2019-2020 NOS(E) Award Shortlists

I so utterly forgot that the NOS(E) Award shortlists would be announced on Halloween – “are they trick or are they treat?” really is the question, I suppose – that I thought a lot about Anna Kozlova’s Rurik and Liubov Barinova’s Eve all week because I’d intended to write about them. I’ll keep thinking (and saving) those thoughts for next week.

As was the case last season, NOS(E) will award two prizes in early 2020: one named by what I think of as the regular jury (members listed here; their shortlist is here) and the other determined by the critical academy (members listed here; their shortlist is here). Both this season’s lists are a bit short on books that sounded particularly appealing to me (e.g. Nikitin’s Про папу, About Papa, the book that’s supposed to make people happy, didn’t make it, meaning I now feel even more driven to read it and determine its joy factor…) and there aren’t many women on either list. (Not that three out of sixteen for the longlist is very good, it’s pretty awful and it really makes me wonder what was nominated.) Plus there’s the usual mishmash of disparate genres, but, well, who am I to complain about that? If I want to like absolutely all of an award’s rules and practices, plus know what books were nominated, I’d have to invent my own award. Hm.

On that all too quixotic note, here are four books that made both lists:

• Nikolai Kononov: Восстание (Uprising) is a “documentary novel” apparently inspired by the life of Sergei Solovyov, one of the organizers of the Norilsk camp uprising. It’s on my shelf.
• Aleksandr Dolinin: Комментарий к роману Владимира Набокова “Дар” (Commentary on Vladimir Nabokov’s Novel The Gift) is apparently exactly what the title says it is. (Sample)
• Alexander Stesin: Нью-йоркский обход (something like New York Rounds) concerns a doctor’s observations of work with very diverse patients in New York and New Delhi. (Sample) (Review)
• Linor Goralik: Все, способные дышать дыхание (literally something like All Capable of Breathing a Breath, perhaps? Or maybe “Everybody”? I’m interested in figuring out how to read this title.) The brief description introducing this excerpt says the book concerns a country that’s facing a huge catastrophe and discovers that empathy can be a double-edged sword. A Big Book finalist, too, a book that, alas, I’ve had a very hard time trying to get into.

There are four other books on the regular jury’s shortlist:

• Kirill Kobrin: Поднебесный экспресс (The Celestial Express) sounds like an interesting sort-of-but-not-really-a-detective-novel set on a direct train trip (seventeen days!) from China to London.
• Daniil Turovskii: Вторжение. Краткая история русских хакеров (Interference. A Brief History of Russian Hackers. Or maybe Break In? I’m not sure if this concerns the 2016 elections in the US or not.) is a journalist’s account of what’s mentioned in the title. (Sample)
• Evgenii Chizhov: Собиратель рая (The Collector of Heaven? Maybe something more like Collecting Heaven?) concerns a woman suffering from Alzheimer’s disease who often leaves the house and gets lost, and her son (nicknamed “King” because he’s flea market royalty) who goes out to find her. It’s about memory, nostalgia, and people who came of age in the 1990s. I enjoyed Chizhov’s Translation from a Literal Translation (previous post) and am looking forward to this book, which is on its way to me. (Sample) (Review)
• Sofia Sinitskaya: Мироныч, дырник и жеможаха. Рассказы о родине (Mironych, Hole-Worshippers, and ???. Stories About the Motherland. Oh, that “жеможаха” is difficult, please see my previous (longlist) post, including comments for more in it!) contains three novellas set in three separate times: the Great Terror, the late eighteenth century, and the turn of the twenty-first century. The book’s description claims (in my very loose account!) that Sinitskaya’s following in the tracks of Gogol and (even more exciting) Vaginov… (Review) (Sample)

The other books on the critical jury’s shortlist are:

• Aleksandr Skidan: In Путеводитель по N. (A Guidebook to N.) the N. seems to stand for Nietzsche! :) In this mock autobiography, N. speaks in the voices of luminaries like Rilke, Dostoevsky, and Proust. Hm.
• Aleksei Polyarinov: Центр тяжести (Center of Gravity) sounds like a long (though Labirint says it’s only 480 pages so I’ll read it in ten days, ha ha, ha ha) and (potentially) formally complex novel about a journalist, a hacker, and an artist. (Review) 
• Pavel Peppershtein: Тайна нашего времени (Secret of Our Time) is a collection of sixteen stories with the author’s illustrations, published by Garage. I’ve been meaning to read Peppershtein’s fiction for years, after reading (and later translating a text) about his work with Inspection Medical Hermeneutics.

Disclaimers: The usual. I had a meddlesome (but very sweet) cat on my lap while piecing these lists together and hope I found and deleted all her additions to the post.

Up Next: Anna Kozlova’s Rurik, Liubov Barinova’s brand-new Eve, two books in English, and some other books in Russian, including Alisa Ganieva’s biography of Lilya Brik, which I’m continuing to enjoy (and almost sad to be finishing), and the very interesting Big Book finalist biography of Venedikt Erofeev by Oleg Lekmanov, Mikhail Sverdlov, and Ilya Simanovsky, where (to my surprise) I think I’ve been enjoying the biographical chapters more than the critical chapters because they’re creating such a vivid portrait of Erofeev.