The Big Book 2013 Long List

This year’s Big Book Award long list, which came out last week, looks like a good one: beyond the four books I’ve already read and enjoyed very much, there are a couple books I wish I’d bought in Moscow, plus a nice clump of titles I’m interested in. There are 36 books on the list, meaning it’s a bit way too long to include everybody here. But here are some notes:

Four books I’ve already read and loved, with English-language titles linking to previous posts:

• Evgenii Vodolazkin: Лавр (Laurus). I’m appreciating the stark beauty of this book even more as I translate some excerpts. Already on the 2013 NatsBest short list.
• Dmitrii Danilov: Описание города (Description of a City). I was excited to give a copy of this book to a friend recently—I’ll be happy if she likes it half as much as I did. (No pressure, C!)
• Margarita Khemlin: Дознаватель (The Investigator). I still can’t believe how much action, emotion, and tension Khemlin packs into this book.
• Ekaterina Sherga: Подземный корабль (The Underground Ship). A very deserving debut novel. 

Three more books—in addition to 2013 NatsBest shortlister Laurus—have already won or been shortlisted for other major prizes:

• Maxim Kantor: Красный свет (Red Light, though “свет” can also mean “world,” so I suspect dual meaning here). A novel with lots of twentieth-century history. NatsBest short list.
• Aleksei Motorov: Юные годы медбрата Паровозова (Male Nurse Parovozov’s Young Years). Autobiographical fiction that won the readers’ prize in the 2013 NOSE award.
• Aleksandr Terekhov: Немцы (Germans). Won the 2012 NatsBest. On the shelf for ages!

The two books I regret not buying when I was in Moscow… though only mildly because both are available online, in slightly condensed journal versions:

• Aleksandr Arkhangel’skii: Музей революции (Museum of the Revolution).
• Maia Kucherskaia: Тетя Мотя (Aunt Motya).

Books by writers I’ve read and enjoyed in the past:

• Iurii Buida: Вор, шпион и убийца (Thief, Spy, and Murderer).
• Alisa Ganieva: Праздничная гора (Holiday Mountain).
• Aleksandr Ilichevskii: Город заката (City of Sunset).

In a column posted to Izvestiia after the short list came out, critic Liza Novikova noted four books of “documentary prose”:

• Sergei Beliakov: Гумилев сын Гумилева (excerpts) (Gumilev, Son of Gumilev).
• Valerii Esipov: Шаламов (Shalamov).
• Iakov Gordin: Алексей Ермолов (Aleksei Ermolov).
• Irina Rodnina: Cлеза чемпионки (The Champion’s Tear).

That’s only sixteen books… I’ve heard or read about several more, particularly Denis Gutsko’s Бета-самец (Beta-Male), Denis Dragunskii’s Архитектор и монах (maybe The Architect and the Monk), and Igor’ Sakhnovskii’s Oстрое чувство субботы (A Keen Feeling of Saturday: Eight First-Person Stories), but that still leaves nearly half the list.

A few other books are available online:

• Elena Makarova: Фридл (Friedl, which a reader tells me is a diminutive for names such as Friedrich and Friederike... the character in the book is a woman but it doesn’t appear that her full name is in the text.). The online “title page” says this is a documentary novel, and the first page clearly shows a World War 2 setting.
• Andrei Volos: Возвращение в Панчруд (excerpts) (Return to Panjrud). Volos, who is originally from Dushanbe, often writes about Central Asia. His agent’s site says this novel is about a poet in the Middle Ages.
• Nikolai Klimontovich: Степанов и Князь (Stepanov and the Prince).
• Anton Ponizovskii: Обращение в слух (For the Ears? I get the feeling of something intended to be heard…). The quick description from the publisher: a novel about Russia and the Russian soul. The book’s Web site doesn’t explain much more, though the journal intro says the novel includes actual interviews.

Disclaimers: The usual, for all sorts of commercial and collegial reasons.

Up Next: Sergei Nosov’s Грачи улетели (The Rooks Have Flown/Gone/Departed/Totally Left Town). One of you wrote and asked why I didn’t use “flown” in the translated title for this book… The Rooks Have Flown certainly sounds better than my versions! I think I was stuck because the title of the Savrasov painting referenced here is often translated as The Rooks Have Returned or The Rooks Have Come Back. I’m still figuring out how I think the title fits the book, which has something of a shock ending.