Quantcast
Channel: the Literary Saloon

There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of a career-spanning selection of poems by Tove Ditlevsen, There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die.        (This is already...

View Article


PRH takes over Text

       Publishing juggernaut Penguin Random House has taken over leading Australian independent Text; see, for example, the latter's press release, Text Publishing joins Penguin Random House....

View Article


Margaret Atwood profile

       At Mexico News Daily Ann Marie Jackson profiles the author, in In conversation with Margaret Atwood in San Miguel de Allende.

View Article

English-language publishing in Europe

       As I've mentioned before, one of the issues continental European publishers are dealing with is that local book-buyers are buying many books written in English in the original rather than the...

View Article

Edgar Allan Poe Award finalists

       The Mystery Writers of America has announced the finalists for this year's Edgar Allan Poe Awards.        The winners will be announced 1 May.

View Article


Jewish Book Awards

       The Jewish Book Council has announced the (many) winners of this year's Jewish Book Awards.        The only winning title under review at the complete review is the winner of the Jane Weitzman...

View Article

Jalal Al-Ahmad Literary Awards

       They've announced the winners of this year's Jalal Al-Ahmad Literary Awards, a leading Iranian literary prize, with Majid Gheisari's سنگ اقبال ('The Stone of Iqbal') winning the novel prize;...

View Article

Perversity review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Francis Carco's 1925 novel, Perversity.        The American publisher of the 1928 English translation of this gave Ford Madox...

View Article


'World literature'

       At Qantara.de Gerrit Wustmann explores Who defines "world literature" ? finding: Almost no one likes to admit it, but non-Western literature in German translation is (again, with some...

View Article


Dylan Thomas Prize longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize -- awarded: "for the best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or...

View Article

Wolff Translator's Prize longlist

       The Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize has announced the eighteen translation from German into English published in the USA or Canada in 2024 submitted for consideration -- a good...

View Article

NBCC Awards finalists

       The (American) National Book Critics Circle has announced the finalists for its awards.        The only title under review at the complete review is the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize...

View Article

Gordon Burn Prize shortlist

       New Writing North has announced the shortlist for this year's Gordon Burn Prize, awarded for: "novels which dare to enter history and interrogate the past; [...] non-fiction brave enough to...

View Article


Prix Sévigné

       The Fondation de la Poste has announced the winner of the 2024 prix Sévigné, a prize for a volume of correspondence, and it is for a collection Italo Calvino's correspondence, Le métier...

View Article

New Asymptote

       The January 2025 issue of Asymptote is now out -- lots of great material for your weekend-reading.

View Article


Charlotte Mandell Q & A

       At the Asymptote blog Mia Ruf has a Q & A with the translator, in Voiding the Ego: Charlotte Mandell on Translating Paul Valéry.        Mandell's translation of Monsieur Teste is recently...

View Article

Bangla Academy Literary Awards

       As reported at, for example, New Age Bangla Academy suspends literary award list, as the Bangla Academy announced their Literary Awards on the 23rd, and then ... de-nounced them yesterday....

View Article


'Best new novelists' ?

       At The Observer they have a feature on what they consider The best new novelists for 2025 -- though limited to writers living in the UK or Ireland.        They include Q & As with the...

View Article

Zadie Smith Q & A

       In the Sunday Times they have a Q & A with the author, in Zadie Smith on White Teeth: ‘I’ve never reread it. I never will’.        Among her responses: As a reader I’m a great admirer of...

View Article

Uketsu profile

       Uketsu's Strange Pictures is now out in English, and in The Guardian Ella Creamer profiles the author, in ‘Am I a Cyclopian monster?’ How masked writer Uketsu went from asparagus videos to...

View Article

Premio Pepe Carvalho

       They've announced the winner of this year's Premio Pepe Carvalho -- a mystery author prize named after the Manuel Vázquez Montalbán-character, and it is Dead Man's Share-author Yasmina Khadra....

View Article


Volker Schlöndorff (wants) to film Visitation

       Börsenblatt reports -- via a Märkische Allgemeine report that's unfortunately paywalled -- that German film director Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum, The Handmaid's Tale, The Lost Honor of...

View Article


Libris Literatuur Prijs longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Libris Literatuur Prijs, a leading Dutch literary prize.        This prize admirably reveals all the titles submitted for consideration -- as all...

View Article

Q & A: Rohan Murty

       In the New Indian Express Vidya Iyengar has a Q & A with Rohan Murty, founder of the Murty Classical Library of India, in My mother instilled a deep respect for history, Literature: Rohan...

View Article

Q & A: Bonnie Marranca

       Disappointing to hear that PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art has finished its run after forty-eight years -- and at The MIT Press Nick Lindsay has a Q & A with its longtime editor, in...

View Article


Sarah McNally profile

       At Vulture Matthew Schneier profiles the McNally Jackson-founder, in Sarah McNally's Book Club.        Among the titbits of interest: numbers ! "The McNally Editions imprint, despite the...

View Article

'Audio-based digital narratives in literature'

       In Humanities and Social Sciences Communications Bhuvaneshwari Palanisamy & Rajasekaran V offer The listening renaissance: a theoretical exploration of audio-based digital narratives in...

View Article

“Human Authored” certification

       The (American) Authors Guild has announced, sigh, that: Authors Guild Launches “Human Authored” Certification to Preserve Authenticity in Literature -- "a first-of-its-kind official...

View Article

Ockham NZ Book Awards longlists

       They've announced the longlists for this year's Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, 43 books in four categories, selected from 175 entries.        Three of the categories have ten titles each on...

View Article



Susan Barker Q & As

       Susan Barker's Old Soul is now out -- and there are now Q & As with the author at CrimeReads and Writer's Digest.

View Article

Republic of Consciousness longlist

       They've announced the longlist for this year's Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses (the original UK/Ireland prize; there's also a US/Canada version now).        Certainly an...

View Article

Sapir Prize

       They've announced the winner of this year's Sapir Prize, a leading Israeli book prize paying out NIS 150,000, and it is שלושה ימים בקיץ by Yossi Avni-Levy; see, for example, Neria Barr's report...

View Article

Book market 2024: Austria

       The Hauptverband des Österreichischen Buchhandels has issued an overview (warning ! dreaded pdf format !) of the Austrian book market in 2024 -- albeit avoiding revealing a lot of the actual...

View Article


Book market 2024: UK

       The Bookseller has a couple of (presumably paywalled ?) 'Reviews of the Year' (2024), including for fiction sales and non-fiction sales in the UK in 2024.        Non-fiction sales (as counted...

View Article

Jenny Erpenbeck Q & A

       In The Indian Express Aishwarya Khosla has a Q & A with the author at the Jaipur Literature Festival, in ‘All already in the Mahabharata’: Booker Prize winner Jenny Erpenbeck on war and...

View Article

The Lily in the Valley review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Honoré de Balzac's The Lily in the Valley, recently out in a new translation from New York Review Books.

View Article


Han Kang profile

       Nobel laureate Han Kang has a new novel out -- We Do Not Part; I haven't seen it yet -- and at The Guardian Lisa Allardice has a profile of her, ‘I want to be hopeful’: Nobel prize-winning...

View Article


Salome in Brooklyn

       Having written the novel Salome in Graz I'm always curious about new Salome-variations, especially of the Wilde play and the Strauss opera, and tomorrow through 16 February Heartbeat Opera is...

View Article

Bhashavaad

       Ashoka University has announced the launch of "India’s first non-profit, open-access, and crowd-sourced database of Indian translations", Bhashavaad -- already with more than 14,000 entries....

View Article

Mahmoud Saeed (1939?-2025)

       Iraqi author Mahmoud Saeed has passed away; see, for example, the Iraqi News Agency report or Thomas Frisbie's obituary in the Chicago Sun-Times.        Several of his works have been...

View Article

Hilary Mantel estate

       Apparently they're settling Hilary Mantel's estate, and so the numbers are out: she left it all to her husband, "having amassed a fortune of £4,677,327, which later reduced to a net sum of...

View Article


Oskar Pastior Preis

       The Oskar Pastior Prize is a big-money (€40,000) but perhaps not so well-endowed literary prize, by the o du roher iasmin-author, awarded to an author whose work is 'in the tradition of the...

View Article

Near Distance review

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Hanna Stoltenberg's Near Distance, now also out in a North American edition, from Biblioasis; it came out in the UK in 2023.

View Article


PEN Translates grants

       English PEN has announced the latest batch of winners of its PEN Translates grants -- 19 titles, translated from 13 languages.        Among the projects is a new translation of Yasutaka...

View Article