opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 10 September 2025

1 September: R.F.Kuang 'By the book' | Literature and loss
2 September: Prix Décembre longlist | Wo-men Q & A
3 September: Premio FIL | Cundill Prize shortlist | Swallows review
4 September: Europese Literatuurprijs | Prix Goncourt longlist | Österreichischer Buchpreis longlist | Bayerischer Buchpreis finalists
5 September: Longlists: (American) National Translation Awards - Baillie Gifford Prize | Nelly-Sachs-Preis | Meanjin killed off | Russia's literature industry | TLS goes fortnightly
6 September: Tractatus | Prix Renaudot longlists
7 September: Boekenbon Literatuurprijs longlist | Mick Herron profile | Chinese Songs in a French Key review
8 September: India and the Nobel Prize | Cynthia Ozick profile | 'The Sartre and de Beauvoir of Ukraine'
9 September: 'Among Friends - Unter Freunden' | Andrea Bajani profile
10 September: (US) National Book Award for Translated Literature longlist | Wilhelm Raabe-Literaturpreis | British Academy Book Prize shortlist | 'The life of Ukrainian books and authors in wartime' | Mistress Koharu review

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       (US) National Book Award for Translated Literature longlist

       The (American) National Book Foundation is announcing the longlists for its National Book Awards this week, and one of those announced yesterday was that for the Translated Literature category -- ten titles, selected from 139 (unfortunately not revealed) submissions.
       Three of the titles are under review at the complete review:

• Perfection, by Vincenzo Latronico (tr. Sophie Hughes)
• The Remembered Soldier, by Anjet Daanje (tr. David McKay)
• We Computers, by Hamid Ismailov (tr. Shelley Fairweather-Vega)

       I also have the third volume of Solvej Balle's On the Calculation of Volume and will get to it soon; it's not out in the US yet (due out, appropriately enough, 18 November). I haven't seen any of the other titles.

       All the NBA finalists will be announced 7 October, and the winners on 19 November.

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

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       Wilhelm Raabe-Literaturpreis

       They've announced the winner of this year's Wilhelm Raabe Literary Prize, and it is Verzauberte Vorbestimmung, by Kraft-author Jonas Lüscher; see also the Hanser foreign rights page.
       While it doesn't have quite the same prestige as the German Book Prize, it actually pays out more -- €30,000. And Lüscher is also still in the running for the German Book Prize, having made the longlist for that one as well.

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

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       British Academy Book Prize shortlist

       The British Academy has announced the six-title-strong shortlist for their Book Prize, awarded for: "works of non-fiction that will inspire readers to deepen their understanding of people, society and cultures across time and place".
       The winner will be announced 22 October.

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

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       'The life of Ukrainian books and authors in wartime'

       At RAAM Death and the Penguin-author Andrei Kurkov writes about The life of Ukrainian books and authors in wartime.
       He notes:

The Ukrainian book market has now largely recovered from its slump in 2022. In 2024, 15,601 book titles were published in Ukraine with a total circulation of over 33 million copies. This is 1,887 book titles and almost 4.5 million copies more than in 2023. Almost 92% of these books were published in Ukrainian.

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

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       Mistress Koharu review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Tsujihara Noboru's 'love-doll' novel, Mistress Koharu, recently out from Honford Star.

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

       'Among Friends - Unter Freunden'

       The Goethe-Institut USA "is launching a nationwide campaign to celebrate and strengthen transatlantic friendship", Among Friends - Unter Freunden -- including sending two authors On the Road "to bring the transatlantic partnership to life for a new generation and to foster a vibrant literary exchange between Germany and the United States"; see also the Sabine Kieselbach report at Deutsche Welle, Young German authors on the road in Trump's USA.

       I wonder what the over-under is on the INS grabbing them somewhere along the way.

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

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       Andrea Bajani profile

       At Rice News Brandi Smith reports Rice’s Bajani wins Italy’s top literary prize for ‘The Anniversary’. That's old news -- he won the Premio Strega several months ago; see my previous mention -- but it's a new profile, noting also that:

     The attention has thrust Bajani into a whirlwind schedule. By the end of the year, he will have toured Italy, Spain and Germany with launches also in Hungary, Portugal and the Netherlands before continuing to South America. In total, the novel will be published in nearly 30 countries.

       We also learn that the English translation is by Geoffrey Brock, and is forthcoming from Penguin UK in spring 2026. But no word yet re. a US edition (though surely also coming).

       The only Bajani-title under review at the complete review is his If You Kept a Record of Sins.

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

       India and the Nobel Prize

       With the announcement of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature just a month away (9 October) the handwringing articles are beginning to appear -- such as Shankar Sharan wondering (and finding a reason for) Why hasn't India won Nobel Prize for literature after Independence ? Quality of education at The Print.
       He maintains:

This shameful situation is no fault of publishers here. In current democracies, intellectual activities grow or wither according to the government's attitude. Desi rulers have been more engrossed with promoting their own images, schemes and ideological fixations. Their concern has not gone much beyond taking care of the economy and maintaining their seats of power.

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

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       Cynthia Ozick profile

       In the Wall Street Journal Tunku Varadarajan profiles Cynthia Ozick: A New York Jewish Life of Letters.
       Among her pronouncements:

     Ms. Ozick’s lifelong rule, when faced with writers who display antisemitism in their work, is: “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. With one exception—Ezra Pound, because he committed treason. I don’t think the ‘Cantos’ are enough of a baby to keep him.”

       Most of Ozick's work is under review at the complete review.

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

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       'The Sartre and de Beauvoir of Ukraine'

       In the Irish Times Lara Marlowe profiles The Sartre and de Beauvoir of Ukraine: how two literary academics became wartime resistance leaders -- Tetyana Oharkova and Volodymyr Yermolenko.

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

       Boekenbon Literatuurprijs longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Boekenbon Literatuurprijs -- one of the leading Dutch literary prizes, previously also the AKO Literatuurprijs and then the ECI Literatuurprijs, still paying out €50,000, and notable because both works of fiction and non are eligible -- fifteen titles, selected from 525 submissions.
       The shortlist will be announced 6 October, and the winner 13 November.

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

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       Mick Herron profile

       At The Guardian Lisa Allardice profiles Slow Horses author Mick Herron: ‘I love doing things that are against the rules’.
       Slow Horses-author Herron has a new novel out in the series, Clown Town.
       He also is featured in this week's By the Book-column (presumably paywalled) in The New York Times Book Review.

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

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       Chinese Songs in a French Key review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Pauline Yu on How Judith Gautier's Book of Jade Introduced Europe to Chinese Poetry, in Chinese Songs in a French Key, just out from Columbia University Press.

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

       Tractatus

       The Philosophicum Lech has announced the winner of this year's Tractatus, awarded for a philosophical essay, and it is Gefühle der Zukunft, by Eva Weber-Guskar; see also the Ullstein publicity page.

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

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       Prix Renaudot longlists

       They've now also announced the longlists for this year's prix Renaudot -- second after the Goncourt in French prestige; see, for example, the Livres Hebdo report.
       The only overlap with the Goncourt is Nathacha Appanah's La nuit au cœur.

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

       Longlists: (American) National Translation Awards

       The American Literary Translators Association has announced the longlists for its National Translation Awards, in the two categories of prose and poetry.
       Only two of the prose-titles are under review at the complete review: Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain's translation of Bothayna Al-Essa's The Book Censor's Library and Lin King's translation of Yáng Shuāng-zǐ's Taiwan Travelogue (and I've only seen one more of these titles).
       The shortlists will be announced 9 October, and the winners on 6 November.

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

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       Longlist: Baillie Gifford Prize

       They've announced the twelve-title-strong longlist for this year's Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.
       I haven't seen any of these.
       The shortlist will be announced 2 October, and the longlist on 4 November.

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

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       Nelly-Sachs-Preis

       The city of Dortmund has announced the winner of this year's Nelly Sachs Prize, and it is both Japanese- and German-writing Tawada Yoko; she gets to pick it up on 14 December.
       Several of Tawada's works are under review at the complete review:

• 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

       Previous winners of this mostly biennial prize include Nobel laureates Nelly Sachs (1961), Elias Canetti (1975), and Nadine Gordimer (1985), as well as authors including Milan Kundera (1987), Juan Goytisolo (1993), Michael Ondaatje (1995), Javier Marías (1997), Christa Wolf (1999), and Margaret Atwood (2010).

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

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       Meanjin killed off

       As announced at Meanjin: "Melbourne University Publishing (MUP) announced today that Meanjin will cease publication after its final issue in December 2025" -- this after 85 years, the last 17 as an MUP imprint.
       Apparently the claim is:

The decision was made on purely financial grounds, the MUP Board having found it no longer viable to produce the magazine ongoing.

       See also, for example, Kelly Burke's report at The Guardian, Decision to close Meanjin criticised as act of 'utter cultural vandalism' and Alexander Howard's Australian writers shocked and 'disgusted' by closure of 85-year-old literary journal Meanjin at The Conversation
       Disappointing.

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

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       Russia's literature industry

       At Meduza Kristina Safonova reports on ‘It’s mostly whining’ How pro-war writers and A.I.-enhanced censors conquered Russia’s literature industry.
       She reports, for example, that:

In the fourth year of the war, it is difficult to find a major bookstore in Russia without Z-literature on its shelves, or a festival lineup that does not include writers who have endorsed the invasion. “It looks like these people got everything they wanted. They feel they’re on the right side of history; they’ve booted out their rivals; and they’ve cleared the market for themselves. But look at their Telegram channels and the content is mostly whining: ‘We weren’t invited! Hardly anyone showed up to our event! We’re being silenced!’

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

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       TLS goes fortnightly

       Except for one double-issues each winter and each summer, the Times Literary Supplement has been appearing weekly; alas, no more -- from now on it's only appearing every other week, throughout the year (in a new look, too).
       Disappointing.

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

       Europese Literatuurprijs

       They've announced the winner of this year's Europese Literatuurprijs, a Dutch prize for the best European novel translated into Dutch, and it is Adri Boon's translation from the Catalan of Irene Solà's Et vaig donar ulls i vas mirar les tenebres, published in English as I Gave You Eyes and You Looked towards Darkness; see, for example, the publicity pages from Graywolf and Granta.

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

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       Prix Goncourt longlist

       The Académie Goncourt has announced (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) the fifteen titles longlisted for the prix Goncourt, the leading French-language novel prize.
       Books by Nathacha Appanah, David Diop, and Laurent Mauvignier are in the running -- though I have to think Emmanuel Carrère's Kolkhoze is the early favorite; see also the P.O.L publisity page.
       This is a four- rather than just three-round prize, with a longer shortlist of eight titles to be announced 7 October, a shorter shortlist of four titles to be announced 28 October, and the winner to be announced 4 November.

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

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       Österreichischer Buchpreis longlist

       On the heels of the announcement of the longlist for the German Book Prize (see my previous mention), the Austrians have now announced the ten-title-strong longlist (selected from 72 submissions) for their big fiction prize -- with, somewhat surprisingly, no overlap with the German Book Prize at all.
       Beside the three Austrian titles longlisted for the German Book Prize that didn't make the Austrian Book Prize-cut, I'm also surprised that Raphaela Edelbauer -- who won this prize in 2021 with DAVE -- didn't make the longlist with Die echtere Wirklichkeit (see the Klett-Cotta publicity page), even as it tops, for example, the ORF critics' Bestenliste for September.

       I haven't seen any of these, but I am more intrigued by more of the Austrian titles than the German Book Prize ones. There's a Wolf Haas, for one, -- the The Weather Fifteen Years Ago-author is dependable -- as well as some hefty ones, including Dimitré Dinev's Zeit der Mutigen (the only book of his I have is his 2003 novel Engelszungen, which clocks in at six hundred pages -- and this one is almost twice as long (1152 !); see the Kein & Aber publicity page) and Monika Helfer's a-story-for-each-day-of-the-year book, Wie die Welt weiterging, which comes to 768 pages (see the Hanser foreign rights page). Also of interest: Marlene Streeruwitz's New York-novel, Auflösungen.; see the S.Fischer foreign rights page (that's only 416 pages long).
       (For those seeking some relief, the six titles longlisted for the debut-prize are all of much more manageable length -- and two are under 75 pages !)
       The shortlists will be announced 9 October, and the winners on 10 November.

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

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       Bayerischer Buchpreis finalists

       And they've also announced the finalists for this year's Bavarian Book Prize, three in each of the categories, fiction and non -- with one German Book Prize longlisted title making the cut, Dorothee Elmiger's Die Holländerinnen.
       The winner will be announced 28 October.

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

       Premio FIL

       They've announced the winner of this year's Premio FIL de Literatura en Lenguas Romances -- an author prize for an author who writes in one of the Romance languages -- and it is French-writing Amin Maalouf.

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

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       Cundill Prize shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Cundill History Prize, "the world's leading award for history writing".
       Princeton University Press did well, with three of the eight shortlisted titles.
       Three finalists will be announced 30 September, and the winner will be announced 30 October.

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

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       Swallows review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Kirino Natsuo's latest, Swallows -- yet another contemporary Japanese novel taking on an aspect of the country's fertility rate crisis.
       It's already out in the UK, and is coming out in the US next week.

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

       Prix Décembre longlist

       The big and long French literary-prize-season is picking up speed this week, with the announcement of the longlist for this year's prix Décembre the first big(ger) one out; see, for example, the Livres Hebdo report.
       This prize -- which started out as the prix Novembre -- has a solid list of previous winners, including Lydie Salvayre's The Company of Ghosts (1997), Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles (1988), Mathias Énard's Zone (2008), and Jean-Philippe Toussaint's The Truth about Marie (2009).
       It's also always impressive to see how star-studded these French-prize-juries are -- this one, for example, includes The Heart-author Maylis de Kerangal, Amélie Nothomb, and Charles Dantzig (who picked up the prize in 2005 for the excellent Dictionnaire égoïste de la littérature française).
       The shortlist will be announced 14 October, and the winner on 28 October.

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

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       Wo-men Q & A

       At Radio Prague International Ian Willoughby has a lengthy Q & A with Barbora Baronová, the “punk” publisher putting art before financial stability -- founder of Czech publisher wo-men.
       Among her responses:

To tell you the truth, I never wanted to be a publisher. It’s just one big mistake. But I’m successful in what I do so I keep doing it

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

       R.F.Kuang 'By the book'

       The 'By the book'-column in this week's The Guardian is Katabasis-author Rebecca F Kuang: ‘A Tale of Two Cities is deeply silly camp – I love it !’
       Among her responses:

It also took me a while to find the charm in Victor Hugo's bloviating.

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

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       Literature and loss

       In The Telegraph (India) Debnita Chakravarti writes about how: 'Literature homes the dissonant narratives that are stopped from entering through the archways of history. Jaunt and jubilation must come back to nest in the bleak reality of their terms and costs', in Glorious Loss.
       She suggests that the: "Bengali psyche seems to have a situationship with the concept of defeat", as: "Very few communities may be called bedonabilashi -- luxuriating in loss -- with more aptness".

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

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