Big Book Goes Big With Its 2019 Long Longlist

Last week the Big Book Award announced a longlist consisting of forty one titles. The Big Book’s shortlist – of somewhere between eight and fifteen titles – will be named on June 5. Given the sheer volume of volumes on this year’s (long)list, I’ll name about a third of those selected, including the books I’ve read, a couple overlaps with the National Bestseller shortlist, and several completely unfamiliar books that sound like they might be interesting.

The books I’ve already read:

• Eduard Verkin’s Остров Сахалин (Sakhalin Island) (previous post) still bugs me for being such an absorbing and unforgettable but rather messy postapocalyptic novel that channels Chekhov.
• Evgenii Vodolazkin’s Брисбен (Brisbane) tells the story of a virtuoso guitar player who discovers he has an incurable medical condition.
• Anna Nemzer’s Раунд (Round) (previous post) is a polyphonic novel about love, identity, history, and everything else.
• Alexei Salnikov’s Опосредованно (Indirectly perhaps? This is what a colleague and I think might fit…), which I’ll finish today, is about a woman living in the Urals who writes poetry in a world that’s almost like ours, though poems have drug-like effects.
• Grigory Sluzhitel’s Дни Савелия (Savely’s Days) (previous post) is the first-cat narrative I so enjoyed last year.
• Evgenia Nekrasova’s Калечина-Малечина (Kalechina-Malechina) is waiting for a second chance. I read half of K-M and am now feeling strong pangs that demand I return, particularly after just finishing Nekrasova’s novella Несчастливая Москва (Unhappy Moscow). I already appreciated her use of language and now I’m starting to get into her (abundantly peculiar and rather frightening) universe, too, so feeling ready for the second half of K-M. (I’m also finally going to read Platonov’s Happy Moscow. I’m so long due to read more Platonov, but even his short works are always a big itch to try to scratch.)

The two books that overlap with the National Bestseller list (previous post) are Nekrasova’s Kalechina-Malechina and Andrei Rubanov’s Финист - ясный сокол (Finist, the Brave Falcon).

A few books and authors completely unfamiliar to me, listed in alphabetical order by author:

• Olgerd Bakharevich, author of Собаки Европы (The Dogs of Europe), says this gigundo (nine-hundred-page Edit: oops, apparently it’s a mere 768 pages!) book is about everything, with Belarus, Europe, the world, and Minsk being some of that “everything.” He translated the book himself, rewriting it in the process.
• Fyodor Grot’s Ромовая баба (Rum Baba) warrants a mention for the simple fact that the beginning mentions plague.
• Anna Klepikova’s Наверно я дурак (literally something like I’m Probably a Fool) describes itself as an anthropological novel (it appears to be autofiction) and sounds like it’s about a volunteer at a home for children with (apparently) psychiatric issues. (An excerpt)

Finally, there are two manuscripts. Manuscripts always have an air of mystery (and, honestly, irritation as well) since no author’s name or publisher is mentioned. But at least these titles are simple! Number 141 is Вавилонская лестница (The Staircase of Babel) and number 158 is Рюрик (Rurik).

Disclaimers and Disclosures: The usual. Many of the books mentioned in this post were given to me; I know some of the authors listed and have translated three books by one. I’m a member of the Big Book’s jury, known as the Literary Academy.

Up Next: A Salnikov post covering The Department and what I’ll provisionally continue to call Indirectly. And then probably Nekrasova.

Anna Nemzer’s The Round

Anna Nemzer’s Раунд (The Round, I think) is a perfect example of why I don’t like to know (too) much about books before reading them. I knew The Round was polyphonic and I knew a main character was trans, but that’s about it. The Round is a finalist for this year’s NOSE Award.

What I didn’t know about The Round (or maybe never quite processed since I was jetlagged?) is that it covers about a century, is written in what I’ll call verbatim style, and is composed primarily of various sorts of interviews. Some of the characters are based on real people (I recognized Solomon Mikhoels, among others, though not the rapper) and some of what happens feels very up-to-the-minute. I’m torn on how many specifics to mention: on the one hand, they might attract readers but the most news-based line of the plot surprised me, making me afraid of spoilers. So I’ll be vague.

I often have difficulty with fictionalized versions of real figures and current events but Nemzer’s background as a journalist and her use of .doc stylistics – the interviews, some of which even mention an important, real documentary film – give her stories tremendous raw emotion and verisimilitude. The book opens with an interview with Dima, a rapper who’s been jailed for extremism; his girlfriend is now a trans man. And then Nemzer dives into the past, with interviewees who tell of theater and relationships… I don’t think it spoils much to mention that many of The Round’s characters are related, through blood and work.

The Round is described as “оптический роман,” an “optical novel,” something easy enough to see, though I admit I slacked off on tracking the optical thread. Chapter titles fit the theme –Doppler effect, x-ray, laser, etc. – plus one character’s profession is related to optics. Another is losing their vision. And of course we see events in various tellings, from different angles.

The Round had a strange effect on me. The first chapter/interview, with Dima, caught me because of his relationship with Sasha; I wanted, desperately, to find out what would happen. And though the more historical figures interested me less, they also felt familiar and even interesting, thanks in part, to all the years I read a Russian film journal. But what really kept me reading was momentum. The interviews and chapters and characters and their stories kept building on one another, circling around and around. (I think the novel’s title probably refers most directly to rounds in battle rap, as Languagehat suggested in a comment on another post, but a more general sense of “rounds” for talks (or interviews) or even a boxing match also feels pertinent.)

I’ll confess that I read The Round far, far too quickly: sure, interviews read easily because of familiar, colloquial language as well as lots of white space, but I just couldn’t put the book down, zipping through because I had to find out how the characters would end up relating to one another. I couldn’t help myself. (And let me just say that was a great feeling after all my unsatisfying reading last year!) For once, the balance of fact and fiction felt just right and Nemzer’s clever weaving of relationships, times, metaphors, and ambitions – and use of detail – works beautifully for this exploration of human nature, love, cruelty, truths, storytelling, and current events. And I loved the ending.

Up Next: Books by Alisa Ganieva, Ludmila Petrushevskaya, Yulia Yakovleva, and Olga Stolpovskaya. Slavist conference trip report.

Disclaimers: The usual. Publisher Elena Shubina recommended The Round to me and I took her up on a copy – thank you!