August Is Women in Translation Month: Translations of Russian Women

Looking back at my Women in Translation Month post from 2014 was an interesting exercise. For one thing, the blogger known as Biblibio, who started Women in Translation Month back in 2014, now uses her real name, Meytal Radzinski. And she continues to read and write about tons of books (do visit her blog!) and has generated tremendous awareness of and reactions to gender-based disparities in translated literature. According to the Women in Translation site (there’s a site now!), only about 30% of new translations into English are of books written by women. This year’s list of Russian-to-English translations (here) is in that range.

That’s a downer of a datum, but I’m happy there are books—meaning books translated into English—already available or on the way from some of the authors I mentioned in my old post. I’m working on Margarita Khemlin’s Klotsvog (previous post) for the Russian Library/Columbia University Press and my translation of Marina Stepnova’s Безбожный переулок (Italian Lessons) (previous post) is in process, too, for World Editions. Meanwhile, Carol Apollonio’s translation of Alisa Ganieva’s Bride and Groom (previous post) is coming this year, from Deep Vellum, and Melanie Moore’s translation of Khemlin’s The Investigator (previous post) is already available from Glagoslav. I’m also at various stages with two other books, both for Oneworld, written by women that I didn’t mention in that post because I hadn’t yet read them: Guzel Yakhina’s Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes (previous post) will soon be edited and I’ll be starting on Narine Abgaryan’s Three Apples Fell from the Sky (previous post) later this year.

Since I’m one to accentuate the positive—while simultaneously trying to find ways to counter the negative—I want to highlight three of the books on this year’s translation list that are written by women and that (bias warning!) particularly interest me:

• Ksenia Buksha’s The Freedom Factory, translated by Anne Fisher (Phoneme Media). I’m embarrassingly long overdue to read this National Bestseller Award winner, which I’ve heard so many good things about over the years.
• Polina Dashkova’s Madness Treads Lightly, translated by Marian Schwartz (Amazon Crossing). I read lots of Dashkova’s detective novels, including this one, in the early 2000s, when I got myself back into Russian reading: her writing and characters are clear, and she always seems to address social and political issues, too. Quality genre fiction like Dashkova’s deserves to be translated. Publishers Weekly gave Madness, in Marian’s translation, a starred review.
• Sofia Khvoshchinskaya’s City Folk and Country Folk, translated by Nora Seligman Favorov (Russian Library/Columbia University Press). It’s great to see a translation of a nineteenth-century novel written by a woman… and this one sounds like particular fun. I’m looking forward to it! This translation also received a star from Publishers Weekly.

This year’s disappointingly all-male Big Book shortlist (the list) made me vow to seek out female authors’ books that made 2017’s Big Book longlist or National Bestseller shortlist. (I’m sure there are plenty of books that will keep me reading far longer than, say, Pelevin’s Big Book finalist Methuselah’s Lamp, or The Last Battle of the Chekists and Masons.) I mentioned a few candidates in my Big Book shortlist post: Anna Starobinets’s Посмотри на него (Look at Him, maybe?), Anna Kozlova’s NatsBest-winning F20, and Elena Dolgopyat’s short stories. Other candidates, whose authors are completely new to me, include Olga Breininger’s There Was No Adderall in the Soviet Union and Viktoria Lebedeva’s Без труб и барабанов (Without Trumpets and Drums). I’ll be interested to see what hits other award lists later this year—more lists, from the Yasnaya Polyana, Booker, and NOS awards are on the way—and what other books might find their way into English in the coming years.

More literature by women will make its way into translation one poem at a time, one story at a time, one book at a time… so I’m just going to keep on reading. And translating. And recommending good books to publishers. Translator recommendations, after all, are how some of the translations mentioned in this post got signed in the first place. And I know there are more on the way.

Disclaimers: The usual.

Up Next: Vladimir Medvedev’s Заххок (Zahhok), which has taken over my reading: this polyphonic novel set in Tadzhikistan is ridiculously suspenseful and absorbing. And more Big Book reading: Mikhail Gigolashvili’s Mysterious Year and Shamil Idiatullin’s Brezhnev City.

Favorite Russian Writers from A to Я: Х Marks the Spot

It’s been years, literally years, since I’ve written an alphabet post: I left off with the titanic letter T in July 2014. And then I struggled with the letter У/U, just as I had struggled with O earlier, because I simply didn’t have enough favorite authors to compile a post. I decided to skip a few letters after one of you asked me last week when there would be another alphabet post: since I’d already skipped O (and something else, too, I think…), I decided not to bother with У/U or Ф/F, either, at least for the time being. Hence we’ve arrived at Х, the letter often represented in English as Kh.

And what a productive letter Х/Kh is! My first Kh author to mention is Mikhail Kheraskov, an eighteenth-century writer I studied in grad school. It wasn’t Kheraskov’s Rossiad—a classic epic poem that was/is evidently in school curricula—that drew me, though, but his plays, which Wikipedia rightfully says have been “neglected by posterity.” Kheraskov’s Гонимыя (in the old orthography; I called it The Persecuted in English) was not only the reason I learned how to use a microfiche machine: it was also a good lesson about the literary transition from sentimentalism to classicism. And literary influences. Kheraskov contributed to my love of sentimentalism—The Persecuted’s title pages call it a “teary drama”—and it was his work that got me interested in analyzing literary genres. That’s more than enough to make him a favorite.

One of my favorite contemporary authors, Margarita Khemlin, who died a very young death in autumn 2015, is the first writer whose work I loved so much I had to translate it. I’ve enjoyed her long and short stories, and her novels, too, and am very happy I’ll be starting work on her Klotsvog (previous post), for the Russian Library at Columbia University Press, in June. I’ve always admired Margarita’s ability to write about the damage of World War 2 and Jewish heritage with humor, grit, and grace. And I can’t wait to create an English-language voice for Maya, the narrator (and title character) of Klotsvog, my favorite of Margarita’s novels. (Favorite that I’ve read at this writing, anyway: a new one was recently published posthumously.) I missed her terribly when I was in Moscow last fall and think about her constantly: her trust in me years ago means a lot to me as a person and as a translator. And I always loved her sense of humor as a person. (Her husband and sister both took to calling me Becky Thatcher, too.) Melanie Moore translated The Investigator (Дознаватель), which earned excellent reviews and was published by Glagoslav.

Khlebnikov's grave, Moscow, November 2012, my fuzzy photo

And then there are three that I always enjoy reading but don’t have such personal feelings for… There’s the wonderful Daniil Kharms, whom I took a liking to in the early 2000s after reading Старуха (The Old Woman): Kharms is always good for some absurdity: I bought a compact 1991 edition with prose, poetry, drama, letters, and art when I lived in Moscow and enjoy picking it up every now and then for a little weirdness. Kharms has grown on me over the years, like a cucumber. There’s lots of Kharms available in translation, including Matvei Yankelevich’s Today I Wrote Nothing, from Overlook Press (2009), and Alex Cigale’s Russian Absurd, from Northwestern University Press (2017). That “three” includes two poets: Vladimir Khodasevich and Velimir Khlebnikov, neither of whom I have read methodically or even broadly but both of whom I love reading when references or mentions pop up. I’ve always had a thing for futurism so enjoy Khlebnikov for that. And, of course, for his “Incantation by Laughter,” which is mentioned in this fun post (and my comments) about Khlebnikov on Wuthering Expectations. I’ve read less of Khodasevich but he keeps turning up, both at translator conferences (represented by his translators, of course!) and in quotations in fiction. Since I’m utterly inept at writing about poetry, I’ll leave this one to Wuthering Expectations, too, since there’s this post about Selected Poems, which contains Peter Daniels’s beautiful translations. Here’s a sample of Peter’s work, from theguardian.com’s “Poem of the Week” feature. Peter’s collection, by the way, was published by Angel Classics in the UK and Overlook in the US.

Х is an unusual letter for me because nearly all the Kh authors on my shelf are favorites. The only writer left unread is Boris Khazanov: I have a collection that a friend borrowed and enjoyed very much.

Up Next: An Afanasy Mamedov novella set in Baku. Kir Bulychev’s Поселок (known in English as Those Who Survive): I read very little science fiction (I’ve failed on nearly every attempt at reading the Strugatsky Brothers) but enjoy it when I find something that suits my taste. This Bulychev book feels like a perfect fit for a very frenetic time. I’ll also be doing some preparatory reading before participating in Russian Literature Week events in early May. And I’m still plugging away with Crime and Punishment, though may switch to Oliver Ready’s translation of the novel, which I enjoy reading much more than Dostoevsky’s original, which I’ve been rereading as a remedial measure and as a prelude to reading Robert Belknap’s Plots, which discusses C&P as well as King Lear…

Disclaimers: The usual, including knowing the translators mentioned in this post.

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.

A Final Goodbye to Margarita Khemlin

Learning yesterday morning that Margarita Khemlin had died during the night, apparently after her heart stopped, made for a horribly sad wakeup and some unsteady days. She was only 55; I will miss her and her writing. Rita was more than just a favorite writer: she was also the first author I chose, myself, to translate, and it was a treat to see her at Russian literature events in various places over the last several years. I feel tremendous respect, affection, and gratitude to her, as a writer and as a person.

Rita was funny (she loved calling me “Becky” because I reminded her of Becky Thatcher) and she was generous (she let me translate her when I had no translation credits whatsoever) but of course it was her writing that endeared her to me first, long before we corresponded or met. The initial appeal of her writing was in its humor and generosity, too, but her books grew on me because of Rita’s ability to describe the long-term effects of World War 2, things Rita grew up with in her native Ukraine. I love her use of skaz technique, I love her complex characters, I love the amber necklace she made for me (it’s a sort of good luck charm for my readings), and I love remembering the time I spent with her.

I’m going to list, below, Rita’s works that have been translated into English and links to previous posts about her books. Before I do that, though, here’s a lovely piece for Izvestia written by Evgenia Korobkova that speaks of Rita’s achievements and character. Among other things, Korobkova mentions that Rita was to have been jury chair for the Russian Booker next year.

Works translated into English:

• The Investigator (Дознаватель), translated by Melanie Moore, was published on October 15, 2015.
• “Shady Business” (“Темное дело”), translated by me, was published in the journal Subtropics, Issue 17, winter/spring 2014. (A brief description here.)
• “Basya Solomonovna’s Third World War” (“Третья мировая Баси Соломоновны”), translated by me, was first published in Two Lines XVIII/Counterfeits and reprinted in the Read Russia! anthology, available free, in PDF form, here. (The Russian originals of both the stories I translated are here.)

Past posts:

• Novellas – the first of Margarita’s books that I read, her debut book, which I learned about when it was a finalist for the Big Book Award in 2008.
• Klotsvog – my favorite, a wonderful novel.
• Krainii
• The Investigator – The Investigator won the Inspector NOSE Award in 2014 as well as the Booker translation prize that covered Melanie’s translation.
• Women in Translation Month – a cross-post for Bibliobio, in which I list Rita as one of my favorite Russian female authors.
• London Book Fair Notes – a quick mention of Rita’s talk about family objects.

Women in Translation Month: Some Contemporary Russian Reading Ideas

When the blogger known as Biblibio invited me to write a guest post for Women in Translation Month—it’s right now, this August—I was quick to agree to write something for both our blogs. For one thing, I’ve been enjoying Biblibio’s posts for years. For another, I knew it would be easy to put together a list of wonderful female Russian writers; I’ve even translated a book and two stories by a couple of them. Best of all, it’s always fun to make lists like this by remembering good books and the people who write them. Here are some of my favorites.

Margarita Khemlin is one of my very favorite writers, both because I love her books and stories, and because she’s one of the first writers I chose to translate. I started reading Khemlin with her first book, the story collection The Living Line, and moved on to her novels—Klotsvog, Krainii (The Endman), and The Investigator—reading each as soon as I could after it was published. Margarita’s stories and novels are generally about life in eastern Ukraine, and I particularly love the language she uses to tell, with quiet but dark humor and occasional dialogue in surzhik, a combination of Ukrainian and Russian, about Jewish heritage and the never-ending effects of World War 2. I’ve published translations of two of Margarita’s stories from The Living Line: “Basya Solomonovna’s Third World War” appeared in Two Lines (the “Counterfeits” edition, 2011) and was reprinted in the Read Russia! anthology, too (PDF download); “Shady Business” came out in issue 17 of Subtropics earlier this year. “Shady Business” took me forever: I knew the words (and got great help from Misha Klimov, a local colleague, on the ones I didn’t, those being the surzhik) but wanted to be sure I was capturing the emotions of elderly characters who’d survived the war. I still can’t believe how much feeling and history Margarita can pack into so few, seemingly simple, words. I’m sure that’s why I love her writing so much.

Marina Stepnova’s novel The Women of Lazarus also looks at history, through an unconventional family saga that begins just after the Russian Revolution and continues to the present, focusing on various women in the life of Lazar Lindt, the Lazarus in the title. I loved the novel’s combination of history, various forms of poshlost’, postmodernism, and cultural commentary when I read it but didn’t truly appreciate how much Stepnova had achieved until I was working on a late draft of my translation. (The many, many levels of new-found appreciation I find through translation are a big reason I love translating so much.) Stepnova, a literary magpie, fills her novel with colorful and changeable language, historical perspectives and figures (Beria has a cameo), Soviet science, references to pre-revolutionary cookery, and ballet. Among other things. But everything comes together, creating an almost ridiculously readable and comprehensive novel about the meaning of family and the meaning of country and culture and heritage. Among other things… it’s a very rewarding book that can be read on many levels.

Alisa Ganieva won notice by winning the Debut Prize for the novella Salam, Dalgat!, which she wrote under the male pseudonym Gulla Khirachev because of taboos against a woman writing about a world that is “absolutely male.” I loved Salam, Dalgat! for its story of a day in the life of a man searching Makhachkala, Dagestan, for a relative. As I wrote earlier, “With its mixture of humor, tradition (wife stealing even gets a mention, though a character says that’s a Chechen habit), and a sense of alarm about the future, Salam, Dalgat! felt unusually energetic and organic, all as poor Dalgat, seeking but never quite managing to find, trots along, a perfectly agreeable, generally patient, nearly blank slate of a character, the ideal figure for a reader like me, who’s never been to Makhachkala, to follow.” Translations of Ganieva’s writing are available and on the way: Nicholas Allen’s translation of Salam, Dalgat! appears in the anthology Squaring the Circle (Glas, 2011), Marian Schwartz’s translation of the story “Shaitans” is in the Read Russia! anthology (PDF download), and Carol Apollonio’s translation of The Russian Wall (Праздничная гора) will be published next summer by Deep Vellum.

Since I’ve been so chatty about the first three writers, I’ll keep things shorter and limit myself to brief notes on four more writers I’ve especially enjoyed reading. Each has a story in the same Read Russia! anthology I mentioned above and each has at least one novel already out in English translation… I’ve read quite a few books and stories by Ludmila Ulitskaya and think my favorite is probably Sincerely Yours, Shurik, which has never been translated into English. Of those that exist in English, I particularly enjoyed the polyphonic Daniel Stein, Interpreter, (which Arch Tate translated for The Overlook Press) about a Polish Jew who works for a Nazi officer and dies a Carmelite monk in Israel. The Big Green Tent is on the way, too, in Bela Shayevich’s translation… And then there’s Olga Slavnikova, whose 2017—beautifully stuffed with gems, metaphors, and plot lines—won the Russian Booker. I particularly enjoyed the expedition scenes and carnivalistic episodes; Marian Schwartz translated 2017 for The Overlook Press… Maria Galina’s Mole Crickets appealed to me because of the voice Galina creates for her narrator, a man who rewrites books (e.g. a classic by Joseph Conrad) by incorporating clients into the plot lines. Though Mole Crickets hasn’t been translated, Amanda Love Darragh won the Rossica Prize for translating Galina’s Гиви и Шендерович, as Iramifications, published in 2008 by Glas… Finally, there’s Anna Starobinets, whose Sanctuary 3/9 kept me up late at night: the novel’s combination of folk tale motifs, suspense, and creepiness is perfect. Sanctuary hasn’t been translated into English but three other Starobinets books have: An Awkward Age, translated by Hugh Aplin for Hesperus; The Living, translated by James Rann for Hesperus; and The Icarus Gland, coming this fall from James Rann and Skyscraper Publications.

Happy reading! And a big, huge thanks to Biblibio for the invitation... and all this month’s posts about books written by women.

Disclaimers: I’ve translated work by some of the writers mentioned in this post and met all of them, if only briefly. I work on occasional projects for Read Russia and have translated a book for Glas: appropriately enough, it’s Russian Drama: Four Young Female Voices, with four very diverse plays by Yaroslava Pulinovich, Ksenia Stepanycheva, Ekaterina Vasilyeva, and Olga Rimsha.

Up Next: Evgenii Chizhov’s Перевод с подстрочника (literally Translation from a Literal Translation), which I’ve finally finished. And which I already miss. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even slowing down a little in the last sections because I didn’t want it to end. Several books read in English, including a wonderful Dovlatov translation.

Inspector NOSE: From Whodunnit? to Whowunnit?

Watching last Tuesday’s Webcast of debates for the Prokhorov Foundation’s special Inspector NOSE award offered up far more suspense than I’d expected. I came in a little late thanks to my ongoing post-BookExpo America haze (now, thankfully, departed), picking things up during jury discussions about which books to put on the shortlist but apparently missing (thankfully, I suspect) some sort of discussion about what to do with some of the biggest names in post-Soviet detective novelry: Boris Akunin, Leonid Yuzefovich, and Alexandra Marinina.

And then, all of a sudden, after several jurors had listed their three favorites from the Inspector NOSE long list (previous post), the Webcast cut out for good, never to return. Despite some evening Googling, I didn’t learn the name of the winner until I opened my e-mail the next morning and read a note from Margarita Khemlin, who’d written to say she’d won, for her novel Дознаватель (The Investigator) (previous post)… I’d written to her on Tuesday saying I was going to watch the Webcast and hoped to at least catch a glimpse of her on my computer. Which I didn’t!

Despite the technical difficulties, I saw enough of the debate to know Margarita had a good chance of winning and understand that Inspector NOSE truly did intend to recognize fiction that expands on the detective genre’s literary conventions. Scholar and writer Andrei Astvatsaturov, for example, noted The Investigator’s stylized skaz writing and appealing characters, as well as the novel’s ability to interest him in far more than who’d committed murder. Linguist Maxim Krongauz put the book on his shortlist, too, saying The Investigator is more than a detective novel and citing the novel’s characters plus its mix of languages and peoples: much of the dialogue is in surzhik, a blend of Ukrainian and Russian. Alas, due to my own tardiness and the etherealness of the Internet itself, I didn’t hear all the jurors discuss their choices for the shortlist.

In any case, these five books ended up on the shortlist:

• Arsen Revazov’s Одиночество -12 (Solitude 12), which is on my shelf.
• Boris Akunin’s Азазель (The Winter Queen), which I enjoyed many years ago. (Available in Andrew Bromfield’s translation.)
• Dem’ian Kudriavtsev’s Близнецы ((The) Twins), which I’m going to get, thanks to Astvatsaturov’s recommendation (I scribbled down words like narcotic, psychedelic, and strong text).
• Margarita Khemlin’s Дознаватель (The Investigator), which won!
• Oleg Dark’s На одной скорости (At One Speed (?))

Disclaimers: I’ve published translations of two of Margarita Khemlin’s short stories and am currently working under two translation grants from the Prokhorov Foundation’s Transcript program.

Up Next: BookExpo America trip report. Yuri Mamleyev’s The Sublimes is still waiting for me to finish its post, I’m almost done with Irina Ratushinskaya’s The Odessans, Bulgakov’s White Guard is still “in progress,” and I’m zigging and zagging my way through Anna Matveeva’s story collection Подожди, я умру — и приду (Hold on, I’ll Die and Come Back).

Busybody: Khemlin’s Investigator

Where to start? A murder. A stabbing that hits the heart. May 18, 1952. Klara Tsetkin Street, Chernigov, Ukraine. The victim is Lilia Vorobeichik. The man sent to investigate the case is Mikhail Tsupkoi. Case closed early, murder solved, pinned on Roman Moiseenko, who’d been romantically involved with Vorobeichik. Moiseenko is dead, suicide.

The book is Margarita Khemlin’s Дознаватель (The Investigator), and Tsupkoi, a decorated World War 2 veteran is the title figure and first-person narrator. I should note that Tsupkoi says he’s a дознаватель, an investigator who doesn’t normally handle serious crimes. But he’s sent to handle the Vorobeichik case on his own because the department’s so busy.

Tsupkoi stays busy, too, continuing to investigate the Vorobeichik case after it’s closed. According to seamstress Polina Laevskaya, Vorobeichik’s friend, there are rumors going around town. People don’t believe Moiseenko did it, and Tsupkoi is accused of trying to keep the story quiet because Vorobeichik was Jewish. And so Tsupkoi spends the rest of the book questioning and requestioning Vorobeichik’s friends, neighbors, and family, including her twin sister Eva. As Khemlin said on Echo of Moscow’s “Book Casino,” Tsupkoi thinks everything can be figured out, calculated (рассчитать is her verb) but this is a story about “безумная любовь,” we’ll call that “crazy love.” And crazy is impossible to calculate. Other factors in this dense, crowded book: more death, a resurrection, births, betrayals and infidelity, theft, matzo, adoption, tailored clothing, knives, and gold.

The Investigator is one of the most complex, absurd-at-the-very-core, and bizarrely rewarding books I’ve read in ages: though I kept reading and reading, hypnotized as Tsupkoi zigged, zagged, clomped, and tromped his way around Chernigov, Oster, and the last decade or so to question and listen, it took more than half the book to realize what Khemlin was up to. I knew all along that the novel was literary fiction with elements of detective novel, soap opera, Jewish history, Ukrainian history, Soviet history, World War 2 history, and more...

But then the book spirals more sharply, drawing Tsupkoi closer and closer to the essence of what went wrong for Lilia Vorobeichik, the other characters, and society. I’ll attempt to explain… Though it’s often difficult to keep track of who’s who in The Investigator—there must be dozens of characters of various ages and importance—the book simultaneously chronicles family life and creates a protocol of an unofficial investigation. The ever-present Big Picture in the background is unrelenting: as Khemlin noted on Echo, the post-war atmosphere in the Soviet Union wasn’t easy. She mentions the doctors’ plot, Zionist conspiracy theories, and the interconnectedness of everyday people. That interconnectedness and the misunderstandings it can create are crucial in The Investigator: everybody knows everybody’s business, yards and houses are close, and Tsupkoi, investigator, is the novel’s chief busybody, reaching, always, for the most personal, hidden truths, which he finally finds at the end of the book. Most important, most of those truths reach, somehow, back to World War 2. One character was a partisan. Another’s children burned. Tsupkoi’s war buddy, Evsei, is in the book, too, and there’s even a bag of gold that includes some fillings. The stories build and build, generating pain and tension that become unbearable by the end of the book. There is a confession. Of sorts. As a review in НГ-Ex Libris notes, given Khemlin’s balance of good and bad, every reader will have an opinion about the punishment side of things; Ex Libris put The Investigator on their list of 25 best fiction and poetry books of 2012.

What fascinated me most about The Investigator was how and how much people talk. Tsupkoi questions and questions and people talk and talk, creating some paradoxes: Tsupkoi is an investigator and the novel’s narrator, but huge swaths are told by other characters, who describe their lives and relationships. They tell stories within stories. But is Tsupkoi a faithful protocol writer and narrator? Who knows? Either way, the book is, as Vladimir Guga’s excellent piece for Peremeny.ru notes, polyphonic, because Khemlin offers up varied voices, including one that’s not audible because its owner can’t speak. (I should also note that Guga thinks Khemlin does well writing the book from a man’s perspective.) No matter how varied the voices, though, the war keeps coming back. As Khemlin said on Echo about Tsupkoi, “Выиграть войну можно. Но как жить потом, не знает никто.” – “It’s possible to win the war. But nobody knows how to live after that.”

I’ve read all Khemlin’s books and translated two of her stories plus an excerpt from Klotsvog so it’s interesting for me to watch how she addresses the war, over and over again, in her fiction. I remember her saying (though I don’t remember where) that she grew up living among the aftereffects of the war and that compels her to write. When I read her collection The Living Line, I wrote that the book’s unconnected novellas seemed to meld into “a mural that feels like a small world: Jewish heritage, settings in Ukraine, and the feel that someone is sitting with you, telling tales.” Now, after four books, I feel as if all Khemlin’s books meld into an even bigger mural that blends the personal and the public, the Jewish and the non-Jewish, telling stories that are individual but universal, where characters often speak in Soviet-era clichés, use dark, dark humor, and describe things nobody should ever experience.

I think what I find most mysterious and, thus, appealing about Khemlin’s writing is that, whether I’m reading or translating, nearly everything (except, perhaps, the occasional “суржик,” a blend of Russian and Ukrainian) feels relatively simple at first, as if I’m reading the barest, most factual of fiction… but then her writing evolves into something more complex as I realize how much history and emotion she packs into her words.

Disclaimers: The usual. Margarita gave me my copy of The Investigator.

Up Next: 2012 year-end post. Then Olga Lukas and Andrei Stepanov’s Prince Sobakin’s Elixir and, most likely, Aleksei Slapovskii’s День денег (Money’s Day)… I started reading Slapovskii, which I liked, but then got sick (again! or relapsed?) so went for the extreme lightness of the Lukas/Stepanov book, a perfect accompaniment to lots of coughing and snow.

Moscow Trip Report: Translator Congress, Book Fair, Book Shopping

In early September I spent a short week in Moscow thanks to the Institute of Translation, which invited me to the second International Congress of Literary Translators, where I spoke and served as co-moderator, with Natasha Perova of Glas, during sections categorized as “Translation of Contemporary Literature.”  I went to Moscow a few days early so I could work down my jetlag before the Congress (mixed results), go to the Moscow International Book Fair (success), and visit friends, colleagues, and favorite sites (success). A few jumbled highlights:

The Congress. I called my conference paper “Оптимистический взгляд с другого берега: Что такое «хорошо» в современной русской литературе” (“An Optimistic View from the Other Shore: Contemporary Russian Literature & The Meaning of “Good”) and spent my 10 minutes speaking first (very fast!) about the unique internal logic I think governs good works of fiction. Internal logic is my take on Jonathan Lethem’s thought that a writer should teach the reader to read his/her book. Then I mentioned three favorite books—Khemlin’s Klotsvog, Senchin’s Yeltyshevs, and Gigolashvili’s Devil’s Wheel—that I think work particularly well. A sequel on internal logic appears below…

As for Congress highlights, I particularly enjoyed a plenary session talk from Natalya Ivanova, first deputy head editor of the thick journal Znamia. Ivanova named names in a talk about contemporary fiction, quoting contemporary writers who find fault in today’s literature, then saying there’s plenty worthy of translation, then offering her own examples of good writers (e.g. Mikhail Shishkin, Fazil Iskander, Liudmila Petrushevsksya, Vladimir Makanin, and Alexander Kabakov) plus two nonfavorites she sees as nostalgic for the Soviet past: Mikhail Elizarov, whom she accused of writing poorly, and Zakhar Prilepin, whom she considers a better writer, prolific, and unusual. Ivanova also listed recent books about problems in contemporary life written by Olga Slavnikova, Alexander Ilichevsky, Iurii Buida, Dmitrii Danilov, Vladimir Gubailovskii, and Maria Galina, among others.

Other Congress highlights: Michele Berdy’s talk about language, including current uses of words like вообще (a.k.a. “вооще!”) and актуальный, and the fact that Russian plates “stand” on a table… hearing numerous talks (and even a slight related outburst) mentioning who gets translated into various languages: I made a list of popular names in the sessions I attended, noting the prolific Prilepin as well as Akunin, Marinina, Shishkin, Sorokin, Erofeev, and classics like Bulgakov… meeting people like Zaven Babloyan, who translates from Ukrainian to Russian and gave me a copy of his translation of Sergei Zhadan’s Voroshilovgrad; and Kristina Rotkirch, who translates Russian into Swedish and interviewed writers for the useful Contemporary Russian Fiction, published by Glas… and, of course, getting caught up with literary agents and translators I’d met before. It’s always nice to see familiar people when you’re tired after travel! The only downside of such a big event is that I wasn’t able to hear nearly as many papers as I wanted. Here’s a PDF of the Congress program. Just ask if you have questions.

Vladislav Otroshenko and That Internal Logic. I visited with writer Vladislav Otroshenko on my first full day in Moscow; I translated his short story “Языки Нимродовой башни” (“The Languages of Nimrod’s Tower”). We talked about all sorts of things, from Cossacks and Vikings to the story and my Congress paper, focusing a fair bit on my “internal logic” idea, something he feels, from a different angle, as a writer. I must have been a little more lucid that day than I thought because he ended up writing a piece for Russian Pioneer about what he calls the “Lisa Hayden Moment.” In short, this is a point within a story or novel when a reader realizes the piece does or doesn’t work. His essay extends, very logically, what I told him: I rely a lot on instinct and intuition, which are inherently difficult to describe, so it was wonderful to see his summary.

The Moscow International Book Fair. I spent an afternoon at the book fair—it’s held in a pavilion at what used to be VDNKh, the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy, what a strange feeling to go there again!—where I heard Margarita Khemlin speak about her new book, Дознаватель (The Investigator), which I’m looking forward to reading. I was pleased to see other writers, editors, and book people I’ve met in my travels, too, particularly Irina Bogatyreva, who has a story in a new collection compiled by that prolific Zakhar Prilepin. The AST and Eksmo booths both bustled with novelist talks, panels, and book signings but I was even more struck with all the publishers focused on specialized books; railroad sticks in my mind for personal reasons.

What I brought back. I started with
Voroshilovgrad and will soon work through the
pile of 2012 Big Book finalists on the right.

Book Shopping. Of course I brought back lots of books: some were given to me by writers and translators, but I purchased most of my books at Falanster, Biblio-Globus, and Moskva. I even bought one—Prilepin’s Книгочёт, a book about books and even, in one essay, drinking—at Domodedovo airport because I thought (correctly!) the short pieces would make good plane reading. Each store was fun in its own way… Falanster’s relatively random selection is great: the Vita Sovietica sort-of-a-dictionary is useful fun, and I snapped up German Sadulaev’s difficult-to-find Raid on Shali; I wish I’d thought to go back for some thick journals though I’m not sure I could have hauled much more home. I especially enjoyed Biblio-Globus because I went there with Dmitrii Danilov, who recommended several books, including Mikhail Butov’s Freedom; he also gave me his new Description of a City. Even Moskva, which I’ve always found convenient but a bit too dark and crowded, was fun because the cashier mentioned liking Valerii Popov’s Big Book finalist To Dance to Death, prompting another customer to notice my large stack of books and ask for recommendations because she thought I looked young enough to suggest books for her 30-something daughter who lives in Germany. I was flattered she thought I was young enough for the task: perhaps I was feeling especially youthful because, earlier that afternoon, the ticket seller at the Tretyakov Gallery asked if I needed an adult ticket (!!!); I told the truth about my age but was happy she sold me a Russian citizen ticket without asking my provenance. Anyway, I was more than pleased to suggest books on the Moskva shelves. Of course the poor woman didn’t know what hit her, particularly since I’m not even Russian: she seemed a little overwhelmed with the choices and I’m not sure she was familiar with chernukha. I showed her the laminated list of 2012 Big Book finalists that was hanging on the wall… and hope she picked up a finalist or two—maybe Popov’s book, Maria Galina’s Mole Crickets, or Marina Stepnova’s Lazar(us)’s Women—after I left with my two heavy bags of books.

Disclaimers: The usual and more: many of the people I mention in this post are colleagues with whom I am on friendly terms, as are certain individuals (including editors and literary agents) who work with/at entities or people that I mention. A few organizations and individuals, particularly the Institute, fed me much-needed snacks, meals, caffeine, and/or a glass or two of wine, and helped me in various financial and nonfinancial ways, with my travel.

Up Next: Marina Stepnova’s Lazar(us)’s Women, Ergali Ger’s Koma, the Russian Booker shortlist…

2011 NOSE Long List

It’s been a long time since I’ve methodically gone through an entire long or short list for an award, adding links and descriptions… so here you go: the entire 25-member 2011 НОС/NOSE award long list, with a few notes, including links to previous posts about the four books I’ve read. As usual, I’m sure some of the title translations are awful due to lack of context. The NOSE award is a program of the Mikhail Prokhorov Fund.

I’m also sure more summaries, excerpts, and full texts are floating around in the Runet, but this warm fall day keeps calling me away from my computer! Though a few books sound interesting, I can’t say I found anything new on the list that I feel compelled to seek out right away, particularly since there seem to be a lot of short story collections and nonfiction books on the list. Marina Palei, whom I’ve been meaning to read for some time, is probably at the top of my list.

1. Andrei Astvatsaturov: Скунскамера (Skunskamera), a book that’s a veteran of long and short lists.

2. Karine Arutiunova: Пепел красной коровы (Ash from the Red Cow), a collection of very short stories.

3. Marina Akhmedova: Дневник смертницы. Хадижа (Diary of a Death Girl. Khadizha. [a key title word can mean a prisoner condemned to death or a suicide bomber]), a novel about a Dagestani girl that Akhmedova based on stories of real girls in the Northern Caucasus.

4. Nikolai Baitov: Думай, что говоришь (Think When You Speak). Short stories (41 in 320 pages) from a poet.

5. Il’ia Boiashov: Каменная баба (The Stone Woman) (previous post)

6. Iana Vagner: Вонгозеро (Vongozero), a debut novel about a nasty flu; the book grew out of Live Journal posts.

7. Igor’ Vishnevetskii: Ленинград (Leningrad), a novella set in Leningrad during World War 2 that Vishnevetskii says is a postscript of sorts to Andrei Belyi’s Petersburg because he imagined Belyi’s characters in his own book. For more: Svobodanews.ru interview with Vishnevetskii here.

8. Natal’ia Galkina: Табернакль (Tabernacle)

9. Dj Stalingrad: Исход (could be Exodus or something like The Outcome), apparently about leftwing skinheads.

10. Dmitrii Danilov: Горизонтальное положение (Horizontal Position) (previous post)

11. Nikolai Kononov: Фланёр (The Flâneur), a novel set in the 1930s and 1940s. (OpenSpace.ru review)

12. Aleksandr Markin: Дневник 2006–2011 (Diary 2006-2011), Live Journal posts from Russia’s first LJ blogger. (This seems to be a common thread this year…) Comments on Ozon.ru note Markin’s interest in German literature and European architecture.

13. Aleksei Nikitin: Истеми (İstemi), a novel about bored students who create a geopolitical game and get in trouble. (The description on the Ad Marginem site is much more complicated.) Risk, anyone?

14. Marina Palei: Дань саламандре (beginning end) (Tribute [the monetary kind] for the Salamander) was also long-listed for the National Bestseller award.

15. Viktor Pelevin: Ананасная вода для прекрасной дамы (Pineapple Water for the Beautiful Lady), a bestselling story collection.

16. Andrei Rubanov: Тоже родина (Also a Motherland), a story collection.

17. Maria Rybakova: Гнедич (Gnedich), a novel in verse about Russian poet Nikolai Gnedich, the first Russian translator of The Iliad. Rybakova is also a poet. Excerpt

18. Figl’-Migl’: Ты так любишь эти фильмы (You Love Those Films So Much), a NatsBest finalist that lost in a tie breaker vote when Kseniia Sobchak cast her vote for Dmitrii Bykov instead. Sobchak said in an interview that she doesn’t consider F-M’s book literature. She also compares Bykov to McDonald’s and says she hates his ЖД (Living Souls) (previous post). Take that!

19. Margarita Khemlin: Крайний (Krainii: my previous post explains the title)

20. Andrei Sharyi and Iaroslav Shimov: Корни и корона (Roots and the Crown), essays about Austro-Hungary. (OpenSpace.ru review)

21. Mikhail Shishkin: Письмовник (Letter-Book) (previous post)

22. Nina Shnirman: Счастливая девочка (Lucky Girl) (excerpt); a book about a girl’s childhood that includes World War 2. I’m not clear if it’s strictly memoir or somewhat fictionalized. Either way, it was a Cosmo book of the month!

23. Gleb Shul’piakov: Фес (Fes or Fez, as you prefer), a novel. The publisher’s description says Fes is about a man who brings his wife to the maternity hospital and, when left to his own devices, ends up in a basement in an unidentified eastern city… sounds like more warped reality.

24. Aleksandr Iablonskii: Абраша (Abrasha), a novel with a vague summary.

25. Irina Iasina: История болезни (Case History) appears to be a memoir about having multiple sclerosis.

Up next: I’m hoping to finish Sergei Kuznetsov’s Хоровод воды (The Round Dance of Water) in time for a post next week.

Living on the Edge: Margarita Khemlin’s Krainii

I have a horrible case of чемоданное настроение – “suitcase mood,” being antsy to travel – but want to write about Margarita Khemlin’s novel Крайний before I forget everything I want to say about the book… I apologize for this slapdash post, particularly since I don’t mean to give Krainii short shrift: it’s a good book. Though it’s not my favorite piece of Khemlin’s work that’s largely because I loved her Klotsvog (previous post) so very much. Krainii is a grittily powerful first-person narrative, a life story told by a Jewish man, Nisl Moiseevich Zaidenband, who grew up in Oster, in central Ukraine, and was a partisan as a teenager during World War 2.

Nisl is a loner, and the book is a confession of sorts. He tells us on the first page that he has no “collective” to hear his story, meaning we, his readers, all of humanity who will listen, become his people. The word in the book’s title, Krainii, has multiple meanings that relate to Nisl: the Oxford Russian-English dictionary’s suggestions include words like extreme, last, uttermost, and, for sports, outside. The root word край (krai) is often used for edges and brinks; it’s also used for regions. Krainii can refer to the last person in line, and one of you who read the book suggested “fall guy,” also very fitting for this context.

Khemlin inserts lots of treacherous edges and brinks into Krainii. Oster is near the USSR’s western border and people speak a mix of languages; that occasionally put me on the linguistic brink. Nisl’s life history reads like a series of close scrapes with wartime death, the law, and the difficulties of being Jewish. His teenagedom includes hearing Nazi troops kill the Jewish population of Oster, and his escape involves help from an unexpected source and using an assumed name that hides his identity. He learns the useful craft of haircutting from older partisans. After the war Nisl commits a crime, making himself a wanted man; a partisan friend helps, hiding him the woods, essentially making him a partisan again, living away from society. Nisl survives again.

Khemlin works plenty more into Krainii: Nisl is reunited with his parents after the war, tries to establish relationships with women, and lives with an elderly Jewish couple. The Holocaust subject of soap made from human fat comes up when Nisl takes possession of bars of soap, leading to some emotional scenes. Some of the book’s most striking passages – particularly about the elderly couple and their house, and an eerie double death – made me realize, yet again, that I’m probably missing allusions to Jewish storytelling, traditions, and mysticism. Or maybe not? I don’t know. I have a few books on my shelves to broaden my knowledge – Sholom Aleichem stories and I.B. Singer novels among them – and am planning to mine the Yiddish literature posts on Wuthering Expectations, too. I’m open to suggestions, particularly if you have a favorite novel to recommend!

Level for Non-Native readers of Russian: 4/5. Some passages are very easy to read, others are difficult because of mixed language.

Up Next: I hope to queue up a quick post about Vladimir Sorokin’s Путь Бро (Bro), which I found silly but painfully absorbing, before I leave. After that, I’m not sure: I’ll try to post from London about the book fair but may not have much time. My next book post will likely be about Aleksandr Snegirev’s Тщеславие (Vanity): I’m enjoying Vanity’s very humorous account of finalists for a young writers’ book award. They’re at a rest house outside Moscow for literary seminars, which brings back lots of memories of workshops at rest houses with lousy food and after-hours parties… it’s just the thing for my suitcase mood.

Disclosure: I’ve translated one of Margarita Khemlin’s stories.

Happy New Year! & Reading Highlights from 2010

Happy new year! С Новым годом! I hope 2011 brings you lots of fun and intriguing Russian fiction, whether you read in English or Russian. Before the year ends, I thought I’d mention some 2010 favorites and a few reading intentions – not to be mistaken for goals or resolutions – for 2011:

Most enjoyably readable long novel: Based on reviews and awards nominations, I expected to like Mikhail Gigolashvili’s Чертово колесо (The Devil’s Wheel), but I wasn’t prepared for the intensity of the book or the skill with which Gigolashvili brings dozens of characters to life while describing withdrawal from drugs and the Soviet way of life. (previous post) Bonus: Ad Marginem, which published The Devil’s Wheel, sent a link to a story by Gigolashvili as a holiday gift. (No, I haven’t read it yet…)

Favorite first-person narrative: With Клоцвог (Klotsvog), Margarita Khemlin does a wonderful job putting the reader inside the head of a character with all sorts of unpleasant life experiences. Khemlin has a tremendous ability to use simple language to create complex situations and characters. I’ve translated one of her short stories and hope to find it a good home in 2011. (previous post)

Favorite чернуха (dark/naturalistic realism): Roman Senchin’s Елтышевы (The Yeltyshevs), a horribly sad and realistic depiction of a failed family, is so beautifully and simply told that I asked about translating it... I’m working on it… (previous post)

Best nonfiction: I’m still recovering from Drawings from the Gulag, written and drawn by Danzig Baldaev. With its graphic visual and written descriptions of Gulag abuses, the book is very difficult to read but I think Baldaev’s perspective is important. Yes, I admit I only read one book of nonfiction this year but this one carries so much emotion and information that I know it would have been notable even if I’d read dozens. (previous post)

Favorite translated book: I did something unusual this year: I read a book, Moscow Noir, in Russian-English translation because I couldn’t wait for the collection of originals to appear in Russian. The translations read well, and the book was dark, dark, dark, as promised. Okay, I confess this is another category with no real competition since Drawings from the Gulag is bilingual. But the book was good, and the editors, Natalia Smirnova and Julia Goumen, did a great job compiling it. (previous post)

What might be coming in 2011: Hmm, the Sh writers seem to lead: I’ve been delaying my Shklovsky mini-marathon for far too long, and I’ve been staring at several of Mikhail Shishkin’s books for months. I also have Viacheslav Shishkov’s Угрюм-река, which I’ll call Gloom River in English, if only because it sounds like “Moon River”… Finally, I’m particularly looking forward to reading Iurii Buida after finally being able to buy one of his books, after several years of on-and-off attempts.

A big thanks to everyone for all your visits, comments, and e-mail messages in 2010! It’s been a fun year of reading, blogging, and hearing from so many of you. I look forward to more reading and book talk in 2011 -- happy new year!

Disclosures: I received Drawings from the Gulag and Moscow Noir from their publishers, Fuel and Akashic, respectively.

New year stamp image from Mariluna, via Wikipedia.

2010 Russian Booker Prize Finalists

Most literature watchers are waiting for the announcement of this year’s Nobel Prize for literature but I’m happy with today’s announcement of the Russian Booker short list. The six finalists were selected from a 24-member long list; 95 books were nominated for the 2010 Booker. The winner will be announced in early December.

There are two books on the list that I’ve read, two others I’m familiar with, and two whose authors I’d never heard of before now. Here’s the short list, in (Russian) alphabetical order, by author.

• Oleg Zaionchkovskii: Счастье возможно (Happiness Is Possible) (excerpts) (previous post)
• Andrei Ivanov: Путешествие Ханумана на Лолланд (Hanuman’s Journey to Lolland) –the adventures of two illegal residents of Denmark, the Nepalese title character Hanuman (also the name of a Hindu deity) and a Russian friend. Hanuman apparently wants to go to Lolland, a Danish island. (review) (another review)
• Elena Koliadina: Цветочный крест (The Cross of Flowers, perhaps), about a 17^th-century man of the cloth, father Loggin. (the novel online: beginning middle end) (an interview with the author)
• Mariam Petrosian: Дом, в котором... (The House in Which…), which won third prize in the readers’ vote for last year’s Big Book Prize.
• German Sadulaev – Шалинский рейд (The Raid on Shali), about the Chechen War. (начало) (окончание)
• Margarita Khemlin. Клоцвог (Klotsvog) (previous post)

Happy reading!

Khemlin’s Klotsvog: Loving the Unpleasant Narrator’s Story

Some readers loathe books about unpleasant people but I seem to be one of the oddballs who love them. Perhaps my subconscious tells me that all pleasant characters are alike but all unpleasant characters are unpleasant in their own ways? I don’t know. But here’s what I do know: I found in Margarita Khemlin’s Клоцвог (Klotsvog), a short novel narrated by a vain and immature person, Maya Klotsvog, a fascinating character study.

Maya tells the story of her life in very simple language, often throwing in Sovieticisms, often referring to herself as a pedagogue. Though Maya spends little of her life actually teaching math, she maintains a “once a teacher, always a teacher” attitude. Unfortunately, she uses her pedagogical talents primarily to manipulate and irritate family members and (oh, irony!) teachers. Maya is from Oster, Ukraine, which she says was an important Jewish center when she was born in 1930, but she says she spent part of World War 2 in evacuation in Kazakhstan. Maya and her mother worked there in a train repair factory.

Remnants of World War 2 loom over Klotsvog, and the trauma runs deep. Maya’s father died during the war, and Maya’s first husband was at the front; his wife and children died during the occupation. Maya’s mother’s second husband was a partisan. Maya’s third husband lost his parents to the war. Jewish heritage is a thick thread that runs through the book, too: Maya’s son learns Yiddish words in Oster when he lives with his grandmother, and Maya’s daughter loathes her Jewish heritage.

Given her propensity for demonstrating her pedagogical skills, Maya has difficulty getting along with other people. She has few friends but several husbands, and her relationships with her relatives are strained at best. Maya’s mother sees through her and (spoiler alert!) even keels over in the middle of a conversation, when Maya tries to pump her for information; Maya seems most upset that she’ll never got her answers. To be fair, Maya shows surprising fairness at times: she allows her first husband, who has a breakdown while eating cake in Kiev, and his new wife to live in a house she owns.

Klotsvog may not sound very exciting, but the book sucked me in from the first page thanks to Maya’s nonpretty language, calculated behavior, and matter-of-fact descriptions of Soviet-era life. Maya’s present-day narration carries an air of soap opera, something I think Maya cultivates. About 25 pages in she says: “Сейчас много бразильских и других сериалов, и у всех есть знания, как бывает в жизни.” (“Now there are lots of Brazilian and other TV series, and everybody has knowledge of what happens in life.”)

Of course Klotsvog is a literary novel, not a prime-time melodrama – it’s turned up on the long lists for this year’s Big Book, Russian Booker, and NOS(E) prizes – thanks to Khemlin’s ability to integrate the historical and the personal. Her emphasis on physical and emotional survival, and Jewish heritage elevates Klotsvog, too. But there’s something else about Khemlin’s writing that I like even more, probably because it feels a little mysterious as it holds the book together: her use of skaz techniques, which enable her to maintain Maya’s voice and wring so much life and emotion out of simple words.

I should mention that I enjoy Margarita Khemlin’s writing so much that I translated one of her short stories from Живая очередь (The Living Line) (previous post).

Reading level for non-native readers of Russian: fairly simple language, 2/5.

Up next: I set aside Aleksandr Ilichevskii’s Перс (The Persian) for now, in favor of Sviatoslav Loginov’s Свет в окошке (The Light in the Window), a fantasy-ish book about life after death that three people with very differing tastes recommended…