Awards, Awards, Awards! Big Book, Compass & AATSEEL

The Big Book Awards were announced this evening in Moscow, and I’m particularly excited that Evgeny Vodolazkin’s Лавр (Laurus) won the first jury prize – regular visitors to the Bookshelf know how much I loved this book. Laurus already won the Yasnaya Polyana last month and it’s not often a book wins two major awards in one season. Second jury prize went to Sergei Beliakov’s Гумилев сын Гумилева (Gumilev, Son of Gumilev), which I’ve read parts of but can’t get too excited about, and third went to Iurii Buida for Вор, шпион и убийца (Thief, Spy, and Murderer), which I thought was best in its first half. Readers’ choices were Maya Kucherskaya’s Тетя Мотя (literally Auntie Motya but the Elkost literary agency is calling it Auntie Mina), which I also couldn’t get too excited about, followed by Gumilev and Laurus.

The Compass Award announced three winners for its 2013 competition, all awarded for translations of poems by Maria Petrovykh. Josephine von Zitzewitz won first prize, Alexandra Berlina took second prize, and Peter Oram received third, with Nora Krouk earning an honorable mention.

Finally, I’m especially late to mention the winner of AATSEEL’s “best translation into English” award, which was announced several weeks ago: The Letter Killers Club, by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, translated by Joanne Turnbull with Nikolai Formozov. AATSEEL is the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages… and I’m so dorky I always enjoy reading through all their lists of award nominees.

Disclaimers: The usual, including work on excerpts of Vodolazkin’s book.

Up Next: We’ll see…