Sunday, June 5, 2016

2016 National Bestseller Award Goes to Yuzefovich

Leonid Yuzefovich won the 2016 National Bestseller Award for Зимняя дорога (The Winter Road), a book that describes itself as a “documentary novel.” In my description of the book for my last post, which lists finalists for the 2016 Big Book Award, I wrote, “the cover sums up the details with ‘General A.N. Pepeliaev and anarchist I.Ia. Strod in Yakutia. 1922-1923.’ I’ve been reading small chunks of The Winter Road each night and thoroughly enjoying Yuzefovich’s absorbing, masterful characterizations of people and a time. He works wonders with archival material.”

Yuzefovich won the very first NatsBest in 2001, too, for his Князь ветра (Prince of the Wind), a fact he noted in his very brief comments after winning today for The Winter Road. Yuzefovich graciously noted that he hopes Mikhail Odnobibl, whose Очередь ([The?] Line) came in second by winning votes from two of the jury’s six members, will receive fame thanks to NatsBest. NatsBest’s slogan is “wake up famous.” Maria Galina’s Автохтоны Autochthons) received one vote. I’m very happy for Yuzefovich, very curious about Odnobibl’s book, and very glad for Galina that her book won a vote, too.

Although commentary on the NatsBest voting and results isn’t yet online, there’s video of the award ceremony available on YouTube here. My post listing the NatsBest finalists is here.

Disclaimers: The usual plus: I’ve translated excerpts of books by Galina as well as NatsBest secretary Vadim Levental’s entire novel Masha Regina, released by Oneworld Publications last month—just for fun, here’s a Words Without Borders “Watchlist” piece by M. Bartley Seigel recommending it—and was very happy to finally meet Yuzefovich in summery New York last December during Russian Literature Week.

Up Next: Eugene Vodolazkin’s The Aviator, which I loved when I read it and am loving all over again as I translate it; Alexander Snegirev’s Vera, which I do think I’ll call Faith; Galina’s mysterious Autochthons; and Aleksei Ivanov’s Nasty Weather/Nenast’e, which is pretty absorbing.

12 comments:

  1. I really did not enjoy Автохтоны much -- it had its moments, but was disappointing overall. I'm looking forward to starting The Aviator this week and just picked up the Yuzefovich on LitRes. Your awards posts always overload my virtual bookshelves! :-)

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    1. Thanks for your comment, Chris! The Galina book was uneven for me, too, though there were some elements I liked very, very much, so I'm still trying to figure out the unevenness so I can write my post. I hope you enjoy the Vodolazkin and Yuzefovich books more. Awards posts wreak havoc on my book budget, too!

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  2. Has Очередь actually been published? The Russian practice of giving awards to books still in MS confuses me.

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    1. Good question, Languagehat, the book is available digitally. It's listed on Ozon.

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    2. I know, but all sorts of things are "available digitally." Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but to me a published book is a book I can hold in my hand, with a publisher's name on it.

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    3. I keep thinking back to your comment, Languagehat, because I realized that I have strong feelings that a published book is a book that's gone through a comprehensive publishing process, something I think should include (this is also pretty old-fashioned these days) editing and proofreading before a publisher's name is put on the finished book. I, too, much prefer a printed book, though I do occasionally read electronic versions: I put it that way because I prefer them as PDFs that look like the printed book (meaning they have the book's layout and pagination) and contain edited, preferably final, texts. (I prefer finished copies to ARCs when reading printed books, too.)

      The Odnobibl book was apparently self-published; the сервис he used can/will produce printed books. (There's a photo of one copy of Очередь here.) The сервис he used, Ridero, has a blog post here about Odonobibl's book. I think what I find most interesting about the Odnobibl phenomenon is that it was Lev Danilkin who nominated the book for the NatsBest in the first place. (That's also mentioned in this article, where the PS sums up the reason the NatsBest went the way it did.)

      All of which is to say that my full answer to your question would probably be something like "self-published and available digitally" if, that is, Новая газета is still correct that the book isn't available in printed form.

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  3. Very interesting; thanks for your explanation of the background and your prejudices (which I share)! I presume if the book gets sufficient attention and credibility, it will get picked up by a "real" publisher, at which point I will pay attention to it (however unfair that is).

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  4. Languagehat, yes, you're right about books being picked up by professional publishers once they've gotten attention elsewhere. There are some great examples of this in Russian contemporary fiction, including Yana Vagner's Vongozero, which began on ЖЖ/Live Journal. I read the book as a printed, published book and thought it was very good; it's gone on to be translated into quite a few languages. English is coming this fall.

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    1. Correction! I read Vongozero as a PDF (with layout, edited) but read the sequel novel as a printed, published book. I think I tend to conflate the two books!

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  5. That's very exciting news about the Vongozero English translation. I'm a lapsed Russianist and an avid lurker on your blog, Lisa, and your recommendations helped me greatly in coming back from a visit to Moscow in Febraury loaded down with contemporary Russian novels (I doubt I'll ever get through свечка but still...)

    I couldn't manage to track down a hard copy of Vongozero, unfortunately, so I bought a digital version and it ended up being the first Russian novel I have read in Russian right through to the end since my university days (back in the mists of time). I thought it was a great book, and I will definitely buy a copy of the English version, to support both author and translator, and to pick up the nuances I missed with my runs Russian.

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    1. Now you've made me want to read it!

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    2. Thank you, Philip Price, for your comment! I'm glad to hear from you and glad to know the blog helped you buy lots of books in Moscow! I loved Vongozero, too (previous post), and it's a perfect book to make your first after not reading in Russian for a long time. Momentum can carry a reader a long way.

      I'd recommend Vongozero to anyone who enjoys a well-written novel about pandemic, apocalypse, or the end of the world. (FWIW, I'd put books like Ben Winters's The Last Policeman trilogy, which I also loved, and Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven (with a bit of a caveat about the beginning)into that category.) Languagehat, if that includes you, go for it!

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