opinionated commentary on literary matters - from the complete review

       David McCullough (1933-2022)

       Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author David McCullough has passed away; see, for example, the obituaries in The New York Times and The Washington Post..

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       The Book and the Sword review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Louis Cha's -- also known as Jin Yong -- 1955 novel, The Book and the Sword -- a martial arts novel published by ... Oxford University Press.

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       Furukawa Hideo Q & A

       At Japan Forward Stefania Viti has a Q & A with Furukawa Hideo -- see parts one and two.
       Several Furukawa titles are available in English, including Slow Boat and Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure, but not, alas, the one discussed at greatest length here, サウンドトラック ('Soundtrack').

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       Mass Market Paperbacks

       At Publishers Weekly Jim Milliot considers Where Are Mass Market Paperbacks Headed ?
       The format has been faring poorly in the US, with sales collapsing, down 31.5 per cent in terms of units sold between 2017 and 2021.
       Among the interesting points:

All mass market publishers are aware of the price sensitivity around the format, and even as a few publishers have increased the trim size of mass market paperbacks, they are reluctant to go beyond the $9.99 price point.

       And:

To keep retailers carrying mass market paperbacks, HC conducted extensive research on the format. [CEO of HarperCollins’s Harlequin subsidiary and CEO of HC Canada] Swinwood said it found that 74% of print book buyers prefer mass market and that it’s the cornerstone of any retailers’ book offering.

       Also of interest: at the end of the article they list the top-selling mass market paperback titles this year, to date (according to NPD Bookscan) -- with actual sales numbers !

       As longtime readers know, mass-market paperback-sized is -- by far -- my favorite book format; if it were possible, I would want to read practically everything in that format. I do not understand why it isn't more popular.

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       Nigeria Prize for Literature

       In The Guardian (Nigeria) Gregory Austin Nwakunor looks at the Nigeria Prize for Literature and makes the case that 18 years after, writers declare literature prize generative, transformative, economic-saver.

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       David Hare Q & A

       At The Guardian Matthew Reisz has a Q & A with David Hare: ‘There is an awful lot of pious theatre at the moment’.

       I haven't reviewed any of Hare's work in quite a while, but several of his plays are under review at the complete review; see, for example, Stuff Happens.

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       SAGE India

       As The Wire reports As SAGE India Shuts Books Publishing Wing, Cloud Over Future of Laid-Off Staff, Volumes on Anvil, as the Indian books arm of SAGE is being shut down.
       Disappointing.

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       New The Washington Post books editor

       Just a week after The New York Times announced the appointment of a new books editor, The Washington Post has followed suit, naming John Williams -- most recently of The New York Times ... - as their new books editor.

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       PEN Translates winners

       English PEN has announced the most recent batch of their awards (which are actually grants ...) -- 21 titles from 19 countries and 18 languages.
       The mix includes several familiar authors -- Yan Lianke, Juan Gabriel Vasquez, and Hassan Blasim, among others -- and a nice variety of promising-sounding titles.

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       Max Lawton Q & A

       Biblioklept has An interview with Max Lawton about translating Vladimir Sorokin's brilliant novel Telluria.
       Telluria is due out from New York Review Books shortly -- see their publicity page --; I have my copy and should be getting to it soon.
       Lawton is very ambitious, and has both promising translations forthcoming -- a pile of more Sorokin; Jonathan Littell's An Old Story -- and hopes to get to much more (not least; "the three insanely fucked volumes" of Régis Jauffret's Microfictions).

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       Gordon Burn Prize shortlist

       They've announced the shortlist for this year's Gordon Burn Prize, for which works of both fiction and non are eligible.
       The winner will be announced 13 October .

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       The Galton Case review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Ross Macdonald's 1959 novel, The Galton Case.

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       St. Louis Literary Award

       They've announced that Neil Gaiman will receive the 2023 St. Louis Literary Award, a leading American author prize that: "recognizes a living writer with a substantial body of work that has enriched our literary heritage by deepening our insight into the human condition and by expanding the scope of our compassion".
       It's been awarded since 1967 -- as the Messing Award through 1981 -- and has a solid list of previous winners.
       Gaiman gets to pick up the prize on 13 April 2023.

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       Diary of a Void review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Yagi Emi's Diary of a Void, just (about) out in English (from Viking in the US and Harvill Secker in the UK).

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       Wales Book of the Year

       They've announced the Wales Book of the Year, and it is Nadifa Mohamed's The Fortune Men.
       They announced the Welsh-language category and book of the year winners over a week ago, with the fiction category winner, Mori by Ffion Dafis, winning the book of the year prize.

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       Lambda review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of David Musgrave's Lambda, recently from Europa Editions.

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       Crime fiction favorites

       The Observer has The joy of crime fiction: authors from Lee Child to Paula Hawkins pick their favourite books, asking each: What makes a great thriller/crime novel ? What's your favourite thriller of all time ? and: What's the best one you've read recently ?

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       David Ireland (1927-2022)

       Australian author David Ireland -- a three-time Miles Franklin Award-winner in the 1970s -- has passed away; see, for example, Jason Steger's obituary in The Age.
       Text Publishing has four of his titles in print, but you don't see much by him outside Australia.

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       The Gate of Angels review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Penelope Fitzgerald's 1990 novel, The Gate of Angels -- shortlisted for the Booker Prize, back in the day.

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       Tomb of Sand complaint

       So, as for example the PTI report has it, Booker winner Geetanjali Shree's event cancelled in Agra after complaint against her, as some self-important bozo: "has filed the complaint against the writer. In the complaint, he has blamed Geetanjali Shree for alleged objectionable comments on Lord Shiva and mother Parvati" in her novel, Tomb of Sand .
       Apparently even just a complaint -- very late in the day, no less; the novel has been out in Hindi since 2018 ... -- is enough to scare everyone into silence. Frustrating.
       Abhik Deb's Scroll.in report reports:

The police said that they will read the book before deciding on whether to file a FIR [first information report].

       So at least more people will be reading the novel.

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       Bullet Train - the movie

       The movie version of Isaka Kōtarō's Bullet Train will be out (in the US) later this week -- see, for example, the official site -- and in The New York Times Motoko Rich profiles The Japanese Author Behind ‘Bullet Train’ Is OK That the Film Isn’t So Japanese. (I'm not sure why he wouldn't be; I assume he was remunerated well and, hey, they got Brad Pitt to be in it; yes, "the movie bears little resemblance to real life" but, come on, neither does the book.)
       Among the interesting bits from the piece:

With Isaka’s work all but unknown to English-language readers, Yuma Terada and Ryosuke Saegusa, the founders of CTB, a film production and literary agency that represents Isaka, consolidated the copyrights to his novels and commissioned translations of a handful of them, hoping to pitch him as a literary cousin to Murakami

       (All but unknown, maybe -- but readers of the complete review have been aware of his Remote Control since 2011, when I reviewed it .....)
       I'm looking forward to seeing his Three Assassins, already out in the UK and coming to the US later this year.

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       New Asymptote

       The July issue of Asymptote is now online -- more than enough reading material for the weekend.

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       New Hungarian books

       At hlo they've now posted the second of their two summer round-ups, so with both New Books in Hungarian - Summer 2022 I. and now New Books in Hungarian - Summer 2022 II. online you've got a nice overview of major new publications.
       Let's hope we eventually get to see some of these in translation.

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       The New York Times names new Books editor

       It took quite a few months, but The New York Times has finally filled the position vacated by Pamela Paul, naming a new Books editor, now announcing: Gilbert Cruz Is Our Next Books Editor.
       Apparently:

Now he’ll move to Books to focus his energies on three important pillars of coverage. The first is to reimagine The New York Times Book Review, the nation’s last stand-alone newspaper book-review section, for the digital age. The second is to increase and embolden our reporting on and criticism of ideas and intellectual life, the publishing world and all that lives within it. And the third is to build new muscles in service journalism that will help our readers choose their next books with ease and joy.

       Not sure about some of this language -- "build new muscles in service journalism" ? really ? -- and, of course, I am always concerned when I hear about reïmagining-efforts (of any sort ...), but I guess we will see .....

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       Armory Square Prize

       They've announced a new prize, the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation.-- open to:

Any previously unpublished book-length work of narrative prose, fiction or nonfiction, including story collections, written by a South Asian author (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Maldives, or part of the diaspora), living or dead.

       Open Letter will publish the winning title.
       Among the judging-criteria is the: "Relative degree of underrepresentation of the original language" !
       The jury is about as impressive as pone could wish for, so this is certainly a prize to keep an eye on.

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       Witness to the Future review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Klaus Rifbjerg's 1981 novel, Witness to the Future, in Steven T. Murray's 1987 translation, published by his and his wife Tiina Nunnally's Fjord Press.

       Despite Rifbjerg's popularity in Denmark, not much of his work has been translated into English -- though Norvik Press did bring out his Terminal Innocence in 2015; see their publicity page.

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       Literature from ... Taiwan

       In the Taiwan News Casey Ho reports on how Taiwan literature faces different publishing climates in Europe.

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       AI translation

       The University of Massachusetts Amherst reports on US$822,365 grant awarded to Mohit Iyyer for work on AI translation "especially when the original versions were published in a non-Romance language and written with a high-literary sensibility", in Lost In Translation: A New Approach to AI Navigates World Literature, as:

Over the next two years, Iyyer and his team will build an online platform that hosts a wide range of previously untranslated novels, which will be available in English thanks to an AI model that his team will develop. These translations will be interactive, and readers will be able to highlight sections of text that they think are incorrect and propose alternatives that read more smoothly. Another AI model -- a post-editing model -- will collect these user-generated corrections and update the AI translational model with them. It’s a way for the AI translation model to “learn.”

       I look forward to hearing how this works out.

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       Yoga review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of the latest by Emmanuel Carrère, Yoga, now also out in the US.

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       Booker Prize longlist

       They've announced the thirteen-title-strong longlist for this year's Booker Prize, the leading English-language novel prize, selected from 169 (unfortunately not revealed ...) titles.
       I've only seen (and read) one of these; I did not take to it and did not review it.
       There are several titles I am curious about -- notably The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, which just narrowly slipped in the previously-published-outside-the-UK grace period for eligibility, having come out in India in January 2020. It originally came out under a different title: Chats with the Dead -- but then his Chinaman was published under a different title in the US as well, The Legend of Pradeep Mathew. (Have I mentioned how much I dislike this re-titling practice is, and how baffled I am that this kind of thing still goes on ?)
       (Updated): Publisher Sort of Books alerts us that The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is, in fact, not identical to Chats with the Dead, but rather a revised, (re-)edited version of the text. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

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       Rathbones Folio Prize format change

       With rather poor timing, the Rathbones Folio Prize has announced (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) a change in its format: picking up where the recently retired Whitbread Costa Book Awards left off. they will now be naming a four-title shortlist in three categories -- fiction, non, and poetry -- with the category winners then pitted against each other for the big prize.
       Quite a wait until the first shortlists are announced: expect them in early 2023.

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       Yuri Andrukhovych Q & A

       At the Los Angeles Review of Books Kate Tsurkan has a Q & A with the Perverzion-author, in “Writers Are the Middlemen Between the Human Race and Immortality”: A Conversation with Yuri Andrukhovych.
       They mainly talk about Radio Nights -- not yet available in English, but see, for example, the Suhrkamp foreign rights page.

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       Julian Barnes on ... books

       PEN Transmissions now has a version of a speech Julian Barnes gave at the recent Christie's auction, First Editions, Second Thoughts,: "on reading books, collecting books, and annotating books" -- Books, Books, Books.
       Barnes admits that:

I have been a book reader, a book buyer, a book sniffer, a book collector and, in recent times, a regretful book discarder

       The piece is also noteworthy in that it uses the word: 'especial' ("I wouldn't take especial umbrage if you started one of my books, decided it wasn't for you, and transferred your attention to someone else's book"); that's not a term you see used much any more.

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       Gerald Murnane profile

       In The New Yorker Merve Emre profiles The Reclusive Giant of Australian Fiction -- Gerald Murnane.
       Several Murnane titles are under review at the complete review:

• Barley Patch
• Border Districts
• Inland

       I also have several more, and expect to get to some of them soon.
       Meanwhile: read Barley Patch !

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       Literary estates

       At The Bookseller Rod Smith writes on one of my favorite subjects -- literary estates and executors --, in Whose legacy is it anyway ?
       Not sure I agree that:

The candidate for the role of literary executor must understand your wishes in the form of the guidelines. They should positively challenge you on them where necessary. Most of all they need to be alive to the opportunities and be prepared where necessary to interpret your wishes in the light of the prevailing circumstances, circumstances which might not have been in your contemplation at the time of setting down the guidelines.

       I worry a great deal when executors (or pretty much anyone ...) start 'interpreting' -- but, certainly, authors should make as clear as possible how they want their (literary) legacies handled.
       (See also me on Weighing Words Over Last Wishes, from way back when.)

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       Invasion of the Spirit People review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of the latest by Juan Pablo Villalobos, Invasion of the Spirit People, just out from And Other Stories.

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       PEN America at 100 exhibit

       The exhibit PEN America at 100: A Century of Defending the Written Word has opened at the New York Historical Society, and runs through 9 October; see also Ed Nawotka's report in Publishers Weekly, PEN America Marks 100 Years.
       And see, of course, the PEN America site.

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       Shishkin on Russian culture

       Maidenhair-author Mikhail Shishkin makes the case for Russian culture -- despite current circumstances -- in Don't Blame Dostoyevsky.
       He notes:

The Russian state has no use for Russian culture unless it can be made to serve the state.

       (Which can probably be said for most states .....)

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       Running Blind review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Lee Child's Running Blind -- published in the UK as The Visitor --, the fourth Jack Reacher novel (from way back in 2000).

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       Onitsha Market Literature

       In Vanguard Maxim Uzoatu goes about Toasting Babes with Onitsha Market Literature.

       Quite a few works of Onitsha market literature ae under review at the complete review; the anthology edited by Kurt Thometz, Life Turns Man Up and Down, is a good place to start.

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       Literary prizes in the UK

       In the New Statesman Ellen Peirson-Hagger wonders Why are so many literary prizes closing ? in the UK.

       She does ... note: "Other countries such as France and the US have state-funded literary prizes" -- rather odd choices, as France and the US are actually unusual in that the leading literary prizes in those countries (Goncourt, Pulitzer, National Book Award, etc.) are, in fact, not run (or funded -- beyond, in the US, being taxpayer-subsidized (being run by so-called 'non-profit'-organizations)) by the government.
       It should also be noted that, despite several prizes losing funding and others being in danger of shutting down, there are still a hell of a lot of them out there, in the UK and elsewhere.

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       Abdulrazak Gurnah's 'The books of my life'

       The latest in The Guardian's 'The books of my life'-series is Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah's contribution.
       Always a fun exercise.

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       Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year

       They've announced the winner of this year's Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and it is Slough House, the latest in Mick Herron's series.
       I haven't seen any in this series, but it does sound like a lot of fun; see also the publicity pages from Soho and John Murray, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org or Amazon.co.uk.

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       Publishing in 'Web3'

       At Esquire Elle Griffin writes at some length on how The Crypto Revolution Wants to Reimagine Books.
       Of course it does .....

       As she notes, however, far into the piece:

If this is all starting to sound like a pipe dream, that's because it is, for the time being.

       Oh, yes -- there's also this:

Even if these platforms become more user-friendly (they'll have to if they hope to attract business), none solve one of the biggest challenges facing the publishing industry right now: finding readers.

       Some creative ideas here, but .....
       But.

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       Out of This World review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Rachel S. Cordasco on Speculative Fiction in Translation from the Cold War to the New Millennium, in Out of This World, recently out from the University of Illinois Press.

       (Cordasco is also the founder of the very useful Speculative Fiction in Translation site.)

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       Akutagawa and Naoki prizes

       They've awarded the latest round of Akutagawa and Naoki prizes, the two leading Japanese literary prizes; see, for example, the Kyodo News report, Female writers win top Japan book awards, dominate shortlists.

       The Akutagawa Prize went to おいしいごはんが食べられますように, by Takase Junko.

       The Naoki Prize went to 夜に星を放つ, by Kubo Misumi.
       A short work by Kubo is actually under review at the complete review: Mikumari, published a few years ago in the Strangers Press Keshiki-series.
       An English translation of Kubo's novel So We Look to the Sky came out last year; see also the Arcade Publishing publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org or Amazon.co.uk.

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       Miles Franklin Literary Award

       They've announced the winner of this year's Miles Franklin Literary Award, the leading Australian novel prize, and it is Bodies of Light, by Jennifer Down; see also the Text publicity page.

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       Casablanca Story review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of In Koli Jean Bofane's Casablanca Story, recently out from Indiana University Press in their Global African Voices-series.

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       Prize news

       More British literary prizes are having trouble finding financial support, with The Bookseller reporting that "just weeks after the cancellation of both the Costa Book Awards and the Blue Peter Book Awards" Desmond Elliott Prize on hiatus for 2023 while Sunday Times Short Story Award could be discontinued.

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       Singapore Literature Prize shortlists

       They've announced the shortlists for the Singapore Literature Prize, in all twelve categories, three each in each of the four languages the prizes are awarded in, selected from 192 submissions (down from 2020's 224 (it's a biennial prize)).
       See also the press release (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) for the English-language shortlists.

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       The Fragrant Companions review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of A Play About Love Between Women, Li Yu's 1651 drama The Fragrant Companions, just out in English, from Columbia University Press.

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       Caine Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Caine Prize for African Writing, a leading prize for an African short story, and it is Five Years Next Sunday (warning ! dreaded pdf format !), by Idza Luhumyo.

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       Hannah-Arendt Prize

       Just a few weeks ago, they announced that Serhiy Zhadan was getting this year's Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, and now they've announced that he will also receive the Hannah-Arendt Prize for Political Thinking; see, for example, the Deutsche Welle report.

       Previous winners of this prize include Julia Kristeva (2006), Tony Judt (2007) -- and fellow Ukrainian author (Perverzion, etc.) Yurii Andrukhovych (2014).

       Several Zhadan titles are under review at the complete review:

• Anarchy in the UKR
• Depeche Mode
• Mesopotamia
• The Orphanage
• Voroshilovgrad
• What We Live For, What We Die For

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       Sahitya Akademi Prizes for Translation

       I missed this a couple of weeks ago, but the Indian Sahitya Akademi has announced their Prizes for Translation 2021 (for translations published between 2015 and 2019), in all twenty-two languages; the official press release (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) helpfully also lists all the shortlisted titles. Impressive to see so much translation between so many different Indian languages !
       Shanta Gokhale won the award for English translation, for her translation of Laxmibai Tilak's Marathi memoir, Smritichitre -- see also the Speaking Tiger publicity page -- and at Scroll.in they now have an edited version of a talk she gave in 2014, ‘Authors are great, translators are not’: Shanta Gokhale on being a translator.

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       Index, A History of the review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Dennis Duncan's Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age.

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       Herbert W. Franke (1927-2022)

       The remarkable Herbert W. Franke -- "one of the first contemporary German sf writers whose work ranks with that in English and other European languages", as The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction notes -- has passed away; see, for example, the ORF report, or the Ars Electronica Blog post by Martin Hieslmair, When Herbert W. Franke brought art and science together (as Franke was, among much else, also one of the co-founders of Ars Electronica).
       ARTnews posted Reena Davis' Q & A with Franke, Why a 95-Year-Old Computer Artist Has Turned to Making NFTs, just over a week ago .....

       (Updated - 18 July): I see now that there's also a Q & A in last month's issue of The Brooklyn Rail, Herbert W. Franke with Charlotte Kent.

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       Seagull Books profile

       Seagull Books is celebrating its 40th anniversary and at Outlook there's another profile, by Nilanjana Bhowmick, Bookmark This ! 40 Years And Counting, The Story Of Seagull Books.

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       Paul-Celan-Preis

       They've announced the winner of this year's Paul Celan Prize, a leading German prize for a translation, and it is Ulrich Blumenbach's translation of Joshua Cohen's Witz (Schöffling & Co.).

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       Hotlist 2022

       They've announced the thirty finalists for this year's 'Hotlist', a German prize for which any independent publisher can submit one German title (translations are eligible, too) -- see all 191 submissions.
       The submissions-list offers a good overview of what small German-language publishers are bringing out.
       Readers can now vote for their favorites, with the top three vote-getters joining seven titles selected by the jury, with the jury then selecting the winner from these ten finalists.

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       Shield of Straw review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Kiuchi Kazuhiro's Shield of Straw.

       (This was also made into a movie, directed by Miike Takashi, in 2013.)

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       Orwell Prizes

       They've announced the winners of the four Orwell Prizes, including the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, which went to Small Things Like These, by Claire Keegan.
       See also the publicity pages from Grove Press and Faber, or get your copy at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org or Amazon.co.uk.

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       More 'most anticipated' .....

       If the 230 titles on the Literary Hub's Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2022, Part Two -- announced last week -- weren't enough for you, The Millions now has their Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2022 Book Preview, with "more than 175 books".
       Yes, there is some overlap -- and, yes, there are a lot more books out there to look forward to.

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

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