2016 Yasnaya Polyana Award Shortlists

I was very sorry to have to leave Moscow before the jury for the Yasnaya Polyana Award announced its 2016 shortlists: six books in the “XXI Century” division and three books in the “Childhood, Adolescence, Youth” division. Winners will be announced in late October. Without further ado—other than my usual caveat that many titles and book descriptions are problematic—here’s the list, in Russian alphabetical order by author:

Narine Abgaryan’s С неба упали три яблока (Three Apples Fell from the Sky), the only book on the list that I’ve read in its entirety (previous post). It’s a lovely book and I enjoyed translating excerpts.

Sukhbat Aflatuni’s Поклонение волхвов (Adoration of the Magi), about which I wrote, earlier: “[it] sounds like it captures a lot, from the familiar biblical story in the title to a family story that begins in the middle of the nineteenth century and concludes in the present, with plot lines that involve a secret society, exile, and a romance with the tsar. Aflatuni’s name keeps popping up on award lists.” Though Adoration sounds very good, I bought Aflatuni’s The Ant Tsar/King in Moscow instead, primarily because it came first, is shorter, and sounds a bit simpler, better for easing myself into Aflatuni’s world.

Aleksandr Grigorenko’s Потерял слепой дуду, is a novella with a title I’m not sure how to translate, particularly since a quick look at the text shows play with language. Jury member Vladislav Otroshenko is quoted on the YP site as being especially pleased the novella made the list; it was among the books and stories he recommended to me when I saw him in Moscow. I thoroughly enjoyed Grigorenko’s Mebet (previous post) and bought Ilget in Moscow; I hope this novella comes out in book form, too.

Boris Minaev’s Мягкая ткань (Soft Fabric), a two-book combo: Батист (part 1) (part 2) (Batiste) and Сукно (Broadcloth or something similar, a heavyish fabric, often woolen; textiles were never my forte even when I sewed a lot!). I heard about the first book from a friend who’d loved it months ago so I was very happy when the publisher, Vremya, gave me copies of the first two books. The fabric apparently refers to life’s fabric, and the books are set primarily in the early twentieth century.

Vladimir Eisner’s Гранатовый остров (Garnet Island is my guess, based on a reader review I found), a collection of long and short stories about life in the Russian north. I love northern stories (see above, Mebet) and do appreciate books with polar bears on the cover.

Leonid Yuzefovich’s Зимняя дорога (The Winter Road), which already won the 2016 National Bestseller Award and is already on the Big Book shortlist, too. It’s a very absorbing “documentary novel” whose cover says “General A.N. Pepeliaev and anarchist I.Ia. Strod in Yakutia. 1922-1923.” As I’ve said before, Yuzefovich works wonders with archival materials.

In the children’s literature division:

Marina Moskvina and Yulia Govorova’s Ты, главное, пиши о любви (Write about Love, That’s the Main Thing or thereabout, albeit with a “you” thrown in) is an epistolary novel written by a writing teacher (Moskvina) and her student (Govorova), who moves to Pushkinskie Gory to work in a zoo.

Marina Nefedova’s Лесник и его нимфа (The Woodsman and His Nymph) is apparently about 1980s Moscow hippies—one of whom is a Janis Joplin sort of figure—and choices between art and love.

Yulia Yakovleva’s Дети ворона (The Raven’s Children, though the “raven” referred to here isn’t a bird, it’s what’s often known in English as a Black Maria…) is set in 1938: two children are left without their parents and younger brother. It’s the first in a cycle of stories about Leningrad.

Disclaimers: I am still a bit sleepy and hope this post makes sense (and lacks weird mistakes!). Two of the Yasnaya Polyana Award’s jury members—Eugene Vodolazkin and Vladislav Otroshenko—are authors I’ve translated. Some of these books have come to me from publishers and literary agents; I’ve translated excerpts of Abgaryan’s book.

Up Next: Moscow trip report (including a record heavy homeward haul of books that includes books by Aflatuni, Grigorenko, and Minaev), Ludmila Ulitskaya’s Jacob’s Ladder, Alexander Snegirev’s Vera (Faith), and Oleg Zaionchkovsky’s Timosha’s Prose.

Quick Takes: Shulpyakov, Georgia, One of My Translations

Sometimes the best thing a book can do for me, particularly during busy spells—like, say, the last two years—is leave me with a pleasant, blurry feeling of having read an enjoyable book. The details that stick (and sometimes there aren’t very many, even if the book is thought-provoking and complex) aren’t nearly as important as the experience of reading a book that carries me away from dismembering and rebuilding sentences, deadlines, and my searches for apt words. On this short “spring forward” day, here are short takes on two books I found especially enjoyable for reasons I can’t exactly explain…

At first glance, Gleb Shulpyakov’s Музей имени Данте (Museum Named for Dante) seems like an odd candidate for a busy-time book: it’s a moderately thick novel about, among other favorite themes, political and social changes, and Shulpyakov incorporates poems, diary entries, and a play. There’s so much in the book—changes in geographical and temporal settings, literary references, love stories, the prickly poet Gek (“Gek” is what Huck Finn is called in Russian), and all sorts of other layers—that I’d even forgotten the main Dante connection (Reminder: not all details stick!) until I looked at my notes: our narrator, a sometime TV journalist and sometime used book dealer finds a draft translation of part of Dante’s Inferno.

There are two aspects of Museum that held particular powers to generate those pleasant, blurry impressions I mentioned above: nineties Moscow and the language Shulpyakov gives his first-person narrator. Nineties Moscow is, of course, a favorite setting since I lived there, though Shulpyakov does well with lots of travel, too, including to a remote island and a dig. Shulpyakov includes tanks in central Moscow, booksellers, mentions of Khasbulatov and Yeltsin that help make this another October Events novel, and references to period details like the MMM pyramid scheme and the TV show “600 Секунд” (600 Seconds). On another level, our narrator notes that he feels like an uncomfortable loser in a new place and time, wondering if he belongs in a place where the comfort of the kitchen is disappearing. This is familiar, too. As for language, Shulpyakov’s writing has a clear, simple elegance that I admire. I think the language is a big part of why the book grabbed me so nicely: the simplicity of the language meant I didn’t have to stop much to sort through difficult sentences, leaving me open to getting fully drawn into the book’s content on an almost subconscious, dream-like level. That’s a great feeling, even if it’s difficult to describe.

Eggplant! Spinach!

Another book I was sorry to finish is Waiting for the Electricity, a novel set mostly Georgia and written by Christina Nichol, who has lived in Georgia. Of course Georgia isn’t Russia and the book is written in English, but the word pirozhok does appear on the first page and the novel was so much fun—the description on the front flap includes terms like “gleeful picaresque” and “visionary satire”—that I stretched my reading out over months so I wouldn’t finish. I feel okay about that because our (un?)faithful narrator says “where there is speed there is no feeling.” Who cares that he was talking about disco, “this doom-boom-doom music,” instead of books?

It wasn’t the plot that kept me going with this book, either, though there’s lots of great material—power outages, a love story, quirky work details—and the thought of a maritime lawyer named Slims Achmed Makashvili sending letters to Hillary Clinton because he wants to go on a technical training program to the United States certainly has its appeal. What I loved was (and maybe there’s a trend here?) the language Nichol gives her first-person narrator. Her language combines beautifully with her eye for details: “Tbilisi is a small city and on the street it is possible to recognize many people: the hundred-year-old Soviet ballerina, the talk show host whose huge yellow sunglasses make him look like a bug, the documentarians who make films about ancient door locks. Look in front of the bank. The security guard was once a famous bison breeder.” In the next paragraph there’s a mention of “the modern American emotion of stress.” Later, when Slims is stopped by a policeman and asked if he’s been drinking and says he hasn’t, the cop asks, “Why is your passenger wearing a seatbelt then?” It’s because Slims’s British passenger refuses to ride without wearing a safety belt. And then there’s all the food, appetizingly torturous given the lack of Georgian restaurants in Maine. Page 261 includes chicken in walnut sauce, tomato salads with peppers and herbs, mutton pilov, a pastry with noodles and cheese, and the line, “The food on the table wasn’t just food but pure philosophy.” This is a book to give someone along with a copy of Darra Goldstein’s The Georgian Feast and a few packets of khmeli suneli, a wonderful spice blend that, for me, makes even a simple burger taste a little bit Georgian.

Finally, I’m very happy to write that my translation of Vladislav Otroshenko’s Приложение к фотоальбому is now out from Dalkey Archive Press as Addendum to a Photo Album. It was nice to read in Kirkus’s review that the reviewer called the book “carefully translated,” and I think the conclusion—“A deeply strange novel that reads like a Chekhov play inspired by the comedy stylings of Monty Python.”—sums things up beautifully.

Disclaimers: I received a copy of Waiting for the Electricity from The Overlook Press, thank you!

Up Next: Evgeny Vodolzakin’s Solovyov and Larionov and Cartagena by Lena Eltang, a complex murder mystery of sorts that I’m still reading slowly to appreciate all the details. Plus maybe a novella or two… 

Photo from salvagekat, Creative Commons. This food even looks familiar: I think it has to be from a Khachapuri restaurant in Moscow...