Happy New Year! & 2016 Highlights

Happy New Year! С Новым годом! As I look back at this year’s posts and last year’s year-end greeting, I feel like I could repeat much of my old text: another year seemed to slip by very quickly and, for the fourth year in a row now, “the reading situation has been quality over quantity with lots of abandonments but also a fair number of books I’ve enjoyed.” And, yet again, it was a very busy year for translation, which is one reason I’ve been on a bit of a holiday hiatus this month. Here are some of the year’s highlights:

Favorite book by a writer I’d already read: Evgenii Vodolazkin’s The Aviator (previous post) was thoroughly enjoyable to read and it’s just as enjoyable to translate: I finished a smoothed rough draft yesterday and can only marvel at how nicely the book’s themes and plotlines fit together. Vodolazkin’s theme of timelessness and time’s spirals feel especially topical (I don’t want to write “timely”!) just before a holiday that’s so based on the nature of time. The Aviator fits beautifully with Laurus and Solovyov and Larionov, making a sort of triptych, all to be published by Oneworld Publications.

Favorite book by a writer I’d never read: Aleksandr Grigorenko’s Mebet (previous post) has stuck with me very nicely: Grigorenko’s portrayal of a fierce taiga warrior is beautiful and epic in all the right ways, making for a perfect combination of simple and complex, too. I bought Grigorenko’s Ilget when I was in Moscow and am looking forward to reading it… though I’m also a bit afraid to pick it up after having enjoyed Mebet so much.

Nicest book surprise: It was a lovely surprise to receive a big, flat package from Russian Life a few months ago: the box was clearly too heavy to contain a calendar and I certainly wasn’t expecting a copy of The Spine of Russia, a coffee table book with photos by Mikhail Mordasov and Paul E. Richardson, along with commentary from the photos’ highly varied subjects, about whether they consider themselves patriots. I’m a sucker for books with vivid, telling photos of Russia so of course I love paging through to look and read, particularly in combination with Richardson’s Driving Down Russia’s Spine, a companion book with a textual account of the trip that covers the same characters—who include Vodolazkin—in much more detail. Richardson, who enjoys quirkiness, includes lots of interesting tidbits about history and contemporary (2015) life in Russia, including the far north, an area of particular interest for me.

Happiest moods: I think winning the Read Russia Award and being shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize pretty much topped everything (previous post)! That said, signing contracts to translate Vodolazkin’s Aviator (Oneworld), Margarita Khemlin’s Klotsvog (Columbia University Press/Russian Library), and Guzel Yakhina’s Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes (Oneworld) put me in pretty excellent moods, too, particularly since I loved reading all three books. Nice reviews for Vadim Levental’s Masha Regina, also for Oneworld, made me very, very happy, too!

Best travel: Moscow, for the literary translator congress and for my love of the city (previous post). Beyond the award, it was fun to see colleagues, authors, and old friends, and amass lots of books to bring home.

Favorite novel about translation: I made up this new category because I keep thinking about Idra Novey’s Ways to Disappear (and the hair brush!), which I enjoyed so much (previous post). Novey has said she wrote it as a love letter to translation and that truly comes out. 

What’s coming up in 2017: In terms of translation: my translation of Marina Stepnova’s Italian Lessons is in the works and should be on the way, plus I’ll be finishing The Aviator and Zuleikha and starting on Klotsvog. In terms of the blog: I have a lot of posts to write to get caught up on my reading, though some common themes—as well as some (honestly, far too many) disappointments that have made me think more about my expectations as a reader—mean I’ll write some roundups. I’m now reading Sergei Kuznetov’s Kaleidoscope, which is over 800 pages of, hmm, connected stories/chapters that have a strange way of drawing me in. I’ll be greeting 2017 with that book. I also have my Crime and Punishment reread project, which involves Robert Belknap’s wonderful Plots, sent to me by Columbia University Press, whose package of the first three Russian Library books was waiting for me at the post office today, just in time for the holiday.

Thank you again! Thank you to everyone for visiting the blog, whether regularly or occasionally. I’m glad it’s useful and wish everybody a very happy, healthy 2017 filled with many good books! Special thanks go to Columbia University Press and Russian Life for sending the books I mentioned above.

Happy New Year!

Image credit: Fireworks in Bratislava, New Year 2005, from Ondrejk, via Wikipedia.

A Busy (Yester)Day for Russian Literary Awards: 2016 Yasnaya Polyana Winners & NOSE Finalists

I’m a day late posting about the Yasnaya Polyana Award’s 2016 winners and the NOSE Award’s 2016 shortlist—I got so caught up working on last year’s Yasnaya Polyana winner, Guzel Yakhina’s Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes, that I forgot to write my post!

Yasnaya Polyana first: there’s a Russian summary with juror commentary here and Alexandra Guzeva’s English-language Russia Beyond the Headlines article on Yasnaya Polyana is very complete, too. Best of all, it means I can stop agonizing over how to translate a problematic winning title and expand on summaries of the books I haven’t read, too. So! The two co-winners—this is the first time a Yasnaya Polyana award has been shared—of the “XXI Century” award are Narine Abgaryan’s С неба упали три яблока (Three Apples Fell from the Sky), a novel I liked very much when I read it last summer (previous post), and Aleksandr Grigorenko’s Потерял слепой дуду (A Blind Man Lost his Flute). As I’d expected, Three Apples won reader voting, too. It’s the Grigorenko title that I wasn’t quite sure how to translate when I wrote my post about the shortlist: beyond the possibility of word play, the word “дуду” is “duduk” in English (Wikipedia offers lots of information about it) but this word for a wooden, double-reeded wind instrument feels a bit obscure to me. In any case, I loved Grigorenko’s Mebet (previous post) so am looking forward to reading the novella, as well as his Ilget, which I bought in September.

The winner of the “Childhood, Adolescence, Youth” award is Marina Nefedova’s Лесник и его нимфа (The Woodsman and His Nymph; RBTH uses “forester”). I was very, very pleased that Vladimir Makanin won the “Modern Classic” prize for his 1984 novella Где сходилось небо с холмами (Where the Sky Meets the Hills): I’ve enjoyed several of Makanin’s early novels and stories (previous posts involving Makanin) and have long regarded him as a modern classic. Finally, Orhan Pamuk’s A Strangeness in My Mind, which Apollinaria Avrutina translated into Russian, won the “Foreign Literature” award. Guzeva’s RBTH article notes that A Strangeness has a Russian basis: “[Avrutina] said that the whole novel is based on the epigraph for the second part of A Hero of Our Time by Russian writer Mikhail Lermontov: ‘Asians... once let them feast and drink their fill of boza at a wedding or a funeral, and out will come their knives.’” How about that!

Moving right along, to the NOSE Award… Finalists were announced at the Krasnoyarsk Book Culture Fair after public debates. The winner will be chosen on January 24, 2017.

• Eugene Vodolazkin’s Авиатор (The Aviator), which is already on the Big Book shortlist and which I’m already translating and loving all over again (previous post). I’m glad to see it made this list.
• Kirill Kobrin’s Шерлок Холмс и рождение современности. Деньги, девушки, денди Викторианской Эпохи (Sherlock Holmes and the Birth of Modernity. Money, Young Women, and Dandies of the Victorian Epoch) is nonfiction that the title and this excerpt explain.
• Sergei Kuznetsov’s Калейдоскоп (excerpt) (Kaleidoscope) involves dozens of characters and their stories, set in the twentieth century; one of my Goodreads friends noted sex and vampires. This one sounded interesting from the start but for some reason hearing it described—in a positive way, mind you—as “Pynchon lite” more than once in Moscow intrigues me all the more.
• Vladimir Martynov’s Книга Перемен (The Book of Changes) is described as more of a palimpsest than a book and as a sort of hypertext for hyperreading that uses zapping and fortune telling practices from The Book of Changes. I was an I Ching fan as a teenager but well, hmm.
• Aleksandra Petrova’s Аппендикс (excerpt) (The Appendix, in a metaphorical sense, it seems) is a novel about Rome. (A review)
• Boris Lego’s Сумеречные рассказы (Dusky Stories) is a collection of nineteen Russian gothic stories; a cover blurb calls it the scariest book of the year…
• Sergei Lebedev’s Люди августа (People of August, click through for synopsis and excerpt) is also on the 2016 Booker shortlist.

Disclaimers & Disclosures: The usual, plus translating that Vodolazkin book, having translated books by two YP jurors, the fact of support for my translation work from Prokhorov Foundation grants, having received the Abgaryan book from her literary agency and translating the very beginning of Three Apples.

Up Next: Trip reports (Moscow and Oakland), Oleg Zaionchkovsky’s Timosha’s Prose and Alexander Snegirev’s patient Faith/Vera, books I’ve been reading in English, plus other Big Book finalists, though the second half of the Big Book list brings me little joy and much left unfinished…

2016 Yasnaya Polyana Award Shortlists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the children’s literature division:

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

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

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

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

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

Lazy Snow Day Special: Grigorenko’s Mebet

I’m not quite sure why I feel so surprised about how much I enjoyed Aleksandr Grigorenko’s Мэбэт (Mebet, watch for spoilers!), a novel Grigorenko apparently used to describe as, simply, “about the taiga.” Despite lots of great reviews and recommendations, I’d been passing over Mebet on my shelf for almost four years, always thinking, I suppose, that a book about a taiga warrior sounded too frozen, anthropological, ethnographic, folkloric, frozen (did I mention that already?), and, thus, uninteresting to pick up. Obviously, I was wrong.

Mebet is anything but uninteresting, probably because Grigorenko so successfully channels what is frozen, anthropological, ethnographic, folkloric, and (again) frozen into the story of one man’s successes (mostly in hunting, often done in others’ territory, and in battle with neighboring peoples, sometimes using tricks) and failures (mostly in dealing with other human beings). What struck me most was Grigorenko’s portrayal of Mebet’s, hmm, rigid character. Don’t get me wrong: a man who can catch flying arrows deserves some big-time praise, but I jotted down “a hardass with no friends.” Mebet, a Nenets who’s a darling of the gods, sees no reason to back down from anything because he sees people as being either weak or strong and he believes there’s no reason to deny one’s category. I’m sure it’s clear which category he inhabits. Mebet even tells his son, Khadko, that there’s just one area where he’s incapable: regretting past deeds or repenting. (That sets up the second half of the book; more on that below.)

Mebet and Khadko have a strained relationship, thanks to differences in their worldviews: Khadko may be a fantastic hunter but, unlike his father, he wants to observe the rules of the taiga that humans have set. In a key disagreement, Khadko follows those rules and proposes marriage properly to a woman from another tribe; he’s refused and told, in part, that it’s because his father doesn’t honor gods or guidelines, and wants only for others to fear him. Khadko marries a different woman; Mebet chooses her and kidnaps her for Khadko. She is Khadne (her name means Woman of the Blizzard) and she turns out to be very helpful in battle against her own people.

What I’ve outlined is only a portion of the story, to show some of the factors that lead to further confrontations in the book, after Mebet goes to take revenge on a bear and loses, which forces him to, well, face his mortality, his wrongdoing, and those he has wronged. Those people range from his battle victims to a one-eyed witch who made mushroom potions that Khadko tried. During a hellish eleven-stage quest, Mebet runs into the spirits of many of those people and is aided by his very wise talking dog. Like Mebet’s prideful character, many of the realizations that come—about immortality, being manipulated, and how scary it is to be a human (or even a dog?)—feel universal rather than unique to the taiga, despite belonging so solidly in Mebet.

For this reader, the biggest miracle of Mebet isn’t what happens in the end but that the novel works so beautifully, making a 239-page book feels like the epic literature that reviews promised. The matter-of-fact storytelling, the timeless characters speaking everyday-sounding Russian (they even say “oy”), the narrator’s occasional contextualizing, and the many familiar tropes Grigorenko folds into the text all make Mebet read easily, but the more I go back to look at my notes and reread individual pages, the more I appreciate—as I always do—how much depth an author can work into such a seemingly simple text. Mebet made for particularly good company during a particularly busy time: it’s not easy to find books that read this smoothly, pleasantly, and smartly on multiple levels.

Up next: Boris Akunin’s The Black City, set in Baku; fun in spots but dragging a bit. Eugene Vodolazkin’s The Aviator, which I’m reading slowly and enjoying very much.