Thursday, April 17, 2014

2014 NatsBest Shortlists

Yes, that’s right, this year there are two National Bestseller shortlists: the usual NatsBest shortlist and a NatsBest-Beginning shortlist of books written by young writers. Where “young” means under 35. The “Beginning” piece of NatsBest is sponsored by the TV channel 2x2; 2x2 will choose the winner. There’s a bit of list-based overlap:

The “usual” NatsBest shortlist
  • Sergei Shargunov: 1993. This novel calls itself “a family portrait set against the backdrop of a burning house”… 1993 was the year of the “October events,” when tanks shelled the Russian White House. (13 points)
  • Pavel Krusanov: Царь головы ([edit The Tsar in the Head, thanks Languagehat!] Tsar of the Head? I feel like I’m missing something horribly, embarrassingly obvious here, me and my titles!..). Short stories. (10 points)
  • Ksenia Buksha: Завод “Свобода” (The “Freedom” Factory). About a factory called Freedom that was founded in 1920 then fails in a later era; based on real events. (9 points)
  • Vladimir Sharov: Возвращение в Египет (Return to Egypt). In which one Kolya Gogol (a distant relative of familiar old Nikolai Gogol) finishes writing Dead Souls. An epistolary novel. (8 points)
  • Marat Basyrov: Печатная машина (The Typewriter). A novel with story-like chapters; this one sounds difficult to describe, with (to summarize vague summaries) existential suffering. (6 points)
  • Vladimir Sorokin: Теллурия (Tellurium). On my NatsBest long list post, I wrote: A polyphonic novel in 50 highly varying chapters. I read about 150 pages before setting Tellurium aside: Sorokin’s use of a futuristic medieval setting, tiny and huge people, kinky stuff, sociopolitical observations, and a novel (ha!) psychotropic agent all felt way too familiar after Day of the Oprichnik, The Blizzard, and The Sugar Kremlin. (6 points)

The NatsBest-Beginning shortlist
  • Valerii Airapetian: Свободное падение (Freefall) Short stories. (6 points)
  • Ksenia Buksha: Завод “Свобода” (The “Freedom” Factory) About a factory called Freedom that was founded in 1920 then fails in a later era; based on real events. (4 points)
  • Kirill Ryabov: Сжигатель трупов (The Corpse Incinerator/Burner) A debut novel with stories that NatsBest secretary Vadim Levental says fit the book’s title, which is also Ryabov’s pseudonym. Hmm. (2 points)
  • Anna Starobinets: Икарова железа (The Icarus Gland) This book, “a collection of speculative stories,” will be coming out in English translation in 2014, from a new publisher, Skyhook Press. (2 points)
  • Sergei Shargunov: 1993. This novel calls itself “a family portrait against the backdrop of a burning house”… 1993 was the year of the “October events,” when tanks shelled the Russian White House. (2 points)

Disclaimers. The usual.

Up Next. Oh my! There’s a lot… The Big Book long list is coming very soon. Then we have: Soviets, another wonderfully produced book from Fuel; this one has drawings by Danzig Baldaev and photos by Sergei Vasiliev. And Yuri Mamleyev’s The Sublimes. And, later still, Mikhail Bulgakov’s White Guard.

8 comments:

  1. "Царь головы" might be a play on "Князь тишины" — четвертый студийный альбом рок-группы «Наутилус Помпилиус». But that's just my guess.

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    1. Thank you, Irina, for this guess. It's certainly better than anything I can come up with... and it sounds nice, too! (I hadn't thought about Наутилус in a long, long time, so thank you for that, too.)

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    2. i´d say it´s rather a play on царь горы AKA king of the hill (of the mountain/castle) children game mixed with без царя в голове

      but it´s hard to guess without reading the book first

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    3. Sasha, thank you for that! Yes, it's often impossible to translate titles without reading the book. And sometimes even then it's not very easy... I've noticed that you are often creative with titles, which I think is a very good thing! ))

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  2. At this page, the story of the same name is described thus:

    Одному персонажу призовут царя в голову - и увидит он то, что другими невидимо. Дело кончится так: "Благодаря моему вольнолюбивому другу, мне известно, как выглядит кошачий рай - он полон ромашек, блудливых кошек, дразнящих трясогузок, глупых бабочек и жаркой пыли на своих дорогах. Там есть услужливый хозяин, хлопочущий о блюдце с молоком и свежей, шлепающей хвостом уклейке... Я видел рай Аякса. Он в моем вкусе".

    So "The tsar in the head" might be the best rendering. (Sounds like an interesting collection of Petersburg stories!)

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    1. Thanks for this, Languagehat! I looked at a few pages about the book but (of course!) not this one.

      The pages I looked at also made the book sound interesting. I have a couple of Krusanov's novels that I've been meaning to read for years... All I've read of his so far is "The Hairy Sutra," which I read in Amy Pieterse's translation that was in the St. Petersburg Noir collection (previous post). The story is now available in Russian, too, both in this new collection and online, here.)

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  3. By the way, Печатная машина is a confusing title as well; Google Images brings up photos of typewriters, and the cover of the book shows one, so I guess "The Typewriter" is appropriate, but the Wikipedia article shows and describes something entirely different.

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    1. I know, that title is even worse in its own way! (And the book itself sounds thoroughly indescribable...) I went with "typewriter" largely because of the cover (though maybe it's intended to be confusing?) but also realizing that a typewriter is generally машинка.

      Sometimes I want to just transliterate these titles instead of attempting to translate them!

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