Andrei
Volos won the Russian Booker Prize today for Возвращение в Панджруд (excerpts)
(Return
to Panjrud), a novel featuring Persian poet Rudaki, who lived during
858-941, as its main character. Return to
Panjrud also won a Bunin Prize this fall and was shortlisted for the Big Book.
I have no excuse whatsoever for having never read Volos,
particularly since I’ve heard so many good things about him over the years and
even more particularly since his Хуррамабад (Hurramabad)
has been staring down at me for months from the top shelf of The Bookshelf… Hurramabad, by the way, is available from
Glas, in Arch Tait’s translation. As for the rest of the Booker shortlist,
the only books I’ve read so far are Evgeny Vodolazkin’s Laurus
and Margarita Khemlin’s The
Investigator, though I’m now reading Denis Gutsko’s Beta Male, which gets off to a good
start.
Booker edit, December 5: The news items I saw yesterday didn't mention the Booker grant award but today I learned that Margarita Khemlin won the first grant, for publication of one of her novels in England!
Booker edit, December 5: The news items I saw yesterday didn't mention the Booker grant award but today I learned that Margarita Khemlin won the first grant, for publication of one of her novels in England!
In other news, Andrei
Bely Award winners were named last week. Denis Osokin won the prose prize
for his novel Небесные жены луговых мари
(Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari),
a book that was adapted for screen, directed by Aleksey Fedorchenko, in 2012.
This year’s Bely Award poetry winner was Anna Glazova, for the collection Для землеройки (For the Shrew), and the service to Russian literature prize went to
poet Ivan
Akhmetyev for his work publishing unofficial poetry. Poetry by Glazova is
included in Relocations: Three Contemporary
Russian Women Poets, a bilingual book just out from Zephyr Press. Relocations also contains poems by Polina
Barskova and Maria Stepanova; translators are Catherine Ciepiela, Anna Khasin,
and Sibelan Forrester. Information about additional Bely Award categories is
available on the Bely Award site
and Lenta.ru.
Fun Bonus! Poet and translator
Alex Cigale posted on Facebook about the Bely Awards, including links to some
of his own translations of Akhmetyev’s minimalist poetry… as one who loves sleeping
in on weekends, I particularly like the first poem on this page from
Alba, but for maximum minimalist variety, check out these other pages, too:
Exchanges, The
Brooklyn Rail, and Fiera
Lingue.
Disclaimers: The usual.
Up Next: We’ll
see… I have a couple books waiting for posts…
Do you happen to know when the novel Небесные жены луговых мари was published? I'm finding lots of mentions of the prize but no mentions of the actual book.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the question, Languagehat. I don't know: I first learned about this one when I read a review of the film some time ago. I've only done a casual search for this (book) title but wonder if perhaps the novel was renamed because of the film. I seem to remember that some of Osokin's work has been published on Журнальный зал; it's possible there's a mention there.
DeleteOsokin's Wikipedia page has a сборник «Небесные жены луговых мари» listed for 2013, but Идель from 2008 refers to "отрывки из романа «Небесные жены луговых мари»," so it's all very confusing.
ReplyDeleteAargh, titles causing trouble yet again! I'm starting to get more curious about this myself... maybe I'll do a bit of searching over the weekend. Perhaps articles about the film or reviews would have some helpful information!
DeleteIf you find out anything, I'm all ears (well, eyes)!
ReplyDeleteIn the better-late-than-never category: I also found lots of pages mentioning the 2013 сборник plus this article, which explains a bit about the delay to publish said сборник. I hope that's helpful!
ReplyDeleteAh, so it wasn't published until after the movie was made! Strange but true. Thanks, and I hope you're having a happy Christmas!
DeleteYes, this is a bit different as a reason, isn't it? We had a nice, relaxing Christmas that began with a long sleep-in... sometimes that's the best gift of all. I hope you enjoyed your Christmas, too!
Delete