It is list season. The NOSE Award announced an eclectic long list -- 19 books -- today. Next up on the NOSE calendar: a short list on November 4 and then a talk show in late January 2011 to choose winners. NOSE is an annual award; it was established by the Mikhail Prokhorov Charitable Foundation. (NB: The Prokhorov Foundation writes the award name as NOS but I’m having a hard time with that...)
I’ve mentioned some of the NOSE long list books in other posts about National Bestseller, Big Book, Yasnaya Polyana, and Booker nominees, so I’ll paste in some of my previous descriptions. I chose a few other nominees randomly to give you about half the list...
Vasilii Avchenko’s Правый руль (Wheel on the Right) is a “documentary novel” about the love of drivers in the Russian Far East for used cars imported from Japan.
Lidiia Golovkova’s Сухановская тюрьма (Sukhanovka Prison) is about a secret prison run by the NKVD and Ministry of State Security during the Soviet era; the prison was in a monastery.
Aleksandr Ilichevskii’s Перс (The Persian) is a novel about an émigré to the U.S. who returns to his place of birth, on the Caspian, where he sees a childhood friend who lives in a nature preserve. The Persian is next on my reading pile…
Aleksei Ivanov’s Хребет России (Russia’s Spine or Russia’s Mountain Range), a book of material (essays and photos) about the Urals; the book is based on a four-part TV miniseries from Ivanov and Leonid Parfenov. (previous post about Ivanov’s Geographer)
I’ll be posting soon about Margarita Khemlin’s Клоцвог (Klotsvog), a curiously compelling book…
Maksim Osipov’s Грех жаловаться (literally, It’s a Sin to Complain… more Maine-ish, Can’t Complain), writings by a rural doctor. In 2007 Osipov received an award from the journal Знамя, which has published his work. Online here.
I always like including Viktor Pelevin’s t because the title’s so easy to type and translate.
Pavel Peppershtein’s Весна (Spring) is described by publisher Ad Marginem as “psychedelic realism.”
German Sadulaev’s Шалинский рейд (The Raid on Shali) (начало) (окончание) is about the Chechen war.
I already read Vladimir Sorokin’s Метель (The Blizzard) (previous post).
Edit: Oops, I also meant to include Pavel Nerler’s book Слово и "дело" Осипа Мандельштама: книга доносов, допросов и обвинительных заключений... the book’s title sums everything up: The Word and "Deed" [Case] of Osip Mandel'shtam: A Book of Denunciations, Interrogations, and Indictments.
Openspace.ru has the full long list here.
P.S. It’s difficult to believe but this is, apparently, my 200th post.
Off-topic, you might find this magazine interesting - snob.ru - http://lubman.org/?p=983
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link, Steven -- I've been meaning to sign up for the (free) three-month trial subscription, so thank you for the reminder! And it's not really off-topic at all since Snob is a Prokhorov project... I just hope he doesn't try to sell me basketball tickets.
ReplyDeleteThanks, as always, for the informative reporting. A minor correction: the town is Shali, not "Shalin." Russian toponymic adjectives can be confusing! (Compare бакинский for Baku.)
ReplyDeleteThanks, languagehat! You're absolutely correct about the town name. Both "Shali" and "Shalin" appear to be used in English as adjectival forms, with "Shali" looking significantly more popular on Google, at least in the combinations I checked. When I think about it, I might rather call this book The Raid on Shali or something similar, since it reinforces the geography in the title... I've always said these quick title translations were trouble!
ReplyDeleteI'm curious, where are you getting this adjectival use of "Shalin" in English? I'm pretty sure there is no English adjective for the place, considering how obscure it is, and my googling mostly turns up hits for the Shalin Liu Performance Center and similar things that have nothing to do with Chechnya. In any case, it's not an adjective in the English title (you'd write "the Moscow murders," not "the Muscovite murders"); you should make it either The Shali Raid or, as you suggest, The Raid on Shali.
ReplyDeleteI'm starting to get absolutely, thoroughly confused about my English usage here... Russian adjectives are so much simpler to handle! As for searches: the combination of "Shalin" and "Chechnya" brings up over 100k results with Shalin, and many seem to refer to Shali in various contexts... as I said before, though, results for "Shalin sector" are far, far fewer than for "Shali sector." And some results are completely off-topic, e.g. last names.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, this title is now listed as The Raid on Shali in all my posts!
That Nerler book certainly sounds interesting (if depressing). For those who don't know, the title refers to an old Russian name for crimes against the state.
ReplyDeleteLanguagehat: I was convinced before that "Слово и дело" is the slogan from Ivan IV oprichnina, I must've heard it in the Lungin's movie "Царь" or read it in Sorokin's "День опричника".
ReplyDeleteI received the first free issue of Snob in the mail - it is an incredibly opulent magazine, I've never seen anything like it. Prokhorov must be sinking a ton of money into it.
Steven, I'm glad you commented: it reminded me that I've been meaning to add a note saying that "слово и дело" appears in Sorokin's Опричник, too.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious... What did you think of the content of Snob? Is it worth reading? And worth the money after the trial offer runs out? I'm hoping to receive my first issue soon.
Lisa, I haven't had the chance to read it yet, I just skimmed it, there are articles there that immediately appealed to me: interview with Boris Akunin being one. I will read it in the next few days and post my impressions. I am in the middle of reading "Тихий Дон" of all things :) and it's hard to ply myself off of it to read something else.
ReplyDeleteYes, please do let me know what you think of it, Steven. My first issue should arrive any day now. I'm very curious!
ReplyDeleteIt's also interesting what you say about Тихий Дон... I didn't particularly like it when I read it years ago in translation but I want to reread it in Russian.
I've read Snob. The general impressions are very favorite, the quality of writing is high. The magazine, in my view, is similar to Vanity Fair in its combination of "glamour" attitude and good writing, they have a battery of fashionable writers and journalists as contributors - Linor Goralik, Oleg Kashin and others. In the issue that I got there is a very soul-searching profile of Russian high-tech entrepreneur Pachikov - inventor of Evernote, among other things, which was of particular inerest to me because of my field of work. I am awaiting now for the other two issues. So far I am not convinced on spending money on the subscription, as it is much more expensive than The New Yorker (which I won't give up) or Vanity Fair.
ReplyDeleteAs far as Тихий Дон - it's an incredibly gripping reading for me, the flow of the book is dynamic, masculine, the language is of course peppered with Cossack dialectisms, but not overwhelmingly so, no more than Gogol's prose set in Ukraine (Viy or Taras Bulba). Not sure about the translation, but the original deserved its Nobel Prize. I got interested in it, because I am on the rereading Russian classics period and I've read about controversy of Sholokhov's authorship.
Thank you for the update, Steven! I'm still waiting for my first issue of Snob... I received my login, so the magazine can't be far behind.
ReplyDeleteIt's been so many years since I read Тихий Дон that I barely remember anything about the book or the translation. I'll have to try it again.
Thank you for the update, Steven! I'm still waiting for my first issue of Snob... I received my login, so the magazine can't be far behind.
ReplyDeleteIt's been so many years since I read Тихий Дон that I barely remember anything about the book or the translation. I'll have to try it again.