Belated Yet Again! Yasnaya Polyana Winners & Blog Birthday

Late again! Yasnaya Polyana Award winners were announced way back on October 12 so I’m painfully late this time around. Getting right down to things: Andrei Rubanov won the contemporary Russian prose award for his Патриот (The Patriot) and Oleg Ermakov was the reader’s choice winner for Песнь Тунгуса (The Tungus’s Song). In the foreign literature category, Mario Vargas Llosa, along with translator Kirill Korkonosenko, won for his El héroe discreto (The Discreet Hero).

I’d been rooting for Vladimir Medvedev’s Zahhak in the contemporary Russian prose category so was surprised that it was The Patriot—rather than either Zahhak or The Tungus’s Song, which I haven’t read but which I’ve read good things about—that won over the jury. As I’ve mentioned before, The Patriot and Znaev, its main character, didn’t capture me at all. That said, I realize the book, which has been shortlisted for two other major prizes, hits numerous nerves with its portrayal of contemporary Russia, a place Rubanov is very good at describing with well-chosen details.

I’ve been so caught up in deadlines, getting back into routine things like feeding cats and doing laundry after travel, and overcoming the combination of jetlag and a minor but lingering cold that I completely forgot about my blog birthday! It’s been ten years since I started writing the blog and each year I could list more and more ways this blog has changed my life. I didn’t start writing it because I wanted to become a literary translator or because I wanted to learn about the book industry but, somewhat inevitably, I suppose, the blog ended up leading me to both. The fact that I love translating Russian novels and I love learning about the book industry makes the blog all the dearer to me. As does the fact that I’ve met so many blog readers during these last ten years: many of you are now colleagues and friends, another reason the blog holds meaning for me.

This year I’ll dispense with my usual statistics—they’re ever duller anyway since so many surfers, including me, surf so anonymously these days—and just say a very, very heartfelt thanks to everyone who visits the blog, no matter how infrequently. Most of all, as I turn ten, I’m happy that what I write here seems to be useful for so many of you in such varied ways. Thank you again for your visits and for your interest in contemporary Russian fiction!

Up Next: The Booker Prize shortlist is coming right up. Trip report on the American Literary Translators Association conference and the Frankfurt Book Fair—what a ten-day whirlwind journey that was! Plus two books: Medvedev’s Zahhak and Anna Kozlova’s F20.

Disclaimers and disclosures: The usual. I’ve translated excerpts from Zahhak and have translated books by two Yasnaya Polyana judges, though have not discussed this year’s results with either of them.

Image credit: nazreth, via stock.xchng, for the cupcake.