John Sutherland on Salman Rushdie’s new novel, The Enchantress of Florence:
If The Enchantress of Florence doesn’t win this year’s Man Booker I’ll curry my proof copy and eat it.
The full review is up here. The Man Booker will be awarded sometime in October 2008.
What a thrill it was to hear the good news: Junot Díaz has won this year’s Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
Last week, the novelist Tayari Jones (The Untelling, Leaving Atlanta) wrote on her blog about the horrific crimes that took place in Dunbar Village last year. The victims, a Haitian immigrant and her twelve year old son, were treated with such depravity that I had a hard time believing that the four accused were between 14 and 18. Jones wrote of her outrage at the NAACP’s demands to release the teens; she asked fellow writers to help raise money for the victims.
The eBay auction is now up: You can bid on a manuscript critiques by George Saunders, Nichelle Tramble, Sarah Schulman, Joy Castro, Martha Southgate, D. Nurkse, Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, and me. Some authors are offering book proposal evaluations and even novel critiques. There are also lots of autographed books on offer. Please hop on over to eBay and make a bid.
I don’t keep up with literary prizes, but I always look forward to the announcement of the IMPAC Dublin award, because the nominations come from libraries around the world; any book in any language is eligible so long as there is an English-language translation; and translators are recognized alongside the authors. This year’s shortlist has just been announced, and the finalists are:
The Speed of Light by Javier Cercas (translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean)
The Sweet and Simple Kind by Yasmine Gooneratne
De Niro’s Game by Rawi Hage
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones
Let it be Morning by Sayed Kashua (translated from the Hebrew by Miriam Schlesinger)
The Attack by Yasmina Khadra (translated from the French by John Cullen)
The Woman who Waited by Andrei Makine (translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan)
Winterwood by Patrick McCabe
Notice that three Arab writers have made the cut (Rawi Hage, who is Lebanese; Yasmina Khadra who is Algerian; and Sayed Kashua who is Palestinian) but none of them write in Arabic. Hage lives in Canada and writes in English; Khadra lives in France and writes in French; and Kashua is a citizen of Israel and writes in Hebrew. So few Arabic novels are translated into English that when Arab writers are recognized in international awards, they tend to be those who write in other languages.
The judging panel includes Helon Habila, Patricia Duncker, Aamer Hussein, Eibhlín Evans, and Jose Luis de Juan, and the winner(s) will be announced June 12.
There’s a great post by Bob Harris over at the New York Times‘ Paper Cuts blog, in which he lists the seven deadly words of book reviewing. In the comments section, people have been contributing their own loathed terms. Hop on over there and add yours.
My friend H. forwarded me this link to the Le Monde review of Fouad Laroui’s new novel, La femme la plus riche du Yorkshire. It’s about a young Moroccan university professor named Adam Serghini, who arrives in the English countryside for work, and, bored out of his mind, decides to conduct an ethnological study of the population. He sits in their preferred habitat (the pub) and takes scrupulous notes of their mores. He soon meets a rich old lady, with whom he obviously has nothing in common. Clash of civilizations–and typical Laroui humor–ensues.
Anyway, don’t bother looking up a date of release in the U.S. As incredible as it sounds, Laroui has never been translated into English. (Don’t look at me. I tried to get several editors interested in him, even offering to translate him, but no one has shown any interest.)