Paul Harding wins Pulitzer for his first novel

The winners of the 2010 Pultizer Prizes were announced yesterday. The Pulitzer Prize is one of the most important yearly writing awards in the United States. Only Americans may win the awards, and their work must be about distinctly American issues.

In fiction, Boston area writer and professional drummer Paul Harding won for his first novel, Tinkers. A bittersweet, exquisitely detailed story of epilepsy, aging, mortality, and fatherhood, the novel was published by Bellevue Literary Press, a small publisher that specializes in medical and scientific writing. This is the first time in almost three decades (since A Confederacy of Dunces, published by the Louisiana State University Press, in 1981) that the winner has not been a large release from a major publisher.

In drama, the musical Next to Normal by Brian Yorkey (book, lyrics) and Tom Kitt (music) won. A musical has not won in the best play category since RENT in 1996.

In poetry, veteran poet Rae Armantrout of San Diego won for her collection Versed.

No news, just reviews

Some of the more interesting book reviews and interviews I've read this weekend:

At SFGate, Carolina de Robertis reviews Sudden Fiction Latino, a comprehensive Norton anthology of flash fiction and microfiction from Latino writers throughout North, Central, and South America--from the internationally acclaimed Gabriel García Márquez to writers barely known in the United States, like Rodrigo Rey Rosa of Guatemala.

Robert McCrum of The Observer presents an amusing interview with Lorrie Moore, the American novelist and short story writer known for her brevity and tragicomic tone. Her latest novel, A Gate at the Stairs, offers a glimpse into the lives of Americans in the years between September 11 and the United States invasion of Iraq and has been longlisted for the Orange Prize.

Shabnam Minwalla of The Times of India provides some context for the latest Stieg Larsson craze, offering a biographical sketch of the best-selling, deceased, Swedish crime novelist and providing reviews of his Millennium Trilogy--The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

A Saudi Arabian novel about divorce, sexual oppression, and superstition during the first Gulf War has recently been translated by Anthony Calderbank and published by the American University Press. Munira's Bottle by Youssef al-Mohaimeed and its translation are reviewed by Amany Aly Shawky at AlMasryAlYoum.

William Skidelsky of The Observer details the life and works of David Mitchell, a young British novelist whose complex, experimental, diverse novels have become a bestselling, postmodern sensation.

Atwood urged to decline Israeli award

Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood is slated to receive the Dan David Prize from Tel Aviv University in Israel on May 9. The prize committee awards three million dollars in the categories of "past, present, and future" to inspirational individuals of various fields who have made an outstanding impact on the world. Atwood would share one million dollars with Amitav Ghosh, an Indian-Bengali author who writes in English; past literary winners have included Amos Oz and Tom Stoppard, in addition to non-writers like environmental activist Al Gore, cellist Yo Yo Ma, and archeologist Graeme Barker.

Various people, including a contingency of students from the Gaza Strip known as the Palestinian Students' Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel, have expressed their concern over Atwood's possible acceptance of an award from Israel due to the nation's apartheid-like treatment of Palestinian people. In letters that can be read here, they plead that she either boycott the ceremony, use the podium as an opportunity to condemn Israel's actions, or publicly use the winnings to contribute to causes such as writers' groups in the Gaza Strip.

Atwood's website, however, still lists that she plans to accept the award.

She will also be participating in an Earth Day panel called Arts of the Earth on April 25 in Washington, DC.

Chinese writer withdraws her denunciation of Pearl S. Buck

Pearl S. Buck was born to Presbyterian missionaries in 1892 in West Virginia, but at three months she relocated to China, where she grew up learning both the local language and the tongue of her parents. Despite two separate periods in the United States where she received her college education and her Masters degree, Buck spent almost all of her young life in China. A progressive-minded, intelligent, and passionate woman, she challenged racism and sexual discrimination, championed adoption and children's rights, and was outspoken on topics of war and immigration, issues which all shined through her writing. In 1930, despite numerous rejections from publishers who considered China a topic in which American writers would be thoroughly uninterested, Buck released The Good Earth, a best-selling epic of the Chinese peasantry which would later win the Pulitzer Prize. In 1938, she became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize.

Despite having inspired an admiration and respect for the Chinese and their culture in millions of previously ignorant Americans and despite having spent most of her life in China, teaching at a Chinese university and fighting for Chinese rights, Buck was targeted as an American imperialist during the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the sixties. Her books were banned, her character was vilified, and when she attempted to accompany United States President Nixon on his famous diplomatic visit to China in 1972, her access was famously denied by the politically aspirant wife of Chairman Mao. Buck died a year later at her home in Pennsylvania, and she never received a chance to return to her childhood home, a situation which left her heartbroken.

In 1971, fourteen-year-old Anchee Min was required to write an essay denouncing Buck as a detestable cultural imperialist despite knowing nothing about the writer or her work. Only years later, while on a United States book tour promoting her memoir Red Azalea, did the Shanghai writer receive a copy of the once forbidden book from a fan who claimed that the novel was what had first made her love China.

Despite a lifelong prejudice against the American writer, Min was moved by the emotional weight of the novel. According to an article from NPR:

Min read that paperback copy of The Good Earth on the airplane from Chicago to Los Angeles. When she finished, she says, emotion overcame her.

"I couldn't help myself, and I broke down and sobbed because I have never seen anyone, including our Chinese authors, who wrote our peasants the way Pearl Buck did, with such love, affection and humanity. And it was at that very moment Pearl of China was conceived."

Pearl of China, released in the United States by Bloomsbury on March 30, is a fictionalized account of the life of Buck, seen from the eyes of a loyal Chinese friend. Buck committed her life to representing and supporting Chinese women; with this brief novel, Min hopes to return the favor.

Brief Interview with Rana Dasgupta, winner of Commonwealth Writers' Prize

I like the following quotation from Rana Dasgupta, as posted by DNA India:

Having taken four years to write Solo — a novel about the life and daydreams of Ulrich, a one hundred year old man from Bulgaria, Rana says, “Solo was an extremely intense, internal journey which is hard to communicate about. The real work of writing is very solitary and a private experience. You are essentially living in a fictional world which exists only because you’ve made it up — there’s no one else living in that world and so you can’t really talk about it to anyone. So, until you finish the book, it’s a very isolated place.”

Solo won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book for Europe and South Asia on March 11.

Award-winning author to be sued by publicity-seeking composer

Saudi Arabian novelist Abdo Khal, winner of the 2010 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the "Arabic Booker") on March 2, is to be sued by Egyptian composer Mohammad Raheem on grounds of libel.

Mohammad Raheem is also the name of a character in Khal's award-winning book She Throws Sparks, a composer who romances and mentors a prostitute in Jeddah. The real Raheem, who has composed music for several Arabic stars, has told Egyptian media that he requests the banning of Khal's book, the arrest of Khal, and the clearing of his name in the eyes of his family and associates.

Khal has insisted that the similarity of names and professions is coincidental and intended no harm. The name is, indeed, quite common.

The International Prize for Arabic Fiction, which is supported by the UK Booker Prize Foundation and funded by the Emirates Foundation of the UAE, carries with it a cash prize of $60,000. This year, its third, the prize committee attracted 113 nominations from seventeen countries. Winning the award promises not only financial security but also increased international recognition and accolades and future publication and translation deals.

According to The Tanjara:

The Administrator of the Prize, Joumana Haddad, commented: “The importance of the IPAF lies not only in its financial value, but in the social and cultural influence it has, the most important aspect of which is supporting high quality Arabic fiction and encouraging both writers and readers to consider writing and reading as vital acts."

Khal's book, whose full title is Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles (an allusion to a Quranic verse about Hell), should--as a result of the award--be published into English soon. A bitingly satirical look at the destructive power of wealth on life and the environment, the novel is unavailable in Khal's home country, where the criticisms allegedly strike too closely at the ruling elites.

Edith Grossman and the Importance of Translation

Renowned translator Edith Grossman, whose works have included Don Quixote, Love in the Time of Cholera, and The Feast of the Goat, is the subject of an interesting examination from thestar online. Her new book, Why Translation Matters, part of the Why X Matters series from Yale University Press, was published yesterday, March 30. The book details the artistic skill required to capture a writer's rhythm and style while remaining true to his or her words and intent, a talent that is often overlooked in a publishing and reading world where translators are poorly paid and largely ignored.

Translation can take as long, or longer, as writing the original book. The art, Grossman and others will say, is more than finding the appropriate word. Translation is about words and music, fidelity and feel, the balance between getting too caught up in the literal meaning and improvising so freely that the author’s voice is lost entirely.

In Why Translation Matters, Grossman writes of taking on the opening phrase of the first chapter of Don Quixote, among the most famous words in Spanish literature: “En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme,” which in an earlier English-language edition was translated into, “In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind.”

Grossman worked on the phrase by reciting the Spanish to herself, “mantralike.” She reached for the right mood and rhythm, to recapture how it struck those who read Quixote centuries ago. She pondered the word lugar, which can mean either village or place. The words came to her, like lyrics to a song: “Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember.”

The article explores the pitiful status of literature in translation in the United States, where as little as 3% of books published come from international writers--a percentage drastically smaller than that in other nations. The article presents the cultural factors underlying this underrepresentation and examines the circumstances which have allowed foreign success stories to overcome the low demand.

Biography of an early Gaelic to English translator

Her inclusion in the latest edition of the Oxford Companion to English Literature is cause for the Irish Times to sketch a eulogy of Charlotte Brooke, an oft-overlooked woman who pioneered the translation of Gaelic poetry and folk songs into English in the eighteenth century.

Censorship in Iran

An interesting essay by Abbas Djavadi on rferl.org details forms of literary censorship in Iran, from the denial of publication of certain new works to the removal of old books from shelves to the excision and rewriting of precise offending phrases.

"Sometimes they reject the books and sometimes they refuse to publish specific passages, sentences, or even words," he continues. In a single history of Persian literature, they demanded 61 separate changes. One concerned a poem from the 11th century that was critical of men's beards. "They said the beard is something sacred and they can't approve anything making fun of it," the publisher says.

Djavadi also mentions two methods of circumventing these bawdlerizing efforts and censorial measures: publishing on the Internet and perusing the secret stashes of freethinking booksellers.

An Interview with Syl Cheney-Coker

On the eve of the publication of his latest poetry collection, Stone Child, Sierra Leonean Syl Cheney-Coker sat with Niyi Osundare of Newswatch Magazine to discuss his poetry, his country, and his experiences with the publishing industry.

Question: ‘Turkish Diptych’; ‘Iranian Diptych’; Toronto’s Harbourfront; Tupac Amaru of the Incas; Wole Soyinka, Amadu Diallo (‘an unarmed African immigrant shot 41 times by undercover New York Police Department men); The Gods of the G8 Summit; etc. Your poetry breathes with diverse persons and places. What would you say to readers who call you a ‘poet of the world’?

Answer: It is a description that I accept: something, I believe, that comes out of my make-up; the sense of being a cultural hybrid; interconnecting with the rest of the world, free of prejudices and, in reality, benefiting from all the subterranean currents of cultural history that went into making me who I am, and thus, trying to write about it. As human beings, we are the beneficiaries of so many narratives, so many fusions of blood, languages and cultures that we would be foolish to deny. And given that as a poet, I have travelled to and lived on four continents, my poetry is like a sponge that has soaked up all the infusions into that life.

Cheney-Coker, who has been publishing since 1973, is perhaps most well-known for his epic novel The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, a fantastical chronicle of nearly four centuries of Sierra Leonean history. Cheney-Coker has won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Fonlon/Nichols Award, and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and his work has been widely translated. He spends much of his time living, writing, and teaching in the United States.