Vladimir Makanin won the 2008 Big Book (Большая книга award today for Асан (Asan), a novel about the Chechen war. I’d been eying Asan on my favorite Russian book site so just ordered it up. I’ve enjoyed Makanin’s writing since the first sentence I read, in which a giant hand swoops down to catch, if only temporarily, a man as he walks down the street.
Second prize went to Liudmila Saraskina for her biography Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and third prize was awarded to Rustam Rakhmatullin for Две Москвы, или Метафизика столицы (Two Moscows or the Metaphysics of the Capital)
A posthumous jury prize went to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Rakhmatullin and Saraskina also won readers’ choice awards, along with Vladimir Kostin, for his collection Годовые кольца (Growth Rings).
I included summaries of Big Book finalists in this previous entry.
Good night!
Further information in Russian:
“Триумвират достойных” – about the winners, particularly Makanin.
“Книжное казино” – Echo of Moscow Russian radio show from November 23, 2008, with Big Book finalists Pavel Basinskii and Margarita Khemlin.
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