Moscow Trip Report 2: Translator Congress, Book Fair, Etc.

This year’s Moscow trip was so full of good stuff – meetings, the translator conference, book events, and the like – that I’m just going to focus on a few highlights. And even that will be far too much!

This year’s International Congress of Literary Translators, held by the Institute of Translation, hosted around 400 translators from 56 countries. The Institute divided us into eight concurrent tracks; we made our presentations over two days. (The PDF program is here.) Two of my favorite talks came in the opening, plenary, session. The first was from Galina Yuzefovich, one of the few remaining critics who writes consistently about contemporary Russian fiction; she spoke about new trends and names in Russian literature. On the sad side of literary fiction: authors receive honoraria of only 60,000-100,000 rubles per book (I’m not sure about the royalty situation), print runs are 3,000-5,000, awards (other than the Big Book) aren’t particularly authoritative so rarely help sell many books (I’ve heard this before), and much of the piracy problem is the result of the dearth of book stores outside large cities. On the positive side, Yuzefovich mentioned some of her favorite books from the last year or two. I read her reviews regularly so there weren’t many surprises in her list of long, roomy books:

• Sukhbat Aflatuni’s Adoration of the Magi (interesting but I didn’t finish)
• Dmitry Glukhovsky’s Text (still haven’t read it but want to)
• Vladimir Medvedev’s Zahhak (previous post)
• Yana Vagner’s Accomplices (unfinished, though I understand the appeal)
• Alexei Sal’nikov’s NatsBest-winning The Petrovs in Various States of the Flu (unfinished but I brought home a print version)
• Dmitry Bykov’s June (which I’m currently reading), and 
• Eugene Chizhov’s The Translation (previous post, I loved this one!). 

Yuzefovich also listed three shorter books:

• Yevgenia Nekrasova’s Kalechina-Malechina (the title refers to a game; this book’s on the shelf now)
• Ksenia Buksha’s Opens Inward, a collection of linked stories, and 
• Natalia Meshchaninova’s Stories.

My note-taking broke down (for good) after that so, sadly, the only children’s literature title I managed was Yulia Yakovleva’s The Raven’s Children, which Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp has already translated. The next speaker, translator Anne Coldefy-Faucard, endeared herself to attendees by mentioning a certain “нюх” (I think of this as “a nose for” or the ability to sniff things out) a translator must possess to, for example, pick up little hints in a text. Many translators in the section I moderated added references of “нюх” to their talks – deservedly so since Anne’s a tremendously versatile translator (her translations were shortlisted in two categories for this year’s Read Russia award and she won for her work on Solzhenitsyn) whom I particularly respect for her no-nonsense approach to just about everything. Post-plenary, I heard lots of interesting, intriguing, and fun papers this year but will limit myself to mentioning just a few favorites: 

• Ksenia Atarova gets top marks for her entertaining and off-beat talk on translating limericks by Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll (handouts much appreciated!), 
• I loved Fernando Otero Macías’s discussion of Russian words included in the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (great handouts, too, I love lists), and 
• Borut Kraševec did a nice job discussing difficult terminology (including camp slang) in Zakhar Prilepin’s The Cloister. 

A final Congress highlight: Klarisa Pul’son moderated an evening event that featured writers Alexei Sal’nikov (he of the afore-mentioned, flu-ridden Petrovs) and Lev Danilkin (he of a literarily fascinating Lenin biography). This “discussion” (was it that?) is indescribable because Sal’nikov and Danilkin exist on such different planes that neither had much interest in the other’s books (or ideas?), though the Q&A developed into a bizarre picture of the state of Russian contemporary literature that, again, is indescribable, though all too emblematic. Sal’nikov’s Petrovs felt a bit amorphous, even floaty (like, well, having the flu) to me; it is more enjoyable than the flu, though, so I’m looking forward to giving it another try. And Danilkin’s lively Lenin biography, something I expected to be dull and dry, felt like a veritable oasis among last year’s odd crop of books.

Mentioning Klarisa feels like the perfect way to move on to the smaller-than-ever Moscow International Book Fair, which I visited twice, the first time so Klarisa could grill me about favorite books during an event (there’s a Russian-language article about that here), the second to hear Grigory Sluzhitel’ speak about Savely’s Days, the book about cats (and people) that I loved so much earlier this year. Unfortunately Grisha’s event ran simultaneously with a talk by Marian Schwartz and Leonid Yuzefovich, who spoke about Marian’s translation of Leonid’s Песчаные всадники (Horsemen of the Sands), due out from Archipelago Books in late October, though at least we were able to meet up and chat!

Another Yuzefovich event was the perfect way to end my trip: he was ostensibly presenting a new story collection, but I think he focused more on his NatsBest-winning The Winter Road. He’d gathered descendents of the opposing Civil War figures in the book and they spoke, too, which was rather moving in and of itself, particularly since Yuzefovich’s book inspired the descendents to meet recently in Yakutsk. An updated version of The Winter Road (with more photos!) is on the way soon. There’s a Russian-language article about the Yuzefovich event here. A nice bonus that draws this circle back toward the start of the post: Eugene Chizhov, author of The Translation, was in attendance so we were finally able to meet in person.

I could go on and on and on about other papers and events – not to mention all the books I acquired – but I’ll stop there! The first part of this two-part series aired last week, here.

Edit, March 5, 2019! Hilah Kohen translated Galina Yuzefovich’s reviews of Kalchina-Malechina and and Opens In for this post on Meduza. Though I wasn’t keen enough on these two books to finish them -- they simply weren’t my books -- I do understand their appeal.

Up next: English-language reading roundup, a brief Russian-language reading roundup, and Big Book finalists, including Bykov’s June, which I’m (surprised to be) enjoying.

Disclaimers: The usual. I have ties to some of the books, translators, and authors mentioned. Many thanks are in order, particularly to the Institute of Translation for bringing me and so many of my colleagues to Moscow for these biennial conferences, which go so far (literally and figuratively!) in building a global community of translators; Klarisa Pul’son for inviting me to be the first translator in her book discussion series; various people, including publisher Elena Shubina, who generously gave me books; and everyone who treated me to coffee, snacks, drinks, and their company. It was a wonderful trip.

A Ridiculously Long & Terribly Inelegant Potpourri: Awards, Events & Conference with Book Fair in Boston

Awards first: Irina Povolotskaya won the Belkin Prize earlier this month for her Пациент и Гомеопат (The Patient and the Homeopath). And Academia Rossica announced this week at the SLOVO festival that Pola Lem won the Rossica Young Translators Award.

On to conference with book fair: I went to slushy Boston earlier this month for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference. The AWP conference is a gigundo event that’s as impersonal as the organization’s name… though I did enjoy a few of the panels and, of course, the book fair, which included lots of small presses and journals. Some conference highlights… for writing technique: Peter Elbow’s talk “The Wisdom of the Tongue: Harnessing the Music of Speech for Good Writing,” looked at intonation units in speech and gave me some great theory to back up my practices for translating dialogue. I can see why one writing teacher told me Elbow’s considered a rock star in the field; I was only too happy to order up his Vernacular Eloquence… for translation: panels on Polish poetry, where it was fun to recognize commonalities with Russian, and hearing James Ragan read from and speak about his translations of poetry by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Ragan said he never stops worrying that he missed something or somehow failed… for disappointment: the lowestlight of the conference was that the room for the panel “Opening Her Veins: Variations on Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva in Two Voices” was so far beyond SRO that I couldn’t even stand in the hallway to hear the speakers. On the bright side: of course I’m very happy Tsvetaeva is such a draw!

The book fair gave me a bunch more entries for past, present, and future translation lists, so I’ve already made some updates to the 2012 and 2013 lists and started thinking about 2014. A few to mention… New York Review Books will publish a new Krzhizhanovsky collection (translator, Joanne Turnbull) in October and a new Pushkin collection (translators, Robert and Elizabeth Chandler) next year… A Canadian publisher, Biblioasis, has a lovely illustrated edition of three Chekhov stories, About Love, translated by David Helwig… Northwestern University Press publishes quite a few translations of Russian-language books and had many on display, including copies of Anne O. Fisher’s translation of Ilf and Petrov’s The Twelve Chairs, Diane Nemec Ignashev’s translation of Victor Martinovich’s Paranoia, as well as a bilingual book of Marina Tsvetaeva’s work that includes translations by Robin Kemball. And I bought Erik Butler’s translation (from the Yiddish) of Der Nister’s Regrowth… It was also nice to see Zephyr Press’s books: Zephyr has a huge selection of translations by Central and East European authors, mostly poets published in bilingual editions… One of my favorite books I brought home came from the people of Merriam-Webster, who gave me the Dictionary of English Usage for my reference shelf… On a non-Russian note, I’m also excited about Lionheart, James Anderson’s translation of Thorvald Steen’s Norwegian-language novel, which University of Chicabo Press/Seagull Books gave me… I brought back two huge stacks of books so will stop there.

Alexander Vvedensky

Off-site events were the real highpoint of AWP, perhaps because they were planned by organizations not called AWP. An evening-with-poetry in a restaurant, for example, included readings of Danuta Borchardt’s translations of Cyprian Norwid and Barbara Siegel Carlson’s translations of Srečko Kosovel… as well as my introduction to a Russian theater in the Boston area, Theater on the Roof. An event with St. Petersburg Review that began with readings by Kadija George, Brian Sousa, and Irina Mashinski was a great opportunity to finally meet Mikhail Iossel and Jeff Parker, the editors of Rasskazy, in real life. Parker and Maria Gusev, who was also in Boston, are translating Zakhar Prilepin’s San’kya. My favorite event, though, was a reading at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop, where translators read from new collections from New York Review Books. Don Share read from Miguel Hernández and Matvei Yankelevich read from An Invitation for Me to Think, a book of translations of Alexander Vvedensky’s poetry for which Eugene Ostashevsky is listed as selector and primary translator, with Yankelevich providing additional translations. Edwin Frank, NYRB’s editorial director, likened the books to “poetry baseball cards,” fittingly so since the books are small and brightly colored, with a “collect them all” feel. Titles like “Stomach Rumbling During Confession of Love” are certainly memorable.

As for coming events: anyone in the New York area interested in hearing Ostashevsky and Yankelevich read their translations of Vvedensky—and/or Share reading his translations of Hernández, which I also enjoyed—is in lots of luck. Read Russia is hosting a book launch party on March 27 for An Invitation for Me To Think. Then NYRB will host four related events in April; three will focus on the Russian Avant-Garde and OBERIU. (NYRB April event calendar) Speakers will include Ostashevsky and Yankelevich, plus Richard Sieburth, Michael Kunichika, Bela Shayevich, Ainsley Morse, and Kirill Medvedev. A special note on Kirill Medvedev: I bought It’s No Good, an English-language collection of Medvedev’s writings, from Ugly Duckling Presse at the AWP book fair and couldn’t put it down during my Amtrak ride home. The book is described as including poems, essays, and actions; it’s translated by Keith Gessen (who also wrote an introduction) with Mark Krotov, Cory Merrill, and Bela Shayevich. Gessen writes in his introduction, “I don’t know if our translations can capture the honesty, transparency, and passion of Medvedev’s writing, both in his essays and in his poems, but we’ve tried.” I’ve only read teeny snippets of Medvedev’s poetry in Russian and haven’t compared translations with originals but as I read I could certainly feel all the things Gessen was hoping to capture. And a lot more. Here are three reviews of It’s No Good that help explain: New York Times (Dwight Garner), Los Angeles Review of Books (Jeff Parker), and Three Percent (Will Evans).

Though I’m sorry none of these events are close enough for my calendar, I have a great consolation prize: Dina Khapaeva will speak about “When Dostoevsky’s Nightmares are Coming True: Gothic Aesthetics in Contemporary Russian Society” at Bowdoin College on March 27. I’ve read and enjoyed chunks of Khapaeva’s very engaging Кошмар: литература и жизнь (Nightmare: Literature and Life)—she covers writers including Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Pelevin—so am looking forward to her talk. Maybe I’ll even write about it.

Up Next: Igor Savelyev’s Tereshkova Flies to Mars, a noughties novel known as Mission to Mars in English: Amanda Love Darragh’s translation will be out this summer from Glas. And then Evgenii Vodolazkin’s Laurus, which brings me back to the Middle Ages in just the right way.

Disclaimers: The usual. In addition to the books I mentioned receiving from publishers at no charge, NYRB sent me a review copy of the Vvedensky book; I am collaborating on a story that will appear in a book that NYRB will publish.

Moscow Trip Report, November-December Snowstorm Edition

It was, put mildly, a supremely pleasant surprise to spend last week in Moscow: how could I refuse an invitation from the Institute of Translation to spend three days in workshops on publishing and translation, plus excursions to the Non/fiction book fair? I added a few days to the beginning and end of my trip so I could see friends, go the Big Book award ceremony, and buy books, making for perfect business-with-pleasure travel. A few highlights:

Big Book. A huge thank you to Georgy Urushadze, Big Book’s general director, for putting me on the list for the Big Book evening: it was great fun to attend my first Russian book award ceremony and see friends and colleagues at the event. Though I was a little surprised that Daniil Granin won two awards—the top prize from the jury for My Lieutenant plus a special award for honor/merit/virtue—Georgy explained to me the next afternoon that special awards are determined long before the ceremony but votes from the jury (a.k.a. a “literary academy” of around 100 people) are tallied just before the ceremony. I’ve read so little of Granin that I have no opinion about his awards… but I was very happy to see Marina Stepnova win third prize from readers and the jury—her Lazar’s Women feels like a “big” book to me—and for Maria Galina to win second prize from readers for her engaging Mole Crickets. I still have a bunch of this year’s finalists on the shelf, including Granin’s book and Valery Popov’s To Dance to Death. For a fun bit of reportage from Big Book, take a look at this video concerning “Кто убил русскую литературу?” (“Who Killed Russian Literature”)—the reporter, one Oleg Koronnyi, seemed always to be standing in front of me when I was sitting so I’m relieved to learn he was working on something important. A Big Book bonus: the винегрет/beet salad was a great snack.

The Workshops. I must admit I was a bit puzzled when the Institute invited me to Moscow for three days of workshops and book fair visits: I’m so used to having specific tasks when I travel, e.g. “give a talk/reading” or “write ten brief articles about this conference,” that I couldn’t believe my only formal responsibility was to contribute in roundtable discussions about publishing Russian literature in translation. I confess I’m sometimes a rather slow study so it took me a couple days to figure out this was a very good thing indeed. I know it sounds painfully cheesy (or like I’m sucking up to someone, something I have absolutely no existential or other need to do!) but all the interaction, learning, and contributions began to feel effortless, thanks to a casual atmosphere and a fantastic international group of publishers, translators, literary agents, and others with a professional interest in Russian literature. A few examples from the group: Ola Wallin, a Swedish publisher (Ersatz) and translator who brings a diverse selection of Russian fiction, from Andrei Platonov to Dmitrii Glukhovskii, to diverse Swedish readers… Christine Mestre, who’s president of the Prix Russophonie and founded Les Journées du Livre Russe festival, and makes me think Paris in February sounds like the very best of ideas… Margherita Crepax, who translates into Italian and won the Premio Gorky for her translation of Sasha Sokolov’s School for Fools; Margherita told how two of her translations—Tolstaya’s The Slynx and Platonov’s Dzhan—were commissioned but never published… I could go on and on and on but will just add that the only bad development was the weather: I love a multiple-day storm with lots of snow, drizzle, sleet, and related precipitation, but "our" storm created horribly slippery sidewalks that caused falls and even a bunch of broken bones. Ouch!

Non/fiction with drizzle.

Non/fiction. I’m relieved that the Non/fiction book fair didn’t let me down! I’d been wanting to go for several years and was glad it lived up to its reputation for fun and usefulness: no wonder people will wait in the cold, wet snow for tickets. For someone like me who doesn’t go to book fairs to buy or sell rights, it’s difficult to describe the difference between Non/fiction and the Moscow International Book Fair, which I visited in September. Many (or at least some!) of the exhibitors were the same—from big houses like Eksmo and AST to the small railroad publisher I chatted with about vocabulary in September—but Non/fiction calls itself, rightly, an intellectual book fair and creates a far cozier atmosphere for discussion thanks to its location in the Central House of Artists instead of a pavilion in what used to be the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy. Potentially relevant bonus: The coffee vendors were better placed! Non/fiction was a great chance to see friends, colleagues, and books, many of which were, yes, works of fiction.

Things I carried home:
books...  plus German throat lozenges  I wish 
I could buy in the U.S. and a ticket to Non/fiction

Book Acquisitions. I didn’t bring home as many books as I did in September, largely because I caught a bit of a cold and didn’t have enough energy and curiosity for rigorous book shopping. I still managed to bring back a nice little stack of books, though, including Oleg Ermakov’s The Arithmetic of War, which many people have recommended, Maya Kucherksaya’s The God of Rain, Mark Kharitonov’s To See More (after talking with Margherita Crepax, who’s translated Kharitonov, I felt guilty about never having read him!), Evgenii Vodolazkin’s Brother Laurus (literally Laurel), and Anton Utkin’s The Road into Snowfall (?), a title that felt weather-appropriate. Marina Aromshtam, a friend of two friends, very kindly gave me copies of two of her books, including When Angels Rest, a finalist for the “youth” category of this year’s Yasnaya Polyana award. A bonus: when I gave Natasha Perova of Glas a copy of Everything Matters!, by Maine writer Ron Currie, Jr., in exchange she gave me Still Waters Run Deep: Young Women’s Writing from Russia, which contains translations by several of you. I’m looking forward to reading your work!

Finally… I had another lovely visit with Vladislav Otroshenko and am pleased to say that my translation of his “Языки Нимродовой башни” (“The Languages of Nimrod’s Tower”) will be published in Subtropics, in January… My airplane reading included the December issue of Snob, which I bought at the airport to spend my last rubles. Snob feels considerably less snobby now than last year when I had a trial subscription, and it was fun to open it up somewhere between Moscow and Zurich and find Stas Zhitskii’s piece listing three books about cities, including Dmitrii Danilov’s Description of a City, which I liked so much; the other two books, BTW, were Maks Frai’s Stories of Old Vilnius and Alexander Ilichevsky’s City of Sunset, about Jerusalem… A dictionary of fashionable words was good company on the Zurich-to-Boston flight, even if I have my doubts that a word I’ve been using for about two decades—облом/oblom—can qualify as fashionable for a book about language in the twenty-first century. Maybe I’m just way ahead of my time?...

Disclaimers. A big thank you to the Institute of Translation, with which I collaborate directly and indirectly through Read Russia!, for bringing me back to Moscow, to Georgy Urushadze for inviting me (at my request) to Big Book, and to many, many friends and colleagues for tea, time, and advice.

Up Next. Serhij Zhadan’s Voroshilovgrad (I realize this probably feels like Waiting for Godot by now…), Margarita Khemlin’s The Investigator, and then maybe Granin’s Lieutenant or Popov’s To Dance to Death, which I’m especially curious about after hearing many good comments… Now that I seem to be back and settled in for the winter, I’m hoping to finally (finally!) get back to my usual reading and writing pace! 

BookExpo America 2011: Odds & Ends on Russian Books & Programs

I always seem to enjoy BookExpo America, but this year’s BEA was particularly fun thanks to increased interest in Russian literature: Russia will be the Global Market Forum country in 2012. A brief summary of a press conference about Global Market Forum, posted by BEA director Steve Rosato, mentions plans to bring more than 40 Russian writers to New York. Needless to say, I can’t wait!

This year’s BEA program included two Russian programs that covered, among other things, a bilingual reading from 2017 with Olga Slavnikova and Marian Schwartz, who translated the book for Overlook, plus an introduction to four writers – Irina Bogatyreva, Polina Kliukina, Pavel Kostin, and Andrei Kuzechkin – who were Debut Prize winners or nominees. Kostin and Kuzechkin’s Rooftop Anesthesia and Mendeleev Rock, respectively, were published, in Andrew Bromfield’s translation, by Glas in 2011, and three of Kliukina’s stories, in Anne O. Fisher’s translation, are in the Squaring the Circle anthology, also from Glas.

2011 releases of newly translated Russian books from American publishers include, listed by publication date:

Twelve Who Don’t Agree, by Valery Panyushkin, translated by Marian Schwartz, due out July 16, from Europa Editions. For a taste of Panyushkin, try the recent New York Times piece “Was It Something I Wrote?” I’m looking forward to reading Twelve.

Apricot Jam, a story collection by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by ? (I’ll see if I can get the name and add it), due out in September, from Counterpoint. (PDF catalogue) Since Counterpoint’s description refers to the eight stories, written in the 1990s, as “paired,” I’m figuring they’ve preserved (no pun intended) the Apricot Jam story cycle presented in this Azbuka-klassika Russian edition and a book on my shelf.

Thirst, a novel by Andrei Gelasimov, translated by Marian Schwartz, due out November 22, , from Amazon Crossing. I read and enjoyed Thirst years ago, before I started blogging, and was interested to see that Amazon Crossing will be publishing several other Gelasimov books.

The Letter Killers Club, by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, translated by Joanne Turnbull, due out December 6, from New York Review Books. This is a great incentive for me to finally read some Krzhizhanovsky. NYRB also has more Vasily Grossman and Andrey Platonov on the way, in the more distant future.

I’ll be writing more about these books later this year. [Edit: A previous post covers other translation releases for 2011.]

One other note: I finished out my four days in New York with an unexpected visit to the Chelsea Art Museum for a fantastic exhibit: Concerning the Spiritual Tradition in Russian Art: Selections from the Kolodzei Art Foundation. I spent several hours at the museum with Tatiana and Natalia Kolodzei, who gave me a personal tour of the exhibit. If you’re in the New York area, I highly recommend a visit. The exhibit closes June 11; Natalia will offer a gallery talk on June 11 at 4 p.m.

That’s it for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with a brief post on the winner of the NatsBest.

Up Next: The 2011 NatsBest winner, then Vsevolod Benigsen’s ГенАцид (GenAcide). I’m looking forward to getting back to my usual reading pace after a spring of colds and wonderful but exhausting travel.

Disclaimers: The usual. I’ve discussed translated fiction with all the publishers named in this post.

Lots of News from Book Expo America

I’m still getting caught up on my sleep after three days in New York for Book Expo America and the Book Blogger Convention. Fortunately, this is a good kind of tired, from long talks with people who care about books, including Russian fiction. As a matter of full disclosure, I should note that I spoke with many publishers about two things: their upcoming titles (more on that at the end) and their potential interest in my translation projects.

The Biggest News. I enjoyed my visits to the first-ever Books from Russia booth, organized by the Russian Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications together with Academia Rossica. Russian books will receive lots of attention over the next two years: Russia will be the market focus at the London Book Fair in 2011 and then at BEA in 2012. I think I need to build a bigger travel budget!

Also of interest: Academia Rossica publishes a journal, Rossica, which calls itself an “international review of Russian culture.” Issue 18 includes translated excerpts of fiction by writers such as Oleg Zaionchkovsky (whom I’m still enjoying), Aleksei Ivanov, Dina Rubina, and Aleksandr Ilichevsky. Issue 19 has extracts of novels by Dmitry Bykov, Vladimir Makanin, and Mikhail Shishkin. There’s much more in each journal; tables of contents are here. (AR gave me copies of both journals plus Dmitry Bykov’s book Был ли Горький? (I’ll call it Did Gorky Exist?).)

Other translation news, listed in alphabetical order by publisher, includes:

Moscow Noir, from Akashic Books, will be available in wide release this summer. Most of Akashic’s Noir series books contain commissioned stories, so there is currently no Russian version of the collection.

This isn’t news but it makes me happy: Dalkey Archive Press loves Viktor Shklovsky, and their list contains seven Shklovsky titles. They gave me a copy of Energy of Delusion: A Book on Plot, translated by Shushan Avagyan; Dalkey’s list also includes Зоо, или Письма не о любви (Zoo, or Letters Not about Love), translated by Richard Sheldon… I’m feeling an even stronger urge to finally read it. Dalkey’s Russian list is online here.

Thanks to Beatrice.com writer Ron Hogan for mentioning that Knopf will release Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s translation of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago (previous post) in fall 2010.

New York Review Books has a Vasily Grossman book, The Road, on its calendar for fall 2010. This eclectic compilation includes stories, letters, and “The Hell of Treblinka.” Translators are Robert Chandler, Olga Mukovnikova, and Elizabeth Chandler.

Translator Andrew Bromfield told me he’s been translating the last of Vladimir Voinovich’s Chonkin books for Northwestern University Press; the book will be released in 2011. Andrew’s translation of Andrei Rubanov’s Сажайте, и вырастет (Do Time, Get Time), a National Bestseller finalist, is listed on Amazon as available in the US from Old Street Publishing… starting tomorrow.

The Overlook Press, which recently published Marian Schwartz’s translation of Olga Slavnikova’s 2017 (previous post), will release a translation of Liudmila Ulitskaya’s Даниэль Штайн, переводчик (Daniel Stein, Translator) (previous post) during winter 2010-2011. Overlook was also excited about the U.S. edition of Sam Garrett’s English translation of Dutch author Frank Westerman’s book Ingenieurs van de ziel (Engineers of the Soul), which focuses on Soviet-era writers and ideology. (A fresh review.) A reminder: Ardis Publishing now resides at Overlook, too, where translated titles include some favorites, from Sologub’s Petty Demon (previous post) to Vladimir Makanin’s Escape Hatch and The Long Road (previous post).

Technically speaking, Android Karenina, a joint effort from Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters, isn’t a translated book but it’s perfect for my rather mashed up state of mind. Quirk Books certainly chose the right novel for a steampunk mashup. (BTW, steampunk is a Russian word, too: стимпанк.) AK has already generated some attention: Russian TV came to BEA to visit Quirk.

Related Non-Translations. At 560 pages, Ian Frazier’s Travels in Siberia, from FSG, sure must expand on Frazier’s New Yorker pieces about a Russian road trip; it comes out in October. Adrienne Sharp’s The True Memoirs of Little K, a historical novel based on fact, narrated by a former ballerina and lover of the czar, is scheduled for November. Harper Collins also has a ballet-related historical novel coming out this fall (September): Daphne Kalotay’s Russian Winter.

I’ll be happy for comments about errors, omissions, or ideas… there was so much going on that it was impossible to see everyone I wanted to see.

And Another Blog on the Way. Now that I’m working more on literary translation, I’m feeling an urge to read more fiction in English: I know I’m missing out on lots of good books, writers, connections, and, yes, vocabulary. Starting a new blog seems like the best (or only?) way to keep discipline so I gathered a nice stack of books at BEA to get myself going. The pile is heavy on translations and books from small publishing houses but there’s lots of variety.

My Russian reading and blogging habits won’t change much but I’ll make a quick mention of the new blog here when it goes live in June. One sure change: I’ll link from blog to blog when I find common themes and techniques in books. After all, it was Mikhail Elizarov’s Мультики (‘Toons) that convinced me I needed to (re)broaden my reading after I recognized shadows of A Clockwork Orange in ‘Toons…