opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

       John Dos Passos Prize

       Longwood University has announced the winner of the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature -- which: "honors a writer whose work offers incisive and original insights into American themes while encompassing a wide range of human experience" and is being awarded for the forty-fourth time --, and it is Eugene Lim.

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       Wortmeldungen shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Wortmeldungen Ulrike Crespo Literaturpreis für kritische Kurztexte a German prize for 'critical short texts' that pays out an impressive €35,000 to the winner, making it one of the richest literary prizes going, on a per word basis, five texts selected from over 160 entries
       Among the authors with a shortlisted text is Marcel Beyer; you can read all the texts via links on the annuncement-page.

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       Julian Barnes profiles

       At the BBC Katie Razzall profiles Julian Barnes on his last novel: 'I hope it's a good one to go out on', while at NPR Terry Gross talks with him, at Julian Barnes says he's enjoying himself, but that 'Departure(s)' is his last book.
       I hope to see and get to the novel soon; see also the publisity pages from Knopf and Jonathan Cape. In the BBC piece he says: "it's a slightly enigmatic, possibly annoying title, but I like it".

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       Runciman Award longlist

       The Anglo-Hellenic League has announced the twenty-title-strong longlist for this year's Runciman Award, "given annually for the best book in English about Greece or inspired by a Hellenic theme".
       The winner receives £10,000 and will be annouced 9 June.

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       'Borges and “Borges”'

       At Nimrod Esther Allen writes on Borges and “Borges” -- on Jorge Luis Borges, Bioy Casares' Borges, and both authors' literary estates.
       Hopefully, we will finally see that translation of Borges in English -- even if it is a pared-down version of the mammoth original .....

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       Knausgaard Q & A

       At Interview they have a Q & A with the author, in “My Life Is Filled With Guilt and Shame”: Karl Ove Knausgård, by Jeremy Strong -- mainly about his newly translated The School of Night.
       I've been hoping to see The School of Night but haven't yet; meanwhile, see the Penguin Press publicity page.

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       Blind Corner review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Dornford Yates' 1927 novel, Blind Corner.

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       Max Frisch-Preis

       The city of Zurich has announced the winner of this year's Max Frisch Prize, a quadrennial author prize that pays out CHF40,000, and it is Michael Köhlmeier.
       They've been awarding this since 1998; it's the rare literary prize that is only awarded every four years; you don't see that often.
       Haus has published English translations of two of his novels.

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       'Independent Press Top 40'

       As Ed Nawotka reports at Publishers Weekly, Independent Publishers Caucus Launches Bestseller List with ABA, as the Independent Publishers Caucus -- "a collective of 117 small and independent publishers" -- and the American Booksellers Association have launched a new bestseller list, the Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers.
       This isn't exactly a bestseller list:

Unlike BookScan-based lists that track unit sales, the Top 40 uses rankings supplied by ABA member stores. Each participating bookstore submits its top 40 fiction and nonfiction titles ranked by sales volume, regardless of whether the top seller moved 10 copies or 1,000. This methodology, Simon said, creates "an equalizing force" that allows both high-volume titles and books selling smaller quantities across many stores to appear.

       I can see that this serves some purpose. Still ... why not simple, hard numbers ?
       Of some interest; see, for example, the most recent fiction list (warning ! dreaded pdf format !).

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       On Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

       At Current Affairs Abdirashid Diriye Kalmoy looks at how: 'Kenya's greatest novelist was never shy about confronting the politics of empire and capitalism', in The Decolonial Mind of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.
       Several of his works are under review at the complete review.

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       Poetry in ... South Korea

       At the Korea JoongAng Daily Lee Jian reports that Korea experiences a poetry boom as younger readers rediscover the literary form, as: "Once dismissed by younger generations as cringey or overly sentimental, poetry is finding new life among Gen Z readers, who are drawn to its honesty, brevity and ability to be easily digitized".

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       Vónbjørt Vang profile

       As I mentioned last fall, the 2025 Nordic Council Literature Prize was awarded to Svørt Orkidé by Vónbjørt Vang, and at Reykavík Grapevine Grayson Del Faro profiles the author, in Black Orchids And White Spaces: Vónbjørt Vang On Winning The Nordic Council Prize For Literature.

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       Coming in 2026 in ... South Korea

       In The Chosun Daily Hwang Ji-yoon reports: "This year, Korean literature readers will have more opportunities than ever to encounter long-awaited full-length novels", in Cheon, Eun's Novels After 10, 7 Years.
       Presumably we'll see some of these in English, though it'll likely be a couple of years for most of them (but re. Kim Hye-soon's "collection of poetic theories" its: "publication in the U.S. next year has already been confirmed").

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       Domesticity review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Joris-Karl Huysmans' 1881 novel, Domesticity, recently out from Wakefield Press..

       I'm surprised this is the first Huysmans I've covered -- of course, I read À Rebours and Là-bas before I started the site, but I have many of the other works brought out by Dedalus in recent years and really should have gotten to some of these by now.

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       Coming in 2026

       The Literary Hub has published its extensive list of their Most Anticipated Books of 2026 -- 314 books !.

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       2025 in review at the complete review

       Here is the annual overview of the year that was at the site in numbers:

       In 2025, 120 books were reviewed at the complete review, down ever so slightly from the 121 in 2024. The total number of pages of the reviewed books was up a bit -- 32,409, compared to 31,901 in 2024 -- with the average length of reviewed books up to 270.08 pages (2024: 263.64).
       The longest book reviewed was 1046 pages long; three more were over 800 pages, and a total of eleven were 500 or more pages in length. Five books were under 100 pages in length (and one was exactly 100 pages long).

       The total number of review-words written was up considerably, to 150,548 (2024: 121,676), with the average review-length back up to the more-or-less site standard, at 1255 (2024: 1006).
       The longest review was 3859 words long -- and five more reviews were over 3000 words long (compared to just a single one in 2024); beyond that, another nine reviews were over 2000 words. The shortest review was 390 words, with only two reviews under 500 words.

       You can find the 50 most popular reviews, 2025 here.

       The Patrick White author page was again the most popular of these, though barely ahead of the Amélie Nothomb-page; Geoff Nicholson's death early in the year propelled his author-page into the top five:

1. Patrick White
2. Amélie Nothomb
3. Geoff Nicholson
4. Cynthia Ozick
5. Jonathan Coe

       The ten most popular index-pages were those for:

1. Far East Asian literature
2. Books from selected Imprints and Publishers
3. Books Written Before 1900
4. Erotic, Pornographic, and Sex-related books
5. German literature
6. Mysteries and Thrillers
7. French literature
8. Eastern European literature
9. Latin and South American literature
10. Spanish literature

       Books originally written in 31 languages (including English) were reviewed in 2025 (2024: 25); disappointingly, only in eleven of them were two or more titles covered (2024: 16).
       The top eleven languages were:

• 1. English 32 (26.67 % of all books) (2024: 34)
• 2. French 19 (19)
• 3. Japanese 15 (16)
• 4. German 9 (4)
• 5. Korean 7 (0)
• 6. Spanish 5 (10)
• 7. Chinese 4 (3)
• 8. Danish 2 (3)
• -. Italian 2 (4)
• -. Ukrainian 2 (2)
• -. Yiddish 2 (0)

       The count of which countries books/authors are from is, as always, less precise (and less interesting), but the leading countries-of-origin appear to have been:

• 1. Japan 15 (2024: 16)
• 2. France 14 (16)
• -. US 14 (15)
• 4. UK 13 (15)
• 5. Austria 8 (5)

       The ratio of male-to-female authors is still very skewed, with reviews of 38.5 titles by women writers; still, that's 32.08%, almost a third, the highest it's ever been over a year (and a sign of how much more work by women writers is appearing in translation).

       No books were rated "A+" or "A", with books rated over the range:

• A 0 (2024: 1)
• A- 9 (10)
• B+ 55 (41)
• B 46 (62)
• B- 6 (3)
• C 0 (1)
• -- 4 (3)

       After continuing to decline for much of the the year, site-traffic surged in the fall -- but practically all of that seems to have been AI-bot-driven, so muddying overall visitor-statistics that there's only limited information to be gleaned from them.
       There were visitors from 208 countries and territories to the complete review in 2025 (2024: 214).
       The countries from which the most traffic came were:

1. United States (31.66%; 2024: 38.81%)
2. China (24.14%)
3. United Kingdom (8.28%)
4. Singapore (6.97%)
5. India (3.67%)
6. Canada
7. Australia
8. Germany
9. Netherlands
10. France

       The traffic from China and Singapore is particularly suspect/worthless -- though China was, more plausibly, the fifth-ranked country in 2024 --; in both cases, the average 'visit' to the site was suspiciously short: 3 seconds (!) per visitor for China, 13 seconds for Singapore. (By comparison, other top-ten sources ranged from 1m 15s (the Netherlands) to 2m 35s (France) per visit.)

       All in all, a pretty unremarkable year, with less coverage of *big* new books -- I just didn't see many. Still, on the whole, I think the site covered a reasonably satisfying (at least to me ...) wide range of titles, and the Literary Saloon still seems to collect and offer literary news that's of some interest.

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       Astrid Roemer (1947-2026)

       Dutch-writing author Astrid Roemer has passed away; see, for example, the report at Trouw.
       She finally came to a little prominence in the US/UK in recent years, with her 1982 novel On a Woman's Madness named a finalist for the 2023 (US) National Book Award for Translated Literature and longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize.

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       de Boon shortlists

       They've announced the shortlists for the de Boon Literatuurprijs, a leading Dutch/Flemish-language book prize (paying out €50,000 each to the winners), in the two categories -- prose (fiction and non) and children's.
       The winners will be announced 24 March.

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       US book sales in 2025

       At Publishers Weekly Jim Milliot reports that in the US Print Book Sales Rose Slightly in 2025 -- with numbers !
       Unit sales were 762.4 million in 2025 -- down from the peak of 839.7 million in 2021.
       They list the top twenty sellers, with sales numbers, with The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbin leading the way, with 2,812,799 copies sold. One more title sold (just) over two million copies, and (only) one more sold over a million copies.

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       Würth Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Würth Prize for European Literature, a biennial €25,000 author prize with a solid list of previous winners (e.g. Herta Müller (2006), Nádas Péter (2014), Peter Handke (2016), Annie Ernaux (2022)), and it is The Name on the Wall-author Hervé Le Tellier.

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       (Albanian) National Literature Awards finalists

       They've announced the finalists for the 2024 (Albanian) National Literature Awards; see, for example, the Express report (also in Albanian).
       Finalists in the translation category include works by Yu Hua, Hilda Hilst, and Aristotle, as well as Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange and Andrej Kurkov's Death and the Penguin.

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       'Dostoevsky's Influence on Modern Japan'

       At Japan Nakama Santiago Campodonico looks at Dostoevsky's Influence on Modern Japan: From Meiji to Today

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       The Image of Her review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of a new translation of Simone de Beauvoir's 1966 novel, The Image of Her.

       This came out in the UK last year, and is coming out (next week) in the US.
       Interestingly, it was published in the UK by one of the 'majors' -- a Vintage Classics edition, from Penguin -- while in the US it is being published by a university press, Yale University Press, in their Margellos World Republic of Letters-series.

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       جایزه ادبی جلال آل احمد

       They've announced the winners of this year's Jalal Al-e Ahmad Literary Awards, one of the leading Iranian literary prizes, with لمس by Mohammad Reza Kateb winning the prize for best novel; see also the publisher's publicity page. (See here for al the finalists in all the categories.) .
       They didn't award a prize for best first novel -- and they didn't even think any of the 76 works submitted was worthy to be considered for the literary criticism category.

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       Banipal Translation Prize

       They've announced the winner of the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation and it is Marilyn Booth for her translation of Honey Hunger by Zahran Alqasmi; see also the Hoopoe publicity page.

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       Best German comics of 2025 ?

       Thirty journalists voted for the best German comics of 2025, and at Tagesspiegel they run down the top ten.

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       Latin American literature in translation

       At Monocle Rory Jones reports that South American literature is having a moment -- and women are at the forefront -- profiling Charco Press founder Carolina Orloff.

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       2025: the year in review copies

       Not much change from 2024 in terms of numbers: 240 books were acquired (2024: 234), of which 196 were review copies sent to me by publishers (2024: 199) -- the fewest in twenty years ...; see the full Index of Books Received and Acquired 2025.

       The publishers providing the most review copies to the complete review in 2025 were:

• New York Review Books: 31 (2024: 21)
• Harvard University Press: 17 (9)
• McNally Editions 16 (5)
• Dedalus 12 (8)
• Europa Editions 9 (6)
• Yale University Press: 9 (7)
• Honford Star 8 (1)
• Columbia University Press: 6 (8)
• And Other Stories 4 (3)
• Open Letter: 4 (8)
• Twisted Spoon Press 4 (4)

       Yes, (small) independents and university presses dominated -- and the number of titles I got from the American 'big five' was ... minimal. I did request several of the 'big' books of the year published by the majors but struck out completely.
       As of 31 December 2025 I had reviewed 71 of the 196 review copies I received -- 36.22%, considerably above the historic average. (Of course, old review copies do continue to get reviewed -- two 2025 review copy arrivals have already been reviewed in 2026 --, often long after I receive them; in 2025 the longest-delayed review was of a title received in 2003, appearing 7940 days after the review copy was received .....)

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       Self-Worth review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Emma Tholozan's Self-Worth, coming in English in April (UK)/May (US).

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       Bestselling in 2025 in ... France

       The Livres Hebdo pages Les 50 livres les plus vendus en 2025 and Les 20 romans les plus vendus en 2025 are unfortunately paywalled, but at Elle they have a top ten list with numbers, Voici le livre le plus vendu en 2025.
       An Astérix-volume tops the list, with 1.65 million copies sold (despite only coming out at the end of October); three works by Freida McFadden follow (with two more in the top ten, at seventh and tenth ...), while Laurent Mauvignier's prix Goncourt-winner La maison vide came in fifth, with 442,714 copies sold.

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       The Empyrean Series

       At his website, Empyrean Series-series editor Jacob Siefring has a Statement on the future of The Empyrean Series, announcing that: "The forty-ninth and the fiftieth titles, which I am currently editing and designing, are slated to be the last in the series".
       It's been a very good run (see a list of all fifty titles at the end of the post); several of the volumes are under review at the complete review, with more to follow.

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       Most Popular Reviews - 2025

       The most-viewed reviews at the complete review in 2025 were:

1. Voice of a Dream, Glaydah Namukasa
2. Strange Pictures, Uketsu
3. The Director, Daniel Kehlmann
4. Perfection, Vincenzo Latronico
5. Ballerina, Patrick Modiano
6. The Remembered Soldier, Anjet Daanje
7. Your Steps on the Stairs, Antonio Muñoz Molina
8. The Empusium, Olga Tokarczuk
9. We Computers, Hamid Ismailov
10. The Fortress, Mesa Selimovic
11. The Aesthetics of Resistance, Peter Weiss
12. The Sleepwalkers, Scarlett Thomas
13. The Proof of My Innocence, Jonathan Coe
14. Perspective(s), Laurent Binet
15. 2666, Roberto Bolaño

       The shift to newer reviews attracting the most attention continues: in 2023 only two titles reviewed in that year made the top 50; in 2024 it was 14; and in 2025 32 (!) made the top 50, including three of the top five Obviously also, few titles from the 2024 list made the 2025 top fifty -- only 14.

       See also all the top 50 reviews of 2025.

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       Nobel nominees in 1975

       The Swedish Academy opens up the archives regarding Nobel nominations and deliberations fifty years after the fact, and so they've now opened up the archives for the 1975 Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded to Eugenio Montale.
       Kaj Schueler has published his annual look at the prize-selection in Svenska Dagbladet but it is, alas, paywalled; still, we can glean that apparently the others in the running were: Graham Greene, Saul Bellow, Doris Lessing, and Nadine Gordimer, with Montale a sort of back-up pick.
       The Swedish Academy has also published the full list of the 1975 nominees (warning ! dreaded pdf format !). There were 116 (1974: 102), and among the first-time nominees were: Fernand Braudel, L.A. Trip-author Mohammed Dib, 1982 laureate Gabriel García Márquez (Living to Tell the Tale, etc.), Wilson Harris, Ibuse Masuji, Tove Jansson (The True Deceiver, etc.), Wolfgang Koeppen, 1988 laureate Naguib Mahfouz, Kamala Markandaya, Vasko Popa, Chaim Potok, Mary Renault, and Meša Selimović (Death and the Dervish, etc.).

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       Braille publishing in France

       At RFI Alison Hird reports on how France's last paper Braille publisher fights to survive in the digital age. (The publisher is Cteb.)
       An interesting overview.

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       Nora Ikstena (1969-2026)

       Latvian author Nora Ikstena has passed away; see, for example, the LSM.lv report.

       Several of her works have been translated into English, notably Soviet Milk; see, for example, the Peirene publicity page.

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       the folded clock review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of the collection of 100 number poems by 100 number poems, the folded clock, recently out in English, from Twisted Spoon Press.

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       Coming in 2026 in ... Singapore

       In the Straits Times Clement Yong reports on some of what to expect in SingLit in 2026: A video game anthology, new book by Teo You Yenn, Epigram's all-women shortlist.

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       'Cocaine in books'

       At El País Nadal Suau looks at Literature that crosses the line: Cocaine in books.
       Lots of examples, including Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho -- but he fails to mention Pitigrilli's excellent Cocaine.

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       Clyde Moneyhun Q & A

       Boise State News has Ten questions: Meet professor and literary translator Clyde Moneyhun.
       Among his responses:

What is one hope you have for the next generation in your field ?

CM: That translators get paid better. It's really hard to make a living as a literary translator.

       Francis Boutle has published two of his translations from Catalan; see their publicity pages for Maria-Mercè Marçal's Witch in Mourning and Ponç Pons' Salt.

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       More year-in-review posts

       A few more weblogs have posted 2025-at-the-site posts; see:

• Novel Readings 2025 by Rohan Maitzen at her Novel Readings
• 2025 Wrap Up: Reading and other stuff by Joseph Schreiber at his roughghosts
• My 2025 in Review (Best Science Fiction Novels and Short Fiction, Reading Initiatives, and Bonus Categories) by Joachim Boaz at his Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations
• The 2025 Tony's Reading List Awards, Your Favourite Posts of 2025, and The 2025 State of the Blog Address by Tony Malone at his Tony's Reading List

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       The Cabala review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Thornton Wilder's first novel, the 1926 The Cabala.

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       Bestselling in ... Ireland, 2025

       In the Irish Times Martin Doyle reports on the bestselling books in Ireland in 2025, in The Let Them Theory is Ireland's bestselling book of 2025.
       That top-selling book -- see, for example, the Hay House publicity page -- sold ... 38,885 copies.

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       Indian language books translated into English, 2025

       Scroll.in again offers Chittajit Mitra's list of Indian language books translated into English published in the last year -- 108 books
       A great resource -- but how frustrating that so many of these are not readily available/distributed in the US/UK.

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       Banned in Belarus

       Via I'm pointed to the Reformation report that Sorokin's and Burroughs' Books Added to the List of Banned Publications in Belarus as Belarus has added 52 more books to their banned-list; they're all listed there; see also the Ministry of Information of the Republic of Belarus announcement; you can also download the whole list of all the banned titles here.
       Newly banned books include Steve Aylett's Shamanspace, several books by Vladimir Sorokin, including Day of the Oprichnik, William Burroughs' Junkie, Alex Garland's The Beach, and Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly.

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       Coming in ... 2026

       New year, new books: quite a few publications have published 'coming-in-2026' lists; see, for example:

• 12 books you need to read in 2026 at the BBC
• Books to look out for in 2026 – fiction at The Guardian
• The 31 Most Anticipated Books of 2026 at Oprah Daily
• PEOPLE Picks Our Most-Anticipated Books of 2026
• The 36 Most Anticipated Books of 2026 at Time
• The 58 books to look out for in 2026 at The Times
• Most anticipated books of 2026 at USA Today
• 23 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2026 at Vulture

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       Reading in ... the US

       You.gov has a new survey of 2,203 U.S. adult citizens asking them about their 2025 Reading and Books (warning ! dreaded pdf format !); see also David H. Montgomery's YouGov's The Surveyor-post summing things up, Most Americans didn't read many books in 2025..
       Yes, the findings are ... not terribly encouraging. Forty per cent of respondents reported having mot read or listened to any books whatsoever in 2025 ..... (Hey, the survey was conducted 15 to 19 December, so maybe a few more managed to read one in the remaining two weeks .....)
       Other findings:

• More people reported reading a play (Drama; 12 per cent) than Literary fiction (11 per cent)
• Only 51 per cent of respondents reported having a library card
• 2 per cent of respondents report owning more than 1000 physical books -- while 32 per cent have fewer than ten at home (but only 19 per cent reported having fewer than 10 in the home they grew up in)
• As many people organize their books by color as do by "Dewey Decimal, Library of Congress or other formal system" -- one per cent (i.e. probably statistically insignificant)

       The survey has lots of detailed information, breaking down the responses; so, for example, 15 per cent of those identifying as Democrats had read some literary fiction, but only 8 per cent of Republicans; the poetry divide is 8/2 (and the only category Republicans read more of than Democrats was 'Religion and spirituality' -- 16 per cent vs. 8. Also: they only looked at three income categories, but the differences were pretty stark: 47 per cent of those with a family income below US$50,000 had not read a book in the last year; while only 31 per cent with a family income above US$100,000 hadn't read a single book.
       As Montgomery's post points out, a mere four per cent of readers read nearly half of all books (46 per cent). Yes, reading looks evermore like a niche activity .....

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       Bestselling in 2025 in ... Switzerland

       The Swiss Booksellers and Publishers Association report (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) -- unfortunately without actual sales-numbers -- on the bestselling German-language titles in Switzerland in 2025
       Translations -- of works by Dan Brown and Joël Dicker -- come in at third and fourth, with German and Swiss Book Prize-winning Die Holländerinnen by Dorothee Elmiger rounding out the top five. The runner-up was the latest by Martin Suter, while the surprise number one -- which was only released in September -- was Lázár by youngster Nelio Biedermann; see also the swissinfo report, Biedermann und Elmiger schreiben ungewöhnliche Bestseller or an English translation.
       Lázár is actually coming out in English fairly soon: Summit is publishing it in April; see their publicity page.

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       2026

       Another year down -- and one that was strikingly similar to the previous one: in 2024 121 books were reviewed at the complete review, in 2025 it was ... 120. (Also: in 2024 I received 199 review copies, in 2025 I got 196). So, if nothing else, things remain consistent hereabout.

       For reasons largely beyond my control, things are still too unsettled for me to properly devote myself to the site, but I hope things will eventually pick up again -- though it now looks like they certainly won't before the second half of 2026 at the earliest, sigh. Still, I and everything putter on more or less as always, and should continue to do so.
       AI scraping has rendered site-statistics much less useful -- though since the bots scrape everything (i.e that traffic is evenly distributed) it still seems possible to discern which are the most popular pages. Overall, *real* traffic also seems to have increased slightly after years of decline, but any and all discoverability of pages is increasingly enfeebled -- search engine (especially dominant Google) quality continues to get poorer, with AI-summarizing and the like on search pages also leading to fewer searchers digging deeper into the results-pages; a trickle of traffic from various AI platforms -- ChatGPT pointing users to review-pages in response to queries, and the like -- doesn't amount to much.

       I have no particular expectations for 2026, but there should be a fairly steady if somewhat slow stream of reviews, as always, along with the daily postings here at the Literary Saloon. As to the world at large -- well, I can just wish good luck to us all .....

       I am glad, as always, to see you're here for (at least the start of) a new year as well -- and I wish all my readers a great new year, filled with an abundance of good books and much good reading !

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

       The year in books in ... South Korea, 2025

       In The Korea Herald Hwang Dong-hee takes a: 'Year-end look at K-literature, from overseas recognition in translation to signs of renewal at home', in Steady notice abroad, modest gains at home.
       Fiction apparently did particularly well in South Korea in 2025, online seller Yes24 reporting that: "Korean novels and Korean poetry saw strong gains -- up 19.5 percent and 7.3 percent, respectively" -- and:

While women in their 30s and 40s have long been considered the core audience for literary fiction, younger female readers in their teens and 20s are now joining them in significant numbers.

       And: "Another defining feature of the year was the prominence of writers born in the 1990s".

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

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       Years in reading

       Quite a few readers have posted 'year in reading'-round-ups -- always interesting to see (though I continue to be baffled why people post these before the year is actually over). Here some of them I've come across [updated]:

• A few sentences on every book I read or reread in 2025 by Biblioklept
• My 2025 reading year by Jo Case at Case Notes
• 1streading's Books of the Year 2025 Part 1 and Part 2
• JacquiWine's Journal My Books of the Year, 2025 Part 1 and Part 2
• Looking back on 2025 ! at Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings
• A Year in Reading: 2025 at The Millions
• Annual Review 2025 at The Modern Novel
• My Best Books of 2025 at Radhika's Reading Retreat
• 10 Favorites From 2025 and Year in Review at Read Japanese Literature
• The year in reading, 2025 by Jacob Siefring
• 2025: My Year in Books by Amardeep Singh
• best reading 2025 at Stochastic Bookmark
• My Year in Reading 2025 at Time's Flow Stemmed

       I hope there will be some more of these, and some the-year-at-the-site/weblog overviews; my the-year-at-the-complete review recap should be up in a week or two.

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

       The year in books in ... Japan, 2025

       At nippon.com Takino Yūsaku offers a round-up of Japan's Prizewinning Books of 2025 -- which includes a look at (some of) the bestsellers of the year.
       Apparently Abe Akiko's カフネ was the bestselling title of the year; see also the Kodansha foreign rights page (and also), while works by Uketsu and Higashino Keigo also made the top five.

       At The Japan Times Kris Kosaka also recently had an overview of the year, with a focus on what made it into English, in In 2025, Japanese literature took a turn for the weird. He also offers some actual numbers, notably:

Uketsu’s Strange Pictures, published in Japan in 2022, sold over 1 million copies domestically. Its English translation by Jim Rion, published in January, surpassed 2 million copies in worldwide sales.

       I find the two-million figure hard to believe .....

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

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       Scorpions review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Kurahashi Yumiko's 1963 novella, Scorpions, now in English from Wakefield Press.

       It's not the first of her works I've reviewed (see), and Routledge has published a collection of her stories, The Woman with the Flying Head -- see their publicity page -- but, damn, we need to see more of her work in English.

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

       Rahi Masoom Reza profile

       At The Wire Ather Farouqui offers The Untold Story of Rahi Masoom Reza and the Making of the Canon of Modern Hindi Fiction.
       Several of his works have been translated into English, including Scene: 75; see also the Harper Perennial India publicity page.

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

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       Publishing world fiction in ... Telugu

       At Scroll.in Harshaneeyam has a Q & A with Mohan Babu of Chaaya Publishers, in ‘A contemporary global conversation’: A Hyderabad publisher is translating world fiction into Telugu.
       They have big ambitions:

we have secured rights for 25 exceptional titles from 15 diverse foreign languages, including Scandinavian languages like Norwegian, Finnish and Icelandic, as well as French, German, Danish, Italian, among others. We successfully launched five of these titles this year, and the remainder will be finished and published by the end of 2027.

       But a bit disappointing to hear that:

For many languages, we simply don’t have professional, literary translators directly available in Telugu. This forces us into the “relay translation” route: we must acquire rights for a highly regarded English translation first. We are extremely careful here; we only work with English translators and publications of the highest repute, ensuring their translation procedures are diligent, thereby guaranteeing the fidelity of the final Telugu version

       But good to hear they're also working towards getting more Telugu literature translated into other languages (well, apparently: mainly into English).

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

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       The Child's Child review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of the novel-within-a-novel by (Ruth Rendell writing as) Barbara Vine, The Child's Child.

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

       2025 Translations from ... Chinese

       At Paper Republic Andrew Rule has this year's Roll Call of Chinese Prose in English Translation -- a useful resource.

       I have several of these but, somewhat surprisingly, have only reviewed one: New Story of the Stone by Wu Jianren.

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

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       'State of the Industry': US publishing

       At Vulture Emma Alpern and Jasmine Vojdani collected responses from twenty-eight agents, scouts, writers, publicists, and magazine and book editors to a 26-question survey in 28 Book Industry Professionals Get Candid About the State of the Industry.
       Among the findings:

Word of mouth matters most for book sales. Listicles and reviews got zero votes in this category.

       (Sigh.)
       And: "Twenty-four percent thought Perfection, by Vincenzo Latronico, was the most surprising best seller this year".
       Also: "The most overhyped books of the year were The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny and “these horrendously tedious Calculation of Volume books from Denmark,” as one respondent put it"."

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

       More best Ukrainian books of 2025

       PEN Ukraine has now released a list of The best Ukrainian books of 2025 -- a total of 252 books.
       They list them by category -- including works of fiction in translation, 63 of them; interesting to see what's been translated recently.

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

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       Jon Fosse's Kant

       His adult fiction has gotten the most attention in the English-speaking world, but Nobel laureate Jon Fosse has also written a great deal of drama -- and some children's fiction, such as Kant; see the Winje Agency information page..
       This has been translated into a number of languages, though not yet into English, apparently.
       Meanwhile, at Realnoe Vremya Ekaterina Petrova reports at some length on how at the recent International non/fiction Book Fair 'they discussed how the prose of Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse is structured', in «Kant» by Jon Fosse: it’s okay not to understand.

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

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