In love with the hotel

The second winner of the Women’s prize for nonfiction will be unveiled next month. Alongside books of memoir, science and biography, this year’s shortlist features two titles in which hotels are the main character: The Finest Hotel in Kabul by Lyse Doucet and Hotel Exile by Jane Rogoyska.

Nonfiction aside, hotels have long been compelling settings for dramas of all kinds: novels (Hotel du Lac, A Gentleman in Moscow), TV (The White Lotus, Fawlty Towers) and film (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Lost in Translation) make use, too. 

International Booker Prize 2026 Longlist

 “Many of the submitted books examined the devastating consequences of war, which is reflected in our longlist,” said judging chair and novelist Natasha Brown. “The list also features petty squabbles between neighbours, mysterious mountain villages, big pharma conspiracies, witchy women, ill-fated lovers, a haunted prison, and obscure film references. The page counts range from ‘pocket-friendly’ to ‘doorstopper’. And while the books’ original publication dates span four decades, each story feels fresh and innovative.” Ella Creamer, The Guardian

The Magic of Translation

In fact, as Calleja demonstrates through several fascinating and detailed translations in progress, shepherding a piece of writing from one language into another requires so many minute responses, thought processes and decisions that the translator would find it impossible to suppress their own voice and experiences; and that if they managed it, the result would probably be worse, inert and undynamic. Alex Clark, The Guardian

recensione a Fair: The Life-Art of Translation, Jen Calleja (Prototype) 

anche: this year’s Booker prize longlist looks in new directions 

The 2024 Booker prize shortlist

Among the shortlisted women are “real heavyweight writers” who are “perhaps undersung” in terms of the “massive commercial success that they should have had”, added Collins, pointing to British writer Samantha Harvey and her fifth novel Orbital; Canadian poet and novelist Anne Michaels, shortlisted for Held; and Australian novelist Charlotte Wood, chosen for Stone Yard Devotional.

Shortlisted alongside them are American writer Rachel Kushner with Creation Lake and Yael van der Wouden, the first Dutch writer to be shortlisted and lone debut novelist to feature with The Safekeep. Completing this year’s shortlist is Percival Everett with James, his retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved Jim. The Guardian

Days of The Jackal

How Andrew Wylie turned serious literature into big business. Andrew Wylie is agent to an extraordinary number of the planet’s biggest authors. His knack for making highbrow writers very rich helped to define a literary era – but is his reign now coming to an end? Alex Blasdel, The Guardian

 

e per continuare a esplorare il lato commerciale della letteratura, da leggere è quest'altro articolo sui premi letterari:  "What 35 Years of Data Can Tell Us about Who Will Win the National Book Award", Alexander Manshel & Melanie Walsh, Public Books

Is Facebook Buying Off The New York Times?

Participating in Facebook News doesn’t appear to deliver many new readers to outlets; the feature is very difficult to find, and it is not integrated into individuals’ newsfeeds. What Facebook News does deliver—though to only a handful of high-profile news organizations of its choosing—is serious amounts of cash. The exact terms of these deals remain secret, because Facebook insisted on nondisclosure and the news organizations agreed. The Wall Street Journal reported that the agreements were worth as much as $3 million a year, and a Facebook spokesperson told me that number is “not too far off at all.” But in at least one instance, the numbers are evidently much larger. In an interview last month, former New York Times CEO Mark Thompson said the Times is getting “far, far more” than $3 million a year—“very much so.” [...]

And Facebook and Google money is, admittedly, all over journalism already. Virtually every major media nonprofit receives direct or indirect funding from Silicon Valley, including this one. When the Monthly gets grants from do-good organizations like NewsMatch, some of the funds originate with Facebook. [...]

But these three points are beyond dispute. [...]

First, the deals are a serious breach of traditional ethics. [...]

Second, these deals help Facebook maintain the public appearance of legitimacy. [...]

Finally, these agreements undermine industry-wide efforts that would help the smaller, ethnic, and local news organizations that are most desperately in need of help. Dan Froomkin, Washington Monthly

Come altre volte, le notizie sul giornalismo le prendo dall'interessantissima newsletter del Post, Charlie.

Altre notizie della settimana:

The vital role of war, Linda Colley,The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World (Profile), recensito da Miles Taylor, The Guardian

Sempre sul Guardian i finalisti del Booker Prize. 

 

 

Un bel ritratto di Louise Glück

Her poems are controlled and highly charged, restrained but also exposed, unafraid of and perhaps also terrified by outcry. [...] The sounds in her poems emerge tentatively and then bravely, and sometimes fiercely, from within their rhythms. Glück knows what a tone needs when it seeks to be truthful. She has a knowledge, both baleful and enabling, of how little can be said that is true, and how much dark energy that is then released in the effort to speak. In her poems, tone itself is both held in and released. Her work is filled with voice, often hushed and whispering, as though she is exploring a difficult aftermath or the shape of the soul.

If there is one poem by her that gives us a sense of her great talent and the bravery of her voice, it is the opening poem in her collection The Wild Iris, which begins:

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Colm Tóibín, The Guardian

Kertzer wins Pulitzer

David Kertzer, the Paul R. Dupee Jr. Professor of Social Science and professor of anthropology and Italian studies, and a 1969 graduate of Brown, has been awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for biography-autobiography for his book The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe.
Pulitzer judges described Kertzer’s 2014 book as “an engrossing dual biography that uses recently opened Vatican archives to shed light on two men who exercised nearly absolute power over their realms.”
Kertzer expressed surprise at the win.
“I had no idea the Pulitizer Prizes were about to be announced nor any hint they were considering The Pope and Mussolini, so this is quite a shock. Like any author, I hope that the news leads many new readers to the book.” brown.

The Luminaries

The Luminaries è il titolo di un romanzone (848 pag., editore McClelland & Stewart) della scrittrice neozelandese Eleanor Catton, che è tra le finaliste del Man Booker Prize. Amazon lo definisce un "neo-Victorian murder mystery". Jenny Hendrix dice, "The Luminaries is, among other things, an experiment in predetermination. By extinguishing every coincidence, it turns literature into the same kind of problem as astrology: Do we want structural interpretation to dictate narrative, or is it best when a story’s structure, as one character puts it, “always changes in the telling”? slate.

Julian Barnes vince il Man Booker Prize

Julian Barnes has been announced as the winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize for his novella The Sense of an Ending.

Freethinker of the Year Award

Quest'anno è stato assegnato a Christopher Hitchens. "Mr. Hitchens was flattered by the honor, he said a few days beforehand, but also a little abashed. 'I think being an atheist is something you are, not something you do,' he explained, adding: 'I’m not sure we need to be honored. We don't need positive reinforcement. On the other hand, we do need to stick up for ourselves, especially in a place like Texas, where they have laws, I think, that if you don't believe in Jesus Christ you can’t run for sheriff". nyt.