 50,000 pages in the Suhrkamp collected works edition ...) are first rate.

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       Bestselling in ... Finland

       Books from Finland looks at what were the local Favourites in April: what Finland read, but the official (Finnish) site has the full April bestseller list -- and, yes, it is kind of disheartening to see the translated fiction category (an actual category !) headed by ... a novel by Paulo Coelho.
       Oh, yes: I do think Arktinen Banaani is a great name for a publisher.

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

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       (Not really) bestselling in ... South Korea

       Usually every couple of months in the US you hear of some case where a publisher or author tries to game the bestseller lists through bulk sales (and purchases) of a title, artificially inflating sales totals. In South Korea the game apparently works differently, as Kim Tong-hyung reports in The Korea Times in Plot turns for the worse that publishers:

stockpiled large volumes of the books and fraudulently represented them as being sold

       Needless to say, such:

Allegations that publishers are inflating the sales of books are another scandal the country’s terminally ill book market can do without.

       As one person suggests:

This represents the state of the Korean publishing market, which has become a black hole that sucks up everything except for books listed as bestsellers. Industry people talk about how big bookstores and online retailers will concentrate on promoting the books they anticipate will be absorbed by the publishers themselves, rather than the works they think will appeal to readers the most.

       Indeed, Kim is anything but sanguine:

Through a wave of consolidation that accompanied the bad economy in the past decade, the market is now dominated by mega retail chains like Kyobo Bookstore and a few large corporations that control the most influential publishing houses. Diversity was hurt as small publishers were driven out or marginalized, an intellectual vacuum epitomized by the slew of self-help books that are often worse than useless.

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       The Pity of Partition review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Ayesha Jalal on Manto's Life, Times, and Work across the India-Pakistan Divide, in The Pity of Partition, just out from Princeton University Press.

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

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