Yasnaya Polyana Finalists, 2019

Well, how about that? The Yasnaya Polyana Award shortlist appeared last week, the day after I posted about the longlist.

The six finalists are, in Russian alphabetical order:

• Vladislav Artemov’s Император (part one) (part two) (part three) (The Emperor) is a novel that apparently contains allusions to Master and Margarita.
• Vladimir Berezin’s Дорога на Астапово (The Road to Astapovo) sounds like a road novel of sorts, following Lev Tolstoy’s route from Yasnaya Polyana to Astapovo.
• Alexandra Nikolaenko’s Небесный почтальон Федя Булкин (Fedya Bulkin, Heavenly/Celestial Postman) sounds like it’s about a boy who thinks his dead parents are on a long business trip. (Nikolaenko also illustrated Sluzhitel’s shortlisted book.)
• Sergei Samsonov’s Держаться за Землю (Hold Onto (the?) Earth or something similar?) concerns the Donbass region, coal miners, and geopolitical conflict.
• Grigory Sluzhitel’s Дни Савелия (Savely’s Days) is the only book on the list that I’ve read (previous post). It’s also the only book on the list narrated by a cat and it’s so enjoyable and filled with Moscow, life, and emotion (plus Nikolaenko’s beautiful illustrations) that I’d bet a big, fat packet of catnip that it will win the reader’s choice vote.
• Vyacheslav Stavetsky’s Жизнь А.Г. (The Life of A.G.) tells of a Spanish dictator doomed to tour his country in a cage because he failed to shoot himself properly. As I noted last time, this book (like Sluzhitel’s) is also on the Big Book shortlist, though A.G. strikes me as overly burdened with information and description. (As with all Big Book finalists, however, I’ll be giving it another chance.)

Disclaimers and Disclosures: The usual. Two authors I’ve translated are on the Yasnaya Polyana jury, I’ve received two of the above-mentioned books from the Big Book Award, and I’ve met Sluzhitel.

Up Next: Anna Kozlova’s Rurik, Sukhbat Aflatuni’s Earthly Paradise, two books in English, and some other books in Russian. The latter will likely include Alisa Ganieva’s biography of Lilya Brik, which I’ve been enjoying for its detail (Ganieva uses lots of quotes to allow her characters, their colleagues, and family members to speak for themselves), tactful dishiness, and even personal notes. I’ve been finding the book suspenseful, which is rather odd since I already know a fair bit about LB’s life, loves, and times. A side benefit: now that I “know” LB’s sister, Elsa Triolet, better, I’m moving Viktor Shklovsky’s Zoo, or Letters Not About Love up on the shelf. I’ve also pulled a few Mayakovsky volumes off the shelves: a two-volume Russian set plus James Womack’s book of translations, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Other Poems, which Carcanet Press kindly sent me several years ago. Womack’s spirited translations endeared themselves to me when I first opened the book and found “frickin’ Fet”; discovering last night that his English title for “Нате!” is “Up Yours!” confirmed my appreciation of his work for at least the twentieth time.

Aleksandra Nikolaenko Wins the 2017 Russian Booker

Just when I was feeling like a slacker for not having posted about the 2017 Russian Booker Prize winner, I noticed that the Russian Booker site hasn’t posted any news about this year’s results, either. Hmm.

In any case, Aleksandra Nikolaenko won the prize for her Убить Бобрыкина. История одного убийства (To Kill Bobrykin. The Story of One Killing), which I described on my shortlist post as sounding thoroughly mysterious, like some sort of odd inner dialogue. It pains me that I’m not as excited about the book itself as I’d like to be after reading descriptions and comments: the general sense that the language is poetic and interesting is a big plus but I’ve also read that the book is repetitive and derivative, huge minuses since I value structure and, well, freshness so much. Of course I’ll give it a go, just as I’ll try the Melikhov and Novikov books, both of which are on my shelf. What makes me happy about Nikolaenko’s win is that Bobrykin is apparently her first published book and she’s the second woman to win a major literary award this year, following Anna Kozlova, who won the NatsBest for F20 (previous post). (I guess it’s obvious that this year’s absurdly woman-less 2017 Big Book shortlist still rankles me, isn’t it?)

Paradoxical though it may look, I’d been rooting for Vladimir Medvedev’s Zahhak, the only book on the Booker shortlist that I’ve read in full. It may not be fair to root for a book after not reading all of its competitors—though I read a small part of Malyshev’s Nomakh but simply couldn’t go on and read a large chunk (enough to be a short-to-moderate novel!) of Gigolashvili’s tome The Mysterious Year before the repetition did me in—but Zahhak is a very, very good book. I’m sure I’m more than a little biased after translating excerpts, an experience that always accentuates a good novel’s strengths, particularly when it’s a polyphonic text. Zahhak seems especially deserving of recognition because this award year felt rather short on my favorite kind of books: enjoyable and compelling literary novels with strong form, style, and content. On the bright side, I hauled home some very promising-looking (recent) books from Frankfurt and Saint Petersburg.

Also on the bright side: Zahhak won the Student Booker, which, by the way, already posted its results, here. The Student Booker’s shortlist differs from the regular Booker’s, too, so is worth a look.

Up Next: Big Book Award winners. Sukhbat Aflatuni’s lovely Tashkent Novel; Vladimir Medvedev’s polyphonic Zahhak; and Yulia Yakovleva’s thoroughly entertaining Tinker, Tailor (Вдруг охотник выбегает), an atmospheric detective novel that really plays on its setting in Leningrad.

Disclaimers: The usual. Translating Zahhak excerpts.