opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

11 - 20 October 2025

11 October: Prémio Camões | Tóibín on Krasznahorkai
12 October: Nigeria Prize for Literature | Krasznahorkai reactions | Artificial Truth review
13 October: Jerry Pinto profile | Zoran Živković | Krasznahorkai in ... South Korea
14 October: Deutscher Buchpreis | Toussaint translates Kafka | Salomes
15 October: Prix du meilleur livre étranger shortlists | Christopher Merrill steps down | Edward Gorey headstone
16 October: Zoë Wicomb (1948-2025) | HWA Crown Awards shortlists | FBF Guests of Honour
17 October: Henry Miller revival ? | Prix de la langue française | Grand Prix du Roman shortlist | The Sixteen Satires review
18 October: Premio Planeta | Saltires shortlists | Another Krasznahorkai Q & A
19 October: Roy Jacobsen (1954-2025) | Giuliano da Empoli Q & A | Lovecraft Reanimated reviews
20 October: Best of the 21st century ? | Festival Neue Literatur | Wittgenstein Week

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       Best of the 21st century ?

       287,990 votes were cast in Australian broadcaster ABC Radio National's poll to determine the top 100 Books of the 21st century, and they've now announced the results; see also the whole list of 100.
       Not many are works in translation. And not many of these are under review at the complete review, but a few are:

• 21. Atonement by Ian McEwan
• 31. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
• 34. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
• 52. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
• 86. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
• 95. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
• 97. True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
• 99. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

       Unsurprisingly, it's very much a 'popular' list.

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

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       Festival Neue Literatur

       This year's Festival Neue Literatur, "the first and only festival to spotlight German-language and U.S. fiction together", takes place in New York tomorrow and the 22nd, and in Washington D.C. on the 24th..
       Curated by Tess Lewis, the theme this year is: 'Strangers at Home'.
       As part of the festival they will also be awarding the Friedrich Ulfers Prize, "to a leading publisher, writer, critic, translator, or scholar who has championed the advancement of German-language literature in the United States" -- this year to translator Tim Mohr.

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

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       Wittgenstein Week

       The Wittgenstein Initiative is holding Wittgenstein Week in Vienna from tomorrow through the 27th.
       An interesting-sounding programme, with the theme: 'The Wittgenstein Houses' -- good reason also to point to the very worthwhile Bernhard Leitner book on The Wittgenstein House.

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

       Roy Jacobsen (1954-2025)

       Norwegian author Roy Jacobsen has passed away; see, for example, the VN obituary.

       Quite a few of his works have been translated into English; only two are under review at the complete review so far -- The Unseen and White Shadow -- but I'll certainly be getting to more.

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       Giuliano da Empoli Q & A

       At The Observer Stephen Armstrong has a Q & A with the The Wizard of the Kremlin-author, in Giuliano da Empoli: ‘I’m the scribe of a dying civilisation’ -- mostly about his new book on 'Encounters with the Autocrats and Tech Billionaires Taking Over the World', The Hour of the Predator; see also the Pushkin Press publicity page.

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       Lovecraft Reanimated reviews

       The most recent additions to the complete review are my reviews of the three volumes in Honford Star's Lovecraft Reanimated-series -- originally published as the 러브크래프트 다시쓰기 프로젝트:

• The Call of the Friend by Choi JaeHoon
• Alien Gods by Lee Suhyeon
• Come Down to a Lower Place by Yi Seoyoung

       The Choi JaeHoon is a graphic novel; he also did the covers of the other two volumes; it's a nice-looking set.

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

       Premio Planeta

       Sure, the recently announced Nobel Prize is the big literary award of the year, and pays out very, very well -- SEK 11,000,000 this year -- but there's a book prize that -- at least this year -- pips it, money-wise: the Spanish Premio Planeta just announced (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) (see also) this year's winner, and he -- Juan del Val, who won for Vera, una historia de amor -- gets €1,000,000 (at current exchange rates SEK11,000,000 is only €998,000 ...). Even runner-up, Cuando el viento hable by Ángela Banzas, gets €200,000.
       Vera, una historia de amor came out tops among 1320 submissions -- 687 from Spain, but also 32 from the US, 7 from Canada, and one each from Sweden, Bahrain, and South Korea, among many others.

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

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       Saltires shortlists

       They've announced the shortlists for this year's The Saltires -- Scotland's National Book Awards

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       Another Krasznahorkai Q & A

       At hlo they have a 2017 Q & A with the new Nobel laureate by Lajos Jánossy, Gabriella Nagy, and Gábor Mészáros -- László Krasznahorkai: I have changed.
       Among his replies:

Long live free America ! And Lady Liberty !

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

       Henry Miller revival ?

       At Asilomar in Pacific Grove they're holding a conference on Henry Miller in the 21st Century through the 19th and at Monterey County NOW Agata Popęda previews that, among other things, in a lengthy article on how apparently The literary world has sidelined Henry Miller. Now scholars are trying to transform his reputation.

       No Miller books are under review at the complete review, but I've found him to be an ...interesting author -- and, unsurprisingly, his The Books in My Life is a longtime favorite; see also the New Directions publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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

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       Prix de la langue française

       They've announced the winner of this year's prix de la langue française, a leading French author prize, and it is Jean Echenoz.
       Quite a few Echenoz titles are under review at the complete review; to me Piano remains the stand-out:

• Big Blondes
• Chopin's Move
• Command Performance
• I'm Gone
• Lightning
• 1914
• Piano
• The Queen's Caprice
• Ravel
• Running
• S.
• Special Envoy
• We Three

       Also: as I've mentioned before, I'm often impressed by the composition of French prize juries and the authors who are on them; among the jurors for this one this year are: Laure Adler, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Philippe Claudel, Paule Constant, Jérôme Garcin, Dany Laferrière, Alain Mabanckou, and Jean- Christophe Rufin. Not bad.

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       Grand Prix du Roman shortlist

       The Académie française has announced the three finalists for its Grand Prix du Roman.
       The winner will be announced on 30 October.

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

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       The Sixteen Satires review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Juvenal's The Sixteen Satires, in the (1967) Peter Green-Penguin Classics translation.

       (My preference is, of course, to always pick up a bilingual edition of this kind of thing, but I don't have the Loeb and I picked up this one for US$1.00 at a book sale two years ago; though limited in (online) access (archive.org, etc.), I couldn't entirely resist some translation-comparisons. I'll definitely seek out some other versions -- I need the Latin text, for one --, but this one does the job pretty well.)

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

       Zoë Wicomb (1948-2025)

       South African author Zoë Wicomb has passed away; see, for example, Shaun de Waal's obituary at news24 and Fiona Moolla writing In Memoriam at the University of the Western Cape.

       The New Press has published several of her works in the US.

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

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       HWA Crown Awards shortlists

       The Historical Writers' Association has announced the shortlists for this year's HWA Crown Awards.

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

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       FBF Guests of Honour

       The Philippines is this year's Guest of Honour at the on-going Frankfurt Book Fair -- see also, for example, Sabine Kieselbach's overview, The Philippines: Frankfurt Book Fair's guest of honor, at Deutsche Welle -- but next year's Guest, the Czech Republic, is already preparing, and at Radio Prague International Hannah Vaughan has a Q & A with Martin Krafl, director of the Czech Literary Centre, about how Czechia prepares to take Guest of Honour role at Frankfurt Book Fair.

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       Prix du meilleur livre étranger shortlists

       They've announced the shortlists for this year's prix du meilleur livre étranger, a leading French prize for foreign fiction and non -- six fiction titles (five of them translations from English, sigh) and a mere two in the non-fiction category; see, for example, the Livres Hebdo report
       The winner will be announced 27 November.

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

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       Christopher Merrill steps down

       As the University of Iowa's Office of Strategic Communication reports, International Writing Program director to step down after 25 years. That's Christopher Merrill, who will return to faculty in the Department of English in 2026 but is stepping down as director of the illustrious International Writing Program
       He will be succeeded by Cate Dicharry -- who has apparently published a novel titled The Fine Art of Fucking Up (see the unnamed press publicity page), so that sounds promising.

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

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       Edward Gorey headstone

       From Ted to Tom-author Edward Gorey died in 2000, but apparently when they buried him he didn't get his own headstone -- but, as Heath Harrison now reports in The Ironton Tribune (yes, he's buried in Ironton) finally: Gorey gets headstone at Woodland Cemetery.
       It looks like this:



       The (anticipatory ?) text says: "The monuments above the dead / Are too eroded to be read".

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

       Deutscher Buchpreis

       They've announced the winner of this year's German Book Prize, and it is Die Holländerinnen, by Dorothee Elmiger; see also the RCW Literary Agency information page and Hanser publicity page, or get your copy from Amazon.de.

       This is one of the few longlisted titles I downloaded from Netgalley.de, so maybe I'll actually get to it .....

       Several of her works have been translated into English, published by Two Lines Press and Seagull Books, so I expect we'll see this one coming out in English as well.

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

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       Toussaint translates Kafka

       Jean-Philippe Toussaint's The Emotions is coming out in English in December, but before that his translation of Kafka's Das Urteil ('The Judgment') is coming out in French, as Le verdict; see also the Les Éditions de Minuit publicity page.
       And at ActuaLitté Galien Sarde has a (French) Q & A with him about it.
       Toussaint on translation:

Traduire, c’est écrire, oui, mais c’est écrire avec des contraintes très fermes, extrêmement rigides. Cela s’apparente à un exercice de l’Oulipo. La contrainte, inflexible, est le texte original. C’est lui au commencement qui dicte l’écriture. Mais, il importe d’aller au-delà de la contrainte, de la surmonter, de la transcender.

[Translating is writing, yes, but it is writing with constraints tha are very firm, extremely rigid. It resembles an Oulipo exercise. The inflexible constraint is the original text. It is this, at the beginning, that dictates the writing. But it is important to go beyond the constraint, to overcome it, to transcend it.]

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

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       Salomes

       At The Critic they have a podcast apparently exploring The many sides of Salome, as they recently had a production of Oscar Wilde's Salomé at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, and here: "Robert Thicknesse gathers the plays hot young Russian director Maxim Didenko and cultural polymath Yehuda Shapiro to look at how writers, painters and composers have slavered over John the Baptist’s dancing nemesis".
       Unfortunately, I do not have the patience to listen to podcasts -- 54 minutes, too ! --, but I am tempted and curious; after all, my novel, Salome in Graz presumably covers much the same territory (though I suspect in more depth ...).

       As to this recent production, Arifa Akbar was ...underwhelmed at The Guardian, writing in her one-star Salomé review -- breathtakingly boring spin on Oscar Wilde's baroque tragedy and summing up: "At times, you have to stifle the laughs but also the yawns. Although under two hours long, it feels endless",
       On the other hand, in his review at everything theatre Alex Finch finds it is: "a frequently astonishing and intensely sensual creation", and goes so far as to say: "There have been several absolute must-sees in London this year, but this leaps to the top of that list".

       Well, either way, the run of this production is over -- but you can always get your hands on my novel, which should give you all the Salome you could possibly want (and quite a bit about translation, among other things, as well).

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

       Jerry Pinto profile

       Via I'm pointed to Jane Borges' profile of the Em and the Big Hoom-author Jerry Pinto in the Mumbai Mirror, How to write 50 books without a plan.
       I'm not sure this is a good thing:

There was this one time when 28 articles by him were slated to be published in the same Sunday edition of a daily newspaper. “Everything couldn’t go with my name. At least six new bylines were invented that day,” Pinto says, laughing.

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

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       Zoran Živković

       At The Dark Forest S.C. Hickman writes about the The Fourth Circle- author, in Zoran Živković: Fables of a Lost World -- a good introduction/overview.

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

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       Krasznahorkai in ... South Korea

       Krasznahorkai László's Nobel Prize-win means, of course, that sales of his books will get a nice bump.
       Interesting to hear that in South Korea -- despite 'only' (!) six of his books having been translated into Korean (though, disappointingly, all indirectly, via the English or German translations, sigh -- interest has apparently been great, as Choi Min-ji reports in the Korea JoongAng Daily, in Publisher flooded with orders after relatively unknown Hungarian author wins Nobel Prize for literature:

Bookseller Aladdin reported selling 1,800 copies overnight -- far surpassing the records set when Annie Ernaux won in 2022 and 1,000 copies and Kazuo Ishiguro won in 2014 and sold 900 copies.

       Hwang Ji-yoon's article in The Chosun Daily reports that Alma Publishing's Sales Surge 45-Fold Post-Nobel, with bookstore Aladin reporting that: "During the month before the award, the total sales of the author’s works were around 40 copies, but after the announcement, 1,800 copies were sold, marking a 45-fold increase."
       Quite the change from the way things were, when all six titles: "previously sold only “one or two copies a day”", as:

From immediately after the award announcement until the morning of the 10th, a total of 5,600 copies were sold across Kyobo Bookstore, Aladin, and Yes24. Among them, 3,800 copies were of Satan Tango.

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

       Nigeria Prize for Literature

       They've announced the winner of this year's Nigeria Prize for Literature, a US$100,000 prize that rotates through four categories, year by year; this year the prize was for a work of fiction, and the winner is Sànyà, by Oyin Olugbile; see, for example, the Vanguard report.
       See also the Masobe publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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

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       Krasznahorkai reactions

       At hlo they have "More than a Catastrophe" – Reactions to László Krasznahorkai's Nobel Prize -- inclduing by his translators Ottilie Mulzet, George Szirtes, and John Batki.

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

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       Artificial Truth review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of J.M.Lee's AI-thriller, Artificial Truth, coming from AmazonCrossing in December.

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

       Prémio Camões

       They've announced the winner of this year's Prémio Camões, the leading Lusophone author prize, paying out €100,000 to the winner, and it is Ana Paula Tavares; see also the Portuguese-American Journal report.
       The Angolan author has not been widely translated into English, but you can find, for example, some of her poems in the original and English -- click 'inglês' -- (and German and ... Lithuanian) translation, here.
       (I expect another Tavares -- The Neighborhood-author Gonçalo M. -- will eventually also get this prize.)

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

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       Tóibín on Krasznahorkai

       In The Guardian Colm Tóibín writes on Why I set up a press to publish Nobel winner László Krasznahorkai.
       Yes, he reports that as late as 2006: "The view in London was that he was too difficult; no publisher could take the risk". (Which, of course, isn't quite right -- it was UK publisher Quartet Books that first brought Krasznahorkai out in English, The Melancholy of Resistance in 1998, with New Directions picking that up in 2000 -- and publishing Krasznahorkai ever since.)

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

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