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.

2018 Read Russia Prize for English-Language Translations: Winner & Citations

Read Russia announced last week that Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson, and Irina Steinberg’s translation of Teffi’s autobiographical Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea won the 2018 Read Russia Prize for Russian-to-English translation. The book was published in the U.S. by New York Review Books and in the U.K. by Pushkin Press.

The Read Russia jury also made “special mentions” of two other books: Rapture, written by Iliazd (Ilia Zdanevich), translated by Thomas J. Kitson, and published by Columbia University Press’s Russian Library imprint; and Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yankovsky, edited by Bryan Karetnyk, translated by Karetnyk, Maria Bloshteyn, Robert Chandler, Justin Doherty, Boris Dralyuk, Rose France, Dmitri Nabokov, Donald Rayfield, Irina Steinberg, and Anastasia Tolstoy, and published by Penguin Classics.

The full Read Russia shortlist is here.

Hearty congratulations to all involved!

Disclaimers and disclosures: The usual for various ties. I received copies of two of these books from their publishers.

Up next: Sergei Kuznetsov’s Teacher Dymov, a lovely short story cycle, some books in English (including translations as well as Janet Fitch’s long, suspenseful The Revolution of Marina M.), and more award news. I’m still rereading War and Peace, still focusing more on Peace than War, and still particularly enjoying various families’ antics.

Translation Award News: AATSEEL & Read Russia/Anglophone

The American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages announced the winner of AATSEEL’s annual translation award this weekend. The winner is Written in the Dark: Five Poets in the Siege of Leningrad, edited by Polina Barskova and including works by Gennady Gor, Dmitry Maksimov, Sergey Rudakov, Vladimir Sterligov, and Pavel Zaltsman. The translators are Anand Dibble, Ben Felker-Quinn, Ainsley Morse, Eugene Ostashevsky, Rebekah Smith, Charles Swank, Jason Wagner, and Matvei Yankelevich. The book was published by Ugly Duckling Presse and includes an introduction by Barskova and an afterword by Ilya Kukulin. Written in the Dark is a bilingual edition with endnotes. I have the book and have read quite a few of the poems. Yes, I recommend it, though I’m pretty inept at writing about poetry, so will leave details to Piotr Florczyk’s review for Los Angeles Review of Books, which includes this line about Gor’s poems, “For the most part untitled, and rhyming in the original Russian but less frequently in translation, these poems are surreal indeed, and even macabre.”

In other translation award news, Written in the Dark also made the shortlist for this year’s English-only Read Russia Prize for translation. The finalists are, in the order listed on the Read Russia site:

• Written in the Dark (please see extensive details above!)
• Rapture, by Iliazd (Ilya Zdanevich), translated by Thomas J. Kitson; Columbia University Press.
• The Gray House (Дом, в котором), by Mariam Petrosyan, translated by Yuri Machkasov; AmazonCrossing.
• Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea, by Teffi (Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya), translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson, and Irina Steinberg; New York Review Books/Pushkin Press.
• Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky, translated by Bryan Karetnyk, Anastasia Tolstoy, Robert Chandler, Maria Bloshteyn, Ivan Juritz, Donald Rayfield, Boris Dralyuk, Justin Doherty, Dmitri Nabokov, Irina Steinberg, and Rose France; Penguin Classics.

Congratulations to everybody involved with all these books!

Up Next: The NOSE Award winner tomorrow. I was glad to see that Sorokin’s Manaraga, which I enjoyed, already won the reader’s choice award. Also: Sergei Kuznetsov’s Teacher Dymov, which I already mentioned enjoying very, very much. Some English-language titles. And the sequel to Yakovleva’s Tinker, Tailor, which has been just the sort of slow-action detective novel I needed for a busy time.

Disclaimers: The usual, in full force since I’ve collaborated with many of the translators and publishers on this list, not to mention Read Russia!

Live from Moscow Maine: Read Russia Winners

I’d planned to post a list of the winners of the Read Russia Prize while I was still in Moscow: I even set up a post with all the shortlisted names and titles, figuring I’d just work from there, deleting those who didn’t win (including myself), and be done in three minutes. Becoming part of the news, which is now old, though, made me want to post more than just a list of winners. First off, here’s the list:

• Joaquín Fernández-Valdés and Alba for Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (Spain)
• Selma Ancira and Fondo de Cultura Económica for short stories by twentieth-century writers (Tsvetaeva, Pasternak, Blok, Gumilev, Mandelstam, Bunin, Bulgakov, and Berberova) (Mexico)
• Lisa Hayden and Oneworld Publications for Eugene Vodolazkin’s Laurus (US and UK)
• Claudia Scandura and Gattomerlino for Sergei Gandlevsky’s Rust and Yellow (Italy)

Joaquín, Lisa, Claudia, Selma; photo by Anatoli Stepanenko.

There are lots of great things about the Read Russia Prize but I particularly like the fact that it recognizes translators and publishers. And, I admit, that the ceremony takes place in beautiful, historical Pashkov House. It was particularly lovely that Eugene and his wife, who have both become good friends, were at the ceremony and that I was seated with them. They were at the Translator Congress, too, where Eugene spoke just before I did (thank goodness!) during the plenary session.

The title of Alexandra Guzeva’s article about the award referred to a translation “Oscar,” which is apt because all of us thanked lots of people in our speeches. I read my list after I said the translation itself was “fun,” something someone expressed surprise about later! (What could be more fun than translating a combination of archaic language and contemporary slang, anyway?! This is how people like me get their kicks.) I didn’t throw away my scribbled list so want to type it in here: lots of people helped me with that translation and they deserve recognition. I never tire of making these lists because translating a book isn’t a one-person job even if the copyright consists of only one name.

I thanked:

-members of the jury;

-everyone at the Institute of Translation;

-Oneworld Publications, particularly Juliet Mabey, who hired me for the job despite my lack of experience, and copy editor Will Atkins, whose work went so far in improving the translation;

-Liza Prudovskaya and Olga Bukhina, both of whom went over a draft of my translation;

-Eugene’s literary agents Natasha Banke and Julia Goumen, who asked (in a Facebook mail exchange, if I remember correctly) if I wanted to translate excerpts of the novel back in early 2013; and

-Eugene (who is Zhenya to me) for writing the book in the first place and—of course, since author/translator love was an ongoing theme at the Congress—for the warmest, closest collegial relationships I could ever imagine, with both him and Tanya.

There are lots of others I should/could have thanked, from the prize’s sponsor, Alfa-Bank, and organizer, the Yeltsin Foundation, to other translators of Laurus that were so much fun (that word again!) to correspond with as I translated, to many, many of you who have done so much for me as I began and then continued translating.

Disclaimers: Last week was a wonderful whirl and I’m still getting caught up on my sleep so apologize for any oddities in this post!

Up Next: Yasnaya Polyana Award short list, Moscow trip report (including a record heavy homeward haul of books), Ludmila Ulitskaya’s Jacob’s Ladder, and Alexander Snegirev’s Vera (Faith).

Photo credit: Thank you to Anatoli Stepanenko, whose photos of literary events make me feel like I’m there. And who was so calming as I awaited the award announcement!

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.

New York Trip Report, Part One, Belated: Oliver Ready Wins 2015 Read Russia Prize

So much for timely trip reports about award ceremonies! That doesn’t mean I’m not still thrilled to say, more than two weeks later, that Oliver Ready received the 2015 Read Russia Prize for his translation of Vladimir Sharov’s До и во время, which Dedalus Books published with the title Before and During. I accepted the award for Oliver and am very excited for all involved: for Oliver, for Sharov, whom I met through Oliver, and for Dedalus Books.

Recognizing Oliver felt doubly appropriate because his Crime and Punishment translation was shortlisted for this year’s award, too. Given my interest in contemporary Russian literature, I’m especially happy Oliver won for the Sharov book—the decision came, by the way, through unanimous vote—both because I hope it draws attention to present-day writers and because I read and admired (previous post) Oliver’s translation.

Read Russia commended classics, too, by giving a special jury award to two new translations of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: Rosamund Bartlett’s translation was published by Oxford University Press and Marian Schwartz’s by Yale University Press. The jury’s statements on both awards are online here. I should note that this Read Russia Prize was for Russian-to-English translations only.

The Read Russia evening also included a talk from Gary Saul Morson, the man who taught me War and Peace twice: he spoke on the topic of “Because Everyone Needs a Little Russian Literature.” I’d wondered, in a previous post (about the Read Russia shortlist), if Dr. Morson took the title from a Read Russia bumper sticker. He did. My notes about his talk, alas, are even more inadequate than usual, most likely due to a combination of plain old tiredness after three days at BEA and excitement for Oliver.

I am happy to report, though, that, among other things, Dr. Morson quoted from a book by his pseudonym Alicia Chudo, noted the sense of moral urgency that Russian literature conveys, and spoke of literary characters as possible people, a formulation I like very much. Best of all, he read aloud, from translations: when I was a student, undergrad and grad, I didn’t understand why he read aloud to us, but have come to realize in recent years how much his readings helped me learn to hear the shadings of literary voices.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Alex Cigale gave me a copy of the spring/summer 2015 issue of Atlanta Review: Alex edited the issue and it includes four or five or six dozen translations of Russian poems. Alex pulled together a fantastic roster of fifty poets (Shamshad Abdullaev to Ivan Zhdanov, if taken in the Roman alphabet’s A to Z) and several dozen translators, many of whom I know and have heard read from and/or speak about their work. I’ve only read a small sliver of the issue—every time I open the journal, I get happily stuck on Alyssa Dinega Gillespie’s lush translation of a Polina Barskova poem that starts with “Sweetness of the sweetest slumber/Sweet is sweet is sweet is dream” because I love what Alyssa does with rhythm and rhyme—but I can’t wait to read more, poet by poet, translator by translator. Alex reminded me that readers can get tastes of the poems (as well as background) from the Atlanta Review Facebook group, where posts often include lots of links. If you’re looking for very short notes, there’s also Twitter!

Disclaimers: The usual, including work for Read Russia. Thank you to Alex Cigale for Atlanta Review.

Up Next: Trip report, Part Two, BookExpo America book fair and event report. And two books: Eugene Vodolazkin’s Solovyov and Larionov, which I’ll start translating this summer, meaning soon, and Sergei Nosov’s Член общества, или Голодное время (something like Member of the Society or A Time of Hunger), the sad-but-funny story of a man’s life after selling all his Dostoevsky. And then: I’m currently reading Elena Minkina-Taycher’s The Rebinder Effect, which I’m enjoying very much. Rebinder didn’t catch me on several previous tries so I’m glad I kept trying because I’m finding it very, very readable. After that, I’ll be starting my Big Book Award finalist marathon, beginning with Guzel’ Iakhina’s Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes, which I’ve already started…

The 2015 Read Russia Prize for Translations into English -- Shortlist

Ah, a week of prize news! Read Russia announced, yesterday, the shortlist for the 2015 Read Russia Prize for Russian-to-English translations. The award will be presented in New York on May 29: I’m doubly looking forward to attending because Gary Saul Morson, who taught me War and Peace twice, will be the guest speaker, with the lecture, “Because Everyone Needs a Little Russian Literature.” I’m not sure which came first, the title or the Read Russia bumper sticker, but I’ll see if I can clear that up next week.  

Be that as it may, here’s the shortlist, in alphabetical order by translator. Two finalists translated Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Oliver Ready deserves special recognition for having two books on the list, a particular achievement since one book is a classic, the other a contemporary novel. It’s a varied list all around, and the broad selection of publishers is encouraging. I’ve read two of the translations in full and both were very good. Congratulations to everyone!

• Rosamund Bartlett’s translation of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina; Oxford University Press.
• Peter Daniels’s translation of Vladislav Khodasevich’s Selected Poems; Overlook Press (UK: Angel Books). 
• Katherine Dovlatov’s translation of Sergei Dovlatov’s Pushkin Hills (Заповедник); Counterpoint Press (UK: Alma Classics). Katherine Dovlatov’s translation of her father’s Pushkin Hills is lots of fun: I was glad to have it on a stuffy, delayed flight last summer. Recently out in paperback. (There’s a bit more, here.)
• Jamie Rann’s translation of Anna Starobinets’s The Icarus Gland; Skyscraper Press.
• Oliver Ready’s translation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment; Penguin UK.
• Oliver Ready’s translation of Vladimir Sharov’s Before and During; Dedalus Books. With all its cultural references and dense monologues, I can only imagine that Before and During must have been very, very difficult to translate. (Particularly this well!) I wrote a bit about Before and During here.
• Marian Schwartz’s translation of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina; Yale University Press.

Up Next: BookExpo America (and Read Russia Award) trip report, National Bestseller Award. And two books: Eugene Vodolazkin’s Solovyov and Larionov, which I’ll start translating this summer, and Sergei Nosov’s Член общества, или Голодное время (something like Member of the Society or A Time of Hunger), the sad-but-funny story of a man’s life after selling all his Dostoevsky.

Disclaimers: The usual, including work with Read Russia and my incredible good fortune to know most of the translators on this list.

Potpourri: NOS(E) Finalists for 2014 & Read Russia Award Submissions & NYT Book Reviews

I’m slow yet again with my news about NOS(E)… the 2014 finalists were announced in late October. According to a piece in Аргументы и факты-Красноярск, Sorokin’s Tellurium was a heavy jury favorite, the Aleksievich and Freidensson books caused heated debate, and Rafeenko’s book presages events in eastern Ukraine. You can read any of the books from the NOS(E) short or long list and vote for a favorite, here. Here are the finalists, listed in Russian alphabetical order:

• Svetlana Aleksievich’s Время сэконд хэнд (See Second-Hand Time for a detailed description and a list of translations). Nonfiction about Russia’s post-Soviet history. 
• Linor Goralik’s Это называется так (This Is What It’s Called or some similar combination of words…). Short stories and a play.
• Maksim Gureev’s Покоритель орнамента (Conqueror of Ornamentation? The title phrase is in the text but…). A mixture of the here-and-now and historical times… apparently involving a rug at a Crimean museum.
• Margarita Meklina’s Вместе со всеми (Along With Everyone) Short stories.
• Aleksandr Mil’shtein’s Параллельная акция (A Parallel Action). A “novel-palimpsest,” according to this review.
• VladimirRafeenko’s Демон Декарта (Descartes’s Demon). About a man who’s reborn multiple times, wandering the world and wanting to choose one life/fate for himself. This book looks particularly interesting.
• Vladimir Sorokin’s Теллурия (Tellurium). On my NatsBest long list post, I wrote: A polyphonic novel in 50 highly varying chapters. Also shortlisted for this year’s National Bestseller and Big Book awards.
• Aleksei Tsvetkov’s Король утопленников (King of the Drowned). Prose texts arranged by size… the first takes up less than a half a page, the last is around 80 pages long. NB: This book was not written by the poet named Aleksei Tsvetkov. This book recently won an Andrei Bely Prize. I think it’s one of the most interesting-looking books on the list.
• Tatyana Freidensson’s Дети Третьего рейха (Children of the Third Reich). Nonfiction written by a journalist.

Read Russia Award Submissions. One of you wrote to me recently asking about submission information for the 2015 Read Russia Prize. I knew nothing about the current award season at the time but now, thanks to a Facebook post, here’s a link to everything everyone needs to know. I’m especially happy to see there are now four categories for the English-language award.

Bonus Book Review Links! I’ve been woefully lax about posting links to reviews of books published in translation or related to Russia… The October 24, 2014, issue of The New York Times Book Review includes Christopher Rice’s “Killer Company,” which includes a mini-review of Sergey Kuznetsov’s Butterfly Skin, which was translated by Andrew Bromfield and published by Titan. Titan uses words like “gruesome” and “pathological” in its description, and Rice includes this sentence: “The result is a sustained look into the culture of Russian Internet journalism that should appeal to readers who like their thrillers strewn with journalistic details that don’t belong in evidence bags.” I was even happier to see that the November 7, 2014, issue of the Times Book Review contains Rich Cohen’s full-length review of Eugene Yelchin’s Arcady’s Goal, about a soccer-playing Russian boy whose parents are enemies of the people. I’ve read—and thoroughly enjoyed—a large chunk of the book and can’t help but agree with Cohen that, “The language is taut and dramatic. The illustrations are moody, stark and beautiful.” Yelchin packs an astounding amount of emotion and history into his taut writing.

Up Next. All those books I keep promising to write about, but which keep piling up, though I’m glad to have them waiting: Zakhar Prilepin’s The Cloister, with its hundreds of pages and small type, will definitely take some time. Thus far, I’m finding it compulsively readable… I have a slew of good books to write about: Evgeny Vodolazkin’s first novel, Solovyov and Larionov, Marina Stepnova’s Italian Lessons, and Viktor Remizov’s Ashes and Dust. Plus another slew of books I’ve been reading in English. Also: Big Book winners and a trip report about the American Literary Translators Association conference, coming up this week: I’ll be on my way to Milwaukee and the Polar Vortex soon. Brrr!

Disclaimers: The usual, including the fact that I work on occasional projects for Read Russia.

Yet More Award News, Part 10,223: NatsBest & Read Russia

Newest news first: Ksenia Buksha won the National Bestseller Award yesterday for her novel Завод “Свобода” (The “Freedom” Factory) and Anna Starobinets won National Bestseller’s “Beginning” award for her story collection Икарова железа (The Icarus Gland).

Buksha’s writing is pretty much unknown to me, other than a tiny book, a long story/novella called Inside Out (Наизнанку) that, alas, I couldn’t quite get into. I’ve read many good things about her work, though, and may order up a copy of Factory. Peculiarly enough, Starobinets, the alleged beginner, is far more familiar: in fact Starobinets’s literary agency, Banke, Goumen & Smironova, says The Icarus Gland is Starobinets’s seventh published book of prose. The Icarus Gland is even being translated, by Jamie Rann, for Skyscraper Publications and should be out this fall; Skyscraper founder Karl Sabbagh, whom I met last week at BookExpo America, formerly worked for Hesperus Press, which published Starobinets’s An Awkward Age (translated by Hugh Aplin) and The Living (translated by Jamie Rann). My favorite Starobinets (so far!) is still Sanctuary 3/9, a wonderfully creepy novel with lots of themes from folktales (previous post).

Sanctuary 3/9 makes a nice segue since the book was, in its own way, a part of the program at the Read Russia Prize ceremony on Friday night: the evening included a screening of the documentary film Russia’s Open Book, which features Starobinets and a brief excerpt from the book. (You, too, can watch Russia’s Open Book  right here. It’s well worth watching.)

As for the Read Russia Prize itself, Joanne Turnbull won for her translation of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s Autobiography of a Corpse, published by New York Review Books. The late Peter Carson’s translation of Lev Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Confession, published by W.W. Norton, received a second prize commendation. The list of nominees, available here, shows the contenders were a combination of classic and contemporary books.

Ellendea Proffer Teasley’s presence on Friday made the evening particularly memorable: Ardis books and Russian Literature Triquarterly were a crucial part of my Russian literature education, so it was a pleasure and, really, an honor to have a chance to meet Teasley.

Disclaimers: The usual for my work for/with Read Russia and several other entities and individuals mentioned in this post.

Up Next: Inspector NOSE results. Report on last week’s trip to New York for BookExpo America: it was lots of fun despite my unusually sore feet! And the books are piling up: Yuri Mamleyev’s The Sublimes is still waiting for its post, I’ve almost finished Irina Ratushinskaya’s The Odessans, Bulgakov’s White Guard remains “in progress,” plus I picked up a copy of Anna Matveeva’s story collection Подожди, я умру — и приду (Hold on, I’ll Die and Come Back) at the Read Russia booth. I read and enjoyed the first story in the collection on the plane ride home and (whoa!) am wondering if I might be in a short story frame of mind right now. That might be a very good thing, considering all the wonderful collections I rarely seem to get to…