opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 10 December 2025

1 December: BRICS Literary Prize | Krasznahorkai in China | Mircea Cărtărescu profile | Antigone Prize for Classical Philology
2 December: Shortlists: Translation Prizes - Banipal Translation Prize | PEN Heaney Prize
3 December: Wolfson History Prize | NYTBR 10 best of 2025 | Visegrad Literary Awards | Best 2025 literature in translation ?
4 December: FT Business Book of the Year | PEN America Grant winners | Peepal Tree Press at 40 | Andrei Kurkov Q & A | Crossword Book Awards | The Fire Within review
5 December: Solvej Balle Q & A | Hamid Ismailov profile
6 December: Reading in ... Italy | Beloved Son Felix review
7 December: Joyce Carol Oates Prize longlist | (South African) Sunday Times Literary Awards
8 December: Krasznahorkai's Nobel Prize lecture
9 December: Leipziger Buchpreis zur Europäischen Verständigung
10 December: WLT's 75 Notable 2025 Translations | Westminster Book Awards shortlists | Worst fiction of 2025 ?

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       WLT's 75 Notable 2025 Translations

       World Literature Today has released its list of 75 Notable Translations of 2025 -- always interesting to see.
       I'm surprised/disappointed by how many of these I haven't even seen -- but eight are under review at the complete review:

• Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, tr. Sophie Hughes
• The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje, tr. David McKay
• The Rest Is Silence by Augusto Monterroso, tr. Aaron Kerner
• Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno, tr. Natasha Lehrer
• Sons and Daughters by Chaim Grade, tr. Rose Waldman
• Vanishing World by Murata Sayaka, tr. Ginny Tapley Takemori
• We Computers, Hamid Ismailov, tr. Shelley Fairweather-Vega
• Your Steps on the Stairs by Antonio Muñoz Molina, tr. Curtis Bauer

       It should be noted that many notable translations didn't make the cut, among them: Daniel Kehlmann's The Director (tr. Ross Benjamin), which was named one of The New York Times Book Review's The 10 Best Books of 2025; Michael Lentz's grand Schattenfroh (tr. Max Lawton; see also the Deep Vellum publicity page); the third volume in Solvej Balle's On the Calculation of Volume-series (tr. Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell), a finalist for this year's (American) Nationl Book Award for Translated Literature; the latest by Georgi Gospodinov (tr. Angela Rodel); and Marlen Hauhofer's Killing Stella (tr. Shaun Whiteside) -- not to mention quite a few more less high profile publications .....

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

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       Westminster Book Awards shortlists

       They've announced the shortlists for the Westminster Book Awards.
       These used to be called the Parliamentary Book Awards, and two of the three categories are for books written by (British) parliamentarians -- 'Best Non-Fiction or Fiction' and 'Best Biography' (though disappointingly the latter seems rather simply for autobiographical work, rather than biographies of other people ...). Disappointingly, too, the 'Non-Fiction or Fiction' category does not include any fiction this year .....
       These shortlists were selected by booksellers but it's parliamentarians who have the say as to who gets the prizes: they have until 14 January to vote for the winners. I wonder how many vote -- and how many take the exercise seriously, reading all the shortlisted titles .....
       (As always, I also wonder how a US version of this prize would look .....)

       The winners will be announced on 4 February.

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

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       Worst fiction of 2025 ?

       An endless number of 'best-of' lists continue to appear, but there are far too few acknowledging the worst of the year -- but at least Steve Donoghue always comes through, at his SteveReads: see his selection of The Worst Books of 2025: Fiction.
       Lots of big-name 'literary' authors (and Stephen King) -- with quite a few 'Brutalist Dudebro books', "great granite blocks of prose assembled by very similar male writers in order to be owned and praised (but not read) by very similar male customers".
       Somewhat disappointingly, I haven't seen a one of these .....

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

       Leipziger Buchpreis zur Europäischen Verständigung

       They've announced who will be getting next year's Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding, and it is Miljenko Jergović for his recent collection, Trojica za kartal; see also the Fraktura publicity page.
       The collection is subtitled: Sarajevski Marlboro remastered -- 'Sarajevo Marlboro Remastered', after the collection from some three decades ago, published in English translation first by Penguin (1997) and then Archipelago Books (2004).
       The prize pays out €20,000; and Jergović gets to pick it up on 18 March.

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

       Krasznahorkai's Nobel Prize lecture

       It's Nobel Week, with the big awards ceremony to be held on the 10th -- and Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Krasznahorkai László got to give his Nobel Prize lecture yesterday; you can watch the whole thing, or read it in various translations (including English, in Ottilie Mulzet's translation), at that link.

       Krasznahorkai also donated "a Netsuke depicting a wise elderly man to the Nobel Prize Museum" (as laureates traditionally give an item to the museum), and also did the peculiar signing-of-the-chair thing; alas, no press release or additional information about these, just the pictures .....

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

       Joyce Carol Oates Prize longlist

       The New Literary Project has announced the longlist for the 2026 Joyce Carol Oates Prize, an American author-prize paying out US$50,000 and honoring: "a mid-career author of fiction in the midst of a burgeoning career, a distinguished writer who has emerged and is still emerging".
       They haven't narrowed down the field much yet: twenty-eight (!) authors are longlisted -- including may quite well-known ones.
       They don't have a too-strict schedule, either: "Finalists are expected to be named in March 2026, the Recipient in April 2026".

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

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       (South African) Sunday Times Literary Awards

       They've announced the winners of this year's (South African) Sunday Times Literary Awards in the two categories, fiction and non, with The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil by Shubnum Khan winning the fiction prize; see also the Pan Macmillan South Africa publicity page.

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

       Reading in ... Italy

       The Associazione Italiana Editori report on the latest survey, which finds that the percentage of those between 15 and 74 in Italy who have read at least one book in the last year has increased to 76 per cent -- up from 73 per cent in 2024 -- though the percentage of those who read at least once a week has fallen from 72 per cent in 2022 to 61 in 2025, and the time spent per week reading has declined in the same period from 3 hours and 32 minutes to 3 hours and 7 minutes.
       Good also to see reading popular among the young: 89 per cent of 15-17s read at least one book, as did 82 per cent of 18-34 year-olds; only 68 per cent of 55-74 year-olds did (though that's still up from last year).
       Overall, 19 per cent read between seven and eleven books in the last year, and 22 percent read twelve or more.

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

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       Beloved Son Felix review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Felix Platter's sixteenth-century account of Coming of Age in the Renaissance, Beloved Son Felix, a 1961 translation that is being re-issued by McNally Editions.

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

       Solvej Balle Q & A

       At PEN Transmissions Will Forrester has a Q & A with the On the Calculation of Volume I, II, and III-author, in Dissolving Sugar in Water: A Long Conversation with Solvej Balle.
       Balle notes that she knows how the planned seven-part series ends -- indeed, that:

The ending came with the idea; I haven’t thought about the end as separated from the idea. It was there long before I started writing. There are elements that have come along the way, of course. And let’s see if I’m right about the end. But I think it’s not so likely that it will be very different to what I think it will be. I’ve written several versions of the last pages.

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

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       Hamid Ismailov profile

       At The Phoenix Zephyr Weinreich reports on a recent Swarthmore event with the author and the translator of We Computers, in Hamid Ismailov and Shelley Fairweather-Vega on the Histories and Futures of Artificial Intelligence in Literature.

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

       FT Business Book of the Year

       They've announced the winner of this year's Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award and it is The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip, by Stephen Witt; see also the publicity pages from Bodley Head and Viking.

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

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       PEN America Grant winners

       PEN America has announced its 2026 grant winners for works-in-progress -- including ten PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants.
       Among the translation projects: nineteenth-century speculative fiction by Polish author Deotyma, and Solitude of a Python in Paris by Romain-Gary-writing-as-Émile-Ajar !

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

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       Peepal Tree Press at 40

       Peepal Tree Press was founded in 1985, and in The Guardian Nesrine Malik charts 'its journey from an ‘expensive hobby’ to an international household name', in Illustrating the ‘postcolonial experience’: 40 years of Peepal Tree Press
       The only title under review at the complete review from Peepal Tree Press is Cut Guavas by Robert Antoni, but I've long been impressed by their list.

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

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       Andrei Kurkov Q & A

       At France24 Sonya Ciesnik has a Q & A with the Death and the Penguin-author, in ‘People know so much more about Russian literature’: An author’s invitation to discover Ukraine.

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

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       Crossword Book Awards

       They've announced the winners of this year's Crossword Book Awards, a leading Indian book prize -- though not yet at the official site, last I checked, but see, for example, Girish Shukla's TNN report
       The fiction prize went to Great Eastern Hotel by Ruchir Joshi -- see also the HarperCollins India publicity page -- and the translation prize went to J.Devika's translation of Manoj Kuroor's The Day the Earth Bloomed -- see the Bloomsbury India publicity page.

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

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       The Fire Within review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Touhfat Mouhtare's The Fire Within, just out (tomorrow !) in English, from Dedalus.

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

       Wolfson History Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Wolfson History Prize -- "The most valuable history-writing prize in the UK" -- and it is Survivors by Hannah Durkin -- published in the US as The Survivors of the Clotilda (because ... publishers ...); see also the publicity pages from William Collins and Amistad.

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

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       NYTBR 10 best of 2025

       The New York Times Book Review has released its list of The 10 Best Books of 2025
       One of the titles is under review at the complete review: The Director, by Daniel Kehlmann.

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

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       Visegrad Literary Awards

       They've announced the new winners of the first Visegrad Literary Awards -- see the announcements by the International Visegrad Fund and the Villa Decius Association, whose initiative it is.
       There are four winners -- from the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary --, selected from 81 submissions.

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

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       Best 2025 literature in translation ?

       Steve Donoghue has started his annual top-ten rundowns at his SteveReads, and he's now posted his The Best Books of 2025: Literature in Translation

       None of these are under review at the complete review, though I do have a couple of them -- including 900 Conclusions, which is an .... interesting text (and impressive edition), but ......
       The list is rather old/re-translation-heavy -- only two of the authors of these books are alive ...

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

       Shortlists: Translation Prizes

       The Society of Authors has announced the shortlists for its 2025 Translation Prizes -- nine prizes in all.
       Only a smattering of titles are under review at the complete review -- and I haven't even seen any of those shortlisted for the from-any-language John Calder Translation Prize (admittedly, a very UK-publisher-heavy list).
       The titles under review are:

• Scott Moncrieff Prize (French): Mark Polizzotti's translation of Jean Echenoz's Command Performance
  
  
• Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize (Japanese): Stephen Snyder's translation of Ogawa Yoko's Mina's Matchbox
  
  
• Premio Valle Inclán (Spanish): Megan McDowell's translation of Alejandro Zambra's Childish Literature
  
  
• Bernard Shaw Prize (Swedish): Agnes Broomé's translation of Lydia Sandgren's Collected Works

       The winners will be announced in February.

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

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       Shortlist: Banipal Translation Prize

       They've announced the six-title shortlist for this year's Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, selected from the seventeen entries.
       I haven't seen any of these.
       The winner will be announced 7 January 2026.

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

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       PEN Heaney Prize

       English PEN has announced the winner of this year's PEN Heaney Prize. recognizing: "a single-author collection of poetry of outstanding literary merit that engages with the impact of cultural or political events on human conditions or relationships", and it is Namanlagh, by Tom Paulin; see also the Faber publicity page.

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

       BRICS Literary Prize

       They've announced the winner of the inaugural BRICS Literary Prize -- though not yet at the official site, last I checked. Egyptian author Salwa Bakr took the million-ruble prize; see, for example, the report at ahramonline, Egypt's Salwa Bakr wins inaugural BRICS Literary Prize in Russia.

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

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       Krasznahorkai in China

       At China Daily Yang Yang reports that: 'Nobel laureate and Hungarian novelist Laszlo Krasznahorkai's unique narrative fascinates Chinese scholars', in Under the spell of unbroken sentences.

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

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       Mircea Cărtărescu profile

       In The Guardian Philip Oltermann profiles the author, in ‘I took literary revenge against the people who stole my youth’: Romanian author Mircea Cărtărescu.

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

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       Antigone Prize for Classical Philology

       Antigone Journal has announced a new prize, the Antigone Prize for Classical Philology. A great idea -- and it comes with quite the first prize:

The complete Loeb Classical Library (some 660 volumes) plus £5,000; or (for those without space for more books!) a cash prize of £10,000.

       (Kind of them to offer the all-cash alternative, but who could pass up the complete Loeb collection ? If you don't have space for more books, you make the space .....)
       An interesting concept, too: participants can choose from six near-modern texts, and:

The challenge is to produce a self-standing edition of the work: the text is to be presented with an English translation. It is to be preceded by an introduction (in English or Latin) and followed by a scholarly commentary on the text.

       The texts look intriguing too, and I'm not sure which I'd want to see most in translation and with commentary: one of the two Platonic dialogues (Philip Edwin Raynor's 'Anaximander, or On the Origin of Animals' or Herbert Sidebotham's 'Aristophanes, or On Humour') ? Or the Latin Napoleon-monologue by John Noel Dark ?
       The texts themselves are quite short -- but entrants can present up to 25,000 words of commentary to go with their translation .....
       Should be interesting to see what results (and how many entries they get).
       You have until 31 July 2026 to submit your entry (but should give them a heads-up by 31 January that you're planning on playing, and which text you're tackling).

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

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