opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

11 - 20 March 2026

11 March: Alfredo Bryce Echenique (1939-2026) | Republic of Consciousness Prize (US/Canada) | Carol Shields Prize longlist | The Mad review
12 March: Stella Prize longlist | Wortmeldungen Literaturpreis
13 March: PEN Presents: Brazil shortlist | Tomas Tranströmer's Nobel Prize medal and diploma
14 March: Film adaptations
15 March: Kerouac scrolls | Jürgen Habermas (1929-2026) | Jnanpith Award
16 March: Shahrnush Parsipur profile | Sisters in Yellow review
17 March: Sahitya Akademi Awards | Rasputin Prize
18 March: Len Deighton (1929-2026) | Kalinga Literary Festival Book Awards longlists | US book production in 2025 | Fortress of the Forgotten Ones review
19 March: Premio Aena de Narrativa finalists | James Tait Black shortlists | Lambda Literary Awards finalists
20 March: Preise der Leipziger Buchmesse | Dylan Thomas Prize shortlist | Prix des cinq continents

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       Preise der Leipziger Buchmesse

       They've announced the Prizes of the Leipzig Book Fair in its three categories -- basically: fiction, non, and translation.
       The fiction ('Belletristik') winner is Goldstrand by Katerina Poladjan; see also the S.Fischer foreign rights page.
       The translation prize went to Manfred Gmeiner's translation of Gustavo Faverón Patriau's Vivir Abajo, published by Droschl; see also the Agence Littéraire Sophie Savary information page. Grove did publish Faverón Patriau's The Antiquarian over a decade ago, but that seems to be the only one of his works available in English; this one is apparently coming in English translation from Inpatient Press (according to the author's faculty page).

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       Dylan Thomas Prize shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize -- "the world's largest and most prestigious literary prize for young writers" -- four novels and two collections of poetry.
       I haven't seen any of these.
       The winner will be announced 14 May.

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       Prix des cinq continents

       They've announced the winner of this year's prix des cinq continents de la Francophonie, and it is Cette vieille chanson qui brûle, by Alexandre Lenot; see also the Denoël publicity page.

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

       Premio Aena de Narrativa finalists

       They've announced the five finalists for the new Premio Aena de Narrativa Hispanoamericana, recognizing: "narrative works published in Spanish and in Spain's co-official languages that stand out for their literary quality, originality, and cultural contribution".
       It's a pretty impressive-sounding list of finalists that includes works by Enrique Vila-Matas, Samanta Schweblin, Héctor Abad, and Nona Fernández but perhaps more noteworthy is the payout, as the author of the winning book gets €1,000,000. Yes, that's more than the winner gets for the Nobel Prize -- and a lot more than the winners of piddling prizes such as the Booker and the Pulitzer get ..... Only another Spanish book-prize, the Premio Planeta, is in the same league.

       Wikipedia will have to update its List of richest literary awards (where the richest US book prize -- the US$100,000 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature -- is way, way down the list ...).

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

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       James Tait Black shortlists

       The University of Edinburgh has announced the shortlists for this year's James Tait Black Prizes, awarded in the categories Fiction and Biography, five titles each, "selected from the highest number of submissions ever recorded, with 300 titles considered".

       The only title under review at the complete review is Sakina's Kiss by Vivek Shanbhag, in the Fiction category.

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       Lambda Literary Awards finalists

       Lambda Literary has announced the finalists for its Literary Awards in 26 (!) categories.
       The winners will be announced 12 June.

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       Len Deighton (1929-2026)

       British author Len Deighton has passed away; see, for example, obituaries at The Guardian and The New York Times (presumably paywalled).

       I've enjoyed his novels; the only one of his titles under review at the complete review is SS-GB.

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       Kalinga Literary Festival Book Awards longlists

       The Kalinga Literary Festival has announced the longlists for its Book Awards in five categories -- though not yet at the official site, last I checked, but see, for example, the report at Scroll.in.
       One of the categories is Translated Fiction; spelling 'Tamil' as 'Thamizh' is new to me.
       The winners will be announced 8 May.

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       US book production in 2025

       At Publishers Weekly Jim Milliot reported that Book Output Topped Four Million in 2025 in the US.
       Most of these are self-published works (both print and -- apparently mostly -- e-titles) which: "soared 38.7% to more than 3.5 million from 2.5 million in 2024". But 'traditionally published' books also: "rose 6.6%, to 642,242, from 602,428 in 2024". That is a lot of books.

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       Fortress of the Forgotten Ones review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Fahmida Riaz's 2017 novel, Fortress of the Forgotten Ones, out in English next week, from Open Letter.

       Sana R. Chaudhry won the 2024 Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation for her translation of this.

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       Sahitya Akademi Awards

       Sahitya Akademi -- the National Academy of Letters in India -- has announced (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) the winners of its annual prizes "to the most outstanding books of literary merit published in any of the major Indian languages recognised by the Akademi" -- twenty-four of them -- for 2025.
       Eight of the winning titles were works of poetry, four were novels, six were collections of short stories, two were essays, one was a work of literary criticism, and three were autobiographies/memoirs.
       The English-language winner was Navtej Sarna's novel, Crimson Spring; see also the Aleph publicity page.

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       Rasputin Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Rasputin Prize -- a Russian literary prize named for writer Valentin Rasputin, not the better-known one ... --, and it is Груманланы, by Vladimir Lichutin; see, for example, the report at Российский книжный союз.
       See also the Вече publicity page for Груманланы.

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

       Shahrnush Parsipur profile

       More than a decade after it first came out in the US the second translation of Shahrnush Parsipur's Women without Men is finally coming out in the UK, and between renewed interest in Iran and its International Booker Prize-longlisting it, and she, have been getting some well-deserved attention -- and now there's a profile of sorts of her in The Guardian, by Dina Nayeri: Shahrnush Parsipur: ‘The women of Iran will cause the fall of the Islamic Republic’

       (While it's good to see that Women without Men is getting all this attention, don't forget that another of Parsipur's novels is also available: Touba and the Meaning of Night.)

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

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       Sisters in Yellow review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Kawakami Mieko's latest, Sisters in Yellow, coming out this week in both the US and UK.

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

       Kerouac scrolls

       As I mentioned a few weeks ago, among the many things from Jim Irsay's estate going up for auction were two manuscript-scrolls of works by Jack Kerouac -- On the Road and The Dharma Bums -- and on Friday they sold, both for considerably more than their estimates.
       The nearly 120-foot scroll of On the Road went for US$12,135,000 (!).
       As reported by, for example, Rolling Stone it was apparently purchased by entertainer Zach Bryan.
       The Dharma Bums scroll -- only 61 feet long -- went for US$1,651,000. Irsay had only purchased this in 2023 -- from Sotheby's; see their page for more illustrations of it.

       Scroll-manuscripts seem to fetch good prices -- recall that the Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom -- an 11.85 meter long scroll -- was bought by the French government in 2021 for €4,550,000.

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

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       Jürgen Habermas (1929-2026)

       German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has passed away; see, for example, the notice from his publisher, Suhrkamp, and obituaries at The New York Times (presumably paywalled) and The Guardian.
       Much of his work has been published in English -- see his books at Polity --; his best-known work is probably The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere; get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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       Jnanpith Award

       They've announced the latest winner of the Jnanpith Award, the leading Indian author award, and it is Tamil author Vairamuthu; see, for example, the report at The Federal.
       Not much of his work appears to have been translated into English; Sahitya Akademi did publish a translation of his novel, The Saga of the Cactus Land, but it does not seem easy to find.

       (Updated - 17 March): See now also B.Jeyamohan arguing that Jnanpith to Vairamuthu is a mockery of Tamil literature at Frontline.

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

       Film adaptations

       At El País Ianko López considers Insult or adaptation ? Why films still struggle to adapt novels.
       However, now I am eager to see this adaptation, which I had not heard of:

Spain has also seen notable clashes between writers and filmmakers over adaptations. One of the most famous involved Javier Marías and director Gracia Querejeta after she turned his novel Todas las almas (All Souls) into the film El último viaje de Robert Rylands (Robert Rylands’ Last Journey). Marías dismissed the adaptation as a “soap‑opera melodrama” and wrote that he felt impatient and even embarrassed watching scenes that viewers might mistakenly assume came from his book. He eventually won a court ruling that granted him compensation and ordered his name removed from the credits.

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       PEN Presents: Brazil shortlist

       English PEN has announced the shortlist for PEN Presents: Brazil, "the latest round of its programme funding the often-unpaid work of creating samples, giving publishers access to titles from underrepresented languages and regions, and helping diversify the translated literature landscape".
       Thirteen fiction and poetry titles -- all from the Portuguese --, with quite a few interesting-sounding ones among them.
       All these shortlisted translators: "receive £600 grants to create 5,000-word sample translations of their proposed projects".

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

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       Tomas Tranströmer's Nobel Prize medal and diploma

       The heirs of Nobel laureates often flog the winners' gold Nobel medals and diplomas -- Alexander Bitar has a good overview at Collectors Weekly, Nobel Prize Medals: History, Specifics and Auction Records -- and they often get good money for them: apparently eleven have gone for more than half a million dollars, with the best-selling ones raking in considerably more. Oddly, however, literature laureates do not do well: Doris Lessing's, sold at auction for £187,500 in 2017, is only the 26th highest-grossing cash-in and the only literature-laureate to crack the top 32; among the few others that have been put up for sale both Maurice Maeterlinck's medal and diploma (Sotheby's, 2023) and those of William Faulkner (Sotheby's, 2013) were withdrawn when bidding didn't reach the reserve price.
       Admirably, the wife of 2011 Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer didn't put his diploma and medal up for sale, but rather has now donated them to the Nobel Prize Museum; see their official press release.
       Recent literature-diplomas have come without illustrations and hardly even seem display-worthy, but Tranströmer still got one of the good ones.

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

       Stella Prize longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Stella Prize, "a major literary award celebrating Australian women and non-binary writing" -- twelve titles, selected from 212 entries.
       The shortlist will be announced 8 April, and the winner on 13 May.

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

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       Wortmeldungen Literaturpreis

       They've announced the winner of this year's Wortmeldungen Ulrike Crespo Literaturpreis, and it is Ivna Žic's text 'Die Unversehrten'; read it here
       This is a prize for 'short, critical texts', but pays out a generous €35,000 to the winner; Žic's text is just over 8000 words long, so she's getting €4.36 per word.

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

       Alfredo Bryce Echenique (1939-2026)

       Peruvian author Alfredo Bryce Echenique has passed away; see, for example, the BBC report
       Not enough of his work has been translated into English, and A World for Julius and Tarzan's Tonsillitis both seem to be out of print. See the Agencia Literaria Carmen Balcells information page for an overview of his other works.

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

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       Republic of Consciousness Prize (US/Canada)

       They've announced the winner of the 2025 Republic of Consciousness Prize (US/Canada), and it is New Vessel Press' The Remembered Soldier, by Anjet Daanje, in David McKay's translation.

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

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       Carol Shields Prize longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Carol Shields Prize For Fiction‬ -- "the largest English-language literary prize for women and non-binary writers in the world".
       The shortlist will be announced 21 April, and the winner on 2 June.

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

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       The Mad review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Ignatius T. Mabasa's 1999 novel, The Mad, now out in English as the first in the University of Georgia Press' African Language Literatures in Translation-series (after appearing last year from Carnelian Heart Publishing and amaBooks in the UK/Zimbabwe).

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

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