Moscow Trip Report 1: Award News, Head Cold Edition

My recent week in Moscow was so filled with literary events that I’m going to split my trip report into two posts. Beyond all the material, I brought home a head cold along with a gigundo pile of books, so a slightly embellished list is about all I can handle today.

First off, Read Russia Award winners for what I think of as the global prize, for translation into all languages:

Marta Sánchez-Nieves won the nineteenth-century category for her Spanish-language translation of Lev Tolstoy’s Cевастопольские Рассказы (Sevastopol Stories), published by Alba. Anne Coldefy-Faucard won the twentieth-century award for her decades of work, in collaboration with Geneviève Johannet, on the French translation of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Красное колесо (The Red Wheel) for Fayard. Oliver Ready won the contemporary prize for his English translation of Vladimir Sharov’s Репетиции (The Rehearsals) for Dedalus Books. Finally, Kiril Kadiiski took the poetry nomination for his translation into Bulgarian of a collection of poems by Fyodor Tyutchev for Nov Zlatorog. Hearty congratulations to all!

A few award notes… The only other English-language finalist for awards this year was Boris Dralyuk’s translation of Isaac Babel’s Odessa Stories for Pushkin Press. Anne Coldefy-Faucard was also shortlisted in the contemporary literature category for her translation of Vladimir Sorokin’s Telluria. Another translation of Vladimir Sharov’s work was shortlisted: Ljubinka Milincic was recognized for her Serbian translation of Возвращение в Египет (Return to Egypt). The success of translations of Sharov’s work felt horribly bittersweet given his recent death. I felt his passing constantly: in Oliver’s acceptance speech, in discussions with friends who said many couldn’t fathom it (I fit that category), and in the portrait hanging at a bookstore. Most of all, though, I missed seeing him, if only for a brief chat.

On a more cheerful note, it was fun going to the announcement of this year’s Yasnaya Polyana Award finalists. Perhaps most interesting is that there are only three finalists from a long list (it did look pretty weak) of forty-three:

• Aleksandr Bushkovsky for his Праздник лишних орлов (The Festival of Superfluous Eagles is how Yasnaya Polyana translated the title and, well, I’m just going to roll with that given that I haven’t read the book), a collection of stories about friends who fought together in Chechnya but can’t figure out what to do with themselves upon returning home. I’ve seen the Russian word for “eagles” used for distinguished soldiers and since these guys feel lost, “superfluous” feels like it refers back to the superfluous man. 
• Olga Slavnikova for her Прыжок в длину (Long Jump), a book I find rather heavy with metaphors. Even so, I can understand Vladislav Otroshenko’s enthusiasm for the book given its real plot (the novel does just keep plugging along) and view of the world. I’ve read more than half and plan to finish it for my Big Book reading. Long Jump won the Book of the Year award while I was in Moscow, too.
• Maria Stepanova for Памяти памяти (I’ll go for In Memory of Memory since I haven’t read it yet), which is on the way in English, too. Like the Slavnikova book, In Memory of Memory is also a Big Book finalist.

For a bit of commentary on the list, visit the Yasnaya Polyana site, here.

And then there’s this, just for fun: a list of hundred of the most important Russian books in the last thirty years. It’s fitting since the second book is Sharov’s The Rehearsals. There are some interesting entries!

Disclaimers: The usual. My head is addled.

Up Next: The rest of the trip report, English-language reading roundup, and Big Book finalists.