opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

The Literary Saloon Archive

1 - 10 October 2026

1 October: Boekenbon Literatuurprijs longlist | Cundill History Prize finalists | (Maltese) National Book Prizes | Shelley Frisch Q & A | Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize longlist
2 October: Premio Carlos Fuentes | Warwick Prize longlist | Shortlists: Goldsmiths Prize - Baillie Gifford Prize | On the PEN America ‘A Silent Moratorium’-report
3 October: Gish Prize | Grand prix du Roman de l’Académie française longlist | Prix du Meilleur livre étranger shortlists | Nothing to Lose review
4 October: Publishing in ... Canada | Publishing (translations) in ... Estonia | Linda Asher (1932-2026)
5 October: Cheikh Hamidou Kane (1928-2026) | Sunday Times Literary Awards shortlists | Russian book-destruction | Prix Hors Concours shortlist
6 October: Deutscher Buchpreis | William Vollmann profile | Shortlists: Giller Prize - T.S.Eliot Prize | Grand prix de littérature américaine finalists | Jeffrey Archer (1940-2026)
7 October: Nagroda Literacka Nike | Jelinek archive | (US) National Book Awards finalists | (US) National Translation Awards shortlists | Prix Goncourt - deuxième sélection | FT Business Book of the Year Award shortlist | Nobel Prize countdown
8 October: The Nobel Prize in Literature goes to ... Anne Carson | Full English translation of 토지 coming ! | Kirkus Prizes
9 October: Translation copyright | Prix Renaudot shortlists | More book reviews ! | US fall book preview
10 October: Nigeria Prize for Literature | New Directions profile | AI in(festing) publishing | Non-fiction struggles

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       Nigeria Prize for Literature

       They've announced the winner of this year's Nigeria Prize for Literature, and it is Why Does God Need A Gun ? by Ogaga Ifowodo. It'll probably be months before they post the news at the 'official site', but meanwhile see, for example, their Instagram (*sigh*) post, or Nehru Odeh's more useful report at PM News, Ogaga Ifowodo Wins $100,000 Nigeria Prize for Literature.
       The Nigeria Prize for Literature rotates through four genres, and this was a poetry year; Why Does God Need A Gun ? beat out the other 222 submissions; see also the Masobe publicity page for the book.

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

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       New Directions profile

       Racking up two Nobel Prize in Literature laureates in a row now -- adding to the dozen previous winners they already published -- US publisher New Directions continues to be on a nice little roll, and they certainly deserve the success. Anne Carson's win now also leads to Ronda Kaysen's profiling The Plucky Publishing House That Keeps Winning Nobels (presumably paywalled (but e.g. ...)) in The New York Times.
       A solid overview -- showing New Directions in nice contrast to the publishing behemoths that dominate American trade publishing.

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       AI in(festing) publishing

       Adam Morgan reports at Wired on how Book Publishers Are Quietly Using More AI. Staff Are Revolting (possibly paywalled ?).
       Yes, apparently -- and unsurprisingly --:

(A)t least three of the Big Five US book publishers -- HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette -- have been quietly incorporating AI tools into their publishing processes without public disclosures or author consent.

       (I think there's a safe bet to place on the practices of the other two, too .....)
       Fun (and also unsurprising) to hear:

At HarperCollins senior leaders purchased Claude licenses from Anthropic months ago “but very quickly realized they didn’t know how to implement them,” according to a current employee. Dozens of junior- and senior-level staff were then “voluntold” to become “AI Champions” and were tasked with discovering use cases in monthly brainstorming sessions with staff across the company.

       And, of course:

But according to workers at HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette, one of the most common use cases for LLMs so far is generating publicity copy.

       Disappointingly, there's apparently been lots of covering-up re. author-use of AI:

“Every single imprint has a story of someone very esteemed who had a book canceled because of blatant AI use” without ever making the news, one editor says.

       Certainly a lot of interest here -- and most of it does not bode well for the future of big publishing, or for readers.

       (While we're on the topic, see also Sabine Kieselbach's report at Deutsche Welle, about how: 'AI is a hot topic at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair', in Author or artificial intelligence ? Literature in crisis.)

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       Non-fiction struggles

       At The Walrus Tajja Isen discusses how Nonfiction Is Struggling. Publishers Are Making It Worse -- a fairly thorough dive around the subject, with some interesting observations about the publishing (and book-selling) businesses.

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       Translation copyright

       Via I'm pointed to Lin King's Instagram (*sigh*) post, her lengthy Statement on the copyright infringement of the English translation of Taiwan Travelogue.
       King translated Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ's Taiwan Travelogue into English, and the translated book won the International Booker Prize. Now some (unfortunately unidentified by King) European publisher has brought out a translation based not on the original text but on King's English translation, in which King holds the sole copyright. (This is not a given: many translations into English unfortunately wind up with the (English-language) publisher, or with the original author (the English-translation-copyright for Murakami Haruki's books, for example, is in his name, for example, giving him full ownership and control).) King did not give permission for the translation; indeed, she sought to prevent its publication but was thwarted. Now she's taking legal action -- good for her !
       Her post is fascinating for details such as how translations are licensed (and how the process can fail one of the parties, as it did here), but also raises the significant issue of 'relay translations' -- translations via a second language, as, amazingly, still happens too often with books that come out in English but is far, far more widespread with other, especially, smaller languages, where a direct translator can be harder to find and so translations are done based on another (usually English, nowadays) translation (so, for example, even some of Murakami's earlier work was translated into even a 'major' language such as German via the English translation). (My current (least) favorite example is Isaac Bashevis Singer, who wrote in Yiddish, as the German translations of his major works are translations from the English -- despite the fact that Yiddish is a Germanic language which is very close to modern German.)
       King's translation of Taiwan Travelogue is obviously very 'free', in the sense of her clearly having shaped the English text in certain ways; as she notes, the novel: "could have been translated into English in countless ways". Even more obviously than with most works, the English version of the novel is, for better and worse, very much also King's work -- and so she is certainly justified in staking the claim to having a say and getting credit for her part for this new translation into whatever European language it is; that work is no longer (just) Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ's novel, but rather just as much Lily King's work.
       This underlines the importance of translators being able to keep and assert copyright-control over their work: if it is their work that is being used as the basis for a further translation, then they should get a say in (and get paid for) that. Taiwan Travelogue is a great test case, because the translator's presence is so obvious here (again: for better and worse ... (as longtime readers know, I like my translators to be vanishingly invisible (yes, yes, I know, impossible, etc. etc. but still ...))), but really that shouldn't matter: relay translations must fully acknowledge, in every respect (including legally and financially) the work they are based on.

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       Prix Renaudot shortlists

       I forgot to mention this, but the prix Renaudot -- the second-biggest French book prize, after the Goncourt -- also announced its 'deuxième sélection' earlier this week, in its two categories, fiction and non (like the Goncourt, this is a four-rounder, so this is the shorter longlist, or the longer shortlist ...); see, for example, the Livres Hebdo report
       It's noteworthy because not only did the Renaudot folk not follow the lead of the Académie Goncourt and kick controversial (because allegedly AI-written) C’était ça ou mourir, by Thélyson Orélien, straight off the longlist, but the book actually made this second-round cut. So: very different treatment of the book -- and it will be interesting to see how far it goes in the next rounds (the final shortlist is to be announced 23 October, the winner 3 November).

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       More book reviews !

       Worth pointing to: at his Political Currents by Ross Barkan Barkan makes the case that The Little Magazines Should Review More Books.
       No disagreement here.

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       US fall book preview

       At The Millions they've posted The Millions' Great Fall 2026 Book Preview, "some 130 books out this fall" that they're excited about.
       The usual caveats, but it's a big list, so it covers a lot and certainly includes titles of interest -- but please do also keep an eye out for titles that don't have the big PR and hype machine behind them .....

       (Glad to see that The Millions is still doing these -- but they don't seem to be doing much else; that 'editorial hiatus' sure is dragging on (but, hey: "we hope to return to our full operations soon").)

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       The Nobel Prize in Literature goes to ... Anne Carson

       They've announced the winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature, and it is Anne Carson, getting the prize: "for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature"

       The only work by her under review at the complete review is Norma Jeane Baker of Troy, and I am afraid I don't have any of her other work at hand.

       The Poetry Foundation has a good author page on her (with links to some examples of her work).

       For early reports on her win, see, for example:

• Anne Carson Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature (presumably paywalled) by Alex Marshall at The New York Times
• Canadian poet Anne Carson wins Nobel Prize in Literature by Ian Youngs at the BBC

       That's pretty much all I've got at this point; more presumably to follow tomorrow.

       (Updated - 9 October): A few more odds and ends for you:

• Anne Carson Is (Yet Another) Perfect Nobel Literature Laureate by Alex Shephard and Mark Krotov at The New Republic
• Anne Carson Punches a Hole Through Greek Myth - a 2021 Q & A with Tacita Dean at Interview
• ‘Delights await!’: Margaret Atwood and other writers on Nobel winner Anne Carson at The Guardian
• A crash course in Anne Carson: the books that won the Canadian author the Nobel Prize by Talia Kliot at CBC Books
• 2026 Nobel Prize winner Anne Carson: Where to start reading by Elizabeth Grenier at Deutsche Welle

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       Full English translation of 토지 coming !

       I only mentioned a handful of works of literature that had not, or had barely been translated into English in my The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction (since the focus there is on works that are actually accessible to English-reading readers), but among them was the modern Korean classic (and epic) Land, by Park Kyung-ni (noting, inter alia, that it was her: "most remarkable achievement").
       There's been a stab at translating it -- see the Brill publicity page -- but that didn't make it very far (and has long been out of print). But now comes the great news that renowned translator Anton Hur has been commissioned to translate the whole thing into English; see Lee Jae-yong's article at the Seoul Economic Daily, Translator Anton Hur Wins New Park Kyung-ni Prize Special Award. (No word yet on who is publishing it, however .....)
       It's one hell of an undertaking: a twenty-volume work ! One of the recent Korean editions came out as a two-box set .....
       Obviously, it will be a couple of years before we get to see this -- but this is very big and good news.

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       Kirkus Prizes

       They've announced the winners of this year's Kirkus Prizes, "given annually by Kirkus Reviews to works of exceptional merit in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, and young readers' literature".

       Each winner gets: "a cash prize of $50,000" -- which is more than the more prestigious American book prizes (Pulitzer, National Book Award, etc.) pay out.

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       Nagroda Literacka Nike

       They've announced the winner of this year's Nike Prize, the biggest Polish book award, and it is Null, by Szczepan Twardoch; see also Agnieszka Warnke's report at culture.pl, Szczepan Twardoch Wins 2026 Nike Literary Award.
       See also the Marginesy publicity page for Null.
       The only work by Twardoch that has appeared in English translation so far seems to be his King of Warsaw, published by ... Amazon Crossing.

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       Jelinek archive

       The City of Vienna has announced the acquisition of Nobel laureate and Greed-author Elfriede Jelinek's literary estate, with the 'Teilvorlass' (partial pre-death estate) now going to the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus (the Vienna City Library, located in City Hall), the rest, completing the collection, presumably to follow upon her passing.
       Since it's public money being used to pay for the acquisition, they also reveal how much they're shelling out: €600,000. (Two appraisals were commissioned to determine the value/price.)

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       (US) National Book Awards finalists

       The American National Book Foundation has announced the finalists for its National Book Awards -- five books in each of the five categories (Fiction, Non, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People's Literature).

       Two of the finalists in the Translated Literature-category are under review at the complete review: Rahul Bery's translation of Vicente Luis Mora's Centroeuropa and Martin Aitken's translation of Karl Ove Knausgaard's The School of Night.

       Interesting titbit:

Publishers submitted a total of 1,912 books for this year’s National Book Awards: 451 in Fiction, 727 in Nonfiction, 285 in Poetry, 159 in Translated Literature, and 290 in Young People’s Literature.

       Interesting to see that so much more non-fiction is submitted than fiction -- publishers obviously thinking more non-fiction titles stand a chance against the competition, while apparently believing only a more select selection of fiction does. Also curious/sad to see how (relatively) few translated works are submitted.

       The winners will be announced 18 November.

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       (US) National Translation Awards

       The American Literary Translators Association has also announced its shortlists, for its National Translation Awards, in the two categories of Prose and Poetry.
       I haven't seen any of these.

       The winners will be announced 23 October.

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       Prix Goncourt - deuxième sélection

       The Académie Goncourt has announced (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) its 'deuxième sélection' -- its shorter longlist or longer shortlist, as this is a four-round prize with one more round to go (four finalists will be announced 27 October) before the winner is then announced on 3 November.
       And, no, they didn't reconsider and put Thélyson Orélien's C’était ça ou mourir -- booted off the original longlist for AI-suspicions -- back on the list .....

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       FT Business Book of the Year Award shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Financial Times and Standard Chartered Business Book of the Year Award.
       As they note: "Three of the six finalists tackle the risks and opportunities of AI" -- though apparently not with the writing (or judging) of the books themselves, with all that still human-done. In a few years -- who knows ?

       The winner will be announced 2 December.

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       Nobel Prize countdown

       Yes, it's that time of year: the Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced tomorrow; you can watch the announcement live at the official Nobel site or on YouTube.
       I haven't been able to work up much enthusiasm this year, with the routine and candidates pretty much the usual (minus a few possible contenders that have died off). As usual, the place for discussion is the World Literature Forum's Nobel Prize in Literature 2026 Speculation-thread, with over three thousand posts to date. (I'm afraid I haven't been following it much, but there's usually much fun speculation.)
       Elsewhere, we find the usual stuff -- say, Faisal Al Zaabi exploring Could an Arab writer win the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature ? Nine names to know in The National. In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung they offer seven suggestions, in Wer verdient den Literaturnobelpreis ? Sieben Vorschläge -- throwing in some such as Journey to Karabakh-author Aka Morchiladze, as well as Gabriela Adameșteanu (Eastern European ? I don't think so, not this year), along with Murnane and ... Houellebecq. Meanwhile, at Expressen we get the always-fun who-do-you-think-will and who-do-you-think-should win the prize round-up in De här kan få årets Nobelpris i litteratur, with a decent mix of names.

       Finally, there's Katharina Abel going over the familiar at Deutsche Welle, in How the Nobel Literature Prize winner is secretly chosen.
       I mention this because Gisèle Sapiro is quoted extensively here -- a researcher whose Qu'est-ce qu'un auteur mondial ? (see the Seuil publicity page) I've been curious about and eager to see.
       Among other things:

According to Gisele Sapiro, the Academy aims to honor ambitious, influential literature that has, for example, given rise to a new literary movement. "At the same time, the work has to be universal, being able to transcend its own culture," she says.

Translations can be one indication of this. "I noted in my research, however, that all the laureates since 1990 had been translated into English, French and German -- except for Abdulrazak Gurnah [the Tanzanian-British 2021 Nobel laureate], who had not been translated into German before winning -- meaning that I think these three languages are the most important," Sapiro explains.

       Interesting enough -- but, dear god, how could a researcher get that one detail so wrong (and why didn't German outlet Deutsche Welle catch it ?): Gurnah's work had been extensively translated into German long before he got the prize: Pilgrims Way in 2004 (see e.g.), Paradise in 1996 (e.g.), Admiring Silence in 2000, By the Sea in 2001, Desertion in 2006 (e.g.) -- the same year it came out in English. How can one miss those ? The Biobibliography-page at the Nobel site even conveniently and helpfully lists them (scroll down) !
       So, someone has fallen in my estimation .....

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       Deutscher Buchpreis

       They've announced the winner of this year's German Book Prize -- the imitation-Booker that is the biggest German novel prize -- and it is Die Lücken, by Shida Bazyar.

       Bazyar is definitely on a roll: a previous novel was shortlisted for this year's International Booker Prize, while this one has already won the Wilhelm Raabe-Literaturpreis (which actually pays out more than the German Book Prize does). World English rights have apparently already been acquired by Scribe (who admirably picked up her up early, having already published two of her books).
       See also the Kiepenheuer & Witsch foreign rights page for Die Lücken.

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       William Vollmann profile

       At The Sacramento Bee Graham Womack and Lia Russell have a lengthy (if somewhat local) profile of the author, in Famed writer William Vollmann is dying. Sacramento's still a big part of his life
       He again notes that Viking dropped him after he wouldn't cut A Table For Fortune down some (and: "refused to change the fonts" !), adding the nice detail that he tried to be accommodating, but:

“I went through it and I said, ‘I cut it, but I’m really sorry but unfortunately, it’s like 400 pages longer now,’” Vollmann recalled telling his editor. “So he was not happy, and they fired me.

       I have an e-version of A Table For Fortune, but fear I won't be able to make it through it in that format. Meanwhile, see also the Arcade publicity page.

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       Shortlist: Giller Prize

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Giller Prize, apparently: "Canada's leading and most influential literary prize for fiction", with a prize of C$100,000 for the winner.

       The winner will be announced 16 November.

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       Shortlist: T.S.Eliot Prize

       They've announced the not-so-short shortlist for this year's T.S.Eliot Prize -- "the most valuable and prestigious in the UK for a new collection of poetry", with the winner getting £25,000 -- ten titles selected from 174 poetry collections that were submitted.

       The winner will be announced 18 January 2027.

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       Grand prix de littérature américaine finalists

       They've announced the three finalists for the Grand prix de littérature américaine, a French prize for the ... best American novel (translated into French ... -- and, yeah, ostensibly: "choisi pour la richesse et l'originalité de son style"); see, for example, the Livres Hebdo report.

       The winner will be announced 2 November; it might even be that Jay McInerney novel ... (it's one of the finalists).

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       Jeffrey Archer (1940-2026)

       Jeffrey Archer, who technically qualified as an author and did enjoy considerable sales-success with his books, has passed away; see, for example, the BBC report.

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       Cheikh Hamidou Kane (1928-2026)

       Cheikh Hamidou Kane, author of the classic Ambiguous Adventure, has passed away; see, for example, the editorial tribute at Financial Afrik, Death of Cheikh Hamidou Kane: a giant of African literature has passed away, or the RFI report, Sénégal: l'écrivain Cheikh Hamidou Kane inhumé à Dakar, les hommages se poursuivent.

       (Updated - 7 October): See now also the obituary in The New York Times by Adam Nossiter, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Author of Seminal Anticolonial Novel, Dies at 98 (presumably paywalled).

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       Sunday Times Literary Awards shortlists

       At the (South African) Sunday Times Jennifer Platt runs down the shortlists for the Sunday Times Literary Awards in its two categories, fiction and non, with some information and judges' comments on each of the shortlisted books.

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       Russian book-destruction

       It's been widely reported on -- since it's been going on for a while --, but in The Guardian Charlotte Higgins covers it thoroughly and at good length, in Incinerated novels and destroyed warehouses: Russia's war on Ukrainian books.
       So much depressing waste ......

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       Prix Hors Concours shortlist

       The prix Hors Concours, a French literary prize: "dedicated exclusively to independent publishers, celebrating bold and contemporary fiction", has now announced the finalists for this year's prize -- though not yet, *sigh*, at the official site, last I checked, so see, for example, the ActuaLitté report.
       They do make some effort to get the word out and try to interest publishers, etc. abroad -- "Our selection of 40 competing excerpts is now available in English translation, offering international readers and publishing professionals a direct gateway to these works", they offer here -- so that's probably good, but I don't know how many people bother to check these out.

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       Publishing in ... Canada

       In May they had a conference marking Canada, eh ? Fifty Years of Canadian Studies at Trier University (warning ! dreaded pdf format !), with David Staines giving the keynote lecture, 'Fifty Years On: Canadian Fiction Then and Now', and at the National Post they now offer a lengthy excerpt, in the more click-baitingly titled: Crisis in CanLit: Canada has a wealth of fiction writers. Its literary culture is holding them back.
       Among other things, Staines laments the disappearance of newspaper book reviews, noting that: "Perhaps only the Winnipeg Free Press still caters to a readership that fosters an affection for the written word; the Free Press even boasts of having a book editor", and finding:

The absence of book sections in almost all papers suggests strongly the decline in readers’ awareness and the decline in readers’ responsibilities. Our literary culture is disappearing when the worlds of fiction are demanding promotion, or even just awareness.

       He also notes: "In the world of non-fiction, matters are even worse" .....
       Still, he concludes:

(W)hat is happening now is that the finest literary fiction being written is not American or British but rooted in Canada and speaking to the world.

Despite the failure of much of the surrounding literary or pseudo-literary material, the study of Canadian fiction must acknowledge its astonishing wealth.

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       Publishing (translations) in ... Estonia

       At ERR they speak with publishers Krista Kaer and Piret Lemetti, in Publishers say using AI to translate classics is ethically wrong.
       The headline is meant to be attention-grabbing, I guess, but AI-translation isn't the main focus of the piece, and the headline itself is slightly undermined by the quote that, hey: "With the classics, everything is fine -- the Hieronymus series publishes books very nicely, and what should have appeared long ago is well covered".
       The real area of concern is elsewhere: "However, the situation is bad with contemporary quality literature".
       Specifically:

Print runs of books have dropped sharply, and translated literature is expensive to publish. In addition to purchasing rights, there is the translation cost, which is very significant for larger books. Overall, the amount of valuable translated literature has decreased.

       And: "If print runs drop by another couple hundred, there will actually be no point in publishing these books anymore".
       Even currently: "a large part of the world is still uncovered for Estonians, and this situation will not change in the near future either".
       Depressing also to think that:

The publishers added that exciting niche works remain untranslated because, in Estonia, their target audience would only be 300 to 400 people.

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       Linda Asher (1932-2026)

       I only learn of this via the The New York Times obituary (presumably paywalled), but translator Linda Aasher passed away a few weeks ago.
       Several of her translations -- including, among others, works by Yasmina Reza (Babylon) and Milan Kundera (e.g. The Curtain) -- are under review at the complete review.
       And I had not realized that she was a long-time editor at The New Yorker, of stories by: "literary luminaries like Haruki Murakami, Louise Erdrich and A.S. Byatt".

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       Gish Prize

       I missed this last week, but the Gish Prize Trust has announced the winner of this year's Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, "given annually to an individual who has “made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life”", and it is Louise Erdrich.
       J.P. Morgan Chase Bank is trustee of the Gish Prize Trust -- and their site hosts the re-directed official prize pages -- but they haven't yet updated the pages to include this news, last I checked (which seems like pretty poor performance from trustees, but what do I know ?), so see, for example, Hillel Italie's 25 September AP report, Louise Erdrich wins the Gish Prize, a top arts honor. .

       The AP report doesn't mention how much cash Erdrich will be receiving, but the press release for last year's winner states that this is: "is one of the most prestigious honors given to individual artists in the United States and bears one of the largest cash awards, currently valued at more than $250,000". The amount is not exactly specific, suggesting the prize-money is tied to some formula that fluctuates depending on how well the trust's investments do. It seems to fluctuate wildly: while in 2023 the award was: "currently valued at approximately $250,000", in 2024 it was: "currently valued at more than $450,000"; back in 2014 it was also up to US$300,000.
       Those are some pretty big swings, especially 2023 to 2025 .....
       It'll be interesting to see how much Erdrich gets to take home .....

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       Grand prix du Roman de l’Académie française longlist

       The Académie française has announced the longlist for its Grand prix du Roman; among the twelve titles in the running are books by Ananda Devi, Yannick Haenel, and Olivier Rolin.

       The winner will be announced 29 October.

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       Prix du Meilleur livre étranger shortlists

       One of the long-established French prizes honoring the best books in translation, the prix du Meilleur livre étranger, has announced its shortlists in its two categories, fiction (six titles) and non (three); see, for example, the Livres Hebdo report. .
       Observations: three non-fiction titles were longlisted in the first round of this prize, and none have been cut for this shortlist. Meanwhile, Anjet Daanje's The Remembered Soldier did not make the longlist in the fiction category, but has now been added to the mix. (Yes, one of the fun things about lots of French literary prizes is that if the juries forget or overlook a book in the early goings they feel free to add it in the later rounds; it's a not-infrequent occurrence.)

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       Nothing to Lose review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Lee Child's Nothing to Lose.

       This 2008 novel was the twelfth in his Jack Reacher-series; it's also the sixteenth in the series under review here .....

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

       Premio Carlos Fuentes

       The Premio Internacional Carlos Fuentes a la Creación Literaria is a prominent author prize for Spanish-writing authors that they've been awarding since 2012 (the first few times biennially, but now it's an annual thing), and they've now announced this year's winner -- The Reef-author Juan Villoro.

       The prize has a solid list of winners -- the first one went to Mario Vargas Llosa, and they've also honored Sergio Ramírez, Luis Goytisolo, and Diamela Eltit, among others. I also like how the prize-amount is set at the equivalent of US$125,000 -- but paid out in Mexican pesos (the winner receives: "una cantidad en pesos mexicanos equivalente a 125 mil dólares estadounidenses").

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

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       Warwick Prize longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Warwick Prize for Women in Translation -- thirteen titles, selected from 164 submissions (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) (yes ! as all literary prizes should -- but the fewest do, *sigh*, ... -- they reveal all the books that are being considered for the prize).
       Only two of the titles are under review at the complete review: Ottilie Mulzet's translation of Tóth Krisztina's Eye of the Monkey and David McKay's translation of Anjet Daanje's The Remembered Soldier

       The shortlist will be announced on 26 October, and the winner on 16 November.

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

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       Shortlist: Goldsmiths Prize

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Goldsmiths Prize, a £10,000 prize that: "rewards fiction that breaks the mould and extends the possibility of the novel"
       I haven't seen any of these, but they do look of interest.

       The winner will be announced 4 November.

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

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       Shortlist: Baillie Gifford Prize

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, which is apparently: "widely recognised as the world's most prestigious international award for literary non-fiction that is open to books on any subject and to writers of any nationality" (and published in English). (Maybe it is -- as they advertise: "Nielsen BookData research found that in the four weeks after the announcement, a winning book's sales rise by an average of 860% against the four weeks before"; gotta love a book prize that sells itself by selling its sales-boost numbers.)

       There are six titles left in the running for the £50,000 prize; the winner will be announced 4 November.

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

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       On the PEN America ‘A Silent Moratorium’-report

       In July PEN America published Lisa Tolin, Geraldine Baum, and Malka Margolie's much-discussed report ‘A Silent Moratorium’, with then-president of the organization, Dinaw Mengestu, resigning over its publication (see, for example, Malia Mendez's report in The New York Times, PEN America President Resigns After Article About Israel and Cultural Boycotts (presumably paywalled)).
       Now, at Jewish Currents Josh Lambert and Dan Sinykin find that: 'Misleading anecdotes, flawed data, and oversimplified analyses are at the heart of a narrative of Jewish exclusion promoted by the free expression organization, the ADL, and others', in What PEN America Got Wrong About Antisemitism in Publishing.
       They go over things with admirable thoroughness -- and provide actual data, including the interesting graph of 'English translations of Hebrew adult fiction published in the US, by year', covering 1948 to 2025 (a total of 416 works).
       They note:

Almost a third (53 out of 172) of the books on our bibliography of Hebrew-to-English translations published in the US between 2004 and 2020 came from just four publishers: Dalkey Archive, HarperCollins, Toby, and the Jewish press Schocken. These presses published only four such books total from 2021 through 2025

       Also: a reminder of how reliant publishers are on government translation-subsidies, as:

[Jessica] Cohen told us about two recent cases in which Israeli authors asked her to translate their books, and have interest from American publishers, but neither the authors, nor Cohen, nor the publishers are willing to accept funds from the current Israeli government. Considering that most of the publishers Cohen works with “are cash-strapped indie presses that rely on grants, which are almost nonexistent in the US,” that leaves her without a way to get paid for her work, which means the projects won’t happen.

       Funding generally goes through the Israeli Institute for Hebrew Literature, which, incidentally, has long had one of the best and most useful national book-information sites. (I liked the old look better, but the information still seems to be well-provided.)

       In any case, I appreciate the reporting -- specifically because it does try to get at the facts rather than relying on the anecdotal (as far too much discussion and reporting on publishing and the book business tends to ...) and gives actual numbers (and how they can be interpreted).

       See also the index of Israeli and Hebrew literature under review at the complete review.

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

       Boekenbon Literatuurprijs longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Boekenbon Literatuurprijs -- previously also known as the AKO Literatuurprijs and then the ECI Literatuurprijs, among others, and one of the leading Dutch-language literary prizes; it is open to both works of fiction and non.

       The shortlist will be announced 21 October, and the winner on 25 November.

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

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       Cundill History Prize finalists

       They've announced the three finalists for the Cundill History Prize -- "one of the world's leading prizes for a work of history written in, or translated into, English", paying out US$75,000 to the winner.

       The winner will be announced on 23 October.

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

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       (Maltese) National Book Prizes

       I missed this last week, but in Malta the National Book Council has announced the winners of this year's many National Book Prizes.
       The best novel award went to one in Maltese, Eħlisna mid-deni, by Karl Schembri; see also the Merlin publicity page. The best prose fiction translation prize went to a Maltese translation of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.
       There were eight adult categories (with 103 titles submitted across them), and quite a few young adult/children categories; disappointingly:

No works were submitted towards the remaining categories of Young Adult Literature in Translation and the newly-introduced Sport Literature for Children and Young Adults (ages 8-16), which was made possible in collaboration with Sport Malta.

       How disappointing for Sport Malta -- all collaborative and everything, and then no one can even come up with an eligible book. (Also: translate more YA literature !)

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

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       Shelley Frisch Q & A

       At the Princeton University Press site they have Q & A with the translator, in Shelley Frisch on the work (and play) of translation.
       Lots of interesting observations, including that:

The language of any source text is amply overcoded, brimming with all manner of linguistic markers that can be included, excluded, transfigured, or reworked entirely for the target language. In recreating a work in a new linguistic garb, the translator gets to write not so much a derivative work but a fresh creation that gives rise to its own set of denotations and connotations. Puns are repunned, alliterations realliterated, sentences resentenced.

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

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       Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize longlist

       The New India Foundation has announced the longlist for its Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize, awarded: "in recognition of the finest non-fiction writing about the history of Independent India".

       The winner will be announced 12 December.

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

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