Big Book’s Rather Long Short List

I wanted to be sure to make a very quick post with the Big Book Award’s 2012 short(er) list before heading off tomorrow for BookExpo America and lots of ReadRussia events… three of the writers on the short list will be in New York: Vladimir Makanin, Zakhar Prilepin, and Andrei Rubanov. Two books—those by Nosov and Stepnova—are also NatsBest finalists, and Eltang’s book has already won an award from Russian Prize. I don’t know much about the other books on the list other than Prilepin’s, which I’m reading, so am most certainly lacking in nuance for translating the titles!

• Maria Galina: Медведки (Mole-Crickets)
• Daniil Granin: Мой лейтенант… (My Lieutenant…)
• Aleksandr Grigorenko: Мэбэт. История человека тайги (Mebet. The Story of a Person from the Taiga)
• Vladimir Gubailovsky: Учитель цинизма (The Teacher of Cynicism)
• Andrei Dmitriev: Крестьянин и тинейджер (The Peasant and the Teenager)
• Aleksandr Kabakov, Evgenii Popov: Аксёнов (Aksyonov)
• Vladimir Makanin: Две сестры и Кандинский (Two Sisters and Kandinsky)
• Sergei Nosov: Франсуаза, или Путь к леднику (Françoise, Or the Way to the Glacier)
• Valerii Popov: Плясать досмерти (To Dance to Death)
• Zakhar Prilepin: Чёрная обезьяна (The Black Monkey)
• Andrei Rubanov: Стыдные подвиги (Shameful Feats/Exploits)
• Marina Stepnova: Женщины Лазаря (The Women of Lazarus/Lazarus’s Women)
• Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov): «Несвятые святые» и другие рассказы (“Unsaintly Saints” and Other Stories)
• Lena Eltang: Другие барабаны (Other Drums)

Disclaimer: I am working with Read Russia on projects.