opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

       New Murakami (in Japan)

       A new volume of stories by Murakami Haruki is out in Japan, 女のいない男たち; see the 文藝春秋 publicity page.
       See, for example, The Japan Times report, Murakami's new book hits shelves amid fan frenzy; more ordered, as:

Publisher Bungei Shunju has already raised the first shipment of the book to 300,000 copies from 200,000 due to heavier-than-expected advance orders for the first compilation since 2005, local media said.

       You figure they'd have this figured out by now; I assume they just low-ball what they say the initial print run is so that they can report the 'heavier-than-expected' demand ..... (Of course, since this the publishing industry it's distinctly possible that they have nothing figured out .....)

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       Turkish fiction

       In Daily Sabah Kaya Genç considers Turkish Masterpieces Unread by the World -- both some available in translation and some that have yet to make it into English.
       Maureen Freely weighs in with some suggestions:

So which Turkish authors would she like to see in English ? The first name that came to her mind was Sevgi Soysal. Freely had translated Soysal's Yıldırım Bölge Kadınlar Koğuşu in her twenties but said it had been impossible to place Turkish writing in English publishing houses in those days. "The book of hers I really love is Şafak," Freely wrote. "And I also wish that somebody could bring the best of Murathan Mungan into English."

       See also the Turkish fiction under review at the complete review.

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       Peter Buwalda Q & A

       This week's Small Talk-column in the Financial Times has a Q & A with Peter Buwalda, whose Bonita Avenue is just out from Pushkin Press; see their publicity page and the Dutch Foundation for Literature information page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
       I'm won over by this response:

Which book changed your life ?

The Darkroom of Damocles by Willem Frederik Hermans, one of the great 20th-century Dutch writers. It's a novel about resistance in the second world war but also about personal failure. I read the book when I was 18. I stopped studying physics immediately and started studying literature.

       Damn, that warms the heart.

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       In the Light of What We Know review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Zia Haider Rahman's In the Light of What We Know -- apparently one of this year's 'big' debuts.

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       Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014)

       The 1982 Nobel laureate, Gabriel García Márquez, has passed away.
       Only two of his titles are under review at the complete review (I read pretty much all the rest before I started the site):

• Living to Tell the Tale
  
  
• Memories of My Melancholy Whores

       One Hundred Years of Solitude still seems to me the most significant novel of the past fifty years; get your copy -- if, incomprehensibly, you don't have one -- at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

       There has been extensive coverage (and much, much more will follow, no doubt); see, for example:

• Gabriel García Márquez obituary by Nick Caistor at The Guardian
  
  
• Gabriel García Márquez, Nobel laureate writer, dies aged 87 by Richard Lea and Jo Tuckman in The Guardian
  
  
• Gabriel García Márquez, Conjurer of Literary Magic, Dies at 87 by Jonathan Kandell in The New York Times
  
  
• Entwining Tales of Time, Memory and Love, 'an appraisal' by Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times
  
  
• Gabriel García Márquez: He proved that tall tales could be truer than facts by Gaby Wood in The Telegraph
  
  
• Gabriel García Márquez, Nobel Prize-winning explorer of myth and reality, dies at 87 by Marcela Valdes in The Washington Post

       But there's tons more -- especially in the Spanish-language press.

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       Göran Malmqvist profile

       In the South China Morning Post Janice Leung invites readers to Meet Göran Malmqvist, Nobel Prize member and champion of Chinese literature -- the Chinese-speaking member of the Swedish Academy.

       The big news here is Malmqvist claiming of Border Town-author Shen Congwen that:

If he hadn't passed away, he would have got the Nobel Prize in 1988

       Stop the presses ?!??
       Was the 1988 laureate -- Naguib Mahfouz -- really second choice ?
       Well, not so fast -- Shen passed away in May of 1988; he may well have been one of the (usually five) finalists by then, but they don't settle on a winner until the fall, so there's no way of telling whether he would have prevailed over Mahfouz. Still, interesting to hear he was so close.

       Also of interest: Malmqvist's complaints:

Unfortunately, he says, there are as many poor translators as there are good writers in China.

"What makes me angry, really angry," he cries, eyes blazing, "is when an excellent piece of Chinese literature is badly translated. It's better not to translate it than have it badly translated. That is an unforgivable offence to any author. It should be stopped.

"Often translations are done by incompetent translators who happen to know English, or German, or French. But a lot of them have no interest and no competence in literature. That is a great pity."

       One exception:

David Hawkes' rendition of Cao Xueqin's epic novel The Story of the Stone, which he regards as a rare gem of translated Chinese literature.

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       Reading Kundera in Central Europe

       At Eurozine they reprint a piece by Jonathan Bousfield from New Eastern Europe, Growing up in Kundera's Central Europe, in which he discusses how Milan Kundera's concept of Central Europe (and his writing) influenced three writers from the area -- from Czechoslovakia (Tomáš Zmeškal, "of mixed Czech and Congolese descent"), Yugoslavia (Miljenko Jergović, several of whose works have been translated into English), and the Soviet Union/Ukraine (The Moscoviad-author Yuri Andrukhovych) -- three countries that no longer have the same contours as they did when these authors were growing up, or even after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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       Fiona McCrae Q & A

       At Guernica Jonathan Lee has a Q & A with Graywolf Press-publisher Fiona McCrae, The Art of Independent Publishing.
       She worked at Faber during interesting times, too, and describes the pleasant surprise that was the success of Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses.

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       124 entries for Nigeria Prize for Literature

       The closing date for entries for this year's Nigeria Prize for Literature was 31 March, and they've now announced (though not yet at the official site ...) that there were 124 entries; see, for example, the This Day report.
       The prize rotates through four genres, and this year it's drama; the winner will receive US $100,000.
       To "encourage literary criticism" there's also a literary criticism prize, "open to literary critics from all over the world" (as long as the criticism is of Nigerian literature). Here the prize-sum is given in the local currency -- presumably since 1,000,000 naira sounds more impressive than its US dollar equivalent (less than $6200).

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       New Asymptote

       The April issue of Asymptote is now out -- and worth your while, top to bottom. Nevertheless, a few of the highlights:

• The Artist on her Trapeze: Barbara Wright's 99 Variations on a Theme by Raymond Queneau by David Bellos, on her translation of Raymond Queneau's classic Exercises in Style -- a piece apparently taken from Dalkey Archive Press' Barbara Wright: Translation as Art (see their publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk), a book I regretably haven't seen yet (but now have on reserve at the library)
  
  
• The Space between Languages by Herta Müller
  
  
• Adrian West on Marianne Fritz
  
  
• Brief Notes on Science by Gonçalo M. Tavares

       But don't overlook the rest, either !

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       Best Translated Book Awards - poetry finalists

       As a judge for the fiction category for the Best Translated Book Awards (and, let's face it, someone whose reading is entirely dominated by fiction (as I noted recently, 91 of the past 100 titles reviewed at the complete review were of works of fiction)) I focus almost exclusively on that half of the BTBA (see also yesterday's mention) -- but, of course, there's also a poetry half to the BTBA, and the finalists for that were also announced yesterday.
       I've only even seen one of these -- but that one is under review at the complete review: The Unknown University by Roberto Bolaño.

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       Don Bartlett Q & A

       At the World Literature Today weblog Sarah Smith has a Q & A with translator (of Knausgaard, among others) Don Bartlett, Translating Norway's Love of Literature.

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       Best Translated Book Award shortlist

       The shortlist for the Best Translated Book Award (for which I am a judge) has been announced, and the remaining ten titles are:

• The African Shore by Rodrigo Rey Rosa
  
  
• Blinding by Mircea Cărtărescu
  
  
• The Forbidden Kingdom by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff
  
  
• Horses of God by Mahi Binebine
  
  
• Leg Over Leg (Vol. 1) by Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq
  
  
• My Struggle: Book Two by Karl Ove Knausgaard
  
  
• Seiobo There Below by Krasznahorkai László
  
  
• The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
  
  
• Tirza by Arnon Grunberg
  
  
• A True Novel by Mizumura Minae

       Among the points of interest:

• Neither of the longlisted titles by Nobel laureates -- Sandalwood Death and Her Not All Her -- made the cut
  
  
• Four (!) volumes-that-are-parts-of-series (which I would have figured might have counted against them) made the cut: Cărtărescu, Ferrante, Knausgaard, al-Shidyaq
  
  
• Meanwhile, the three story-collections from the longlist all failed to advance
  
  
• The only language represented more than once ? Dutch !

       Six of the ten longlisted titles I voted for in this round of voting made the shortlist; five of the original ten titles I voted to be on the longlist have made it to the final round.

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       Pulitzer Prizes

       They've announced this year's Pulitzer Prizes.
       The fiction prize went to The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, which beat out The Son by Philipp Meyer and The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob Shacochis.

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       Knausgaard coverage

       Karl Ove Knausgaard and his multi-volume My Struggle epic (see reviews of volumes one and two, with more to follow) is getting a nice lot of attention.
       In the US the series is coming out in hardcover from Archipelago Books, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux then publishing each volume in paperback.
       Archipelago prints their copies in a more or less uniform look, boxy books with a cover design like this:



       The FSG paperbacks were originally designed (and the first one published) as:

   

       Universally reviled and ridiculed -- and presumably not selling as well as hoped for -- FSG appears to have had a change of heart -- and cover-designer. The first three volumes now look like this:

     

       Looks a bit more promising .....
       (But if you got a copy of the original FSG-volume one paperback, hold onto it -- collector's edition !)

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       New Swedish Book Review

       The 2014:1 Issue of the Swedish Book Review is now available online, including a whole bunch of reviews -- including of the most recent book by The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared-author Jonas Jonasson, Analfabeten som kunde räkna (which, disappointingly, will apparently be titled The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden in English); Kevin Halliwell finds him mining: "once more the material of his earlier work to produce another entertaining, Fieldingesque romp" (I think I might pass.)

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       Why I Killed My Best Friend review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Amanda Michalopoulou's Why I Killed My Best Friend, just out from Open Letter.

       (Oddly, of the last four books I've reviewed, three have some form of 'kill' in their title (even more oddly, the one book that doesn't is the only real mystery/thriller among them ...); I'm not quite sure what to read into that.)

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       Svenska Akademiens nordiska pris

       The Swedish Academy (the folks that decide who gets the Nobel Prize, among others) announced a month ago that Lars Gustafsson would be getting their Nordic Prize, and the ceremony was held on Wednesday, Gustafsson picking up his 350,000 kronor prize (a bit more than $53,000 at the current exchange rate). Previous winners include Purge-author Sofi Oksanen (last year) and Per Olov Enquist (2010).
       At his weblog Swedish Academy permanent secretary Peter Englund writes about the event, while in Svenska Dagbladet Per Wästberg has a nice tribute, Hos Lars Gustafsson är gåtan svaret.

       New Directions brought out a pile of Gustafsson's works but seem to have lost interest -- a shame. He deserves more and continued attention.

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       Writing in ... Norway

       Evan Hughes recently published a profile of My Struggle (etc.) author Karl Ove Knausgaard in The New Republic and now follows that up with a wide-eyed report on how wonderful the literary situation in Norway is, The Norwegian Government Keeps Book Publishers Alive.
       It's always fun to read Americans writing about state support in other nations for ... well, almost everything (even outrageous things like ... health care !), but especially the arts.
       The Norwegian situation is a bit unusual -- they have even more money to play with than most countries (and, unlike most of the other oil-rich nations, are more convincingly democratic, and less corrupt ...), but a lot of this sort of support, direct and indirect, is common elsewhere too. And some things surely are less than ideal -- such as: "The leading bookstore chains in Norway are owned by the major publishing companies".

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       Ozick on Reiner Stach on Kafka

       In The New Republic the great Cynthia Ozick writes on the first two volumes of Reiner Stach's Kafka-biography (the third volume, covering his early years, is apparently nearing completion), in How Kafka Actually Lived -- well worth a read.
       While I agree with much that she says -- and admire the way she puts it -- I'm not not fully on board with all her raging against the term 'Kafkaesque'. As she notes, "it has by now escaped the body of work it is meant to evoke" -- and that's exactly how I see it: it seems perfectly fine (if admittedly a bit confusing) to me if treated as such: I find 'Kafkaesque' a useful shorthand in describing some writing and situations, but when I do I never mean anything to do with Kafka; so, also, Kafka's own writing doesn't seem in the least 'Kafkaesque' to me and I would never call it that.

       For the Stach-volumes (which I have, and hope to get to):

• Kafka: The Decisive Years: see the Princeton University Press publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk
  
  
• Kafka: The Years of Insight: see the Princeton University Press publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

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       LA Times Book Prize winners

       They announced the winners of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes on Friday.

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       Kamila Shamsie profile

       In The Guardian Natalie Hanman profiles Kamila Shamsie.
       Of particular interest:

She is scathing about what she sees as a lack of rage in the fiction coming out of the world's superpower, a country with such a tangled involvement -- both past and present -- in the region she comes from. "I am deeply critical of American writers for their total failure to engage with the American empire. It's a completely shocking failure, not of any individual writer ... but it's the strangest thing to look around and say, 'Where is the American writer writing about America in Afghanistan, America in Pakistan ?'. At a deep level, there is a lack of reckoning."

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       Up and coming, out of Russia ?

       At Russia Beyond the Headlines Phoebe Taplin considers what she terms Future legends of Russian literature at the London Book Fair.
       A lot of names bandied about, and among the most interesting is Eugene Vodolazkin -- see also the Banke, Goumen & Smirnova information page, as well as Lizok's Bookshelf's review of his Лавр (apparently coming to English soon).
       Given that even what should have been a very impressive one-two punch by Mikhail Shishkin of Maidehair and The Light and the Dark barely seems to have even registered in the US/UK I think contemporary Russian fiction still has quite the uphill climb -- and I don't know that any of the authors mentioned here will help make much of a dent either.

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       How's the Pain ? review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Pascal Garnier's How's the Pain ?.
       Gallic Books brought this out in the UK in 2012, and now it's finally also coming to the US -- and let's hope the flood of Garnier titles continues, because these are damn fine books.

       Also a nice touch: translator Emily Boyce is described as the: "in-house translator for Gallic Books". Every publisher should have an in-house translator !
       (Of course, less nice, still: the translation copyright is in Gallic Books' name, not Boyce's .....)

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       Guggenheim fellowships

       They've announced the 2014 (US and Canadian) Guggenheim fellows -- 178 of them (from almost 3000 applicants).
       As always, lots of writers -- and a few translators, notably Susan Bernofsky for two Robert Walser works.

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       Writing from ... (North) Korea

       Korean writing has been increasingly visible in English in recent years (with lots of help from the LTI Korea), with more titles being published in translation -- especially in Dalkey Archive Press' Library of Korean Literature -- and just now there's been a Korea Market Focus at the just-concluded London Book Fair.
       Of course, pretty much all of this is South Korean literature (and the part that's not tends to be pre-divided Korean ...), i.e. there's not much heard or word from North Korea. Insights of any sort remain rare -- see, for example, Sonia Ryang's Reading North Korea -- but it's good to see at least some discussion of the subject around the LBF events.
       At Publishing Perspectives Olivia Snaije reports on Yi Mun-Yol on Allegory and Naked North Korean Writing, as Yi (see my reviews of Our Twisted Hero and The Poet, among others) addressed the subject:

He said there was almost zero literary output coming from North Korea, and that in the case of the few non-fiction books that make their way to South Korea, "even though the language is the same, we can't identify with them. The forms and mechanisms are completely unfamiliar. We feel like we're reading South Korean books from 50 years ago."

       (North Korean non-fiction sounds particularly uninteresting, but surely there's some fiction that trickles out, no ?)
       Apparently speaking about North Korean exiles now writing in the South:

While he finds North Korean authors' stories very interesting, unfortunately South Koreans don't appear to be responsive to what they have to say, remarked Yi Mun-yol.

       Meanwhile, at PEN Atlas Shirley Lee reports on North Korean love poetry (and wouldn't it be great to see an anthology of that stuff ?).

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       Mansoura Ez-Eldin Q & A

       At Qantara.de Arian Fariborz has a Q & A with Mansoura Ez-Eldin about the literary situation in Egypt these past few years.
       Ez-Eldin's story, Gothic Night, is available online. I have a copy of Maryam's Maze and will try to get a review up soon; meanwhile, see the American University in Cairo Press publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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       Prizes: Magnesia Litera

       The Czech Magnesia Litera awards have been handed out, and as Jan Richter reports at Radio Praha, Guide to wartime Prague wins top literary award, as the non-fiction category winner, the unusual Průvodce protektorátní Prahou by Jiří Padevět also took book of the year honors.
       The fiction category winner was Skutečná událost, by Of Kids & Parents-author Emil Hakl; see also the (Czech) Argo publicity page.
       The translation category winner was Robert Svoboda's translation of Esterházy Péter's Celestial Harmonies (get your copy of the English translation at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk).

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       Prize: Gyldendalprisen

       The Gyldendalprisen, a Norwegian award for significant writing in any genre, has been awarded to Øyvind Rimbereid; see, for example, the report, Poet wins prestigious literature prize.
       The previous two winners were Karl Ove Knausgård and Per Petterson, and other winners include Dag Solstad (1996), Jon Fosse (1999), and Tomas Espedal (2009), so it certainly has a good track record. The 400,000 kroner prize -- US$67,428 at the current exchange rate -- isn't bad either.

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       Indonesia prepares for Frankfurt

       Indonesia will be the 2015 Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair, and in the Jakarta Post Niken Prathivi considers Frankfurt Book Fair 2015: How serious is Indonesia in promoting its culture, literature ?
       Among the news:

So far, we've translated 61 titles -- there are about 40 to go. We're optimistic that every title will be ready by next year

       Sounds good.
       Less good:

Even so, Wandi is realistic. "Most publishers overseas still look down on Indonesian books. Only books from great and famous authors, like Pramoedya Ananta Toer, get their attention."

       And pretty disappointing to hear (from Kate Griffin, international programme director for the British Centre for Literary Translation):

"In the UK, we are generally not as adventurous and open to other literary styles as other European countries. Crime fiction in translation is popular, as is straightforward storytelling, but not so much literary experiments.

"This means that UK publishers are often quite cautious in what they choose to translate, selecting titles that don't stray too far from the taste of UK readers and familiar literary styles. They might focus on genres such as crime, or big family sagas, to be sure that there is an audience," she said.

       Sigh.
       Meanwhile, see the official sites, Indonesia @Frankfurt Book Fair and Indonesia goes Frankfurt 2015.

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       Killing the Second Dog review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Marek Hłasko's Killing the Second Dog, a re-issue from New Vessel Press (they're following up later this year with All Backs were Turned -- Cane Hill Press first brought these translations out some two decades ago).

       Amusing Killing the Second Dog trivia: in 1995 the New York Daily News reported:

Fresh from his Outbreak box office success, Dustin Hoffman has bought the rights to Killing the Second Dog, Marek Hlasko's novel about a gigolo in Israel who preys on rich American women

       Too bad that never made it to the screen -- it definitely has screen potential, and some prime acting roles.

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       Shortlist: IMPAC award

       They've announced the ten-title-strong shortlist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award -- selected from 152 titles nominated by libraries from around the world.
       Several titles are under review at the complete review:

• A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard
• The Detour by Gerbrand Bakker
• The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
• [Traveller of the Century by Andrés Neuman]

       The most interesting of these titles is the Bakker -- published as Ten White Geese in the US: the winner of the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, it didn't even make the 25-title strong Best Translated Book Award longlist in 2014 -- and his The Twin (shortlisted for the 2010 Best Translated Book Award) won the 2010 IMPAC award.
       The winner of the €100,000 prize will be announced 12 June.

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       Shortlist: NSW Premier's Literary Awards

       They've announced the shortlists for the (Australian) NSW Premier's Literary Awards.
       Among the categories: there's a: 'Community Relations Commission Award for a Multicultural NSW'.
       The winners will be announced 19 May.

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       Africa39 selected

       They've been looking for the Africa39, 'a Hay Festival and Rainbow Book Club Project':

which aims to select and celebrate 39 of the best African south of the Sahara writers under the age of 40

        [Aside: if you're excluding writers from north of the Sahara, why not call yourself the 'Africa south of the Sahara 39' ? My complaining about the Man Asian Literary Prize calling itself 'Asian' -- when, for its first years, it excluded writers from nations west of Pakistan (i.e. an enormous part of Asia) -- seems to have paid off (writers from most Asian countries are now eligible), so I'll register the same complaint here: you can't (and shouldn't) call/consider yourself continental if you aren't. (I note also that the the writers who suffer most from this exclusion are those writing in Arabic -- as is also still the case with the remaining Asian nations excluded from the Man Asian Literary Prize -- what's that about ?)]
       Anyway, they've now come up with the 39 authors -- though I can't even find a simple list of all of them, or any sort of press release -- the official site has a ridiculous alphabetical index, the official weblog is ... not very helpful, the official Twitter feed a joke [Updated: okay, this Twitter feed -- now the official one -- looks a bit more promising]. Come on, this is a worthy endeavor -- these authors deserve better !

       (Updated - 10 April): See now also Margaret Busby in The Guardian on Africa39: how we chose the writers for Port Harcourt World Book Capital 2014 (where you can also find all the authors listed one one simple list -- hurrah !). Incredibly, she doesn't even mention that entries were limited to south-of-the-Sahara-Africans (since those north of the Sahara apparently don't count as 'African' (or as 'writers' ?)). She does point out the admirable fact that -- other than completely skipping over anything written in Arabic -- they've managed a linguistically nicely diverse group: "Twenty countries are represented by work created in a variety of African and European languages -- Kiswahili, Igbo and Lingala as well as English, French, Spanish and Portuguese".

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       Altschulova metoda

       I'm already won over by an article that reveals that the chief rabbi (of both Prague and the Czech Republic), Karol Sidon, admits:

I couldn't read anything but what is considered lowbrow sci fi literature which I really love

       But how great to hear that he went on to write his own (and publish it under a pseudonym) -- and that, as Jan Velinger reports at Radio Praha, Prague rabbi pens literary hit of season, as the first volume of his planned tetralogy, Altschulova metoda (see the (Czech) Torst publicity page), has become a big hit
       Sounds pretty wild -- I'd love to hear more about this.

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       Shortlist: Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

       They've announced the shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize -- and three of the six titles are under review at the complete review (I believe the other three are not yet US-available):

• A Man in Love by Karl Ove Knausgaard
• Revenge by Ogawa Yoko
• Strange Weather in Tokyo by Kawakami Hiromi

       The Knausgaard also has a chance to double up, with the shortlist for the Best Translated Book Award (for which I am a judge) due to be announced 15 April (the other IFFP longlisted title still in the running for the BTBA shortlist is The Infatuations by Javier Marías, which did not make the IFFP final six).
       The winner will be announced 22 May.

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       Shortlist: Orange Prize for Fiction

       The Orange Prize for Fiction -- which currently styles itself the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction -- has announced its shortlist.
       See also chair of judges Helen Fraser's obligatory article, Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2014: How do you read 158 books in 16 weeks ?
       Choice quote:

I must admit that I got very tired of nineteenth century novels where there was only one woman character of any interest and she was a prostitute.

       The only shortlisted title under review is The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.
       The winner will be announced on 4 June.

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       Writing in ... Tamil

       In The Hindu 'Lakshmi Krupa speaks to publishers in the city to understand what works and what doesn't when it comes to Tamil books', in Tamil in the time of Kindle.
       (I'm rather disappointed and embarrassed that there are still no translations from the Tamil under review at the complete review -- but the books are relatively hard to come by (not a good sign).)

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

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       Writing from ... Burma

       In the Myanmar Times Douglas Long reports on Universal themes: Bringing Asian literature to Western readers.
       Since this involves 'literary' agents I have my doubts about how this will work out; still, of some interest.

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

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       Tuer le père review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Amélie Nothomb's Tuer le père. (Her book-a-year output gets translated as a matter of course into most European languages, but not English; so too this one is available in German, Italian, Spanish, etc., but not English.)

       In other Amélie Nothomb news: 15-16 May they're holding an international conference in Paris, Identity, Memory, Place: Amélie Nothomb: Past, Present and Future.

       And in even more exciting Nothomb news: this year the Best Translated Book Award will be announced on 28 April, in the US -- and in Paris, at Shakespeare and Company, with Nothomb announcing the fiction winner !

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

       Book trailers ... in Thailand

       In the Bangkok Post they report on: 'How bloggers and netizens are being tapped by traditional publishers dedicated to the noble goal of passing on the reading bug -- while making a few baht in the process', in Word-wise web.
       The first example they cite is:

Last week a video clip went viral. It features a mock interview with a Westerner who recounts his first experience of being cursed at by Thai people. Deftly using comical expletives and po-faced humour, the clip clocked up one million hits within 24 hours. At the end of the five-minute video, called BKK 1st Time, the clip reveals itself to be an advertisement for a new book, a lighthearted piece of non-fiction written by a Thai student. The gist of the matter is that this publication, entitled New York 1st Time, is to be launched at the 42nd National Book Fair

       Last I checked, the video had 2,333,389 views, which seems pretty good for a ... book trailer; compare that to, say, the trailer for B.J.Novak's One More Thing (233,010 views), or the trailer for Gary Shteyngart's Little Failure (with James Franco), with all of ... 37,997 views.
       See also publisher Salmon Books' site -- and note how many of the covers also have the title in English.

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

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       Shipwrecks review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Yoshimura Akira's Shipwrecks.

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

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       The last 100 reviews

       There are now more than 3300 reviews at the complete review, so it's time for a statistical look at the last 100 (well, reviews 3201 through 3300):

        - the 100 reviews were posted in 187 days (previous hundred: 184 days), and totaled 89,132 words (previous hundred: 89,651). (Wow -- a steady and consistent pace !)

        - reviews were of books originally written in 22 different languages -- the best-represented languages being French (20) followed by English (19) and German (13). One new language was added (Thai), bringing the total number of languages represented at the complete review to 63. See also the language list for a full breakdown of all languages

        - reviewed books were by authors from 36 countries, led by France (16), the US (10), Germany (8), and Japan (7).

        - 89 of the 100 reviewed titles were novels (plus two story-collections) -- fiction continues to dominate completely

        - more titles from the 1930s were reviewed (6) than the 1970s (3) and 1980s (2) combined; six titles were written before 1900 (all 19th century titles)

        - no book received a grade of A or A+, but 13 were graded A-; one book was graded F

        - shamefully (and almost absurdly) only 13 of the reviewed titles were written by women, lowering the percentage of female-authored titles at the site from 15.14 per cent to 15.08 per cent; see also the full breakdown here.

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

       Tulenkantaja-palkinto !

       Here's an interesting idea for a peripheral literature/literary language: a prize for the local book published in the past year which: "is estimated to have the 'best export potential'". That's what they have in Finland, with the Tulenkantaja-palkinto (which, with a payout of €5,000, is worth more than most foreign rights deals ...); see also the Books from Finland report, Potentially translatable.
       Personally, I'd rather see finalists Leena Krohn or Asko Sahlberg in English (or some other language I can read) than the 'graphic novel' that won, but still -- sounds like a good idea.

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

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       The Hindu prize

       The Hindu prize for fiction has issued its annual call for entries -- though note: "Only works of literary merit will be considered".
       Of more concern to me, the disappointing news that, once again:

Only original works in English will be eligible. Works in Indian languages or translations are not eligible.

       (Because, you know, it's an Indian literary prize, and all these annoying local languages are ... well, apparently just annoying and better disregarded.)
       Years ago I voice my disappointment about this same limitation, and was assured:

We will be branching into more categories covering translations, regional languages and others in subsequent editions of the award.

       God, I am a gullible, stupid arsehole, aren't I ? I actually thought they meant it.
       What a terrible message it sends to those in India writing in languages other than English. (It leaves the Crossword Book Award, and its 'Translation Award', as the major Indian literary prize willing to consider works that weren't originally written in English.)

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

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       Translation in ... India

       The second of K.Satchidanandan's articles on 'the culture of translation in India' is now also available in The Hindu; see:

1. Do you understand me ?
2. An attempt to retrieve history

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

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