Read Russia Translation Prize Shortlists & Women in Translation Month

Shortlists for the 2016 Read Russia Translation Prize (the global prize, for all languages) were announced last week for four categories: nineteenth-century classics (three finalists), twentieth-century literature until 1990 (three finalists), contemporary literature (four finalists), and poetry (three finalists). Since Alexandra Guzeva’s article for Russia Beyond the Headlines covers things so well (and since it’s a beautiful beach day!), I’ll send you to her, right here, for all the details.

I do want to add, though, that I’m very excited that Laurus, my translation of Eugene Vodolazkin’s Лавр for Oneworld Publications, is on the very varied contemporary literature list. There are two other English-language translations that are finalists on, respectively, the nineteenth-century and poetry lists: Michael Pursglove’s translation of Ivan Turgenev’s Smoke and Virgin Soil for Alma Classics, and Philip Metres and Dimitri Psurtsev’s translation of I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky, published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center. It makes me very happy to see this recognition for translations of Tarkovsky’s poetry. It also makes me very happy that this is Laurus’s second shortlist: I was pleasantly surprised to find the translation on the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize shortlist earlier this year, along with seven other books, including Stephen Pearl’s translation of Ivan Goncharov’s The Same Old Story, published by Alma Classics. The award was shared by Philip Roughton, who translated Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s The Heart of Man for MacLehose Press, and Paul Vincent and John Irons, who translated 100 Dutch-Language Poems for Holland Park Press.

Since August is Women in Translation Month, I want to note a few bits of news about English-language translations of Russian fiction written by women:

• Melanie Moore’s translation of Tatyana Shcherbina’s Multiple Personalities, published by Glagoslav, was on Read Russia’s contemporary literature longlist. (That longlist, though, is so short it’s short!) Melanie also translated Margarita Khemlin’s The Investigator for Glagoslav; here’s my previous post about The Investigator and here’s a review of Melanie’s translation written by Lori Feathers for World Literature Today.
• The U.S. edition of Catlantis, written by Anna Starobinets, translated by Jane Bugaeva, illustrated by Andrzej Klimowski, and published here by New York Review Books, will be available in mid-September. I loved this fun kids’ book (previous post), which is already out in the U.K. from Pushkin Press. Catlantis is a wonderful gift for cat lovers of all ages; my previous post includes a rare Lizok’s Bookshelf cat photo.
• Yana Vagner’s To the Lake, published by Skyscraper Publications, will be out this fall, too, by an unnamed translator. I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, known in Russian as Вонгозеро.
• Looking back at the post I wrote for the very first Women in Translation month, in 2014, at the invitation of Meytal Radzinski, who writes Biblibio, I found a few items to update. I mentioned, above, Melanie’s translation of Margarita Khemlin’s The Investigator, which is already available and want to mention that Margarita’s Klotsvog (previous post) will be on the way in a couple years, too: I’m translating it for the Russian Library series published by Columbia University Press. My translation of Marina Stepnova’s The Women of Lazarus came out last fall from World Editions and is on the list for the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s First Book Award, along with the aforementioned Laurus plus my translation of Vadim Levental’s Masha Regina, also for Oneworld. And I’m finishing up Marina’s Italian Lessons (known in Russian as Безбожный переулок) for World Editions now (previous post). Some of the other writers I mentioned are already more available in translation now and/or have more books coming soon: Carol Apollonio’s translation of Alisa Ganieva’s The Mountain and the Wall (Праздничная гора) (mentioned here) is already out from Deep Vellum Publishing and Carol’s translation of Alisa’s Bride and Groom (previous post) is on the way. Also: Ludmila Ulitskaya’s The Kukotsky Enigma is out this month from Northwestern University Press, in Diane Nemec Ignashev's translation.
• Finally, on (yet) another personal note, I think I’ve already mentioned somewhere along the way that I’m working on Guzel Yakhina’s Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes for Oneworld Publications and loving it—one of my favorite aspects of translation is enjoying a book all over again when I translate. Of course there are many phases of “all over again” with all the editing, revising, proofing, correcting, and checking! Which is why I have to love a book (previous post on Zuleikha) to translate it…
• And now, truly finally, since I could go on and on and but have already written enough and, yes, the beach beckons: several of you have mentioned other books written by Russian women that you’re working on, that will be published in English translation within the next year or two, so I know there’s more to come. I’ll be watching for details on those so I can add them to future translation lists!

Up Next: Ludmila Ulitskaya’s family saga Jacob’s Ladder, Alexander Snegirev’s Faith/Vera, Anna Matveeva’s Vera Stenina’s Envy (Matveeva and Stenina are headed to the beach with me…), and Read Russia results, which will be announced on September 10 in Moscow.

Disclaimers: The usual.

Big Book Three: “The Usual?” and the Unusual in Maria Galina’s Mysterious Autochthons

I have a feeling this may be one of my least informative, least conclusive, and most rambling blog posts ever: I haven’t been kidding when I’ve used the word “mysterious” to describe Maria Galina’s Автохтоны (part one/part two)(Autochthons), a book that was shortlisted for this year’s National Bestseller Award and Big Book Award. Pronouncing the English-language title—which looks mysterious, at least to me—turns out to be easy enough, and I’ve now come to think of the word as meaning “the locals,” in the sense of extraordinarily peculiar long-term, indigenous locals. I have no earthly idea how I can possibly describe the novel after presenting something of a plot summary below. At least I’m not alone: Elena Vasileva, for example, writing on Prochtenie.ru, says the characters’ many unreliable accounts of events can cause schizophrenia (or suspicions of such) among readers.

And so, a bare plot summary. Galina sets Autochthons in an unnamed city on the brink of Europe (reader consensus seems to be that it sounds a lot like Lviv), where an unnamed out-of-town visitor claiming to be a freelancer for the theater journal Teatr settles in at a hostel and gets to work, for an unnamed reason that is revealed later, on research into some local—and very obscure—theater history from the 1920s by interviewing a slew of local experts (ha). Among the juicy and dry details, there’s talk of death on the stage, of philosophy, of one of anonymous man’s interlocutors resembling Yuri Lotman, and even of the use Spanish fly. Or maybe not.

Though I wasn’t quite self-diagnosing schizophrenia, all the details and stories that anonymous man uncovers did make me wonder what was happening to my head: Was my memory failing? Was I just confused? Was I reading too much at a time? Too little? Or was I so caught up in the quirky and oddly, charmingly eerie atmosphere and characters of Autochthons that I was zipping through the more serious and, really, more technical material? I suspect the latter but don’t regret, at all, having reading that way. Even little details like the breakfast spot where the waitress always asks “the usual?” («Как всегда?»)—because that establishes both a past and a future—feel at least as important as anonymous man’s formal research. There are clearly patterns here and the city’s legends (urban legends?) are said to include a little sex, fear, violence, and morality, plus a sad ending. Of course everything ends up blending anyway.

Meanwhile, Galina plays with a pile of cultural references, Russian and otherwise. Every person is said to hide the maniac within and when our unnamed hero confronts someone who’s following him in a wax museum, he steps out from behind a Dracula figure. Jack the Ripper’s there, too, and no, of course, this is not the only mention of vampires. Other variations on the human, hmm, condition and form appear, too, perhaps most notably in someone who purports to be a sylph… he asks unnamed man if he’s ever seen Angel Heart, which shows the hazards of pursuing oneself. I haven’t even mentioned world history, meaning the non-theater part, (then again, all the world’s a stage, right?), which also comes up plenty, perhaps most memorably when one character is accused of having been a Nazi collaborator. In any case, Galina twists and blends detective and fantasy genres with local myth plus a figure who comes to a new place as a seemingly clean slate but turns out to be nothing of the sort.

I mentioned in my “up next” sections of previous posts that Autochthons made me think a lot about my own reading habits. For one thing, this is yet another novel complex and puzzling enough that I’d need to reread to understand because I focused so much on one layer in my first reading. I’m not alone here, either: in her Meduza.io review, critic Galina Yuzefovich also mentions the need for a second, slower reading. I always find it difficult to get to know lots of characters at once, particularly when they’re offering up so much unreliable information; Autochthons is certainly appealing enough to read again.

My second “thing” is odder: I most enjoyed reading Autochthons in the dark, with a new book light. (Side note: it’s the Mighty Bright Recharge, which I love and which is worth the extra money for its dimmer, discrete light, very flexible neck, and easy (re)charging.) It didn’t even feel right to read Autochthons using regular lamp light. Somehow, sitting in the dark with a small pool of light from the Recharge illuminating only two pages of the book felt just right for a novel as slyly occult and metaphysical—not to mention slyly humorous—as Autochthons.

August is Women in Translation Month so I also want to note that Maria Galina’s novel Гиви и Шендерович was translated by Amanda Love Darragh, as Iramifications. Amanda won the 2009 Rossica Prize for the translation.

Up Next: Ludmila Ulitskaya’s family saga Jacob’s Ladder, which I’ve almost finished and will move up since Ulitskaya is another woman who’s been translated. Then Alexander Snegirev’s Vera, which has been waiting so patiently…

Disclaimers: The usual. I’ve translated excerpts from some of Maria Galina’s novels, including her Mole Crickets, which I enjoyed very much four years ago.