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The Literary Saloon Archive

21 - 31 March 2026

21 March: SuperBook finalists | Calvin Tomkins (1925-2026) | Shahrnush Parsipur profile
22 March: New Swedish Book Review
23 March: Prix Ahmadou Kourouma | README review
24 March: Kawakami Mieko Q & A | Joyce Carol Oates Prize finalists | Drahomán Prize finalists
25 March: de Boon | 図書新聞 (1949-2026) | Reading in ... Armenia
26 March: Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize | OCM Bocas Prize category winners | Women's Prize for Non-Fiction shortlist | I Am a Cat profile | Teddy Bears Never Die review
27 March: NBCC Awards | Alexander Kluge (1932-2026)
28 March: Kim Stanley Robinson on Mars-colonization | Abdulrazak Gurnah Q & A | Benjamín Labatut on Bolaño
29 March: Bookshops in the Middle East
30 March: Yagisawa Satoshi profile | AI and publishing | The Village on the Edge of the World review
31 March: Lionel Gelber Prize | David Bellos Translation Prize | VCU Cabell First Novelist Award longlist

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       Lionel Gelber Prize

       They've announced (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) the winner of this year's Lionel Gelber Prize, a C$50,000 award for: "the best book on international affairs published in English", and it is Thinking Historically, by Francis J. Gavin; see also the Yale Univesity Press publicity page.

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       David Bellos Translation Prize

       Literary agency Janklow & Nesbit UK has announced a new literary prize, the David Bellos Translation Prize, to: "be awarded to the translator of an excerpt from a novel originally written and published in any language other than English".

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       VCU Cabell First Novelist Award longlist

       I missed this last week, but they've announced the longlist for this year's VCU Cabell First Novelist Award -- twenty titles strong.

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       Yagisawa Satoshi profile

       At nippon.com they profile the Days at the Morisaki Bookshop-author, in Yagisawa Satoshi: An Interview with the Days at the Morisaki Bookshop Author About His International Bestseller.
       Interesting to hear that:

“My novel, which had been described as ‘bland,’ became popular overseas during the pandemic, and then people began reading it in Japan. Maybe everyone was feeling worn out,” Yagisawa says.

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       AI and publishing

       There have been quite a few articles about this -- the cancellation Shy Girl after it was discovered that it was written with the ... *help* of AI -- already, but the mounting hysteria is hard to resist: ‘Soon publishers won’t stand a chance’: literary world in struggle to detect AI-written books.
       Publishers won't stand a chance ? Well, we can always hope. Fun to hear, in any case, that:

“Sophisticated authors who want to evade the detection tools know how to edit their text, test it against these tools and revise again,” [assistant professor at Cornell Tech’s Jacobs Institute Nikhil Garg] said.

       Fun times ahead, at any rate -- but I certainly don't envy anyone who has to deal with manuscripts right now (literary agents, publishers, etc.).
       At least, for all their many faults, I feel fairly confident that no one will ever mistake my reviews for AI-generated. (Same goes for my Salome in Graz, too.)

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       The Village on the Edge of the World review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Nobel laureate Herta Müller in conversation with Angelika Klammer on Writing and Surviving Ceaușescu's Romania, in The Village on the Edge of the World, coming out in English in May.

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       Bookshops in the Middle East

       At Cairo Scene Yasmin Farhat profiles Six Historic Bookshops Keeping the Arab World's Literary Soul Alive.

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       Kim Stanley Robinson on Mars-colonization

       At the New Scientist Red Mars (etc.) author Kim Stanley Robinson writes about: 'how the idea of moving to Mars holds up today' in (spoiler alert) Author of Red Mars calls 'bullshit' on emigrating to the planet
       He finds that, thirty-five years later: "the whole project of humans inhabiting Mars looks much more difficult than it did back then".

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       Abdulrazak Gurnah Q & A

       At The Observer Catherine Taylor has a Q & A with the Nobel laureate, in Abdulrazak Gurnah: ‘Tanzania is deeply embedded in my imagination’.

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       Benjamín Labatut on Bolaño

       At Publishers Weekly Nick Hilden speaks with the When We Cease to Understand the World-author about Roberto Bolaño -- " the writer that I cherish above everybody else" --, in Writers Talking Writers: Benjamín Labatut on Roberto Bolaño.

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       NBCC Awards

       The National Book Critics Circle has announced the winners of its 2025 Awards, with We Do Not Part by Han Kang winning the Fiction award.
       Interestingly, We Do Not Part was also a finalist for the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Award -- but lost out to Natasha Lehrer's translation of Neige Sinno's Sad Tiger.

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       Alexander Kluge (1932-2026)

       German author Alexander Kluge has passed away; see, for example, the obituary at The Guardian and the Suhrkamp notice.
       Seagull has brought out a lot of his books in English; see also the Suhrkamp foreign rights information page.

       (Updated - 28 March): See now also Seagull publisher Naveen Kishore's Let the night be full of stories: A publisher’s tribute to German writer Alexander Kluge (1932–2026).

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       Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize

       They've announced the winners of this year's Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize -- the prize being shared by Ghost Driver by Nell Osborne (Moist Books) and Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group by Rebecca Gransden (Tangerine Press)

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       OCM Bocas Prize category winners

       They've announced the three category winners for this year's OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, with Ibis, by Justin Haynes, winning in the fiction category.
       The grand winner will be chosen from these three category winners, on 2 May.

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       Women's Prize for Non-Fiction shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Women's Prize for Non-Fiction -- six titles.
       The winner will be announced 11 June.

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       I Am a Cat profile

       At nippon.com Damian Flanagan profiles The Unnamed Cat Who Triggered Japan's Literary Explosion -- writing on Natsume Sōseki's I Am a Cat.
       Flanagan writes of the novel's opening line:

This wasn’t just an opening line. It was also perhaps the greatest haiku of modern Japan, and the point at which the modern era of Japanese literature truly begins

       As to the Itō Aiko and Graeme Wilson-translation -- the one under review at the complete review -- he feels they: "turned a tricky text into what reads like a quirky novel of Edwardian England".

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       Teddy Bears Never Die review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Cho Yeeun's Teddy Bears Never Die, coming out in English in May.

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       de Boon

       They've announced the winners of this year's de Boon, one of the leading Dutch/Flemish book prizes, paying out €50,000 to each of the winners.
       Grondwerk, by Tijl Nuyts, won the fiction/non-fiction category; apparently it is narrated by ... "a female naked mole rat". See also the Flanders Literature information page and the Atlas publicity page.

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       図書新聞 (1949-2026)

       The loss of print book reviewing outlets is not just an American phenomenon: longtime Japanese book review periodical 図書新聞 (Tosho Shimbun) announced a few months ago that, after 77 years, they were closing shop as of 31 March.
       See now also Cécile Mazin's report at ActuaLitté, L'arrêt de Tosho Shimbun au Japon porte un coup dur à la critique littéraire.

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       Reading in ... Armenia

       At Armenian Weekly Anna Harutyunyan reports at some length on Books as an expensive pleasure: What does reading cost in Armenia ?
       Gotta love an article that uses as an example: "the complete poetry collection of Charles Aznavour" (this one).

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       Kawakami Mieko Q & A

       At the Literary Hub Leanne Ogasawara has a Q & A with the Sisters in Yellow-author, in Mieko Kawakami on Sisterhood, Survival, and Finding Hope in the Darkness; it also includes quite a bit with the translators of the novel, Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio.

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       Joyce Carol Oates Prize finalists

       I missed this last week, but the New Literary Project has announced the five finalists for this year's Joyce Carol Oates Prize, awarded to a a mid-career author of fiction.
       No works by any of the finalists are under review at the complete review.

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       Drahomán Prize finalists

       PEN Ukraine has announced the three finalists for the Drahomán Prize, awarded for the best translation from Ukrainian, selected from thirty-one translations into eighteen languages.
       The one finalist that's a translation into English -- Nina Murray's of Lesia Ukrainka's Cassanadra -- is under review at the complete review.

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

       Prix Ahmadou Kourouma

       The Salon du livre de Genève has announced (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) the winner of this year's prix Ahmadou Kourouma, awarded to an African author for a work of fiction in the tradition of the great African author, and it is La prière du cochon, by Libar M. Fofana; see also the Gallimard publicity page.

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       README review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines by W. Patrick McCray, README, recently out from The MIT Press.

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       New Swedish Book Review

       Issue 2026:1 of the Swedish Book Review is now out -- with translations, interviews, and a bunch of reviews.

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       SuperBook finalists

       The Italian Cultural Institute of New York has set up a new, US$10,000 SuperBook prize-of-prizes, pitting eight Italian award-winning titles against each other.
       Ed Nawotka reports at Publishers Weekly on it, in Italian Authors to Compete for U.S. ‘SuperBook’ Award -- noting that: "The winning work will receive a $10,000 award to support its translation into English and its promotion in the English-speaking market".
       The article quotes ICI NY director Claudio Pagliara:

He also noted that in his time living in New York, it became clear to him there is a latent appetite for Italian literature in English, one that cannot merely be fulfilled by books from just one or two authors.

       Okay .....

       As far as the contest goes, I have to assume the Premio Strega-winning The Anniversary, by Andrea Bajani -- coming in English this fall, from Other Press -- is the favorite.

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

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       Calvin Tomkins (1925-2026)

       Amrican art critic Calvin Tomkins has passed away -- at 100 ! --; see, for example, The New York Times obituary (presumably paywalled) and, at The New Yorker, David Remnick Remembering Calvin Tomkins, a Master of the Profile.

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       Shahrnush Parsipur profile

       Good to see yet more coverage of the Women without Men-author, as, at The Hindu, Kanika Sharma profiles Exiled Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipur on her International Booker Prize-nominated novella.

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