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.

2011 London Book Fair Notes: Russia Market Focus

The highlight of my London Book Fair was meeting so many of you – it was tremendous fun talking about books and learning about what you do. A colossal thanks for telling me so much about yourselves and your work. I enjoyed the collegial atmosphere very much.

It’s impossible to condense everything I saw and heard during those three days, so I was thrilled to find Russian Dinosaur’s blog post about the LBF whilst riding the bus home from Boston. Days later I’m still feeling a bit fatigued and wanting to hide under a table, а-ля Valerii Briusov in the post’s photograph. I’ll pick up on one of Russian Dinosaur’s points later in the post…

Some of my favorite memories of the fair involve meeting the warm and very funny Margarita Khemlin, who spoke at Pushkin House about how family heirlooms – scissors, a fork – help inspire her writing. It was lovely to learn how objects and family members fit into her work, including the story I translated. It was wonderful chatting with her about her novels, particularly my beloved Klotsvog. Speaking of translation, I also enjoyed the “Found in Translation” panel. Though that panel was a little over-populated – six people, one hour – precluding in-depth discussion, some of the anecdotes were fun. Zinovy Zinik noted that some translators succeed beautifully in creating very readable translations despite mistakes: one character in his Mushroom Picker, translated by Michael Glenny, was a дантист in the original, but Glenny promoted him from dentist to Dante specialist in the translation. I was also grateful for the conversation about British and American English, a big topic during one-on-one discussions. John O’Brien, of Dalkey Archive Press, expressed his preference for translations that hover somewhere over the mid-Atlantic. He said vast differences in tone, slang, clichés, and everyday vocabulary – he mentioned the question of lifts and elevators – sometimes necessitate editor intervention to avoid alienating readers… But Robert Chandler noted that changing words can throw off sentence rhythm; he spoke of his experiences with New York Review Books, where it sounds as if changes are made only when misunderstandings might occur. Speaking of Robert Chandler and NYRB: this week’s New Republic contains a piece about The Road, a collection of Vasilii (Vasily) Grossman’s works. (I can e-mail you a link if you can’t access the article.)

I may get myself into a quagmire here but I’ll follow up on Russian Dinosaur’s apt comment about Mikhail Elizarov “blatantly over-performing.” The absurdly awkward combination of Elizarov, Zakhar Prilepin, and Polina Dashkova, moderated by Bridget Kendall, for “Beyond the Headlines: Writing about Russia Today,” resulted in a messily fascinating session. Yes, the three writers incorporate political themes into their books but there was palpable tension between Dashkova – who claimed she doesn’t write detective novels (!) – and Prilepin and Elizarov. By the end, Elizarov had trotted out statistics (whose, I don’t know) comparing deaths during the Stalin era, Queen Victoria’s reign, and the Great Depression, inspiring audience gasps (I don’t think I was imagining that) and much discomfort on the dais. Which was probably exactly the reaction he sought. Like Russian Dinosaur and others I spoke with who were there, I saw it as an exaggerated performance intended to provoke. Whether or not you like Elizarov’s tactics and/or writing, he’s a controversial and imaginative writer who explores uncomfortable territory about life, society, and politics. My post about his Librarian, and subsequent comments, demonstrate some of the discomfort he raises. He likes to poke the bear. I, too, have to wonder if he was bored… he and Prilepin were both extremely theatrical, which certainly kept things lively.

The evening program, with events held around London, contrasted nicely with the official-feeling daytime panel discussions held on daises with headphones for simultaneous interpretation. I attended several programs at Pushkin House, where a small, homey space encouraged mingling and discussion between writers and the public. “A Short History of Russian Literary Non-Conformism,” a packed evening hosted by the tireless Irina Prokhorova, included readings and music; I was very sorry to miss percussionist Vladimir Tarasov’s late-evening performance, but enjoyed readings from writers, particularly Zinovy Zinik, who described his “double zed” cocktail of vodka and lime. I wish they’d been served! Two evenings later, in a Q&A session with fans, Liudmila Ulitskaya revealed various aspects of her personal life and tastes: she eats oatmeal, rarely take vacations, and when asked about writers she respects, listed Andrei Platonov, Liudmilla Petrushevskaia, and Venedikt Erofeev’s Москва-Петушки, among others. Some London-based friends and I also had a great time at Foyle’s hearing two writers we don’t even read much: Dmitry Glukhovsky and Sergey Lukyanenko. They were engaging as they spoke about their fantasy/science fiction books, showing plentiful good humor. Plus respect for Johnny Depp. The audience clearly loved them: the line for book signing was very long.

There’s lots, lots more I could write, including about two Mikhails I particularly enjoyed hearing speak in panels and talking with, albeit briefly: Mikhail Shiskin called for more universal themes to move Russian fiction out of a “ghetto” and back into world literature, and Mikhail Gigolashvili discussed how multilingual life makes him more creative… I was very happy to hear Gigolashvili has another book on the way. Then there was my most unexpected moment: debating the ending of Asystole with its author, Oleg Pavlov. Finally, I should note that I’ve already heard about several good, varied possibilities for English translations, meaning LBF’s Russian program is already accomplishing what it was supposed to accomplish: sales. I’m awaiting news that I can make public.

The full LBF Russia program is online here; if you have a question about a specific event or writer who is not named Dmitrii Bykov (Is it true he bailed out and went to California!? I guess so.), e-mail me or add a comment. Maybe I or someone else can offer information or clarification. I had an absolutely wonderful time but am happy to be back at home, recovering my mental energy and getting back to my reading and writing! Again, thank you to everyone – particularly Academia Rossica, British Council, and all the attendees I met and heard – who made the book fair so productive, worthwhile, and fun for me. I can’t wait to do it again in New York next year.

For more:

• Russian Dinosaur: A fun summary of events with a Valerii Briusov tie-in. And Elif Batuman’s boots.
• Russian BookWorld: This radio show includes discussion of the Новый литературный обозреватель/New Literary Observer program and the ever-energetic Elena Rubinova’s quick interviews with Irina Prokhorova, Zinovy Zinik, Mikhail Shishkin, and Andrew Bromfield.
• Publishers Weekly: A pre-LBF piece about the Russian book market. And full LBF coverage.
• OpenSpace.ru: Some nice photos of the book fair itself and, apparently, a reception.

Up Next. I can’t wait to get back to writing about the books I read! Coming up: VladimirSorokin’s Путь Бро (Bro), Aleksandr Snegirev’s Тщеславие (Vanity), then a book by Vardvan Varzhapetian, Margarita Khemlin’s husband, who is also a tremendously engaging writer.

The 2010 Russian Booker Long List

It’s July 1, which means we have a Russian Booker Prize long list. The Booker people received 95 nominations and chose 24 for the list; last year they received 82 nominations. The six-book short list will be announced on October 6, and the winner will be named on December 2.

A number of this year’s long listers are already on the 2010 Big Book short list:

• Mikhail Gigolashvili – Чертово колесо (The Devil’s Wheel) (5 глав из романа)
• Oleg Zaionchkovskii – Счастье возможно: Роман нашего времени (Happiness Is Possible: A Novel of Our Time) (excerpts)
• Evgenii Kliuev – Андерманир штук (Something Else for You – Languagehat has a discussion of the name of this book here)
• Pavel Krusanov – Мёртвый язык (A/The Dead Language)
• Oleg Pavlov – Асистолия (Asystole [Flatline]) (начало) (окончание)
• Viktor Pelevin – t
• German Sadulaev – Шалинский рейд (The Raid on Shali) (начало) (окончание)

Other notable books include:

• Mariam Petrosian’s Дом, в котором... (The House in Which…), a 2009 Big Book finalist that won third prize in the readers’ vote
• Andrei Astvatsaturov’s Люди в голом (People in the Nude), a National Bestseller finalist and NOSE finalist. (earlier post with description) Previous writing from Astvatsaturov is on Журнальный зал here.

I’m especially interested in these two books, both of which made the 2010 Big Book long list but not the cut for the short list:

• Bakhyt Kenzheev’s Обрезание пасынков (Pruning the Shoots) because two friends have recommended it and it’s waiting for me on my shelf
• Margarita Khemlin’s Клоцвог (Klotsvog) because I enjoyed her last book so much (previous post)

The only Booker long list book that I’ve already read is Zaionchkovskii’s Happiness Is Possible, which I thought was very good. (previous post)

The full Booker long list is online here. I’d love to hear from anyone who’s read any of the books on the list.

Finding Happiness in Zaionchkovskii’s Happiness

I’m happy I didn’t know much about Oleg Zaionchkovskii’s Счастье возможно: Роман нашего времени (Happiness Is Possible: A Novel of Our Time) before I bought it. Had I known this Big Book award finalist consists of loosely linked short stories, I might have skipped it. Several of you have recommended Zaionchkovskii to me but my stubborn love of long-haul fiction means twenty-four stories in three hundred pages with largish print doesn’t sound like my kind of happiness.

Had I known more about the book and not bought it, I would have missed out on a beautifully indescribable collection of pieces about, yes, happiness. And life in general (of course), death (of course), love (of course), and living with a dog named Phil (a new twist on the happiness theme). Zaionchkovskii’s stories describe everyday occurrences in the life of a divorced Russian writer who often visits with his ex-wife and her husband. (Ouch!) We learn about voices heard through kitchen vents, a fishing trip with rain and cows, a funeral, newlywed housing, and the smell of a sewage treatment plant. Each story has its own small-scale narrative arc but the stories combine to create a meta-arc that gives the book a conclusion.

I think it’s safe to say the Novel of Our Time portion of the book’s title alludes to Mikhail Lermontov’s Герой нашего времени (Hero of Our Time) (previous post), another novel-in-short-stories. Zaionchkovskii’s book is more unified than Lermontov’s, though, employing just one first-person narrator, a writer who occasionally incorporates his fictional characters into stories about his own life.

The air of metafiction is mercifully minimalist and muted in Happiness: though it’s clear the writer in the book is writing about himself (and perhaps even incorporating aspects of his creator’s life?), the narrative voice is so unpretentiously conversational and friendly that I never felt I was being pomo-ed to a pulp. And because the book creates such a detailed portrait of the narrator using colloquial language and humblingly mundane happenings, I almost felt he truly was talking to me, not some anonymous reader, when he reached out using the second person.

Zaionchkovskii handles the temporal aspect of of Our Time nicely, too: Happiness Is Possible depicts contemporary Russian life with a blend of dark and quiet humor, wistfulness, and a combination of involvement and detachment. Plenty of details from post-Soviet Russia are here: how people go to a funeral, a pricey-sounding SUV, sleeping with the realtor, and the coincidences of Одноклассники, Classmates, a Russian site like Facebook. There are even memorable minor characters, such as an escalator lady from the Moscow Metro (ah, memories!) and a vodka-drinking cow herder, plus an appearance by the ubiquitous Christmas tree air freshener.

The fun of Happiness Is Possible wasn’t that I sometimes finished reading stories with a smile on my face – though that happened more than once – but that I read an intimate picture of a character who continually adapts, usually with success, to the conditions around him, no matter how absurd they are. And then there’s the book’s tone, which avoids cynicism but has just enough of an edge to prevent the book and the happiness it depicts from sinking into sugar or cheese. The power of the calm, cautious optimism in Zaionchkovskii’s book is that it made me happy because it is neither overbearing nor empty.

Level for non-native readers of Russian: 2.5 or 3/5. Happiness Is Possible read very easily and enjoyably for me because it’s written in fairly conversational Russian, though readers without experience living in Russia may find some of the vocabulary difficult.

Up next: Fate has been sending me lots of short(er) fiction lately… Two short novels from Vladimir Sorokin: День опричника (A Day in the Life of an Oprichnik, as FSG is evidently calling the English-language translation), which I liked a lot and won’t attempt to summarize here, and Метель (The Blizzard), which I’m just starting. I’m also enjoying Moscow Noir, an anthology of English translations of Russian stories that Akashic Books sent to me after Book Expo America (previous post).

Big Book’s Long 2010 Short List &tc.

2010 Big Book Finalists. The Big Book award people issued their short-but-long list of 14 finalists today. The jury has plenty of time to read: the winners won’t be named until November.

The finalists are:

• Andrei Baldin – Московские праздные дни (Idle Moscow Days)
• Pavel Basinskii – ЛЕВ ТОЛСТОЙ: бегство из рая (LEV TOLSTOY: Escape From Heaven/Paradise)
• Evgenii Vodolazkin – Соловьёв и Ларионов (Solov’ev i Larionov) (description with brief excerpt)
• Mikhail Gigolashvili – Чертово колесо (The Devil’s Wheel) (5 глав из романа)
• Boris Evseev – Евстигней (Evstigney). This one is evidently a historical novel about Evstigney Fomin (excerpt)
• Oleg Zaionchkovskii – Счастье возможно: Роман нашего времени (Happiness Is Possible: A Novel of Our Time) (excerpts)
• Aleksandr Ilichevskii – Перс (The Persian) (excerpt)
• Evgenii Kliuev – Андерманир штук (Something Else for You – (?) I found a translation of the Russian title phrase in this article by Catriona Kelly)
• Pavel Krusanov – Мёртвый язык (A/The Dead Language)
• Oleg Pavlov – Асистолия (Asystole [Flatline]) (начало) (окончание)
• Viktor Pelevin – t
• German Sadulaev – Шалинский рейд (The Raid on Shali) (начало) (окончание)
• Roman Senchin – Елтышевы (The Yeltyshevs) (начало) (окончание) (previous post – Disclosure: this is the book I liked so much that I contributed to a proposal for an English translation.)
• Asar Eppel’ – Латунная луна (The Brass(y?) Moon) (title story)

I have Zaionchkovskii’s book on my shelf and am looking forward to reading it soon – somehow, it looks very inviting. Several of these books appear to have been published only in journal form thus far. Speaking of “thick” journals, which are the first to publish so much of Russia’s best literary fiction, I was excited to see several shelves of journals at the Seattle Public Library when I visited last weekend.

Edit: The Комсомольская правда Web site has brief summaries of each writer’s bio plus full texts of each book online. You can get started here.

A New Blog. And a bit of news from Washington State: Jamie Olson, who translates Russian poetry into English and teaches in the English Department at Saint Martin’s University, started a blog about Russian poetry, The Flaxen Wave.

Book Expo America. After missing out on the London Book Fair I decided to go to Book Expo America next week. My agenda will include learning more about Akashic’s short story collection Moscow Noir, due out this summer, and getting a progress report from Overlook on the English translation of Liudmila Ulitskaya’s Daniel Stein, Translator (previous post).

Coming Up. I’m a little behind in writing about books I’ve read… I’ll be posting soon about Mikhail Bulgakov’s Театральный роман (known in English as Black Snow: A Theatrical Novel and A Dead Man’s Memoir: A Theatrical Novel) plus Boris Akunin’s Весь мир театр (All the World’s a Theater/Stage). I didn’t love either one, but I finished them, unlike Vladimir Makanin’s Иsпуг (Fear or Fright).

National Bestseller Finalists & A Nabokov-Related Translation Award

I always enjoy looking up books that are shortlisted for awards -- this year’s National Bestseller short list was good fun thanks to lots of variety... Here are the six finalists and their point totals for this round:

Roman Senchin’s Елтышевы (The Yeltyshevs), which was a 2009 Booker finalist, received 11 points. Senchin’s work, including The Yeltyshevs, is on Журнальный зал here.

Andrei Astvatsaturov’s Люди в голом (People in the Nude), received 7 points. People in the Nude was a 2009 NOSE award finalist. (earlier post with description) Previous writing from Astvatsaturov is on Журнальный зал here.

Vasilii Avchenko’s Правый руль (Wheel on the Right) collected 6 points. (previous post with brief description)

Pavel Krusanov’s Мертвый язык ((A/The?) Dead Language), which Openspace.ru says should have been called Мертвый критик (The Dead Critic), had 6 points. I gather from the review that the main character is an old guard St. Petersburg undergroundish guy dissatisfied with the world. Openspace makes it sound like Dead Language is Chinese water torture with words instead of water. Other work by Krusanov is on Журнальный зал here.

Oleg Lukoshin totaled 6 points for his “повесть-комикс” (story-comics) Капитализм (Capitalism), which appears to be composed of many short sketches written in short sentences. Taking a very quick look at this review I noticed that its writer sees Capitalism as drawing on Chekhov’s “Спать хочется” (“Sleepy”), among other works. The NatsBest site notes that Lukoshin’s book made the short list through popular voting on Live Journal; it was listed as the longest shot to win, with 1:12 odds.

Eduard Kochergin’s Крещенные крестами (Baptized with Crosses) received 5 points. The NatsBest site calls this book autobiographical; the book’s Ozon.ru listing says it relates Kochergin’s childhood experiences running away from a temporary home in Omsk for children of enemies of the people. Other works by Kochergin are on Журнальный зал here.

I’ve only read one of the books, The Yeltyshevs, which I thought was so good (previous post) that I am now (disclosure here!) contributing to a proposal for publishing it in translation. I keep meaning to read the one Kursanov book, Бом-бом (Bom-Bom), that’s on my shelf.

Russian language NatsBest commentary on the finalists is available here.

A note for Nabokovians: I learned from Three Percent that Ross Benjamin won the Wolff Translation Prize from the Goethe Institut for his translation of Michael Maar’s Speak, Nabokov. Here’s an excerpt on n+1.

Russian Literature at the London Book Fair

I’m very excited to be heading to London soon for the London Book Fair and a morning-to-night program of Russian literature events organized by Academia Rossica! Academia Rossica calls this year’s program focus “fantasy and magical realism,” an aptly broad description that fits the diverse writers and critics who will speak and/or read: Dmitry Bykov, Lev Danilkin, Maria Galina, Sergei Lukyanenko, Olga Slavnikova, and Vladimir Sharov.

The schedule also includes seminar discussions on the Russian publishing market and literary translation. Russian programs at the book fair itself are listed here (click on the phrases at the top of the sidebar for full details), and there is a list of evening readings here. I’m especially looking forward to the “Voices from the Future – The Debut Prize for New Russian Writers” session on the 20^th: I translated a few short pieces for Squaring the Circle, an anthology published by Glas that collects work by winners of the Debut Prize.

This week I’ll post two pieces related to writers who will be at the book fair: thoughts on Bykov’s ЖД (recently released in translation as Living Souls) plus an interview with Marian Schwartz, who translated Slavnikova’s 2017.

Let me know if you’ll be at the book fair and would like to meet up… or if you have a question for one of the writers. I’ll see what I can do to get answers!

Favorite Russian Writers A to Я: Zamiatin Plus Znamya

Ah, the letters Ж (Zh) and З (Z)! I decided to combine them since they do fall one right after the other in the alphabet and I’ve read so little by writers with Zh and Z names.

I only have one real, true Z-rooted favorite: Evgenii Zamiatin (Yevgeny Zamyatin). And that’s thanks to one book, Мы (We), which I haven’t read in years, and a few stories, particularly “Пещера” (“The Cave”). I read We several times in translation during my college years, when I was fixated on dystopias and still hadn’t forgotten math. I should reread it, in Russian this time, and move on to some of Zamiatin’s other works, like Уездное (A Provincial Tale) and Островитяне (Islanders).

Beyond Zamiatin, I just don’t have much Ж or З experience. I always enjoy Mikhail Zoshchenko when I pick up his stories because I love his humor… but I never seem to read much because of my overwhelming preference for long stories and novels. It doesn’t help that my Zoshchenko books love to cultivate mildew. Fungus can be a positive, though: I liked Zinovy Zinik’s The Mushroom Picker (evidently known as Русофобка и фунгофил in Russian), which includes ample servings of food and laugh-out-loud humor. I read the book in translation some years ago but haven’t sought out more Zinik. I should.

I’m even worse off with Zh/Z poetry. I have faint memories of reading Vasilii Zhukovskii (Vasily Zhukovsky), whom Mirsky’s History of Russian Literature calls “the first pioneer and the accepted patriarch of the Golden Age.” And then there’s 20^th-century poet Nikolai Zabolotskii, pretty much terra incognita, though on my shelf.

A Z-Related Note. Probably the easiest place to look for more of Zinik’s work is a Russian literary journal with a name beginning in З: Знамя (Znamia for “banner”). Znamia offers lots of Zinik on this page, and recent issues of the journal have published fiction by German Sadulaev, Aleksandr Snegirev, Yury Buida, and Leonid Zorin. Maybe I should start with Zorin, since his name begins with Z and Znamia has published a lot of his work. Znamia also makes annual literary awards.

The Z-List for Future Reading: Beyond getting caught up on my Zamiatin and finding more Zinik, I want to give Vladimir Zhabotinskii’s (Jabotinsky) Пятеро (The Five) another try after setting it aside a few years ago. I learned about the novel from The New Republic, which published this positive review of Michael Katz’s translation in 2005.

Ideas for more Zh and Z reading are, as always, very welcome. I’d be particularly curious to hear thoughts on Aleksandr Zinov’ev (Alexander Zinoviev), whom I’ve never read.

Illustration: Boris Kustodiev's portrait of Evgenii Zamiatin, 1923. (Via Wikipedia)

Zamyatin on Amazon

Zoshchenko on Amazon
Zinik on Amazon
Jabotinsky's The Five on Amazon
Zinov'ev on Amazon

Notable New Translations: What 2009 Brought

It’s the season for year-end lists so I thought I’d take a look at translations that brought Russian fiction into English translation for the first time in 2009. I always enjoy acknowledging translators and their publishers, and the list is so varied it should provide some fun ideas for personal reading or holiday gifts. I began by looking at the translation database from Three Percent (available here, updated here on 2 December), then added a few items that weren’t on that list…

Those of you who visit this blog regularly can probably divine that I think 2009’s most exciting releases are anthologies of contemporary Russian short stories: Rasskazy, from Tin House, and Life Stories from Russian Information Services. (All posts: Rasskazy Life Stories) Both books are treats because their varied voices, literary devices, and topics form a tremendous mosaic. I’ll be writing a full post about Rasskazy within the next week or so and hope to get to Life Stories in December.

Several more of Boris Akunin’s novels (previous post) made it into English this year, thanks to translator Andrew Bromfield: Pelagia and the Red Cockerel (Random House), plus two of Akunin’s Erast Fandorin books, Coronation and She Lover of Death (imports in the US; Weidenfeld & Nicholson). I love Akunin’s Fandorin novels, and She Lover of Death is a sentimental favorite because it was the first book I read when I got back into reading Russian fiction about five years ago. Bromfield is prolific: his translation of Andrei Rubanov’s Do Time Get Time, from Old Street Publishing, came out in May, too.

Last weekend’s post about Anna Starobinets (here) mentioned her story collection An Awkward Age, translated by Hugh Aplin and published by Hesperus Press, as well as Liudmilla Petrushevskaya’s There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales, translated by Keith Gessen and Anna Summers, and published by Penguin. (Edit: Jessa Crispin's "A World of Novels: Picks for Best Foreign Fiction," on NPR.org, includes Petrushevskaya's book and links to the title story, which actually carries the modest title "Revenge.")

Northwestern University Press brought out two new Russian titles in 2009: Gaito Gazdanov’s Night Roads, translated by Justin Doherty, and Ivan Shcheglov’s novella The Dacha Husband, translated by Michael Katz. I’m familiar with Gazdanov – I just finished his atmospheric Призрак Александра Вольфа (The Ghost of Alexander Wolf) – but Shcheglov is a new name for me. Another writer I haven’t read is Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, whom Joanne Turnbull and Nikolai Formozov translated for the (partially) new collection from New York Review Books, Memories of the Future. (previous post)

Amanda Love Darragh, who won this year’s Rossica Prize for translating Maria Galina’s Iramifications, translated A Jewish God in Paris, a trio of novellas by Mikhail Levitin; Glas published both books. Polly Gannon’s translation of Max Frei’s The Stranger (Overlook) brings the first book of the popular, magical-sounding science fiction series Labyrinths of Echo into English. I’ve never read Frei but have the second book in the series – I just never seem to start with the first book.

I should add that there are several ongoing sources of translated Russian stories and excerpts, too: Rossica, from Academia Rossica, and Readings/Чтения, from Russian Information Services. Glas has also published a number of anthologies of translations, and the Glas Web site includes many samples.

A slightly off-topic note about a book that had already been translated: late fall 2009 brought two new translations of Ilf and Petrov’s Золотой телёнок: The Golden Calf from Konstantin Gurevich and Helen Anderson (Open Letter) and The Little Golden Calf from Anne O. Fisher (Russian Information Services). Either Calf would make a fine holiday gift. I haven’t (and won’t!) compare the quality of the translations but have observed, based on my online preview of the Open Letter book and an advance copy of the book from Russian Information Services, that the books show clear differences in philosophy.

I’m not trying to be diplomatic when I say that I don’t honestly know which one I’d choose if I were buying a gift (likely to happen soon) or planning a first-time reading of the book. On the one hand, I like Open Letter’s philosophy of minimalist notes. Notes distract me because I compulsively look to see if I’m missing something. On the other hand, cultural differences mean notes will help readers understand the book, so the RIS book’s detailed historical introduction, hundreds of notes, plus two appendices are pretty useful and, yes, fun to read. Interestingly enough, Complete Review’s review calls the Open Letter book’s explanatory notes “a very limited and almost random grab-bag: more (or none) would have been preferable.” All that aside, I often like to say that the best translation is the one you’re most likely to read and love, so compare the first pages for yourself on Open Letter’s site or Look Inside from Amazon.

Disclosure: I received complementary copies of three books and one journal mentioned in this post: Rasskazy, Life Stories, The Little Golden Calf, and Чтения/Readings. I always welcome notifications about new translations.

Rasskazy on Amazon
Life Stories on Amazon
Boris Akunin on Amazon
Do Time Get Time on Amazon
An Awkward Age on Amazon
There Once Lived a Woman... on Amazon
Night Roads on Amazon
The Dacha Husband on Amazon
Memories of the Future on Amazon
A Jewish God in Paris on Amazon
The Stranger (The Labyrinths of Echo) on Amazon
The Golden Calf on Amazon
The Little Golden Calf on Amazon

Wandering Life’s Corridors in Makanin’s Underground

Vladimir Makanin’s 1999 Booker Prize finalist Андеграунд, или герой нашего времени (Underground or A Hero of Our Time) feels like a literary missing link in my reading of Makanin’s fiction. I haven’t read all Makanin’s work, but Underground sure feels like a stylistic and thematic midway point between the spare 1992 Лаз (Escape Hatch), also a Booker finalist, and the stream-of-consciousness Асан (Asan), 2008’s Big Book winner. (previous post on Asan) (previous post on Escape Hatch)

Underground chronicles, in first-person narrative, a homeless 50-something nonwriting writer’s wanderings through mental and physical corridors that he compares to life itself. Petrovich apartment-sits for residents of a dormitory-like building, drinks quite a bit, and twice commits murder. The first half of this 550-page book felt like baggy, linked, almost stream-of-consciousness stories, but the second half read like a suspenseful and emotional novel, in chapters. I got so caught up in the end that I had a strange, dazed feeling when I finished.

Makanin builds much of Underground around references to Russian literature, which Petrovich claims as a key value, though I don’t seem to recall him reading much. The title refers to Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground plus Lermontov’s Hero of Our Time (previous post). Petrovich certainly is an underground, intelligentsia, superfluous poster guy for the perestroika era, someone with a lot of “I” but no set home, job, or apparent value to society. Makanin opens the book with an epigraph from Lermontov, the famous line saying that his character’s portrait is a composite.

Petrovich likens himself and an old friend – a writer-double who is successful in the West – to a fable about a wolf with its freedom and a well-fed dog wearing a collar. Petrovich, of course, is the free wolf, and a proud Undergrounder, too. According to Petrovich, “Андеграунд – подсознание общества” – “The Underground is society’s subconscious.” Petrovich traces the Underground and his own intellectual heritage to Russia’s hermit monks, émigrés, and dissidents. Makanin also used an underground theme in Escape Hatch: a man crawls through a hole between above- and below-ground worlds.

Petrovich’s preference for the Underground fits with Mikhail Bakhtin’s discussion of Dostoevsky’s Underground Man in Проблемы поэтики Достоевского (Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics), where he writes that the dominant aspect of the Underground Man is self-consciousness. Petrovich’s goal, even in killing, is always to preserve his “я” (“I”), which he also calls his жильё (living place).

The combination of gritty, naturalistic details and literariness makes the book feel hyperreal and symbolic or allegorical. (I would call “условная” in Russian.) Petrovich’s breakdown in a homeless shelter is particularly scary in both real and symbolic ways, with its monosyllabic shrieks, Vietnamese neighbors jumping on him, and extreme existential distress.

Petrovich ends up in the same hospital as his brother Venya, another double of sorts. Venya is an artist who represents the brothers’ childhood; he has spent most of his adult life in the hospital and reverts to childhood behaviors when he has a day out. More allusions? The name Venya reminded me of Venedikt Erofeev’s Москва-Петушки (Moscow to the End of the Line or Moskva-Petushki), with its introspection and drinking, and it may be unintentional, but one of the hospital episodes churned up distant memories of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Another: the chapter on Venya’s day of freedom refers to the title Один день Ивана Денисовича (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich).

Makanin packs so many characters, social observations, and allusions into Underground that the book is messy and crowded, difficult to read and describe. But, like Erofeev’s Moskva-Petushki, form reflects content, and I don’t think Underground would work if it were smooth and easy. I admit I had so much trouble with the stylistic and plot wanderings at the beginning of Underground that I considered stopping half-way through, but then a crisis gave the book so much drive that I couldn’t put it down.

To return to the missing link: the combination of realism and literary devices that felt contrived to me in Asan felt appropriate, even masterful, in Underground… I wonder if the reason is that Makanin felt closer to Petrovich’s writerly “я” in Underground than Zhilin’s military “я” in Asan.

Underground is available online, in Russian, here.

Makanin on Amazon

Favorite Russian Writers A to Я: Dostoevsky (+Dovlatov and Dal’)

Fyodor Mikhailovich, it had to be you! Dostoevsky didn’t became my letter D favorite by default, but the pool of Russian D-writers is so small and Dostoevsky is so worth reading (and rereading) that deliberations were quick and easy.

Dostoevsky and I have been acquainted since my senior year of high school, when my English class read Преступление и наказание (Crime and Punishment). (mentioned in this previous post) Though I haven’t reread C&P since, I feel like it’s always with me because its characters and themes are so ingrained in Russian culture that they seem to pop up in every soapy TV series I watch to keep from falling off the treadmill.

I’ve long recommended two all-time Dostoevsky favorites to anyone interested in Russia or Russian literature: Записки из подполья (Notes from the Underground) and “Легенда великого инквизитора” (“Legend of the Grand Inquisitor”), a self-contained story within the gigantic novel Братья Карамазовы (The Brothers Karamazov). Записки из мёртвого дома (Notes from the House of the Dead), an account of prison camp, is another favorite: the scenes at Christmas are beautiful.

Sergei Dovlatov endeared himself to me so much with Компромисс (The Compromise) (previous post) and certain parts of Заповедник (The Reserve) that I can’t leave him out. Though some of his writing about emigration is good, for my taste, Dovlatov is at his best when he writes about Soviet absurdity.

Off-topic honorable mention goes to Vladimir Dal’ for his nineteenth-century Russian dictionaries. I have a mismatched four-volume set that I bought in the early ‘90s that seems to suck lots of time out of my schedule whenever I look up a word or expression.

The D-List for Future Reading: I have a few Dostoevsky rereads in mind, particularly Notes from the Underground and Crime and Punishment, plus some novellas/long stories that I’ve never read: “Вечный муж” (“The Eternal Husband”) and “Скверный анекдот” (often translated as “A Nasty Story”). Dovlatov’s Зона (The Zone) is on my shelf, too, and I have high hopes for Iurii Dombrovskii’s Факультет ненужных вещей (The Faculty of Useless Knowledge). Dal’, of course, never leaves my office!

Dostoevsky on Amazon

Dovlatov on Amazon

Dombrovsky on Amazon

Big Book 2009: A Lengthy Short List

Only a literary award program called “Большая книга” (“Big Book”) would name a short list of 13 books and writers. Here are the Big Book 2009 finalists:

Andrei Baldin – Протяжение точки (The Space of a Dot… this title could go in many directions…)

Andrei Volos – Победитель (The Victor)

Maria Galina – Малая Глуша (Small Glusha)

Boris Evseev – Лавка нищих (A Shop for the Poor)

Leonid Zorin – Скверный глобус (The Wretched Globe)

Alla Marchenko – Ахматова: жизнь (Akhmatova: A Life)

Vladimir Orlov – Камергерский переулок (Kamergerskii Lane)

Marian Petrosian – Дом, в котором… (The House in Which…)

Ol’ga Slavnikova – Любовь в седьмом вагоне (Love in the Seventh Carriage)

Aleksandr Terekhov – Каменный мост (The Stone Bridge)

Boris Khazanov – Вчерашняя вечность (Yesterday’s Eternity)

Leonid Iuzefovich – Журавли и карлики (beginning middle end) (Cranes and Dwarfs)

Vadim Iarmolinets – Свинцовый дирижабль “Иерихон – 86-89” (The Lead Dirigible “Jericho-86-89”) I suspect this is the only book on the short list to include Led Zeppelin lyrics.

Maria Galina is having a great week: Iramifications, Amanda Love Darragh’s translation of Galina’s Гиви и Шендерович won the Rossica Prize for translation a few days ago (today’s first post). Khazanov’s book won the Russian Award earlier this year.