opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 5 September 2026

1 September: Premio FIL de Literatura | Wendell Berry (1934-2026) | Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature shortlist
2 September: Newman Prize finalists | Publishing in ... Poland, 2025 | Marlon James Q & A | 'Reviving the spirit of revival'
3 September: Prix Goncourt longlist | Europese Literatuurprijs | Cundill Prize shortlist | Baillie Gifford Prize longlist | Best Japanese fiction ?
4 September: (American) National Translation Awards longlists | Angelus Award finalists | Julia Sherwood Q & A
5 September: Prix Jean Monnet | Premio Liber | Hyphen profile | Aarthi Vadde Q & A

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       Prix Jean Monnet

       They've announced the winner of this year's prix Jean Monnet de littérature européenne, awarded for a European work written in or translated into French, and it is Death and the Gardener, by Georgi Gospodinov (well, 'Guéorgui Gospodinov' in the French transliteration).

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

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       Premio Liber

       I missed this earlier this week, but the Federación de Gremios de Editores de España has announced the winner of this year's Premio Liber, an author prize for the most outstanding Latin American author, and it is Heretics-author Leonardo Padura.

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       Hyphen profile

       I've mentioned the promising-looking new Hyphen project previously, and at The Indian Express Paromita Chakrabarti also takes a look and speaks with its founder, in Vivek Shanbhag's Hyphen wants to change how Indian-language literature is read.

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       Aarthi Vadde Q & A

       At the Los Angeles Review of Books People's Choice Literature-author Tom Comitta has a Q & A with We the Platform: How the Internet Changed Twenty-First-Century Literature -author Aarthi Vadde, considering: 'Is it the end of reading or a brand-new era ?' in Literary Web 2.0.
       See also the Columbia University Press publicity page for We the Platform.

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       (American) National Translation Awards longlists

       The American Literary Translators Association has announced the longlists for its National Translation Awards in the two categories, prose and poetry.
       The shortlists will be announced on 6 October, and the winners will be announced on 23 October.

       With moving, etc. I've been even more out of the loop than usual, with a much-reduced inflow of review copies, but I'm still a bit shocked/disappointed that I haven't seen any of these.

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       Angelus Award finalists

       They've announced the seven finalists for this year's Angelus Central European Literature Award, awarded to a work of: "creative prose written by Central European writers and published in Poland" (i.e. translated into or written in Polish), with books from 23 countries eligible for the prize; paying out 150,000 złoty to the winner, it is apparently the most generous Polish literary prize. (It also pays out 40,000 złoty to the translator, if the winning title is a translated work.)
       Among the finalists are: Georgi Gospodinov's Death and the Gardener and Serhiy Zhadan's Arabesques, recently also out in English translation, from Yale University Press; see their publicity page
       The winner will be announced 17 October.

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       Julia Sherwood Q & A

       Comma Press brought out a new anthology in their 'A City in Short Fiction'-series, The Book of Bratislava, earlier this year -- see their publicity page --: ten stories by ten authors, translated by ten translators, and at The Slovak Spectator Nina Kanabová has a Q & A with co-editor Julia Sherwood about it, What can fiction tell us about Bratislava ?

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       Prix Goncourt longlist

       The big French literary prize season now really starts up, as the Académie Goncourt has announced (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) the longlist for the biggest of them all, the prix Goncourt.
       Sixteen titles are in the running, including novels by Ananda Devi, Yannick Haenel, Sylvain Prudhomme, and Olivier Rolin.

       Recall, this is a four-round prize, with a shorter longlist (or longer shortlist) to be announced on 6 October, the four finalists on 27 October, and the winner on 3 November.

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       Europese Literatuurprijs

       They've announced the winner of this year's Europese Literatuurprijs, awarded for the best translation of a European novel into Dutch, and it is Josephine Rijnaarts' translation of Cécile Wajsbrot's (translation-themed !) Nevermore.

       Seagull Books brought this out in Tess Lewis' English translation in 2024; see their publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.

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       Cundill Prize shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Cundill History Prize -- "the world's leading award for history writing", paying out (in US dollars, despite being a Canadian-run prize ...) 75,000.

       This, too, is a four-round prize, and this is only the second round, with three finalists to be named (30 September) before they get around to announcing the winner (on 23 October).

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       Baillie Gifford Prize longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction -- thirteen titles.

       The shortlist will be announced 1 October, and the winner on 4 November.

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

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       Best Japanese fiction ?

       At Metropolis Paul Park offers his list of the All Time Best Japanese Fiction Books. All-time ! Fiction books ! (Limited to ones available in English translation, but still.)
       As he notes (warns?):

The best writing doesn’t just tell you a story. It pulls you under, until you’re not reading about the characters’ lives so much as living alongside them.

By that measure, a teen death-game thriller could beat a Nobel laureate. Murakami, the one name every casual reader can spell, doesn’t necessarily crack my top five. And a few of the “untouchable classics” propping up every other list floating around social media are, frankly, overrated in my book.

       So, yeah, it's ... a list. Still: a lot of books -- thirty -- and the useful division into 'The Top Tier', 'The Overrated-But-Important Middle', and 'Honorable Mentions'.
       And, still: fun to see Battle Royale placed ahead of The Tale of Genji (though the one he really loses me with is Minato Kanae's Confessions). But a lot of solid choices -- Snow Country, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, The Memory Police (and, sure, Dazai's A Shameful Life (his top pick, under the more familiar title of No Longer Human)).
       A lot of the others titles mentioned are also under review at the complete review -- though not the only two that are rated an 'A': Edogawa Rampo's Strange Tale of Panorama Island and Murakami's 1Q84; I realize my credibility takes a (strong) hit with the rating of the latter, but, hey, these are both very much my kind of novels.

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

       Newman Prize finalists

       At the MCLC Resource Center Jonathan Stalling reports that the University of Oklahoma Institute for US-China Issues has announced the five finalists for next year's Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, an author prize that they call: "one of the leading international awards devoted exclusively to Chinese-language literature".
       Finalists Fang Fang, Su Tong, Wu Ming-Yi, and Zhang Yueran have all had several works translated into English; Priest apparently has as well, though I am not familiar with her work .....

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       Publishing in ... Poland, 2025

       The Polish National Library has published (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) it's annual overview of Polish publishing for 2025, and at Chytomo they offer a good summary/overview, in Literary fiction is growing in Poland, with thrillers leading the way.
       With 31,595 titles published in 2025 they're up from 2024, but: "below the 2016-2025 annual average of 33,346 titles"
       There were 1020 crime and thriller ('literatura sensacyjno-kryminalna') titles -- up some ten per cent over the previous year, while: "fantasy reached a record 873 titles, up by 112 year over year".
       Among the interesting bits in the official report are tables listing the number of editions for (many) selected authors, Polish (table 23) and in translation (24), also broken down over various periods. (Quick finds: more total editions of Paul Auster (27) than Samuel Beckett (24); Woody Allen (26) than Aeschylus (20); and, yes, Jonathan Carroll (Mr Breakfast, etc.) is popular in Poland -- 121 editions (almost doubling up Paulo Coelho (63)).)

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       Marlon James Q & A

       Marlon James has a new novel out, The Disappearers, which has apparently been getting very good and enthusiastic reviews, and at Electric Literature Shandela Contreras has a wide-ranging Q & A with the author, For Marlon James, Being Incurious Is a Writer's Biggest Sin.

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       'Reviving the spirit of revival'

       An interesting 'The Intellectual Situation'-piece at n + 1 on 'Reviving the spirit of revival', Old Directions, finding that: "The 2010s and this first half of the 2020s have featured a seasonal rotation of the dead and the aging" -- and that:

Old-book reading cycles are, so to speak, nothing new. Certain novelists, like Norman Rush or Charles Portis or Dawn Powell, seem to exist in a perennial state of mid-recuperation. But the old writers most of interest lately share a particular flavor: unknown legends in their time, recently rediscovered. They wrote something great, or at least very good, sometime in the previous century, but for reasons of sexism, or ahead-of-its-time-ism, their work got left behind.

       They point to and discuss many of the publishers -- many local favorites among them -- "joining the rush into the past" -- focusing particularly on NYRB Classics.

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

       Premio FIL de Literatura

       They've announced the winner of this year's Premio FIL de Literatura en Lenguas Romances -- a leading Romance-language author prize, paying out US$150,000 -- and it is Gioconda Belli; she'll get to pick up the prize at this year's Guadalajara International Book Fair, which runs 28 November through 6 December.
       Quite a few of her works are available in English.

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

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       Wendell Berry (1934-2026)

       American poet and author Wendell Berry has passed away; see, for example, obituaries at the AP (by Hillel Italie), The New York Times (by Robert D. McFadden (presumably paywalled)), and the Kentucky Lantern (by Sarah Ladd).

       None of his work is under review at the complete review, but see, for example, the publicity page for his Library of America collections; see also the author page, with links to many of his poems, at the Poetry Foundation.

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

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       Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature shortlist

       The American University in Cairo Press has announced the shortlist for this year's Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature -- six titles selected from 143 novels submitted from 23 countries.
       The winner will be announced on 11 December.

       Meanwhile, in other Mahfouz-related news, at Cairo Scene they report (in an article datelined today ...) that ‘Naguib Mahfouz Year’ to Launch in Cairo on August 30th, while at ahramonline Dina Ezzat reports Professor of Arabic Literature Khairy Doma talks about the phenology in Mahfouz’s eternal garden.

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