opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

11 - 20 June 2025

11 June: Cats in Japanese fiction | Nepali-Chinese literary exchange | Wilde West review
12 June: Neustadt Prize finalists | Thomas-Mann-Preis
13 June: Women's Prizes | Walter Scott Prize | Translating Rosa Mistika | The Living and the Rest review
14 June: Tagore and Yeats
15 June: Arab literature | Molly Jong-Fast/Jay McInerney conversation
16 June: Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize | Maurice Gee (1931-2025) | Writing in ... Yemen
17 June: In Basho's footsteps | The City review
18 June: Deutscher Sachbuchpreis | Alfred Brendel (1931-2025) | Jay Boss Rubin Q & As
19 June: Society of Authors' Awards | Twilight of Crooks review
20 June: JCB Prize | Geoff Dyer Q & A

go to weblog

return to main archive

       JCB Prize

       Via, I'm pointed to Jane Borges' piece in the Mumbai Mirror reporting that The JCB Prize is gone. What now ? as the leading Indian literary prize, the JCB Prize for Literature, has apparently been shut down (not that you can tell from their website, but they were never very good at keeping that up-to-date anyway).

       (Updated - 22 June): See now also The JCB Prize for Literature has shut down. What else has ended with it ? by Arunava Sinha at Scroll.in.

       (Updated - 27 June): See now also Nawaid Anjum on How the JCB Prize For Literature lost its way and shut down quietly at The Federal.

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

---

       Geoff Dyer Q & A

       At Interview has a Q & A with the author, in “Giving Up Is a Great Source of Happiness”: 30 Minutes With Author Geoff Dyer.

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

       Society of Authors' Awards

       The Society of Authors has announced the winners of its many awards. with Winter Animals, by Ashani Lewis, winning both the Betty Trask Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award.

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

---

       Twilight of Crooks review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Mwalimu Johnnie MacViban's Twilight of Crooks.

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

       Deutscher Sachbuchpreis

       They've announced the winner of this year's German Non-Fiction Prize and it is a graphic work-- Die Frau als Mensch, by Ulli Lust; see also the Reprodukt publicity page.

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

---

       Alfred Brendel (1931-2025)

       Alfred Brendel has passed away; see, for example, the obituaries at the BBC, The Guardian, and The New York Times (presumably paywalled).
       Best-known as a pianist, he also published many books -- including of poetry, with Phaidon bringing out a collected poetry-collection, Playing the Human Game; get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
       See also the Hanser author foreign rights page for information about more of his books. And Armin Thurnher's Der Übergänger -- see the Hanser foreign rights page -- also sounds like fun.

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

---

       Jay Boss Rubin Q & As

       Euphrase Kezilahabi's Rosa Mistika officially came out yesterday -- and there are now some Q & A's with translator Jay Boss Rubin: at the Chicago Review of Books Ian J. Battaglia speaks with him, in The Translator’s Voice — Jay Boss Rubin on Translating Euphrase Kezilahabi’s “Rosa Mistika”, and at the Yale University Press site they have Realism and Rosa Mistika: A Conversation with Jay Boss Rubin.

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

       In Basho's footsteps

       At The Mainichi they follow in the footsteps of Japanese literary scholar Keene's reflections on haiku rhythm, travels of Matsuo Basho.

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

---

       The City review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Valerian Pidmohylnyi's 1928 classic, The City, now out in English in the Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature-series.

       The Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature-series is a relatively new one from the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute -- whose publishing arm was recently hard hit by the current American administration's massive NEH/NEA cuts; see e.g.. This will obviously have an impact on what and how much they can publish -- a great shame, because it is an excellent series bringing out significant works. (The City is the third work in the series reviewed at the complete review, and I hope to get to more.)

       (The City has also been published in German translation, by the admirable Guggolz Verlag -- and it's always well worth checking out what they're publishing.)

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

       Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize, awarded for a: "book-length literary translations into English from any living European language" -- not at the official site(s) yet, last I checked, but see, for example, here -- and it is Jeffrey Zuckerman's translation of Adèle Rosenfeld's Jellyfish Have No Ears; see also the publicity pages from MacLehose Press and Graywolf Press.

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

---

       Maurice Gee (1931-2025)

       New Zealand author Maurice Gee has passed away; see, for example, Philip Matthews' obituary at Stuff and Claire Mabey's tribute at The Spinoff.

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

---

       Writing in ... Yemen

       At Orient XXI Ryan Al-Shibani finds: "the war in Yemen [...] has caused major upheavals in Yemeni cultural life, particularly in the literary sphere", in The Yemeni Crisis Forces a Literary Migration from Poetry.
       Apparently:

Against this backdrop, the novel began to assert itself as the dominant literary form. Instead of poetry -- which had long been Yemen’s preeminent art form -- the novel emerged as a suitable vehicle for confronting the social and psychological ruptures caused by war.

       Impressively:

From 2010 to mid-2022, 373 novels were published -- a figure three times greater than the total produced in all previous decades combined. In comparison, 189 short story collections and 40 collections of very short stories were published in the same period, indicating a clear shift toward narrative and its diverse forms.

       So apparently:

Overall, the novel today appears better equipped to capture the Yemeni moment and its intertwined complexities. Narrative has become a refuge for those fleeing war and displacement, a means of reconstructing self and memory in a fragmented world.

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

       Arab literature

       At Atalayar Aya Aoulouhaj finds that: 'The quality of novels has declined due to the crisis in the Arab cultural business model', in Arab literature falls victim to overproduction.
       So, apparently:

Writers, publishers, literary critics and academics, and even Arab writing award academies have become embroiled in a model based on ‘goodwill’ and the perpetuation of personal, economic and political interests that affect the intellectual development of readers.

       And

Another reason is that the rigour of literary critics has also declined. Mohammed Saeed Ahjiuj complained that these experts no longer do their job, limiting themselves to purely propagandistic activities, thus affecting the development of the judgement of novice readers and the confidence of the more discerning.

       Well, thank god I'm no expert; I would feel very bad about affecting the development of the judgement of novice readers and the confidence of the more discerning .....

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

---

       Molly Jong-Fast/Jay McInerney conversation

       At Interview Erica Jong's kid and the Bright Lights, Big City-author talk, in Molly Jong-Fast and Jay McInerney on the Price of Literary Immortality
       Ah, yes -- 'literary immortality' .....
       McInerney thinks that: "Henry Miller is still in the conversation" (though he doesn't mention whose ...), but:

It just seemed like Updike would never go away, but people don’t talk about him anymore. Literary immortality is a very strange, strange thing. Somebody from the BBC was asking me yesterday about John Dos Passos in the ’30s, when Fitzgerald couldn’t get arrested, Dos Passos was probably considered the great American writer, and now, nobody can even remember him. It’s a fleeting thing.

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

       Tagore and Yeats

       In The Indian Express Aishwarya Khosla revisits: 'Irish Nobel laureate WB Yeats' complex relationship with Rabindranath Tagore, who he first hailed as a mystic sage and championed for the Nobel, only to later dismiss him for “wrecking his reputation”', in Tagore and Yeats: How a Nobel-winning friendship fell apart.

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

       Women's Prizes

       They've announced the winners of this year's Women's Prizes in the two categories, fiction and non.
       The fiction-category winner is The Safekeep, by Yael van der Wouden.

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

---

       Walter Scott Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, and it is The Land In Winter, by Andrew Miller.

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

---

       Translating Rosa Mistika

       At the Asymptote blog Jay Boss Rubin writes on When There's No Fog: Translating Euphrase Kezilahabi's Rosa Mistika -- recently reviewed at the complete review.

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

---

       The Living and the Rest review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of José Eduardo Agualusa's The Living and the Rest, which is now also out in a US edition, from Archipelago (a UK edition of this translation came out in 2023).

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

       Neustadt Prize finalists

       They've announced the nine finalists for the 2026 Neustadt International Prize for Literature -- each one chosen by one of the jurors.
       It's a very strong list, and works by a few of them are under review at the complete review:

• Yuri Andrukhovych
  • Дванадцять обручів
  • The Moscoviad
  • Perverzion
  • Recreations
  • Таємниця
• Elif Batuman
• Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
• Robert Olen Butler
• Safia Elhillo
• Mathias Énard
  • Compass
  • Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants
• Ibrahim Nasrallah
• Tawada Yoko
  • The Emissary (UK title: The Last Children of Tokyo)
  • Exophony
  • Facing the Bridge
  • Memoirs of a Polar Bear
  • The Naked Eye
  • Portrait of a Tongue
  • Time Differences
• Jesmyn Ward

       The winner will be announced 21 October.

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

---

       Thomas-Mann-Preis

       The Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste has announced the winner of this year's Thomas Mann Prize, and it is Katja Lange-Müller; she'll get to pick up the prize on 13 November.
       Two of her works are available in English translation from Seagull Books; see also the foreign rights page from Kiepenheuer & Witsch.

       This €25,000 prize has a good list of previous winners, including Christa Wolf (2010), Lars Gustafsson (2015), Mircea Cărtărescu (2018), and Jonathan Franzen (2022).

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

       Cats in Japanese fiction

       At Metropolis Jessie Carbutt considers the pressing question: Why Are There So Many Cats in Japanese Fiction ?
       Surely Sōseki's I am a Cat deserves more attention in any such overview .....

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

---

       Nepali-Chinese literary exchange

       At Republica they report that 13 Nepali literary works to be translated into Chinese, reporting on a bilateral agreement between Nepal's Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation and China's National Administration of Press and Publication
       Along with the titles to be translated into Chinese:

13 Chinese books have been selected for translation into Nepali. These include Reading Guide for Xi Jinping Thought, Seventy Years of New China, The Origins of Chinese Civilization, and A Brief History of Ancient Chinese Architecture.

       Those lucky Nepali readers, finally getting access to the Reading Guide for Xi Jinping Thought .....

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

---

       Wilde West review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Walter Satterthwait's 1991 novel, Wilde West -- yes, featuring Oscar Wilde on his 1882 US lecture tour.

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

previous entries (1 - 10 June 2025)

archive index

- search the site -

- return to top of the page -

© 2025 the complete review


Main | the New | the Best | the Rest | Review Index | Links