Two Books in English: Expats, Love, Life, Literature, and Moscow

On the surface, two novels set in Moscow that I read this spring and summer—Charlotte Hobson’s The Vanishing Futurist and Guillermo Erades’s Back to Moscow—have a lot in common. Both feature young expats who come to Moscow at tumultuous times, both include lots of literary references, and both end rather sadly, with departures that fit their times. Both novels also mention the dangers of falling ic(icl)e(s) in spring. The differences, of course, are greater the similarities; I’ll try to summarize…

Hobson’s The Vanishing Futurist begins in 1914, when Gerty Freely moves from England to Moscow, to work as a governess for the Kobelev family. What struck me most at the beginning of the book was Gerty’s appreciation of Moscow, where she and I both love walking. Here’s the beginning of a paragraph early in the novel:

Moscow is a city that insinuates itself cunningly into one’s affections. At first it fascinated and slightly repelled me, as some vast medieval fair might. I was still ignorant of politics, yet as a Chapel girl I couldn’t help but be shocked by the contrast between the golden domes and palaces and the crowds of beggars at their doors.

My favorite part of the novel begins after the Kobelev family decamps for Yalta, thanks to unrest after the coup/revolution of 1917, leaving the house in the care of servants and family friend/lodger Nikita Slavkin, a futurist and inventor whose ideas include things like “unbreakable rubber crockery sets that you could fold together and use as a pillow [and] a portable shower bath.” As time passes, Gerty and Nikita become involved (somewhat) romantically, some of the Kobelevs return, the house becomes a commune for young members who share things as intimate as underwear, and there are mentions of real-life futurists. Beyond the fact that I’ve always been fascinated by early Soviet communal living experiments—there’s even a daily timetable here for comrades’ activities and there are jealousies, too—and any book that quotes Velimir Khlebnikov’s “Incantation by Laughter” (in Gary Kern’s translation in the book) wins lots of bonus points, particularly since Gerty notes, “read aloud, [it] always reduced us to helpless snorting heaps.”

Hobson wrote The Vanishing Futurist in the first-person, from Gerty’s perspective as she’s going through old papers and looking for a way to tell her daughter about her past. I particularly admire Hobson’s ability to combine the light—crushes, humor, whimsical inventions—with political and historical realities of the time, which are, of course, linked to Slavkin’s disappearance. Hobson also has a light touch with bits of Russian she includes, mentioning, for example, “using the polite “Vy” or noting that millet porridge was called blondinka, something I hadn’t known, perhaps because I’d do just about anything to avoid the stuff. Whether my kasha of choice is grechka or blondinka, Peter Pomerantsev’s blurb on the back of my book is very apt: “That rare case of a profound book being unputdownable.” That made The Vanishing Futurist perfect reading when I was painfully busy and particularly valued an enjoyable, smart novel with a good sense of plot and history.

The operative cover blurb for Erades’s debut novel, Back to Moscow, comes from Publishers Weekly: “Russia’s capital is the most dynamic character in Erades’s boozy bildungsroman.” Russian literature grad student Martin comes to turn-of-the-century Moscow with surprisingly low proficiency in either Russian or literature, and seems to spend more of his time studying The eXile and going to bars (some of which I remember from the 1990s, too) to drink and meet women. The biggest problem with Martin as a character is that he’s kind of a jerk, a fairly unpleasant first-person narrator whose attitudes toward women make him a literary character that I at least hoped would become a prime candidate for redemption. What felt oddest to me is that when I think back to The eXile of the 1990s, Martin seems like almost a milquetoast and/or a wannabe by comparison; I wonder if that might have been among Erades’s intentions. In any case, his treatment of his girlfriends can be awfully callous and he does some truly dumbass things, but his defense of a tutor early in the book establishes that at least part of his heart is kind. Making him redeemable.

Beyond his (nearly) main occupation of boozing and womanizing, Martin spends a lot of his time reading Russian novels, analyzing and discussing female characters (here we have life and literature!) in a way that felt a bit Cliff Note-like to me, doing occasional work with a Russian businessman friend, and, yes, enjoying Moscow itself. I can’t say that Back to Moscow is my ideal novel—it feels a bit too disjointed, obvious, laden with gratuitous uses of words like “elitny” and “interesno,” and rather predictable twists, though I suppose that’s typical of the genre—but Erades, like Hobson, too, manages to conjure up the feeling of being an expat exploring Moscow. Of course it helps that Erades gifts Martin with a nice apartment by Pushkin Square, making it all the easier, for example, to go to the Stanislavsky Theater to see Heart of a Dog, a Bulgakov adaptation I loved back in the day, too… And I give a nice plus to Martin’s tutor for talking with him about superfluous men.

What’s odd about the combination of these two books, which I read in fairly rapid succession, is that I enjoyed The Vanishing Futurist far more during my reading but came to appreciate Back to Moscow nearly as much after finishing. I suppose that’s partially because of an observation in Erades’s very brief, very last chapter, and partially (to suppose again) because Martin comes to Moscow around the time I left and his account of his girlfriends’ sadness about current events (among other things) felt so familiar. Though they’re not my own, I found plenty of sadness and exhilaration to identify with in Gerty’s world and in Martin’s world. Finally, I have to say I was pleased to see that at least two Goodreaders said Back to Moscow made them more interested in Russian classical literature. I hope The Vanishing Futurist helps bring Khelbnikov, as well as Vladimir Mayakovsky and Alexander Blok, who also get mentions, to some new readers, too.

For more: Max Liu, independent.co.uk, on Back to Moscow (he also mentions the superfluous man discussion) and Anna Aslanyan, spectator.co.uk on The Vanishing Futurist.

Disclaimers: Thank you to Faber & Faber for the copy of The Vanishing Futurist and to Picador for the copy of Back to Moscow!

Up Next: Aleksei Slapovsky’s rather uneven but easy-reading Неизвестность, which I suppose I’ll call Uncertainty.

History, Languages, and All Manner of Other Things: A Few Thoughts About Paul Goldberg’s The Yid

Paul Goldberg’s novel The Yid offers up an unusual angle on Stalin’s Russia: Goldberg begins the book on February 24, 1953, sending a Black Maria with attendant staff to arrest one Solomon Shimonovich Levinson, “an actor from the defunct State Jewish Theater.” Everything goes topsy-turvy in Levinson’s apartment—and, really, in the rest of the novel, just as things have gone topsy-turvy in the USSR over the last several decades—thanks to Levinson’s skill with sharp objects. And so. What does a non-state actor (sorry for the pun!) do with dead bodies killed unofficially? And how might a non-state actor (meaning someone like Levinson) and his buddies try to combat Stalin? This second question is a new variation on the age-old burning question of “What is to be done?”

The fun of The Yid, which looks at the horrors of fascism, racism, and the Soviet past, isn’t just its element of something akin to an almost gleeful alternative history, it’s in its telling. Even more so for a reader like me who so loves to have a writer guide her through a book. The Yid may be Goldberg’s debut novel—he said in an appearance at Print Bookstore in Portland a couple weeks ago that he’s written other, unpublished, fiction—but he makes masterful use of language and literary devices as he establishes an absurd world that blends historical truth (and even historical characters, something I think very, very few writers do successfully) with a fictional world that’s extraordinarily playful and theatrical, drawing, among other things on Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Three early examples. Goldberg begins with a trilingual epigraph from Shmuel Halkin’s Bar-Kokhba (Moscow State Jewish Theater, 1938), very shortly thereafter calls the first part of his book “Act I,” and defines certain terms in his second paragraph:

A Black Maria is a distinctive piece of urban transport, chernyy voron, a vehicle that collects its passengers for reasons not necessarily political. The Russian people gave this ominous carriage a diminutive name: voronok, a little raven, a fledgling.

By page nine, he’s already blending Yiddish, Russian, and English in ways that made me happy as both a reader and a translator. Just scroll down to “Dos bist du?” in this excerpt on the Jewish Book Council site for a sample. The words are playing, the characters are playing, and Goldberg is again showing his readers how to read his book. This time, there’s a crude rhyme that involves two languages; Goldberg even offers an explicit explanation. (Side note: I think Goldberg makes wonderful use of Russian mat, obscenities, in The Yid.) There’s an obvious obviousness and staginess throughout the book that sometimes extends to (oh, here’s a random find, flipping the pages) a bit of a soliloquy from Pushkin’s Boris Godunov, presented in both transliterated Russian and Anthony Wood’s English translation. Late in the book there’s also a mention of how historian Edvard Radzinsky covers “the events at Stalin’s dacha in the early morning of March 1, 1953.” All of that, plus, of course, Goldberg’s abundant humor, remind the reader not to take this world too literally… all while taking its tragicomedy, absurdity, and historical mayhem and reality very seriously. I’ve been a sucker for that paradox for years.

I enjoyed The Yid very much as a reader but I think I enjoyed it even more as a translator because I love observing how writers handle dialogue with multiple languages. I particularly appreciated Goldberg’s combination of translations, transliterations, and original language because, yes, dear readers, he shows that these things can work together. There was even a practical element for me, in noting the words Goldberg uses to refer to unfortunate features of the Stalin era, things that are in Guzel Yakhina’s Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes, which I’m translating: cattle cars, guards, transit prisons, deportees… There are, of course, plenty of books containing those words, but something about Goldberg’s lively combination of English, Russian, and Yiddish really won me over, even more so because he also blends genres, temporal settings (I didn’t even get to that!), cultures (or that!), and so much damn sad history into around 300 pages. I’m looking forward to his next novel.

For more:

• The novel’s Web page.
• A brief (local!) TV interview with Paul Goldberg about his childhood, the basic plot of the novel, Moscow, and the novel’s genesis. (The interview takes place at Print.)
• An essay on Slate.com by Goldberg, about the book’s title.
• A lengthy interview with Goldberg on Electric Lit.
• Goldberg’s acknowledgements from The Yid, which refer to many of the elements from life and literature—including Fadeev’s The Rout—that inspired the book. 
• The Jewish Book Council’s discussion guide for The Yid, PDF here.
• Paul Goldberg’s other books.

Disclaimers: I received a copy of The Yid from the publisher, Picador; thank you to James Meader for sending a copy of the book, which he also edited, as Goldberg’s acknowledgements note. With all its languages and references, I’m sure The Yid presented a slew of editing challenges. Kudos to Meader and the rest of the editorial team for their work.

Up Next: Sergei Kuznetsov’s Kaleidoscope, which I loved for being a book about nearly everything that matters in this world, then Valery Zalotukha’s The Last Communist, which I’m enjoying very much because (about half-way in, anyway) it’s succeeding at the opposite feat and feels almost like chamber theater about post-Soviet Russia, focusing on a wealthy family in a small city… I’m not sure about conquering Sukhbat Aflatuni’s Adoration of the Magi: though I enjoyed some individual passages, the novel lacks, hmm, narrative drive and 100 pages felt like several hundred more. That means that reading six more hundreds of pages feels nigh on impossible right now. Though far, far stranger things have happened.

Translation Potpourri for a Sleepy Sunday

What better for a blustery Sunday afternoon than a translation potpourri? And so: two novels written in English, one essay, one short course, and a link…

I’ll start with Alison Anderson’s The Summer Guest since it’s a novel with a Russian theme: a modern-day British publisher, Katya, hires Ana to translate a journal written by Zinaida Lintvaryova, a young doctor whose own illness has blinded her. The title’s summer guest is none other than Anton Chekhov, who visits the Lintvaryov estate in Sumy, in eastern Ukraine. The journal, which begins in 1888, makes up the bulk of the novel but Anderson intersperses occasional chapters set in the 2010s, chronicling Katya’s personal and professional problems—her husband’s absences and their publishing house’s difficulties—as well as Ana’s work on the manuscript. Of course I relate heavily to Ana, who can be observed checking spellings, splurging on books, and hoping for a new project (did Chekhov really leave behind a draft of the novel he read to Zinaida? could she translate it?), not to mention making an impulsive trip to Ukraine toward the end of the book. Anderson’s greatest success in The Summer Guest, though, is Zinaida’s journal, which beautifully meshes Chekhov’s gentlemanly humor and humanity with Zinaida’s fears and hopes. The rapport he and Zinaida develop is poignant, and the scene where the Chekhov brothers take Zinaida out in a rowboat is particularly lovely: Zinaida feels freed, “suspended” from her darkness. Though the framing device in The Summer Guest felt a bit thin to me because I wanted to see Katya and Ana in greater depth, and some of the current events mentioned felt a little tacked on, I’ll simply say (to avoid spoilers!) that the frame allows Anderson to make the journal count twice. More important to me, as a reader and recommender, though, is the readability of the journal’s story, the colorfulness of the Chekhov and Lintvaryov families, and the many admirable choices that Anderson makes when incorporating bits of Russian language and background into her text. Her own translation work informs her well; so, apparently did her research, which she notes in a brief but informative afterword…

Which made me especially happy to read Anderson’s “Spurn the Translator at Your Own Peril,” on The Millions. I won’t say much about it because you can read it yourself, here. (I know at least one of you already read it: thanks to the reader who sent the link!) Anderson writes about reader perceptions of translation, translator and author invisibility (she takes a fun angle on this because of the mysterious Elena Ferrante), what is (ahem!) found in translation, and even how we do it. She mentions two to ten pages a day. And yes, of course she’s right that “it is a pleasure.” She’s also right that translators make “interesting protagonists within the fiction that is their province”: she notes novels including Rabih Alameddine’s An Unnecessary Woman, which I was lukewarm on, and Idra Novey’s Ways to Disappear…

I loved Idra Novey’s Ways to Disappear. She had me with her first sentence: “In a crumbling park in the crumbling back end of Copacabana, a woman stopped under an almond tree with a suitcase and a cigar.” Whether it was the repetition of “crumbling,” the combination of the suitcase and the cigar, or the thought of almonds, which I enjoy eating on just about anything, yes, dear reader, I bought the book. In hardcover. I had to find out what happens when American translator Emma Neufeld goes from snowy Pittsburg to blazing-hot Brazil in search of the almond tree woman, Beatriz Yagoda, who happens to be Emma’s author. Beatriz has gone missing because of gambling debts and Emma goes missing on her lets-go-running-and-lets-get-married boyfriend because, well, our authors are part of us in some mysterious way. Has Novey ever used the hairbrush of one of her authors? I don’t know and I don’t need to know but I will say that I, personally, have never used a hairbrush (or comb or other grooming device) belonging to any of my authors but oh my, what a wonderful, fitting metaphor. On the same page (23, if anyone’s looking), there’s a mention of Emma’s (earlier, of course) confession to Beatriz that she “hadn’t been quite as dutiful in her last translation as in Beatriz’s earlier books, and Beatriz had replied that duty was for clergy. For translation to be an art, she told Emma, you have to make the uncomfortable but necessary transgressions that an artist makes.” Yes, yes, and yes. I couldn’t wait to buy the book because Novey mentions “the risk-taking, the reckless joys of translation” in an LA Times interview that my cousin clipped and sent to me… Risks and joys are what make translation so exhilarating and I feel lots of reckless joy and risk-taking in Ways to Disappear, too, and all of it works and pays off for Novey. For more complete views: Heller McAlpin’s review on npr.org or Catherine Lacey’s review for the New York Times Book Review.

If you’re a translator looking for a short course in London, in mid-July, you might consider Translate in the City, where the tutor for Russian is Robert Chandler. I think I first heard about the program from Anne Marie Jackson, an alumna of the very first “Translate in the City” course: among other things, Anne Marie is a co-translator of two volumes of Teffi that were just released (herewith, the 2016 translation list for details), including Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea, reviewed in today’s New York Times Book Review by Masha Gessen. Translate in the City covers eleven languages and all are taught by instructors whose main work is literary translation. Robert notes that many students come to London from the US for the program.

And, finally, to end on an especially happy and translation-related note, here’s an article by Alison Flood for The Guardian: Translated fiction sells better in the UK than English fiction, research finds. And here's a Monday-morning addition, also in The Guardian: Daniel Hahn's The Man Booker International prize: a celebration of translation.

Disclaimers: The usual. Thank you to HarperCollins for the review copy of The Summer Guest. The book has a release date of May 24, 2016. Especially recommended for Chekhov fans.

Up Next: Eugene Vodolazkin’s The Aviator, which I just plain loved. Alexander Snegirev’s Vera, which I may yet call Faith. Maria Galina’s Autochthons, which is getting eerier… The Big Book finalist announcement is coming up soon, too.

2014 Russian Booker Finalists

Here you go, Russian Booker fans… the 2014 short list, in Russian alphabetical order. Winners will be announced on December 5. The Russian Booker will award two prizes again this year: one to a “usual” winner, the other in the form of a grant to publish an English-language translation in the UK.

• Anatolii Vishnevskii’s Жизнеописание Петра Степановича К. (The Story of the Life/Biography of Petr Stepanovich K.). The description of this book, which is evidently completely based on documents, is a little vague: it’s apparently about a man who lives a long life but wanted glory more than longevity, though longevity gives him a chance to see a lot. 
  
  
  
• Natalya Gromova’s Ключ. Последняя Москва (The Key. The Last/Final Moscow). This one’s called an archival novel, and it apparently focuses largely on the 1930s and a Moscow that no longer exists. Gromova works at the Tsvetaeva house museum in Moscow. There’s more here. The Key is already a 2014 Big Book finalist.
  
  
• Zakhar Prilepin’s Обитель (The Cloister). This novel about the Solovetsky Islands in the 1920s is already on the 2014 Big Book finalist list, and it won Book of the Year last month. I lugged it back from Moscow (it’s big) and plan to read it soon. Probably right after the next book on this list…
  
  
• Viktor Remizov’s Воля вольная. (This is the book with the title that translates literally as something like Willful Will or Free Freedom but Remizov told me he’d use something closer to Soaring Will. Though he wasn’t even quite sure how to explain the title…) In any case, this is a novel about poaching, corruption, and conflict in the Russian Far East… though there’s much more to it than that. I’m looking forward to reading it. [Description edited after reading the book.]
  
  
  
• Elena Skul’skaia’s Мраморный лебедь (The Marble Swan). According to Novaya gazeta, this is memoiristic writing about friends and family. Even a quick look at the text on the Zhurnal’nyi zal site shows that it’s made up of vignettes/tiny chapters.
  
  
• Vladimir Sharov’s Возвращение в Египет (Return to Egypt). In which one Kolya Gogol (a distant relative of familiar old Nikolai Gogol) finishes writing Dead Souls. An epistolary novel. Already a finalist for this year’s National Bestseller and Big Book awards.

One of the most interesting things about this year’s Booker short list, at least for me, is that four of the six books—Gromova, Prilepin, Remizov, and Sharov—are or will soon be (re)published by editor Elena Shubina’s imprint at AST. And what can I say but that Shubina is a force? And I just seem to gravitate to her books: she published two of the books I’m translating (Marina Stepnova’s The Women of Lazarus and Evgeny Vodolazkin’s Laurus) and now I’m reading Stepnova’s new book and about to read Remizov’s (coming soon from Shubina/AST) and Prilepin’s. I’m also looking forward to reading the tome of Andrei Platonov’s letters she published last winter… more about that one in my Moscow trip report this weekend.

Disclaimers: Just the usual.

Up next: Moscow trip report. Then, at last, books! Evgeny Vodolazkin’s first novel, Solovyov and Larionov, which I enjoyed very, very much (footnotes have never been so much fun), and Marina Stepnova’s latest book, named for Moscow’s Bezbozhnyi Lane. Plus a few books I’ve read in English.

Avoiding Existential Dread: Masha Regina

I’ve been dreading writing about Vadim Levental’s Маша Регина (Masha Regina) for months now, even using a whole arsenal of procrastination techniques (from focusing on award news to telling myself I’m just too darn tired to blog) to avoid this post, all because some books are scary as hell to write about. Particularly books I enjoy and respect as much as Masha Regina, which is, by way of brief summary, a beautiful, tightly structured character sketch of a novel—in my experience, it’s rare to find “character sketch” and “novel” combine so well—about a young woman who comes to Leningrad from a small city and becomes a film director.

There are lots of themes, threads, and subplots I could describe and analyze for pages and pages—Masha’s love interests, studies, use of her life and family as cinematic material, outsiderness, ambitions, temperament, wishes for immortality, and so on and so forth—but it’s the immortality I’ve seemed to fixate on, first as I read, later as I translated excerpts, and now, too, months after finishing the book. One of my favorite phrases in the book refers to work (труд, often translated as labor) as “единственная возможность сбежать от экзистенциального ужаса,” or “the only option for escaping existential horror/dread.” Masha’s immortality may be anchored in celluloid (and/or digital zeroes and ones, hmm, I don’t remember) but Masha Regina begins, appropriately enough, with Easter, the ultimate celebration of immortality, and a subsequent “Christ is risen from the dead,” and then, shortly thereafter, a brief description of teenage Masha’s desire for immortality.

Underlying Masha’s quest for immortality are all sorts of other circumstances that produce everyday dreadfulness worthy of escape: a father who drinks, a dull and empty city, and a fear of getting stuck in a life she doesn’t want. It’s no wonder Masha draws things as she sees them, even as a little girl, whether it’s a cross-section of a river or a bird with four wings. Of course Masha is stuck in her old life despite leaving it—I suppose we all are, in some way—because she keeps coming back cinematically, which raises lots of questions about ethics and representation. Masha truly is a queen, and she’s also that rare literary character who’s simultaneously sympathetic and unsympathetic: ambitious, ruthless, damaged, regal, and also, in many ways, untouchable. Her life looks more painful than glamorous despite all her success and awards.

I think my dread of writing about Masha Regina came about largely because I found the book so inexplicably satisfying and indescribable. I mentioned months ago that when a friend and I met for coffee we realized we were both reading Masha Regina… and agreed the book would read along very nicely for a chapter or so, feel for a while like it might get dull, but then become thoroughly engrossing again. A little like life, I suppose, which may explain why I enjoyed the book so much: it’s a book about art, life, and existential dread (my favorite!) that actually feels like an inexplicably satisfying slice of art, life, and existential dread.

Disclosures: The usual. I read an electronic copy of Masha Regina that I requested from Levental’s literary agency after the book was shortlisted for the Big Book Award; I later translated excerpts of the novel.

Up Next: Marina Stepnova’s The Surgeon.

Blizzards: Butov’s Freedom

I started writing about Mikhail Butov’s Свобода (Freedom) last weekend, when more than 30 inches of fresh blizzard-begotten snow were still languishing outside my office window. Blizzard memories felt perfect for Freedom, a book that isn’t just a blizzard of words and ideas about aimlessness in the 1990s: Butov includes a set piece about a winter camping trip, complete with a blinding snowstorm, ill-preparedness, and references to Jack London.

Freedom, which is narrated by a nameless (I don’t think I missed a name…) first-person narrator who loses his job early in the book, is filled with metaphors for loss of direction and loss of one’s place in the world. Like several other narrators I’ve met—Makanin’s Petrovich in Underground, which lost the 1999 Russian Booker to Freedom, comes to mind—Butov’s character apartment sits for a friend. The friend has gone off to Antarctica; people go to the ends of the earth in this book. Our narrator doesn’t seem to mind being alone a lot, though he’s not strictly alone: he shares his friend’s apartment with a menagerie of mice, rats, roaches, regular flies, fruit flies (there’s a trash chute problem, something I seem to be finding a lot lately), and spiders. Only the spiders cross the threshold into the room where the narrator sleeps. The narrator feeds and even names one spider. Ursus.

I found myself surprisingly agreeable to reading about Ursus and urban solitude and solitariness: Butov’s descriptions of detachment and emotion can be very striking. In one, the hungover narrator vomits into the sink, after which,

Потом я стоял у окна, очень пустой и очень легкий, и двор, еще безлюдный ранним воскресным утром, видел сквозь сгусток внутренней своей темноты. И вдруг, прямо у меня на глазах, стал падать первый снег. Неуверенный и мелкий, как соль, он таял, едва достигал асфальта, — но брал числом, и площадка для машин перед домом медленно покрывалась белым.

Тогда я заплакал. От полноты переживания.

Then I stood at the window, very empty and very (s)light, and I saw, through a clot of my internal darkness, the yard, which was still unpopulated on an early Sunday morning. And suddenly the first snow began to fall right before my eyes. Uncertain and as fine as salt, it melted as soon as it reached the pavement, but it accumulated and the parking area in front of the building slowly whitened.

Then I began to weep. From the fullness/completeness of the feeling/experience/suffering.

I’ve purposely left the translated paragraph fairly literal, with alternate meanings and favorite Russian tics, like вдруг/suddenly. That last line reminds me of the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, particularly after the narrator’s physical emptiness...

Our narrator doesn’t spend the whole book alone, though. There are some brief scenes with an occasional female caller and he visits his mother toward the end of the book. And the anonymous narrator spends lots of time with a college friend, Andriukha, an adventurer whose self-destructive tendencies lead to problems with money, ill-gotten goods, and petty criminals. The lone narrator and Andriukha sometimes feel as antipodal as Freedom’s Antarctica and far north.

The wonder of Freedom is that it works at all: as you can probably tell, it’s lumpy and fairly plotless, and the narrator himself says toward the end that he began by stringing together some funny stories, not thinking they’d turn into an adieu to youth. And Freedom is so dense I reread enough passages that I can practically say I’ve already read the book twice. But the time and effort were more than worth it: for the first snow, for the damn spider, for the narrator’s mother’s clock collection, for a telescope in a kiosk, and for a conversation with Andriukha about death-and-will-it-happen, the conversation we’re supposed to avoid. It’s the combination of Big Things and little things that got to me. And the spontaneous powerful feelings. There’s also a globe factory. Learning about birds from matchboxes. And a reference to railroad stuff and Platonov characters, how could I not appreciate that? Finally, there’s a mention of Tunguska. This is my sixth Tunguska tag, dear readers!

Disclosures: I met Mikhail Butov in Moscow last year through Dmitrii Danilov, who pulled Freedom off a bookstore shelf and recommended it to me as a favorite. I have already thanked him.

Up Next: Grigorii Danilevskii’s Princess Tarakanova, an easy-reading historical novel and Vasily Grossman’s Armenian Sketchbook. Then Ekaterina Sherga’s The Underground Ship, which I’m enjoying. My morbid fascination with Elena Katishonok’s Once There Lived an Old Man and His Wife has come to an end (it feels too goopy and dull, particularly when I have so many other books on the shelves), and I’m reading Mikhail Gigolashvili’s The Capture of Muscovy slowly: his language-based humor can be very, very funny but the book could have used some significant edits.

When Chickens Fly: Lipskerov’s The Forty Years of Changzhuoe

It feels appropriate that I bought my copy of Dmitrii Lipskerov’s 40 лет Чанчжоэ (The Forty Years of Changzhuoe) at my local Russian grocery store: I didn’t buy chicken that day but the book chronicles the strange life of a town invaded by a horde of chickens. Still, though the residents of Changzhuoe—the name apparently means “Chicken City”—find ways to capitalize on the arrival of millions of birds and many people develop feathers, The Forty Years of Changzhuoe is less about birds and feathers then about upside-down worlds and, to borrow from one of the book’s characters, “обыкновенный атавизм,” which I think I might call “normal atavism” here. It’s a diagnosis of sorts.

Though The Forty Years of Changzhuoe chronicles the city’s forty-year history (and, by many accounts, borrows from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose Hundred Years of Solitude are but a vague, distant memory for me…), it’s difficult to pinpoint its temporal setting in our parallel world. The novel apparently takes place before the Russian revolution, though the passage of time is often distorted in the town’s history, which is typed in code by a character named Elena who works in a trance-like state. Her husband, Genrikh Shaller, an officer who’s not really an officer, brings the text to one Mr. Teplyi (Mr. Warm, who’s anything but warm), a teacher at the local orphanage, for deciphering. One of Mr. Teplyi’s students is Jerome, a character who helps connect several of the book’s threads, largely because he’s a nosy young voyeur.

Lipskerov populates his town with lots more characters, including Liza and Françoise, who are two of Shaller’s lovers, a physicist named Gogol, a doctor on the make, and a set of bickering town council members. There’s also a businessman who decides to build a Babel-like tower of happiness. For me, what’s most interesting about all these figures is the way Lipskerov twists myth and literary expectations. [Spoiler alert!] For example, in Changzhuoe, unlike in Nikolai Karamzin’s sentimental classic, “Poor Liza,” Liza doesn’t do herself in because she’s distraught—growing chicken feathers doesn’t push her to suicide—it’s her beau, the businessman with the tower, who kills himself by diving off the structure in front of a crowd.

Physical and metaphorical flights are a theme in the book, too, so a physicist named Gogol feels doubly mischievous, particularly since Nikolai Gogol’s nose-in-the-bread caper (among others), defies our world’s laws of physics. And then there’s the cannibalistic Mr. Teplyi, who keeps a gruesome library and kills because it helps him decode Elena’s text. Teplyi feels like a twist on Dostoevsky, particularly when he tells Shaller that the presence of a hatchet doesn’t necessarily indicate a killer.

Reading Olga Slavnikova’s 1997 piece about Changzhuoe in the journal Ural reminded me of numerous other aspects of this crowded novel that I’d either forgotten or downplayed as I read. I was glad for her mention of characters’ propensity to forget their pasts and take on new names, and Slavnikova notes the laic canonization of people whose sins are forgiven, calling Changzhuoe’s saints folkloric characters. This form of dvoeverie, or dual belief, fits nicely with the (many!) carnivalistic elements I found in the book. Slavnikova also points out the erasure of one key character’s character… in fact, most of the town erases itself, returning the place to the same status (essentially a hole in the ground) it had at the beginning of the chronicle.

Perhaps the oddest aspect of Changzhuoe is that it’s not nearly as confusing or messy to read as it is to summarize. Even better, it’s a fairly enjoyable piece of work that combines eroticism, murder, magical realism, and, of course, atavism (usual or otherwise) and strange cycles of history. The book and its characters are certainly quirky, combining old-fashioned and modern, so I give Lipskerov lots of credit for placing most of his book—a debut novel—on the dark side of quirky rather than succumbing to cuteness. I can only imagine what some other writers might have done with all those feathers.

Level for Non-Native Readers of Russian: around 3/5 out of 5.

Up Next: A quick post on Ergali Ger’s Koma, then Andrei Rubanov’s short stories and Marina Stepanova’s Lazarus and all his women.

Image Credit: “Hen – Kura” from dudek25, via sxc.hu.

Monday Miscellany: Zakhar Prilepin’s Literary Lists

I love lists—particularly when they catalogue contemporary Russian fiction—so wanted to be sure to post two lists of Zakhar Prilepin’s favorite books and stories from the noughties before I forget their existence.

Both lists appear online and both are taken from Prilepin’s new book, Книгочёт. There’s an interesting mix here: several writers I’d never heard of, a clump of books that didn’t grab me, some unread items on my shelf, and writers I’ve enjoyed very much. Several books and stories have even been translated. The lists are long, so I’ll keep the commentary short… but I’m always happy to hear recommendations!

Novels first:

• Aleksei Ivanov’s Блуда и МУДО (I’ve seen the title rendered as Cheap Porn). Waiting on my shelf... I’m a little scared of this one because of high expectations. Like Prilepin, I thought Ivanov’s Geographer was good (previous post) but not great.
• Aleksandr Kuznetsov-Tulianin’s Язычник (The Heathen or The Pagan)—Kuznetsov-Tulianin is a new name for me. Журнальный зал calls this an ethnographic novel.
• Mikhail Gigolashvili’s Чёртово колесо (The Devil’s Wheel)—One of my own big, big favorites (previous post). I just love this book.
• Vladimir “Adol’fych” Nesterenko’s Огненное погребение (literally something like Fiery Burial)—Another new name for me. Crime.
• Mikhail Shishkin’s Письмовник (Letter-Book)—Letter-Book will be out in Andrew Bromfield’s English translation in 2013 (previous post). Won the 2011 Big Book.
• Aleksandr Garros and Aleksei Evdokimov’s [Голово]ломка (Headcrusher)—2003 NatsBest winner. Also on my shelf; it never seems to appeal to me. Available in Andrew Bromfield’s translation.
• Andrei Rubanov’s Сажайте, и вырастет! (Do Time Get Time)—Andrew Bromfield translated Do Time Get Time and recommended Rubanov; alas, my usual book sites and stores never seem to have this particular book.
• Sergei Samsonov’s Аномалия Камлаева (The Kamlaev Anomaly)—I’ve only read Samsonov’s Oxygen Limit, which I thought was flawed (previous post), but Anomaly sounds better.
• Aleksandr Terekhov’s Каменный мост (The Stone Bridge)—Coming out soon from Glagoslav in Simon Patterson’s translation. Another nonfavorite, though several friends loved it.
• Dmitrii Bykov’s trilogy of Оправдание (Justification), Орфография (Orthography), and Остромов, или Ученик чародея (Ostromov, Or the Sorcerer’s Apprentice)—Though I couldn’t get through either Justification or Ostromov, which won the 2011 NatsBest, I swear I will try Orthography. Too many of you have recommended it.

The stories and novellas sound even better to me:

• Mikhail Tarkovskii’s “Гостиница «Океан»” (“The Hotel ‘Ocean’”)—This story is in Tarkovskii’s collection that won the Yasnaya Polyana award in 2010.
• Sergei Shargunov’s Ура! (Hurrah!)—On the shelf; a small book.
• Olga Slavnikova’s “Басилевс” (“Basileus”)—In the Read Russia! anthology, translated by Andrew Bromfield. About a cat; the beginning looks great.
• German Sadulaev’s Я чеченец! (I Am a Chechen!)—Available in Anna Gunin’s English translation.
• Marina Stepnova’s “Бедная Антуанетточка” (“Poor Little Antoinette”)
• Dmitrii Danilov’s “Чёрный и зелёный” (“Black and Green”)—On my reader… hmm, maybe I’ll read this next. July 25 update: I’m thoroughly enjoying  “Black and Green”; the title refers to tea. 
• Roman Senchin’s “Конец сезона” (“The End of the Season”)
• Mikhail Elizarov’s “Госпиталь” (“The Hospital”)
• Il’dar Abuziarvov’s “Троллейбус, идущий на Восток” (“Trolleybus Going East”)
• Maia Kucherskaia’s “Кукушка” (“The Cuckoo”)

Up Next: St. Petersburg Noir, a story by Alexander Snegirev, and Maria Galina’s Mole Crickets, which I enjoyed quite a bit.

Disclaimers: The usual. Many of the writers on these lists were at BookExpo America last month. 

On Edge by the River: Alexander Ilichevsky’s Anarchists

Alexander Ilichevsky’s Анархисты (The Anarchists) was a lovely reading surprise, a novel that blends, fairly successfully, classical and contemporary themes and stylistics. Though I can quote my own post from 2010 about Ilichevsky’s Booker-winning Matisse and say The Anarchists is also “an ambitious, lumpy novel that uses complex, often poetic imagery and language to present social, existential, and metaphysical angles on post-Soviet Russia,” I found in The Anarchists a more even and more satisfying novel than Matisse.

The Anarchists focuses on Petr Solomin, an aspiring artist who left his Moscow life as a businessman to paint on the Oka River, in the Kaluga oblast’. Solomin’s name is rooted in Russian words related to “straw” and he idolizes Isaac Levitan, who died in 1900 but appears in the book as a character. Solomin wants to understand Levitan’s perspectives. Solomin lives with a woman named Katya, whom he meets early in the book, when she gives him a ride in Moscow. And quite a ride it is: Katya, whose beauty is compared to Greta Garbo’s, is a flaky driver. Solomin has to bring her home with him; she turns out to have an addiction. Their acquaintances in the country include two doctors, an Orthodox priest, super-rich newlyweds, and a schoolteacher who’s a specialist in Yevgeny Onegin.

The Anarchists focuses primarily on Solomin’s various sufferings—with himself, with Katya and her addiction, with a Bazarov-like young doctor, and with the rest of the world—and Ilichevsky generally paces the book nicely. The first half of the book is a bit slower and background-heavy than the second, with tangents that take us back in history, telling the story of a local anarchist and natural history expeditions—for those of you keeping track, the Tunguska event gets another mention here and may soon win a tag of its own on the blog. We see the contemporary characters interact with nature, too, particularly the river. There are also heavy, deep, and real conversations among the doctors and the priest: they talk about philosophy and, yes, gossip about Solomin and Katya. Some of this talk feels playful, on the verge of parody.

Ilichevsky folds in lots of literary predecessors, including the afore-mentioned Yevgeny Onegin, Dostoevsky’s Myshkin, a Chekhovesque gun, Lermontov’s Hero of Our Time, and the ever-dreaded-but-popular superfluous man. Many of the book’s themes come together when Solomin tells Dr. Dubrovin that all the escapees to the provinces are anarchists because they want autonomy. Solomin also admits to being a superfluous man. We already know his difficulties with Russian society: he loves Eurotravel and fancies the idea of getting lost or disappearing amidst spirits in the woods. Which he does.

How I imagined it: 

Levitan’s Тишина (Silence)

For me, it’s the river that anchors the novel, connecting themes—art, science, nature—and historical eras, and offering landscapes (often with people) for Ilichevsky to describe. And describe he does, beginning the novel with summaries of seasons on the Oka and ending it with the river reflecting a female face. I think the river, both because of its constancy and because of Ilichevsky’s descriptions, contributed most to my rather indescribable enjoyment of The Anarchists.

Rarely do I use words like “beguiling” to describe a novel… but “beguiling” fits my experience with The Anarchists. I loved the book’s contrasts and combinations: the feel of simultaneously reading the present and the past, the feel of rural leisure and urban urgency, and the feel of ancient settings inhabited by contemporary people. Yes, The Anarchists is lumpy, but I think the lumps and tangents give the book much of its organic energy. Ilichevsky pulls so many elements into his novel that it’s tempting to call him an anarchist, too, but he’s careful with his material, which he seems to love very much. Perhaps that gave him the strength to pull back from offering too much about, say, expeditions, anarchists, or Levitan himself. The result is a curiously timeless composite of past and present that mixes post-Soviet alienation with language, straw hats, rural doctors, river banks, bicycles, and literary motifs that took me back to alienated characters from Russian classics, particularly Chekhov and Turgenev.

Disclaimers: I received a copy of The Anarchists from Read Russia, where Ilichevsky was a participant. The usual.

Up Next: Vladimir Makanin’s Two Sisters and Kandinsky, another book that combines classic and contemporary…

Image Credit: Isaac Levitan’s Молчание (Silence), 1898, via levitan-world.ru.

Ы!: Zakhar Prilepin’s Black Monkey

The core of Zakhar Prilepin’s novel The Black Monkey tells the story of the implosion of a contemporary Russian nuclear family—narrated by a nameless father who tells of his nameless son, nameless daughter, and nameless wife—that ends (almost) not with a bang but with the whimper of the letter ы. Prilepin extends his range beyond the family by inserting set pieces from other times and places that show the destruction of other families and, by extension, societies. One story, set in Africa, includes an extreme example of in loco parentis, for child soldiers, plus mentions of, apparently, celebrity mom Angelina Jolie.

Since Prilepin is, thank goodness, still Prilepin, he juxtaposes episodes of misbehavior, stupidity, and cruelty, some quite nasty, with tenderness, particularly his mixed-up narrator’s love for his small children. He feeds them, reads to them, and worries about them. His descriptions of how they unlock the apartment door when he rings, dragging a chair to the door so they can reach the lock, felt especially sweet. Meanwhile, stories of child violence and the father’s visits to his mistress and a prostitute led this reader to wonder what will happen to these kids who chew gum like a meat grinder and eat whatever hotdogs and pel’meni their nameless father puts on their plates…

The Black Monkey worked best for me as an atmospheric novel, in large part because Prilepin combines realism and abstraction, using language that has a quick, modern flow. The novel has wonderfully mischievous humor that felt especially vivid after seeing and hearing Prilepin at BookExpo America. And the book is a page-turner, albeit in a strange way: I didn’t especially look forward to reading it but it held my interest and kept me reading whenever I picked it up, despite a somewhat disjointed structure that, I must admit, fits the topic. Most telling, though, is that The Black Monkey keeps knocking around my poor skull; it dug its way into my subconscious.

For me, the highlight of The Black Monkey was a brief scene where Nameless Dad reads to his  children from a primer. The primer, though, is unusual: the letters aren’t presented in alphabetical order. Instead, they’re listed “будто в строгий порядок букв упал камень и все рассыпал,” (“as if a rock fell into the strict order and scattered everything”). The book presents “a,” the first letter of the alphabet, then another vowel, “у,” which occurs in the second half of the alphabet and sounds like “oo.” Dad plays with words for a bit with his kids then leaves them, saying he’s going for cigarettes. He calls his mistress and plays more with the primer’s words as he trots down the stairs and, literally, runs into his wife at the entrance to the apartment building.

Nameless Dad calls his mistress, Alya, again from her building’s entryway, pronouncing three vowel sounds, “Ы. У. О.” (“Y. U. O.”… though “ы” doesn’t sound like “y,” it sounds like the tiny ы audio on this page). Alya asks, “Кто это?” (“Who is this?”), addressing a Big Issue of Nameless Guy’s life that goes along with the collapse of his family, the disordering of his alphabet (scary for a journalist), and all that violence. I’d say the letter ы wins a place of (dis?)honor in the book: Nameless Dad’s last utterance is a pained “Ы-ы-ы!” Accompanied by thoughts of Hell.

Up next: Alexander Ilichevsky’s Анархисты (The Anarchists), which I’m enjoying even more than I’d hoped. And St. Petersburg Noir, which is going to the beach with me this afternoon. And more 2012 Big Book Award finalists… The Black Monkey is the first I’ve read.

Disclaimers: The usual.

Image credit: Letter ы from OwenBlacker, via Wikipedia. 

Notable New Translations for 2012 (plus a few from 2011 and for 2013…)

Ah, lists! Now that I’ve finally finished compiling this list, I understand why I procrastinated for so long: the titles may already translated for me but this inventory of newish and upcoming translations is larger than I expected. A very nice problem to have! I’ll start with brand-new and then meander…

A few notes first: If I’ve blogged about a book, I linked my previous post to its Russian title. I linked English titles to publisher pages. Actual release dates (and even titles!) may vary. Finally: my apologies that translator names are missing for a few entries. I’ll fill those in as soon as I can!

I’m happy to report that Oleg Zaionchkovsky’s Happiness Is Possible (Счастье возможно), translated by Andrew Bromfield, is out from And Other Stories, a new British publisher. Another book I enjoyed, Zakhar Prilepin’s Sin (Грех), winner of the NatsBest of the decade award, was just released by another new publisher, Glagoslav, in Simon Patterson and Nina Chordas’s translation. Glagoslav also recently brought out a Patterson-Chordas translation of Elena Chizhova’s The Time of Women (Время женщин), not a favorite but a book that brought record numbers of questions after The New York Times ran an article about Chizhova.

Other Glagoslav Russian-English translations on this year’s calendar include: Igor Sakhnovsky’s The Vital Needs of the Dead (Насущные нужды умерших), translated by Julia Kent (June); Alexander Terekhov’s The Stone Bridge (Каменный мост), translated by Patterson and Chordas (Oct.); Oleg Pavlov’s Asystole (Асистолия) (Dec.) by a translator TBA, and Eduard Kochergin’s NatsBest-winning Christened With Crosses (Крещенные крестами), translated by Patterson (Nov.).

A few other relatively new books… Pavel Kostin’s It’s Time (Время пришло), in James Rann’s translation, from Urban Romantics; and two books by Andrey Kurkov from Melville House: Penguin Lost (Закон улитки) and The Case of the General’s Thumb (Игра в отрезанный палец), both translated by George Bird. Another book with an animal theme is forthcoming from Hesperus in June: The Way of Muri (Путь Мури), by Ilya Boyashov, translated by Amanda Love Darragh, is an allegorical novel about a cat wandering Europe; it won the 2007 National Bestseller Award. Another British publisher, Angel Classics, will release Muireann Maguire’s Red Spectres: Russian Twentieth-Century Tales of the Supernatural, a collection that includes pieces by writers including Krzhizhanovsky, Bulgakov, Chayanov, and Peskov.

Books on the way later this year include Mikhail Shishkin’s Maidenhair (Венерин волос), in Marian Schwartz’s translation, from Open Letter, and St. Petersburg Noir, edited by literary agents Natalia Smirnova and Julia Goumen, and published by Akashic with commissioned stories from writers including Sergei Nosov, Lena Eltang, and Andrei Rubanov (Aug.). Amazon Crossing has several books by Andrei Gelasimov, translated by Marian Schwartz, listed with various dates in late 2012 and 2013; my favorite is The Lying Year (Год обмана), currently listed for January 2013. I should also mention two nonfiction books Marian translated for Yale University Press: The Leningrad Blockade, 1941-1944, edited by Richard Bidlack and Nikita Lomagin, is on the schedule for June, and Aleksandra Shatskikh’s Black Square, with scholarship on Malevich, arrives later.

What else? Another book with “happy” in the title: in November, New York Review Books will bring out Happy Moscow, a compilation of works by Andrey Platonov in translations by Robert & Elizabeth Chandler, with Nadya Bourova, Angela Livingstone, Olga Meerson, and Eric Naiman. The book includes a revised translation of the title novel plus two stories, an article, and a film script. Robert & Elizabeth Chandler—along with Sibelan Forrester, Anna Gunin, and Olga Meerson—have another title on the way: Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov, coming from Penguin Classics in December 2012. Robert Chandler told me the book is roughly half “true folktales”; the other stories are from Pushkin, Bazhov, Teffi, and Platonov.

Last—but definitely not least—are titles from Glas, many part of Glas’s collaboration with the Debut Prize: Arslan Khasavov’s Sense (Смысл) translated by Arch Tait (spring-summer)¸ Vlas Doroshevich’s What the Emperor Cannot Do: Tales and Legends of the Orient translated by Rowen Glie and John Dewey (spring); and an anthology with seven stories, Still Waters Run Deep: YoungWomen’s Writing from Russia (September). Several other Glas books are already available: The Scared Generation, two short novels by Boris Yampolsky (The Old Arbat/Арбат, режимная улица) and Vasil Bykov (The Manhunt/Облава), translated by Rachel Polonsky and John Dewey… Mendeleev Rock, with Andrei Kuzechkin’s title novella (Менделеев-рок) and Pavel Kostin’s Rooftop Anesthesia (Анестезия крыш), both translated by Andrew Bromfield… and Off the Beaten Track: Stores by Russian Hitchhikers, with Igor Savelyev’s Pale City (Бледный город), Irina Bogatyreva’s АвтоSTOP (Off the Beaten Track), and Tatiana Mazepina’s Traveling Towards Paradise; translators respectively, Amanda Love Darragh, Arch Tait, and Ainsley Morse and Mihaela Pacurar. On the way: Alexander Snegirev’s Petroleum Venus (Нефтяная Венера), apparently in early 2013.

One more last but not least: Russian Life sent me two books in recent months… Maya Kucherskaya’s Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy (Современный патерик), translated by Alexei Bayer, is described on the back of my review copy as a mix of fact, fiction, myth, and history. And a story collection by Stephan Erik Clark, Vladimir’s Mustache, is written in English but set in Russia, in various centuries. It looks promising.

I have a horrible feeling I’ve forgotten something or somebody… but it won’t be Andrew Bromfield’s translation of A Displaced Person (Перемещённое лицо), the third/last of Vladimir Voinovich’s Chonkin books, due out some day, some month from Northwestern University Press! Please add a comment or send me a note if I’ve forgotten (or didn’t know about) your book(s). Or, horrors, made an error.

Post-Posting Additions:
April 17: Hesperus will publish James Rann’s translation of Anna Starobinets’s Живущий in fall 2012, as The Living.

Also:
Andrew Bromfield's translation of Hamid Ismailov's A Poet and Bin-Laden came out from Glagoslav in fall 2012; Andrew also wrote that author Rustam Ibragimbekov self-published Andrew's translation of Solar Plexus, a book set in one of my favorite places to visit, Baku. 

Edwin Trommelen's Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka, translated from the Dutch by David Stephenson and published by Russian Life Books, presents lots of cultural background on vodka. There are many, many bits from literature: this is a fun book to have on a side table for some quick reading.

One more 2012 listing from Glagoslav:  Elvira Baryakina's White Shanghai: A Novel of the Roaring Twenties in China, translated by Anna Muzychka and Benjamin Kuttner.

Listings gathered at the 2013 AWP conference:
Two from Northwestern University Press: Ilf and Petrov's The Twelve Chairs, translated by Anne O. Fisher, and Alexander Herzen's A Herzen Reader, translated and edited by Kathleen Parthe. Biblioasis published David Helwig's translations of three Chekhov stories in a beautiful illustrated book called About Love. 

Two other bits of news:

I’ve been excited (for at least a year!) that Russia will be the featured country at this year’s BookExpo America. I’m especially excited now that I’m working on preparations for the many Read Russia events scheduled for early June in New York… the list of writers scheduled to attend includes Olga Slavnikova and Mikhail Shishkin, plus a bunch of Debut Prize writers. I’ll be writing more, soon, about BEA and Read Russia.

Also, St. Antony’s College, Oxford University, is organizing a conference, “Decadence or Renaissance? Russian Literature Since 1991,” for September 24-26, 2012. Conference organizers are soliciting proposals for papers; information is here. I hope to go!

Disclaimers and Disclosures. The usual, with too many specifics to list: I’ve met, worked on paid projects for, discussed translation and specific projects, chatted and shared meals with, and otherwise been in contact with numerous individuals and entities mentioned in this post. I received review copies of some books listed.