opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

       Writing (and translation) in ... Burma

       The Myanmar Times offers a top-ten list of local (Burmese) authors and translators.
       Very little Burmese fiction is available in translation (hence also very little under review at the complete review), but maybe some US/UK publishers will take a look at some of these .....
       And neat to see translators considered such a significant part of the local literary culture to be (such a big) part of a list like this.

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       MoLI preview

       The Museum of Literature Ireland opens its doors on Friday, and in the Irish Times Gemma Tipton offers a First look inside the new Museum of Literature Ireland.
       It certainly sounds like it will be worth a visit.

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       Tulu

       The Deccan Herald reports on B A Viveka Rai's call that 'Novels, stories should be translated to Tulu', as he noted:

Tulu has all qualities to be included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, however, lack of interest in taking up the issue has left the language get unnoticed

       There are a lot official languages in India -- and a lot of others -- but Tulu seems an interesting case. Not a huge number of speakers (readers ...), but Deepa Bhasthi's article in ArtReview Asia, Lost in Translation, suggests it (and its literature/orature) are worth a closer look (and is also a fascinating piece on the script which is used to write a language).

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       Prix Sade

       They've announced the winners of this year's prix Sade -- there's no official site, just, ugh. a ... Facebook page, but fortunately also a Twitter-mention from the chair of the jury, Emmanuel Pierrat, who reports that Querelle by Kevin Lambert (see also the Le Nouvel Attila publicity page) and Métaphysique de la viande by Christophe Siébert (see also the Au Diable Vauvert publicity page) shared the prize.

       (Updated - 16 September): See now also the Livres Hebdo report.

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       The Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Geoffrey Hill's posthumous collection, The Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin, recently from Oxford University Press.

       Nice to see this getting some serious coverage elsewhere too -- including now a more than 6000-word review by Seamus Perry in the current London Review of Books.

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       György Konrád (1933-2019)

       Hungarian author György (George) Konrád has passed away; see, for example, the Pablo Gorondi/AP obituary in The Washington Post
       Best-known for his first novel, The Case Worker -- is that really out of print in English ? -- quite a few of his works have been translated into English; The City Builder, which first came out in English in the Philip Roth-edited 'Writers from the Other Europe'-series from Penguin and was reïssued by Dalkey Archive Press about a decade ago, might be your best bet; see the Dalkey publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
       See also the official Konrád site.

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       Syrian Book Fair

       Syria may be war-torn, bombed to pieces, and with a majority of its population internally and externally displaced, but that hasn't stopped the regime from trying to maintain a semblance of behind the head-/front-lines normalcy -- and so, for example, they're currently holding the 31st Syrian Book Fair.
       Really.
       The Syrian Times reports that 31st Book Fair Witnesses Notable Arab and Foreign Participation (publishing houses representing ... all of ten countries are apparently on hand, from: "Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Oman, Jordan, Sudan, Iran, Russia, Indonesia and Denmark") -- with the (to me) most surprising titbit being that: "237 publishing houses, including 150 Syrian ones are taking part" -- i.e. there are 150 functioning Syrian publishing houses ?!??
       SANA (the Syrian Arab News Agency) reports how 31st edition of Book Fair kicks off at al-Assad Library -- counting only six foreign participants, but noting that this year's theme is: "the book is a creation for brain". (SANA also have an Arabic report on what appears to have been one of the poetry festival events, with the ... welcoming title 'Greetings to the Resistance' (yeah, I think they mean that differently there ...); this article does not appear to be available in an English version .....)

       Maybe I shouldn't be surprised -- I've mentioned Somalia's thriving book fairs several times in recent years, for example -- but I have to admit I'm still shaking my head. And yes, sure, books, good -- but .....

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       Dhahan Prize

       They've announced the winners of this year's Dhahan Prize, the Canada-based prize: "awarded for excellence in Punjabi literature" which awards: "$25,000 annually to the best book of fiction published in either Gurmukhi or Shahmukhi scripts, along with two additional finalist prizes of $10,000 CDN"
       A short story collection by Jatinder Singh Haans took the top award this year.
       See also the Vancouver Sun report.

       I think this is wonderful -- with the odd Canadian locale actually seeming help get some cross-border attention for Punjabi fiction -- desperately needed, apparently, because how many books translated from the Punjabi into English do you think are listed at the entire (2008-2020) Translation Database at Publishers Weekly ? (Clue: they don't even bother/need to list 'Punjabi' among the long list of languages from which works have been translated into English .....)

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       Translation: Chinese → Arabic

       At Xinhua, in Interview: Translation main way to narrow gap between Arabic and Chinese cultures: Egyptian translator, Marwa Yahya and Maryam Kadry speak with Ahmed al-Saeed, who says: "Translation of Chinese books is the main gate to narrow the gap between Arabic and Chinese cultures".
       Hey, it's not the worst idea -- and more translation between these languages is surely welcome.

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       'Francis Bacon: Books and Painting'

       At the Centre Pompidou the exhibition Bacon en toutes lettres ('Francis Bacon: Books and Painting' they're calling it in English) is on through 20 January.
       It's inspired by his reading -- relying also on Bacon's Books: Francis Bacon's library and its role in his art, where they also inventoried his personal library of about one thousand books; eventually they plan to to digitally catalogue the texts (including: "the digital scanning of book covers, and those pages in the texts that are marked with the artist's notations, paint accretions, and heavy usage/wear"); for now you can at least download the list of books (warning ! .xls file !).
       In The New York Times Cody Delistraty introduces the exhibition, in Francis Bacon Read Just as He Painted: Deep, Dark and Bleak.

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       Baillie Gifford Prize longlist

       They've announced the twelve-title longlist for this year's Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction (yes, what used to be known as the Samuel Johnson Prize and then the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize).
       I haven't seen any of these -- but I am curious about Julia Lovell's Maoism: A Global History; her The Politics of Cultural Capital: China's Quest for a Nobel Prize in Literature was certainly interesting.
       The shortlist will be announced on 22 October, the winner on 19 November

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       New Asymptote

       The September issue of Asymptote is now up -- and it's an all-Catalan issue (though there aren't quite as many pieces as in the usual issue).

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       Prix Femina longlists

       They've announced the longlists for this year's prix Femina, another French literary prize that awards a prize both for the best work of French fiction and the best foreign work; translations from the English in the running include novels by Maggie Nelson, Sigrid Nunez, and Edna O'Brien (the Chris Kraus is the German one, not the American one); see the Livres Hebdo report.
       This is also a four-round prize, with the short lists to be announced 8 October, shorter lists on the 23rd, and the winners on 5 November.

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       Serotonin review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Michel Houellebecq's Serotonin, due out in a couple of weeks in the UK from William Heinemann and in November in the US from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

       There are already quite a lot English-language reviews of it -- but I'm a bit surprised the translation hasn't gotten more anticipation buzz yet. Come on -- it's Houellebecq !

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       Wilhelm Raabe-Literaturpreis shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize; see, for example, the BuchMarkt report.
       There is some overlap -- two titles -- with the recently announced German Book Prize longlist -- the novels by Norbert Scheuer and Saša Stanišić.
       The Wilhelm Raabe actually pays out more than the German Book Prize -- €30,000 vs. €25,000 -- and has also been around longer, but between 2000 and 2010 it was only awarded biennially; it is also a sort of successor to the Wilhelm Raabe-Preis der Stadt Braunschweig, awarded between 1944 and 1990 (triennially, from 1954 on), but a sometime book, sometime author prize (which did go to some great authors and books, however, including,in 1975, Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries).
       Winners of the more recent iteration under review at the complete review are: Wolf Haas' The Weather Fifteen Years Ago (2006), Sibylle Lewitscharoff's Blumenberg (2011), and Christian Kracht's Imperium (2012).

       This year's winner will be announced 3 November.

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       Grand prix de littérature américaine longlist

       They've announced the longlist Grand prix de littérature américaine -- a French prize for the best American work; see the Livres Hebdo report.
       The winner will be announced 11 November.

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       Prix Médicis longlists

       They've announced the longlists for the prix Médicis, with fifteen novels in the French category, and thirteen in the foreign category; see, for example, the Livres Hebdo report.
       Always interesting to see what translated fiction is attracting notice abroad, and beside several English-language titles -- novels by Joyce Carol Oates and Regina Porter, and Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi's Kintu -- they also have works by Mircea Cărtărescu, Christian Kracht, and Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, among others.
       This is another four-round prize -- i.e after this they'll announce a shortlist (30 September), shorter list (29 October), and only then the winner (8 November).

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       aspekte-Literaturpreis finalists

       They've announced the five finalists for this year's aspekte-Literaturpreis, a German debut-prose prize.
       They've been awarding this since 1979, and the roster of winners is quite impressive -- including Herta Müller, who won for her 1984 debut -- but the only winning title under review at the complete review is Eugen Ruge's In Times of Fading Light (2011).

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       German-Israeli Literature Days

       They recently held German-Israeli Literature Days (4 and 8 September), and at Deutsche Welle Sabine Peschel reports on them, and on how Authors react to growing populism at the German-Israeli lit fest

       (Updated - 11 September): See now also the Q & A with Dov Alfon and Friedrich Ani at Deutsche Welle.

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       Enrique Vila-Matas Q & A

       At the Los Angeles Review of Books Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi has a Q & A with Enrique Vila-Matas.
       They discuss his recent Mac's Problem (published in the UK as: Mac and His Problem, because ...); there are seven other Vila-Matas titles under review at the complete review, including Because She Never Asked.

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       Welcome to America review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Linda Boström Knausgård's Welcome to America, just out in English from World Editions.

       This was a finalist for the leading Swedish literary prize, the Augustpriset, in 2016, when the prize went to Lina Wolff's The Polyglot Lovers; I liked that one too, but this is an even finer work.

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       Translating Anniversaries

       Damion Searls' translation of Uwe Johnson's great novel, Anniversaries, was one of the major translation-events (and -accomplishments) of recent years.
       Though not eligible for either the Best Translated Book Award (because there was a previous -- though criminally abridged -- translation of the work) or the Man Booker International Prize (because author Johnson is dead), it was awarded the 2019 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize -- and at Words without Borders you can now read Searls' acceptance speech, Vitality Enough: Translating "Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl".

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       Sunday Times Literary Awards

       They've announced the winners of this year's (South African) Sunday Times Literary Awards, with The Theory of Flight, by Siphiwe Ndlovu, winning the Barry Ronge Fiction Prize; see, for example, the Penguin publicity page.

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       Prix Jean Monnet de littérature européenne

       They've announced the winner of this year's prix Jean Monnet de littérature européenne, awarded to the best European novel translated into French in the last year, and it is Le assaggiatrici by Rosella Postorino, published as At the Wolf's Table in the US (see the Flatiron publicity page) and forthcoming as The Women at Hitler's Table in the UK (because god forbid they'd use the same title in two English-language markets ...; see the HarperCollins publicity page). It beat out Robert Menasse's The Capital, and books by Gonçalo M. Tavares, Julian Barnes, Graham Swift, and Bernhard Schlink, among others.
       Previous winners of this prize include Antonio Tabucchi's Pereira Declares (1995), Harry Mulisch's The Discovery of Heaven (1999), Angel Wagenstein's Farewell, Shanghai (2004), and Christoph Ransmayr's Atlas of an Anxious Man.

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       Österreichischer Buchpreis longlist

       They've announced the ten title strong longlist for this year's Austrian Book Prize, selected from 140 titles.
       It includes books by Norbert Gstrein, Gerhard Roth, and Clemens J. Setz; the only title also longlisted for the German Book Prize is Marlene Streeruwitz's Flammenwand.
       The shortlist will be announced on 8 October, and the winner on 4 November.

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       Prix Sade shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's prix Sade -- noteworthy not only because Sade romancier by Dominique Dussidour didn't make the cut, but because two titles that were not on the longlist did make the shortlist (this happens with some French literary prizes), including a second Pierre Louÿs title; see, for example, the Livres Hebdo report.
       The winner will be announced 14 September.

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       Kiran Nagarkar (1942-2019)

       Indian author Kiran Nagarkar has passed away; see, for example, the Scroll.in report, Kiran Nagarkar (1942-2019): A writer both bawdy and lyrical, both irreverent and political.
       Seven Sixes are Forty-Three is the only one of his books under review at the complete review, but by an odd coïncidence, his Cuckold is among a batch of used books I ordered online a couple of days ago; it is in the mail as I write this.

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       Ottaway Award

       Words without Borders have announced that their Ottaway Award -- which: "recognizes an individual whose work and activism have supported WWB's mission of promoting cultural understanding through the publication and promotion of international literature" -- will go to translator and Why Translation Matters-author Edith Grossman this year.
       She gets to pick it up at the Words Without Borders Gala on 29 October, with Daniel Hahn presenting the award.

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       BookSpot Literatuurprijs longlists

       The longlists for the Dutch BookSpot Literatuurprijs, awarded in both fiction and non categories, have been announced, fifteen titles each.
       Previously known as the ECI Literatuurprijs, and before that as the AKO Literatuurprijs, this remains one of the leading Dutch literary prizes, and continues to pay out €50,000 to the winners; several previous winning titles are under review at the complete review -- Marcel Möring's The Great Longing (1993), Arnon Grunberg's Phantom Pain (2000) and De asielzoeker (2004), and A.F.Th.van der Heijden's Het schervengericht (2007) --, and several others have also been translated into English.
       Admirably -- and like all prizes should -- they reveal the groslijst (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) of all the titles considered for the prize.
       The shortlists will be announced 25 September, the winners on 14 November.

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       The Chestnut Man review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Søren Sveistrup's thriller, The Chestnut Man, now just out in a US edition as well.

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       JCB Prize for Literature longlist

       The Indian JCB Prize for Literature has announced its ten-title longlist -- though not very conveniently at the official site; see, instead, for example, The Wire report, Four Debutants in 2019 JCB Prize for Literature Longlist.
       Books written in six languages were considered, but only two translations made the longlist -- Manoranjan Byapari's There's Gunpowder in the Air, translated from the Bengali (by Arunava Sinha) and Perumal Murugan's Trial by Silence and Lonely Harvest, translated from the Tamil (by Aniruddhan Vasudevan) -- while: "Several "fine novels," said Krishen were let down by their poor translations"
       The shortlist will be announced on 4 October and the winner on 2 November.

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       Embargo-busting Amazon

       One of the fall season's most anticipated titles is Margaret Atwood's The Testaments -- her sequel to The Handmaid's Tale -- and it has an on-sale date of 10 September, with Penguin Random House imprint Nan A. Talese insisting booksellers hold back on selling it until then. One bookseller didn't -- Amazon.com, sending out a few hundred copies more than a week early -- and everyone else is ... not pleased.
       Claire Kirch reports in Publishers Weekly that Indie Booksellers Incensed as Amazon Breaks 'Testaments' Embargo, where Rachel Cass of the Harvard Bookstore sums up the problem:

"It makes us look bad," she told PW. "This is bigger than just this book. Customers will see that people who ordered online got their books. They will come into our store and see that we don't have it yet. They won't know or care about embargoes; they will just see that Amazon can supply them a book and we can't. They might not come in next time."

       The American Booksellers Association has also issued a statement.
       It will be interesting to see how Penguin Random House reacts -- but, given Amazon's market dominance, they might well think they can't afford to punish them as they would an independent bookseller. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if in future Amazon doesn't bother even with the pretense of sticking to publication dates and simply starts shipping out books as soon as they are in stock, since they have no real incentive not to.

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       Nada review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Jean-Patrick Manchette's Nada, just out in English from New York Review Books as they continue to bring out translations of his books.
       Claude Chabrol directed the film-version, The Nada Gang.

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       Booker Prize shortlist

       They've announced the six-title shortlist for this year's Booker Prize:

• Ducks, Newburyport, by Lucy Ellmann
• Girl, Woman, Other , by Bernardine Evaristo
• An Orchestra of Minorities, by Chigozie Obioma
• Quichotte, by Salman Rushdie
• 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, by Elif Shafak
• The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood

       The only one of these I have seen -- and have -- is Ducks, Newburyport, which does look intriguing; I don't see myself seeking out or getting to any of the others before the winner is announced on 14 October (the same day they're announcing the German Book Prize ...).

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       National Translation Awards longlists

       The American Literary Translators Association has announced the longlists for this year's National Translation Awards
       Amazingly, there are as many longlisted poetry titles under review at the complete review -- two: Decals by Oliverio Girondo, translated by Rachel Galvin and Harris Feinsod, and War Songs by ʿAntarah ibn Shaddād, translated by James E. Montgomery with Richard Sieburth -- as prose titles: Anniversaries by Uwe Johnson, translated by Damion Searls, and In Black and White by Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, translated by Phyllis I. Lyons.
       The shortlists will be announced later this month.

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       Prix Goncourt long(est)list

       They've announced the première sélection -- the first of the four (rather than more usual three) rounds -- of the prix Goncourt, the leading French literary prize.
       Authors with longlisted titles who have (other) works available in English include Nathacha Appanah, Jean-Paul Dubois, Léonora Miano, Hubert Mingarelli, Amélie Nothomb, and Olivier Rolin.
       The next selection will be announced 1 October, with the finalists to be announced 27 October, and the winner on 4 November.

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       Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist

       They've announced the twelve-title longlist for this year's (Canadian) Scotiabank Giller Prize, selected from 117 (unfortunately not revealed ...) submitted titles.
       I haven't seen any of these.

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       The Reproductive System review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of John Sladek's 1968 novel, The Reproductive System.

       This is one of those fill-in-the-blanks (or rather: gaping voids) at the site titles; I recently picked up a three-book Sladek omnibus, and so I should be covering more of these; certainly of some interest (and interesting to compare the reviews of the day with his slide from much present-day view ...).

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       DETECt

       Via I learn of DETECt -- Detecting Transcultural Identity in European Popular Crime Narratives -- which:

investigates the topics of identity and popular culture and aims to show how, from 1989 to the present, the transnational circulation of crime narratives from various European countries has contributed to the formation of a plural, shared European identity

       Could be interesting -- especially given the scope, and institutions involved. (And: it must be nice to have EU funding, sigh .....)
       They're also holding a conference soon, about: 'Producers, distributors and audiences of European crime narratives': Euronoir at Aalborg University, Denmark, 30 September to 2 October.
       I look forward to hearing more about this, as well as to seeing some of the resulting work and research.

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       Translating Central Asian literature

       As longtime readers know, I frequently complain about the lack of translated fiction from Central Asia -- one of the last frontiers ... (though honestly, there are so many languages from which so little is translated ... but, yes, Central Asia has been particularly poorly represented) -- so it's neat to see this Q & A by Filip Noubel at Global Voices with translator of Uzbek and Kazakh literature Shelley Fairweather-Vega who is working at Decolonising and demystifying Central Asian literature through translation.

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       Prix Renaudot longlists

       French prize season starts up in serious now, and the first big longlists to be announced are those of the prix Renaudot -- sixteen titles in the fiction category and nine in the non category; see the Livres Hebdo report.
       Authors in the fiction category who have had previous works translated into English include: Nathacha Appanah, Hubert Haddad, and Abdourahman A. Waberi.
       The (non-fiction) title I really want to see is Charles Dantzig's Dictionnaire égoïste de la littérature mondiale (see the Grasset publicity page); I have, and have long enjoyed, his Dictionnaire égoïste de la littérature française and so this complementary international volume -- only 1248 pages ! -- sounds like a must-have.

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       Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize shortlist

       At Scroll.in they report on the just-announced Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2019 shortlist: Three Indian writers, one Pakistani, one Bangladeshi, with brief descriptions of the five finalists.

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       V. Ramaswamy profile

       In The Telegraph (India) Chandrima S. Bhattacharya profiles "probably the only Tamil person who is translating serious Bengali fiction into English" -- such as Subimal Misra's Wild Animals Prohibited --, and rotameter-maker V. Ramaswamy in 'Translation needs silencing of my mind'
       The piece closes:

"Translation is torture. Translation is a solitary and lonely enterprise," says Ramaswamy.

As is life. But both have their rewards.

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       From the Shadows review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Juan José Millás' From the Shadows, just out in English from Bellevue Literary Press.

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       Online literature readers in ... China

       Xinhua reports that the Number of China's online literature readers hits 455 mln -- up: "by nearly 23 million from December 2018".
       And so:

With the advancement of procedure-based development of online literature, China has seen diversified business models for online literature, laying a sound foundation for the sector's sustainable development

       Okay .....

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       Literaturpreis Alpha shortlist

       The Alpha literary prize -- an Austrian book prize for promising young authors -- has announced its shortlist of nine titles, selected from 46 entries.
       This is only the tenth year they're awarding this, but it has a pretty decent track record, with two of the previous winners available in English -- both from New Vessel Press, and both under review at the complete review: Milena Michiko Flašar's I Called Him Necktie (2012) and Marjana Gaponenko's Who is Martha ? (2013).
       The winner will be announced 30 October.

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       V & Q Books

       German publisher Voland & Quist has exciting news: they're starting up an English-language imprint, V & Q Books, with translator Katy Derbyshire as publisher, publishing five to six translations from the German annually, starting in the fall of 2020.
       While German is fairly well represented in translation, if you consider things relatively -- it's consistently the third most translated-from language, behind Spanish and French -- in absolute terms the numbers are still pretty feeble, so it's great to see a dedicated imprint like this.
       In Die Zeit Johannes Schneider has a (German) Q & A with Katy Derbyshire in which she talks more about this promising undertaking.

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       The Nine Cloud Dream review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Kim Man-jung's seventeenth century Korean classic, The Nine Cloud Dream, recently out in a new translation in the Penguin Classics series.

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       Amir Hassan Cheheltan Q & A

       At Qantara.de Nasrin Bassiri has a Q & A with Amir Hassan Cheheltan, "Literature is based on politics and eroticism".
       The Iranian author still lives in Iran but notes: "I have not been able to publish a single novel in Iran in the past 15 years" -- while publishing several in German translation over that span (including one under review at the complete review)

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       Objectionable War and Peace ?

       A case at the Bombay High Court against Vernon Gonsalves has been attracting attention, as Justice Sarang Kotwal wondered about the defendant's reading material:

"War and Peace is about a war in another country," Justice Sarang Kotwal said. "Why were you having...[it] at home ? You will have to explain this to the court."

       Sigh.
       But at least the Indian media is having fun with this: Bombay HC asks why War and Peace at home. Truly bizarre, says Jairam Ramesh says India Today, while NDTV reports that, reassuringly (?) After War And Peace Question, Judge Says He Knew Tolstoy Book Was Classic. Meanwhile, at Scroll.in they wonder: If reading 'War and Peace' is illegal, which other books should we not be reading ? and at The Wire Markandey Katju considers other Books Which May Get Me into Trouble.

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

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       Weltempfänger-Bestenliste

       The LitProm Weltempfänger-Bestenliste is a seasonal German best-of list for works in (German) translation from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and the latest one is now out.
       It is topped by Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive, followed by Pyun Hye-Young's The Hole -- and a Mishima Yukio comes in at number five.

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

       Dayton Literary Peace Prize finalists

       They've announced the finalists for the Dayton Literary Peace Prizes, six each in the fiction and non categories.
       One of the finalists is under review at the complete review -- Insurrecto, by Gina Apostol.
       The winners will be announced 17 September, with the awards ceremony then to be held 3 November.

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

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       A Short Treatise Inviting the Reader to Discover the Subtle Art of Go review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of the 1969 A Short Treatise Inviting the Reader to Discover the Subtle Art of Go, co-authored by Pierre Lusson and Oulipians Georges Perec and Jacques Roubaud.

       Go ! Perec ! Roubaud ! What more could one ask for ?

       As always, the Wakefield Press edition is a lovely little one. I can only hope it gets the attention the Italian translation got a few years ago. (It's also coming out in German later this year, as Diaphenes is doing an impressive collected Perec.)

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

       'The 100 China books you have to read'

       Of list-making there is no end, and we now have The SupChina Book List -- apparently: "The 100 China books you have to read, ranked":

There was no criteria except availability in English. Yes, this was more mad than methodical

       It's also limited to one title per author (a list-limitation I have never understood the purpose of).
       Still, they get it right with number one, so who am I to complain ?
       See the more convenient all-on-one-page list -- with a few of the titles under review at the complete review (the latest one added ... two days ago):

• 93. Serve the People !, by Yan Lianke
• 90. Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, by Eliot Weinberger
• 61. Legends of the Condor Heroes, by Jin Yong
• 55. Ruined City, by Jia Pingwa
• 53. Border Town, by Shen Congwen
• 37. The Man Who Loved China, by Simon Winchester
• 19. The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin
• 1. The Story of the Stone, by Cao Xueqin

       With two-thirds of the titles not originally written in Chinese, the list definitely leans towards outside views/interpretations, for better and worse.

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

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       Royal Society Science Book Prize shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Royal Society Science Book Prize, selected from: "over 170 submissions".
       The winning title will be announced 23 September.

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

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