NatsBest Thrown to the Wolves… and Bears

RIA Novosti reports that the writer known as Фигль-Мигль (Figl’-Migl’/Figgle-Miggle) won the National Bestseller award earlier today for her novel Волки и медведи (Wolves and Bears). According to RIA Novosti, the jurors split their votes between Wolves and Bears and Maxim Kantor’s Красный свет (Red Light), leaving honorary jury chair Lev Makarov to split the tie. Update: A June 3 article from Gazeta.ru offers more detail on voting: Kantor and Figgle-Miggle each had two votes, spurring the tie-breaker. Aif.ru has more, here. 

Figgle-Miggle reportedly accepted the award wearing large sunglasses, thanking the jury but declining to identify herself with a more conventional name. (Articles from June 3 include photos of the author without her glasses...) Her pseudonym is the singular of фигли-мигли, which sounds like figgly-miggly and which the Oxford Russian-English dictionary translates as “tricks.” When Figgle-Miggle’s Ты так любишь эти фильмы (You Love Those Films So Much) was shortlisted for the NatsBest in 2011, one of this blog’s readers suggested the English word “flimflam” as a possible translation. You Love… lost a tiebreaker vote to Dmitrii Bykov’s Остромов, или Ученик чародея (Ostromov, or the Sorcerer’s Apprentice). Update: Wolves and Bears was submitted to NatsBest as a manuscript but should, apparently, soon be out in book form.

Up Next: A mishmash of short stories? Leonid Iuzefovich’s Prince of the Wind? Or maybe letter S favorite writers?