A Look Back at the Year

99 works were reviewed for the fourth year of the website, which falls between 18 November 2009 and 17 November 2010. In a broad sense, several of my personal goals for the website were achieved, though these were largely ephemeral and not concretely defined (which perhaps made them difficult to strive for). In essence, I wanted to expand the breadth of the website in terms of reviewing authors from a greater range of nationalities, and also to increase the depth of reviews for national literature I am particularly fond of reading (French, German, Polish). In both, I feel I was successful, but not to the extent I wished; I really wanted to review over 100 works, and just missed achieving that.

Coverage of different Nationalities

This year saw a large increase in the range of nationalities under review at the website. Previous years saw a large number of American, British, French and Australian reviews added. 49 different nationalities were represented over 99 reviews, which is quite a remarkable shift I hope to continue. European literature is increasingly well-covered, but while inroads have been made in African literature, there remains huge untapped areas. Even worse, Arabic literature is virtually unrepresented, and Asian nations aren't much better, which is a problem that needs to be fixed.

Reviews of African literature dramatically increased this year, thanks in large part to the short story collection, African Roar. The collection will be continuing in 2011, and I hope again to review one story each week until the book is complete. In addition, I've recently acquired a reasonable number of books by African authors, both well-established (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Wole Soyinka, J. M. Coetzee, etc), as well as less well-known authors. I would like to, at the very least, double the number of reviews of African works of literature, which at the moment stands at 24

Short Stories

A new focus for the fourth year of the website has been short stories. From zero in previous years, the number of short stories has increased to 33, which comes to 11.87% - quite an increase from none at all! The future of short story reviewing for the website seems pretty clear, as it has proven to be an excellent way to discover authors not yet in print in English for their novels (for European fiction), or for "emerging" authors who have one, two, or zero novels under their belt (primarily the African writers from African Roar).

The short story format is exciting, and though it may function as a training ground for American and Australian authors (ie not "real" writing when compared to a novel), it is very much a vibrant, effective, seriously appreciated form elsewhere. In addition, there are a number of great magazines and collections (both online and in print) which make it their primary objective to translate previously unavailable work into English. Naturally, short stories are easier (and cheaper?) to translate than entire works, and I can only hope that by raising awareness of these great stories in my own small way, perhaps their works will be translated further.

Female Authors

A new focus for the website, I was rather disappointed to discover that, as of last week (10 November 2010), female authors represented less than 10% of the total reviews on the website. In recognition of this, I have put together a separate page for female authors, both as a prompt to action and a way of highlighting what (shouldn't be but is) a minority on the site.

The Focus Ahead

For the fifth year (18 November 2010 - 17 November 2011), I'd like to increase the number of reviews to 150. It's a large increase, but my personal circumstances should make this number quite feasible. Short stories, while quicker to review, aren't always easier, though I'd like to keep them to a maximum of 25% of the total reviews. That gives me a great deal of leeway in the time ahead, but I need to be careful.

There are only so many countries in the world, which means I shouldn't expect to keep adding new nations ever week or so. That said, there are many, many literatures as yet unrepresented, but by and large the "easy" nations have at least one work under review. To that end, I'd like to add more where I can, but the focus will be on depth. In particular, I will focus more on Central and Eastern Europe, and Sub-Saharan African literature.

Statistics - 18 November 2009 - 17 November 2010

Breakdown of Reviews by Nationality - 18 November 2009 - 17 November 2010