opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 10 February 2026

1 February: Society of Authors AI report | Vénus Khoury-Ghata (1937-2026) | Geetanjali Shree Q & A
2 February: AI and translation | Гліняны Вялес shortlist | Picture of Nobody review
3 February: Modern Sanskrit literature ? | Library borrowings in 2025 in ... South Korea
4 February: Sapir Prize | The Girl with the Teddy Bear review
5 February: The Washington Post layoffs | IPAF shortlist | Westminster Book Awards
6 February: PEN Translates grants | Walter Scott Prize longlist | Broken Truths review
7 February: Anke Gowda profile | Wuthering Heights sales
8 February: Jean-Patrick Manchette | Yagisawa Satoshi Q & A
9 February: جایزه کتاب سال جمهوری اسلامی ایران | AI writing | The School of Night review
10 February: Literary festivals in ... India | Mick Herron profile

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       Literary festivals in ... India

       In The Guardian Amrit Dhillon wonders Most Indians don't read for pleasure -- so why does the country have 100 literature festivals ?
       This ... doesn't sound great:

“India hasn’t made the transition to a literate, book-reading class. A literature festival provides a lively atmosphere, crowds and the chance to be ‘cool’ by being seen at a prestigious cultural event. There isn’t much real engagement with books,” says Chiki Sarkar, co-founder of Juggernaut Books.

       And apparently:

The average book in English sells only around 3-4,000 copies. If it tops 10,000, it’s counted a bestseller.

       Interesting however to hear that:

Some believe that reading in Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil or Bengali, or any of the 24 regional languages, is probably higher. But since English occupies an exalted status, until a book has been translated into English (and so accessible to the elite), it remains confined to its state boundary.

“There are no statistics for book sales in the regional languages. It’s an opaque area. We do know anecdotally that at the local level, the literary scene is very vibrant with much discussion of authors and ideas. Moreover, authors are influential, their views on social and political affairs in their state matter,” says [Parsa Venkateshwar] Rao.

       Disappointing that sales are not tracked -- or maybe it's a good thing !

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

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       Mick Herron profile

       At El Mundo Andrés Seoane profiles Slow Horses-author Mick Herron: 'Literature, like all art, begins with entertainment'.

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

       جایزه کتاب سال جمهوری اسلامی ایران

       They've announced the winners of the Iranian Book of the Year Awards; see, for example the (Persian) IBNA report or the Tehran Times report, Iran's Book of the Year Awards honors outstanding literary works.
       A month after they announced the other big Iranian literary prize, the Jalal Al-e Ahmad Literary Awards -- see my previous mention -- لمس by Mohammad Reza Kateb doubles up by winning the prize for best novel here as well; see also the publisher's publicity page. Sadly, I suspect we won't see it in English translation any time soon.

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       AI writing

       In The New York Times Alexandra Alter writes how: 'The romance industry, always at the vanguard of technological change, is rapidly adapting to A.I. Not everyone is on board', in The New Fabio Is Claude (presumably paywalled).
       Among those profiled: Coral Hart -- as:

Last year, she produced more than 200 romance novels in a range of subgenres, from dark mafia romances to sweet teen stories, and self-published them on Amazon. None were huge blockbusters, but collectively, they sold around 50,000 copies, earning Ms. Hart six figures.

       But 'Coral Hart' is an ("early, now retired") pseudonym -- and: "when it comes to her current pen names, Ms. Hart doesn’t disclose her use of A.I., because there’s still a strong stigma around the technology, she said". Hmmmm.
       But:

The way Ms. Hart sees it, romance writers must either embrace artificial intelligence, or get left behind.

“If I can generate a book in a day, and you need six months to write a book, who’s going to win the race ?” she said.

       Ah, yes -- the wonderful future of 'generated books'.
       It's going to be interesting to see how this goes, because there is no doubt that the market -- well, some market -- will soon be flooded by AI-generated books -- which, in some genres, will qualitatively not be all too easily differtiable from in-person-authored books. Interesting times indeed.

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

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       The School of Night review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Karl Ove Knausgaard's The School of Night, the fourth in his The Morning Star-series.

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

       Jean-Patrick Manchette

       New York Review Books has brought out quite a few of Jean-Patrick Manchette's novels in recent years, and now Vintage Classics is bringing out four of them this year in UK editions -- good to see.
       All four are under review at the complete review:

• Fatale
• Nada
• No Room at the Morgue
• Skeletons in the Closet

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

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       Yagisawa Satoshi Q & A

       At the Deccan Herald Asra Mavad has a Q & A with the Days at the Morisaki Bookshop-author, in 'I don’t believe in chasing trends': Japanese novelist Satoshi Yagisawa.
       Among his responses:

What major literary trends do you see in contemporary Japanese literature today ?

Japan doesn’t stick to one particular genre of books for long. There are different genres that become popular randomly from time to time, but they have a short life span and end up falling in popularity just as quickly. This is why I tend to stay away from trends.

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

       Anke Gowda profile

       At the BBC Imran Qureshi profiles Anke Gowda -- The retired Indian factory worker who built a library of two million books.
       A fun story -- and what a great-looking library.

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

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       Wuthering Heights sales

       Apparently there's a new film version of Emily Brontë's classic, Wuthering Heights -- and, as Emma Loffhagen reports at The Guardian, as a result: Sales of Brontë’s Wuthering Heights skyrocket ahead of film adaptation.
       Always good to see actual sales numbers:

In January of this year, 10,670 copies were sold, compared with 1,875 in January 2025, in what Penguin has described as an unusually large boost.

Sales of the book increased by 132% after the release of the first teaser trailer for the film last September. Between the trailer’s release and the end of the year, Penguin sold 28,257 copies in the UK, compared with 12,134 over the same period in 2024.

       And, of course, Penguin is far from the only publisher with editions of the long out of copyright novel out -- though they do have quite a few editions, including a horrific-looking movie tie-in one.

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

       PEN Translates grants

       English PEN has announced the latest batch of PEN Translates grants -- eighteen titles originally written in twelve languages.
       Good to see translations from the Maltese and Filipino among them.

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

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       Walter Scott Prize longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction -- twelve titles.
       I haven't seen any of these.

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       Broken Truths review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Alessandro Robecchi's Broken Truths, coming in English in May, from Other Press.

       This features, among other things, the making of a movie about Augusto De Angelis, "the father of the Italian detective story", and I'm a bit surprised Pushkin Press, which published three De Angelis titles (all under review at the complete review) not too long ago, didn't nab it -- surely great and obvious tie-in potential.

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

       The Washington Post layoffs

       As widely reported, ownership has gutted the once-storied American newspaper, The Washington Post; see, for example, the Poynter report, The Washington Post lays off a third of its staff.
       Among the many, many cuts is, apparently, all the book-coverage (despite the newspaper's owner being ... the founder of Amazon.com ...); see for example Ron Charles' Substack-post, I've Been Laid Off. I'm Not Done.
       Not good. Not good at all.

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

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       IPAF shortlist

       The International Prize for Arabic Fiction has announced the shortlist for this year's prize.
       The winner will be announced 9 April.

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

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       Westminster Book Awards

       They've announced the winners of the Westminster Book Awards, with The Football Battalions, by Chris Evans winning for 'Best Fiction or Non-Fiction Book by a Parliamentarian'; see also the Bloomsbury publicity page.

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

       Sapir Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Sapir Prize, a leading Israeli book prize, and it is שכול וכשלון וזומבים ('Breakdown and Bereavement and Zombies'), by Amir Harash; see, for example, the report at The Jerusalem Post.
       See also the עם עובד publicity page. Apparently, it's a book in the vein (or rather: knockoff of) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies -- taking not Austen's novel but rather Yosef Haim Brenner's Breakdown and Bereavement (see the Toby Press publicity page) as its take-off point.
       Not sure we'll see this in English translation any time soon .....

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       The Girl with the Teddy Bear review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Viktor Domontovych's 1928 novel, The Girl with the Teddy Bear, now out in English, from Dedalus.

       I admittedly have a very soft spot for Soviet fiction of the 1920s and early 1930s, but this was a nice surprise -- originally written in Ukrainian, for one.
       The previously unknown to me Domontovych's biography is also pretty wild, and I will definitely have to seek out his On Shaky Ground, recently published by Central European University Press -- but what I'm really hoping for is a translation of his Doctor Seraficus, which they published together with The Girl with the Teddy Bear in the recent Ukrainian edition.

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

       Modern Sanskrit literature ?

       There's a fair amount of Sanskrit literature under review at the complete review, but it's alll classical -- but Sanskrit isn't a 'dead' language, and at moneycontrol Chanpreet Khurana has a Q & A on 'how modern Sanskrit literature is open and evolving', Ever read Sanskrit ghazals and Sanskrit haiku ? Prof Radhavallabh Tripathi explains how modern Sanskrit literature is both vibrant and inclusive.
       Tripathi suggests that nowadays young Sanskrit authors are: "even more open than the Hindi poets and Hindi writers, experimenting within the genres or in adopting new genres".
       He also addresses the problematic 'present politics around' Sanskrit -- a bit.
       And he does acknowledge: "Scientific writing in the modern sense of the term is not there; like books on modern physics or chemistry, that we don't hear (of). But a lot of Shastric writings are being done in Sanskrit" ......

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

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       Library borrowings in 2025 in ... South Korea

       In The Korea Times they report that in South Korea Han Kang's 'Human Acts' most-borrowed book at public libraries in 2025 -- "borrowed 60,504 times at 1,583 public libraries across the country"; see also the National Library of Korea press release.
       Three more Han titles made the top ten, including The Vegetarian (number two; 58,272 loans), We Do Not Part (number three; 46,387 loans), and The White Book (number seven; 31,829 loans), and a total of seventeen of her books were in the top thousand.
       Also: Korean literature accounted for about 34 million loans, some 25% of the total -- a record high since they've been collecting data, in 2014.

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

       AI and translation

       It was only one poem but, as Park Jin-seong reports at The Chosun Daily: AI Triumphs Over Human Translators in Korean Literature Translation Test, as, out of: "16 domestic English literature professors [...] 12 professors chose the ChatGPT translation, two selected the human translation, and two declared “undecidable.”"
       Impressively (?):

Professors who favored the AI translation praised ChatGPT for its deep understanding of Korean history and culture, as well as its effective preservation of the original’s rhythm and style.

       (Of course, also, the small print at the bottom of this article notes: "This article has been translated by Upstage Solar AI".)

       Meanwhile, also in The Chosun Daily, Hwang Ji-yoon reports that The Guest-author Hwang Sok-yong Uses AI Despite Literary Contest Bans

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

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       Гліняны Вялес shortlist

       They've announced the: "finalists for one of Belarus's oldest independent literary awards" and, as they report at Naša Niva: Shortlist for the "Hliniany Viales" Literary Award Announced: Not a Single Book from Belarus.
       Maybe not a great sign for the state of a country's literary culture when all nine finalists for a leading book prize were published outside the country .....

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

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       Picture of Nobody review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Philip Owens' 1936 novel of a modern-day 'Will Shakespere', Picture of Nobody, a neat little rediscovery coming from McNally Editions in April. (It doesn't appear to have ever been reïssued since it first came out.)

       Now we just need a new edition of his Hobohemians .....

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

       Society of Authors AI report

       The Society of Authors has released a new report, 'Brave New World ? Justice for creators in the age of GenAI'; see the press release, and download the report here.
       The report extends beyond just authors -- "Survey data from the AOP reveals an average loss of £14,000 per professional photographer, while illustrators report average reductions of £9,262. Musicians describe income cuts of up to 50% as GenAI replaces paid work" -- but certainly includes some eye-opening numbers as far as writing and publishing goes: "86% authors say GenAI has already reduced their earnings" and: "57% of authors say their career is no longer sustainable due to the impact of GenAI"
       Interestingly, only: "Over 90% of authors say publishers and clients should clearly label any content where GenAI has been used" (vs. 99% of illustrators, 95.9% of photographers and 98% of musicians).
       Certainly lots of interesting statistics and opinions, but given the cost- and speed-advantages GenAI has -- yes, yes, despite: the 'hidden costs' of AI -- a lot of this feels and sounds like tilting at windmills. (Same goes for book 'reviewing', by the way, which GenAI will, of course, soon completely dominate.)

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

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       Vénus Khoury-Ghata (1937-2026)

       French-writing author Vénus Khoury-Ghata has passed away; see, for example, the report at L'Orient Today.
       Quite a bit of her work has been translated into English, including four titles by Seagull Books.

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

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       Geetanjali Shree Q & A

       Geetanjali Shree's The Roof Beneath Their Feet is now out from And Other Stories -- see their publicity page -- and at The Observer Ellen Peirson-Hagger has a Q & A with the Tomb of Sand-author, in Geetanjali Shree: ‘I’m absolutely against the purity of language’.
       Among her responses:

How is your writing received in India ?

I have serious critics saying that my language is not Hindi because it is so eclectic and doesn’t always fulfil the expectations of correct grammar usage. I coin a lot of words, and I’ve often quite happily changed the gender of certain words – somewhere I turned “moon”, which is male, female, because I like the moon. I’m proud of that eclecticism. I think there’s something limited in [the critics’] way of seeing, their notion of purity. I’m absolutely against purity. My language is completely impure.

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

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