opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

21 - 31 December 2025

21 December: Bestselling in ... the UK | 25 best books of the century ? | Alan Hollinghurst profile
22 December: New Nobel announcer | Salman Rushdie Q & A
23 December: Philippine National Book Awards finalists | Boryslav in Flames review
24 December: Best Ukrainian books of 2025 ? | Books as markers of taste ?
25 December: Vinod Kumar Shukla (1937-2025) | 'Memoir genre' controversies | Support for writers in Assam
26 December: French literature in 2025 | The Smithsonian Institution review
27 December: More best Ukrainian books of 2025 | Jon Fosse's Kant
28 December: 2025 Translations from ... Chinese | 'State of the Industry': US publishing
29 December: Rahi Masoom Reza profile | Publishing world fiction in ... Telugu | The Child's Child review
30 December: The year in books in ... Japan, 2025 | Scorpions review
31 December: The year in books in ... South Korea, 2025 | Years in reading

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       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 -

       French literature in 2025

       Anne-Laure Pineau finds: '2025 was the year French literature focused on family' in reporting on How the French fell in love with family-driven memoirs and autofiction at The Guardian.
       She suggests:

Perhaps traditional fiction is being put aside for a while in favour of plainly confronting the world. These authors invite us to start a real dialogue within ourselves and open our drawers

       One can hope that she is mistaken .....

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

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       The Smithsonian Institution review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Gore Vidal's 1998 novel, The Smithsonian Institution.

       As longtime readers know, I cover a lot of fiction-with-real-people-in-it -- see the index of all such titles under review -- but I have to admit that another reason I picked this up at the library is the WTF cover:




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

       Vinod Kumar Shukla (1937-2025)

       Hindi-writing author Vinod Kumar Shukla has passed away; see, for example, Mayank Jain Parichha's Vinod Kumar Shukla obit: A writer who illuminated ordinariness of the ordinary. in The Federal.
       Several of his works are available in English -- and in 2023 he was awarded the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.
       See also, for example, this Interview with Vinod Kumar Shukla by Bhavya Bhagtani at Blackbird.

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

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       'Memoir genre' controversies

       At the BBC Clare Thorp looks at The Salt Path and 2025's most scandalous books.

       (I don't know that these were '2025's most scandalous books', but as a not-huge-fan of the genre I can only hope that: "The Salt Path scandal will make publishers nervous about commissioning real-life stories" .....)

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

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       Support for writers in Assam

       They're holding the Assam Book Fair in Guwahati, and at the opening Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced that: "As part of #YearOfBooks, we will confer 818 writers with ₹25,000 each to support them in their pursuits"; see also, for example, the coverage at Syllad.
       You can see the full list of the 818 writers here (warning ! dreaded pdf format !).
       ₹25,000 is not a huge amount -- about US$280.00 -- but certainly can be helpful to these young authors -- and it's nice to see money spread around to so many.

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

       Best Ukrainian books of 2025 ?

       At Chytomo they've announced the twelve best Ukrainian: "works of contemporary fiction and auto-documentary prose, compiled through evaluation by eleven Ukrainian literary critics and one creative duo", in The best Ukrainian prose: Chytomo Picks 2025.
       Some interesting-sounding works; I wonder when/whether we will see any in English translation.

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

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       Books as markers of taste ?

       At Coveteur Sydney Gore suggests: "In our hyper-visual world, books have become the last marker of taste", in The Rise of the Literary It Girl.
       Among the quotes: "In regards to performative reading, Carloto considers it as the least of our problems" .....

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

       Philippine National Book Awards finalists

       The (Philippine) National Book Development Board and the Filipino Critics Circle have announced the finalists for the 43rd Philippine National Book Awards -- 139 titles in 30 categories, selected from 385 submissions.

       Most impressive showing: Nicanor Tiongson, whose three volumes about Philippine Theater make up three of the four finalists in the 'Best Book of Literary History'-category; see also the Ateneo de Manila University Press publicity page.

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

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       Boryslav in Flames review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Ivan Franko's unfinished novel Boryslav in Flames.

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

       New Nobel announcer

       Next year, when they announce the Nobel Prize in Literature, it won't be Mats Malm who does the honors: he's been dumped resigned as the Swedish Academy's 'Permanent Secretary', and it is Ingrid Carlberg -- seated in the Academy's stol nr. 5 -- who is taking over the position and duties, starting 1 June 2026 (when they'll be halfway through the Nobel-deciding procedure, when they will have already decided on the five final candidates); see the official press release.

       Carlberg's Raoul Wallenberg-biography has been published in English -- but more recently she's written a biography of ... Alfred Nobel himself ! Rights have been sold right and left -- but not English-language ones yet ...; see, for example the information pages at Brave New World and the Hedlund Literary Agency.

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

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       Salman Rushdie Q & A

       I missed this when it came out over a week ago, but at the New Statesman Tanjil Rashid has a lengthy Q & A with the author, in Salman Rushdie's uprooted people (possibly registration-requiring).
       Among his observations:

The Satanic Verses is a novel about London. Nobody thinks about it like that, which is frustrating.

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

       Bestselling in ... the UK

       They've released the list of The Sunday Times top 50 bestselling books of 2025 (possibly paywalled ?) -- with actual sales numbers !
       The top-selling title was (is ? the year isn't over yet ...) Richard Osman's The Impossible Fortune, with 391,429 copies shifted; four more titles sold over 300,000 copies.
       Two of the top fifty are under review at the complete review: Yuzuki Asako's Butter (at number 35, with 152,060 copies sold) and Robert Harris' Precipice (at number 47, with 129,934 copies sold).

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

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       25 best books of the century ?

       There's another 'The 25 best books of the century so far'-list out -- this one (possibly registration-requiring) at The Observer.
       Good to see that twenty-first-century classic The Odyssey, by Homer, make the list ..... (They mean a specific translation, of course .....)
       It is a ... wide-ranging selection ..... From London Orbital to 2666 to The Amber Spyglass .....

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

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       Alan Hollinghurst profile

       At The Guardian Alex Clark profiles the author, in ‘There’s a sense of our freedoms becoming vulnerable’: novelist Alan Hollinghurst.

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

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