Yuzefovich Wins Third Big Book Award with The Philhellene

The list of this year’s Big Book Award winners feel like a relief after the strangeness of last year’s results: this year I can understand why each and every one of the winners, in both the jury and public voting, won an award. I’m happiest for Leonid Yuzefovich, who won the top jury award for his third time – he previously won in 2009 and 2016 – for his Филлэлин (The Philhellene). I hope to post about The Philhellene moderately soon (January; I’m way behind on my posts) but for now, here’s my previous description: This novel’s characters converse through journals, letters, and mental conversations. Yuzefovich’s own back-cover description refers to the novel as being closer to “variations on historical themes than a traditional historical novel.”

Second prize went to Maya Kucherskaya’s Лесков. Прозеванный гений (Leskov. The Missed/Overlooked Genius), an extraordinarily detailed biography that’s not the sort of book I’d be likely to sit down and read straight through. It’s something even better, though, a resource. And so Kucherskaya (in book, of course, rather than in person) and I are going to read Leskov together as a winter reading project; I’ve already marked passages. Languagehat will join us, too, since he’s read and written about Leskov. Finally, Viktor Remizov won third prize for his Вечная мерзлота (Permafrost), which I’m very sorry to say did leave me cold, despite my love of historical novels and harsh climates. That said, yes, I understand readers’ appreciation for the novel and its exploration of Stalin-era themes. I may try it again in another year or two since I feel as if translating Guzel Yakhina’s Zuleikha may have skewed my perceptions of fiction about Siberian exile during the Stalin era.

Reader’s choice awards went to Narine Abgaryan for Симон (Simon), Alexei Polyarinov for Риф (The Reef), and Marina Stepnova for Сад (The Garden). I find it interesting that the jury and public reader winners are so different this year: Polyarinov’s book, for example, came in last in the tally of jury votes, which you can find online here. Most interesting in the jury voting tally: there was only a two-point difference between the top two books by Yuzefovich and Kucherskaya.

I think that covers everything on this dank, dreary December day!

Up Next: A post about recent reading involving orphans, orphanages, and alienation; Dmitry Danilov’s new novel, which I loved; and an end-of-year post with a list of (at least some of!) this year’s new translations.

Disclaimers and Disclosures: I’m a member of the Literary Academy, the Big Book’s large jury, and have translated or spent time with many of this year’s Big Book finalist authors. I’ve translated excerpts from two of this year’s finalists: Stepnova’s The Garden and Vodolazkin’s History of Island, which I’ll translate in full.

Big Book Roundup #1: Vasyakina’s Wound, Polyarinov’s Reef, &tc.

I confess that this year’s Big Book reading has been something of a slog. A bit harsh as a lede, I suppose, but there you have it. On the positive side, my reading did start on a good note, with Eugene Vodolazkin’s Оправдание Острова – often known in English as The History of Island, though more literally it would be something like Justification of the Island – in 2020. Thank goodness for Island! It’s a very good book, funny and wise, where form and content complement each other in very Vodolazkonian ways (previous post). I’m looking forward to translating it in full.

But then. Well. The first books I started after the shortlist was announced in June (previous post) brought little enjoyment. Gigolashvili’s Koka lacks the edgy tension and drive of his wonderful Devil’s Wheel (previous post) and felt like a string of pun-driven gags (“gags” in the joking sense). I read 170 pages. I also read nearly 60 pages (which would probably have been at least 80 with a more rational type and page size) of Remizov’s Permafrost, which also lacks momentum. It feels a bit overly familiar, too, since certain aspects of the distant setting and Stalin-era situations reminded a bit too much of Yakhina’s Zuleikha. (I translated Zuleikha; these sorts of situations are occupational hazards.) Permafrost was a disappointment after enjoying Remizov’s Ashes and Dust (previous post) some years ago. In any case, despite the small print and many pages in these two books, fairness says I’ll attempt returns to both, just to be sure I wasn’t too cranky in the summer heat, something that’s wholly possible. Both books have their fans and though I understand why, when the thought of reading a book makes me not want to read, I take that as a sign and set the book aside. Unfortunately, I had even more difficulty with Buida’s The Wyvern’s Gardens and Dmitriev’s That Shore.

Fortunately, however, my fall reading brought two Big Book finalists that I did enjoy: Oksana Vasyakina’s The Wound and Aleksei Polyarinov’s The Reef. They make an interesting pair since both are suspenseful in their own ways: Vasyakina’s because I wondered how her trip would go, carrying the baggage of memories and, literally, her mother’s ashes, and Polyarinov’s because he wrote a three-thread book that braids together plotlines that all lead to a charismatic professor who founds a cult that’s just begging to be cracked. These two books also make an interesting pair because The Wound is such personal autofiction and The Reef feels very research-driven. And so…

In The Wound Vasyakina offers memories of her mother (her mother’s beautiful hands, her mother’s formal kisses, her last days spent with her mother, among other things); her memories of childhood and adolescence, situations like, say, watching The Wall over and over at age five, when she was often left unattended; and her sexuality and relationships. Polina Barskova’s foreword to The Wound discusses the directness of Vasyakina’s writing; I think Vasyakina’s directness is especially piercing because it’s so precise and detailed, so heartfelt and reasoned. There’s existential dread on the airplane. There are her months spent with her mother’s urn, talking with her mother’s remains… Although Vasyakina herself wonders if she’s done too little to structure The Wound, my answer is a questioning “maybe it’s fine” since this is a book where everything fits together, even the essayistic parts (which made me glad to have finished that final volume of Proust!). That’s because, well, yes, Vasyakina knows her material and writes so simply and, yes, so directly and so precisely about things that are hard to talk about. The Wound is heartbreaking, from the tacky cheap flower on her mother’s urn to feelings of loss, some temporary, others more permanent, but Vasyakina’s hope is that writing the book will heal a wound that felt (still feels?) very raw. (I have to wonder if she might think she will write another one in a few years.) Despite the book’s very clear language and direction, I read The Wound fairly slowly: it was as if the simplicity of Vasyakina’s language poured her stories and memories directly into my head and thoughts, encouraging me to consider them, feel them, and experience them, if only as a thought experiment. Inviting and compelling the reader to do all that – and identify with the author, too – is what makes The Wound feel like such successful autofiction.

Polyarinov’s Reef, on the other hand, made me read faster. As I mentioned, three plot threads converge when (I’ll simplify and shorten a lot here since there are many plot turns; watch out for spoilers) two characters (one American, the other Russian) go to a cult’s compound outside Moscow to track down the third and fourth characters (one a member, the other the cult’s leader and, formerly, the American’s anthropology professor, when she was in a U.S. grad school). I read quickly because I genuinely found the novel suspenseful – what will happen when the first two characters I mentioned find the third and the fourth? – but also because, alas, some passages felt unnecessary and/or too long. My back-of-the-book notes include “the book tries too hard” and I think a big part of that angle on my reading is that it felt like Polyarinov wanted to make use of his study of cults (the back of the book lists lots of sources) while sticking too much background and backstory into the novel, violating Elmore Leonard’s rule about omitting the parts people skip. I also had (smaller) trouble with Lily Smith, the American who studied with the professor, whose name happens to be Garin (a surname that constantly, perhaps purposely, reminded me of Alexei Tolstoy and hyperboloids/death rays). Lily seems a little gullible (or naïve?), particularly when she up and decides to fly off to Moscow and then has a meltdown when someone at a pharmacy near her hotel doesn’t speak English. To his credit, Polyarinov still kept me interested by including some eerie rituals, an occasional Heart of Darkness feel, and difficult familial relations. I thought The Reef felt most believable in the tiny splinter of the Venn diagram showing its overlap with The Wound: fraught mother-daughter relationships and the non-choices they bring since we don’t chose our birthplaces or birthparents. In the end, the contrast in The Reef – the almost mechanistic, constructed feel that comes from all the background and the inevitability of certain plot turns versus the human understanding that went into describing some of the characters’ relationships, emotions, and vulnerabilities – made for one of the most interesting aspects of the reading, despite an ending that’s also a little deterministic and involves both self-forgiveness and a mother-daughter discussion where empathy is mentioned. Then again, if I think more anthropologically, I could make a very strong case that even though those contemporary therapeutic rituals and conclusions might initially feel cliched and cloying to some readers, under closer inspection, they seem utterly realistic, not to mention fitting and appropriate alongside other human patterns (like cult behaviors and ancient rituals) that Polyarinov presents to the reader.

Up Next: A new novel by Dimitry Danilov.

Disclaimers and Disclosures: The usual. My work translating Vodolazkin. I received all the Big Book finalists in PDF form because I’m a member of the Big Book Award’s Literary Academy but I read printed books that I purchased myself.

Lizok’s Summer Reading Plan: The 2021 Big Book Shortlist

On Wednesday the Big Book Award announced a list of thirteen finalists for the 2021 prize. I’ve read very little from this year’s longlist thus far so can’t decide if I’m surprised that some authors (Vera Bogdanova, for example) didn’t make the list, though I know I’m a little disappointed Bogdanova’s novel – as well as, for various reasons, books by Sergei Nosov, Pavel Krusanov, and Irina Bogatyreva – wasn’t on it. Lots of familiar, perennial nominees and “usual suspects” were left out, too: Ilya Boyashov, Shamil Idiatullin, Zakhar Prilepin, Andrei Rubanov, Sergei Samsonov, and Roman Senchin among them. And Alexander Pelevin’s Pokrov-17, which recently won the National Bestseller Award, isn’t a Big Book finalist either. I’m reading Pokrov-17 now and enjoying it for its suspense and weirdness but haven’t yet read enough to go on record saying more than that.

In any case, the good news is that this year’s books look far more promising than last year’s, though (as my husband likes to say) that sets the bar pretty low. I’m sure some of my positive feelings about the 2021 list involve my familiarity with some of the authors: I’ve translated three of them and know four more. I’ve read and enjoyed (or at least finished!) books by others. And those I haven’t read generally sound interesting. Unfortunately, my biggest regret about the list is that (here I go again!) only four of the thirteen books were written by women, though (as always), I don’t know much about the overall pool of Big Book nominees. I’m happiest because I’m glad this list looks likely to keep me reading.

And so. Here’s the list, in Russian alphabetical order by author surname:

• In Narine Abgaryan’s Симон (Simon), a man’s death brings together his former loves, who tell their stories. I read a large chunk of Simon on my reader but am going to reread (and finish) the novel on paper. (I think I’m getting crankier and crankier about electronic reading! I really need to flip those pages.) 
• Dmitry Bavilsky’s Желание быть городом (The Desire to be a City?) describes itself in the book’s subtitle as “Итальянский травелог эпохи Твиттера в шести частях и тридцати пяти городах” – “A Twitter-era Italian travelogue, in six parts and thirty-five cities.” The publisher’s description uses the terms “documentary novel” and “autofiction.” I’m not much for travelogues but I do like, even relish, the thought of Bavilsky describing works of art he hasn’t seen.
• Yury Buida’s Сады Виверны (The Wyvern’s Gardens, I guess?) sounds difficult to summarize with its three countries and four temporal settings so I’m just going to focus on thinking about the word “wyvern” for now. And buy the book.
• Oksana Vasyakina’s Рана (The Wound) may well be the book on the list that intrigues me the most, with (apparently) an account of the narrator traveling with her mother’s ashes, bringing them to be buried. I read Polina Barskova’s introduction and the beginning of Vasyakina’s text on my reader but am going to order a print copy so I can fully appreciate Vasyakina’s writing.
• Evgeny Vodolazkin’s Оправдание Острова (The History of Island), which I loved on the first reading for its chronicle-like format (sometimes!) and stylization (varying!) and blend of timelines. It’s a very Vodolazkonian novel; he’s exceptionally skilled at writing about favorite themes from new angles that make his material fresh, relevant, and related to his others works without repeating them. I’m working on a short sample translation now and had a good laugh remembering how cats came to be.
• Mikhail Gigolashvili’s Кока (Koka) is a continuation (of sorts?) of The Devil’s Wheel (previous post), which I loved so very much about ten years ago. Two friend who’ve already read Koka enjoyed it. It’s in my reading cart and will probably be the book I choose after I finish Pokrov-17. Like The Devil’s Wheel it’s very long (720 pages) so should keep me busy!
• Andrei Dmitriev’s Этот берег (That Shore) apparently tells the story of a retired schoolteacher who’s been living in Russia then moves to Ukraine, where he finds a new life for himself.
• Maya Kucherskaya’s Лесков. Прозёванный гений (Leskov. The Missed Genius – I almost want to say something like “slept through” or “yawning” here to capture the sense of sleeping!) is a very big book (656 pages, 668 grams) about Nikolai Leskov. My life is embarrassingly under-Leskoved but, inspired by factors including Languagehat’s posts about Leskov and, subsequently, some personalized reading recommendations plus my own impressions after reading “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” back in my first youth, I’m looking forward to letting Kucherskaya, a kind person and a good reader, guide me to and through more Leskov.
• Vladimir Paperny’s Архив Шульца (Shults’s Archive) looks, hm, potentially interesting, if a bit overwhelming at first: a Russian émigré living in Los Angeles receives a package of materials that turn out to form a family archive. A blurb from Alexander Genis uses the word “мозаика” (mosaic), something I confirmed by paging through a PDF of the book. We’ll see how it goes!
• Alexei Polyarinov’s Риф (The Reef): I’ll leave the description to the publisher (here) and add that I’m looking forward to this one after finding Polyarinov’s Center of Gravity (previous post) fairly good.
• Viktor Remizov’s Вечная мерзлота (Permafrost) is another heavyweight, clocking in at 925 grams (over 800 pages of rather small type, yeow) with a story based on actual events, about prisoners laying a railroad line in Siberia during 1949-1953. I enjoyed Remizov’s Ashes and Dust back in 2014 (previous post) and praised Remizov’s storytelling so am looking forward to Permafrost, which comes highly praised by Maya Kucherskaya and Vasily Avchenko.
• I read a large chunk of Marina Stepnova’s Сад (The Garden) on my e-reader and found that it interested me far less for its nineteenth-century plot and characters (which, after translating two twentieth-century Stepnova books, made me feel a bit off-kilter) than for its stylized language. I had fun translating a sample. I’m going to buy a paper copy of The Garden since it’s another book that didn’t feel right to read electronically. (Have I mentioned that I don’t like e-reading?)
• Leonid Yuzefovich’s Филлэлин (The Philhellene) is a novel where characters converse through journals, letters, and mental conversations. Yuzefovich’s own back-cover description refers to the novel as being closer to “variations on historical themes than a traditional historical novel.” This is one of those books where I’ve purposely avoided learning too much before reading.

Disclaimers and Disclosures: The Usual. I’ve translated excerpts from two of these books and entire books by three of the finalist authors. I know other authors on the list and have ties to some of the others through publishers and literary agents.

Up Next: Svetlana Kuznetsova’s The Anatomy of the Moon, which I’m translating and enjoying for the third time but still don’t know how to write about. Vodolazkin’s The History of Island, which I’m rereading the way it should be read – slowly; A. Pelevin’s Pokrov-17, and maybe Alexander Belyaev’s The Air Seller, quick reading that I started while waiting for Pokrov-17 to arrive…

The 2021 Big Book Longlist: Best-Laid Plans Edition

The Big Book Award announced a longlist of forty-one books a Tuesday or two ago. This year’s longlist gives me hope that the 2021 shortlist might be at least a little better (meaning more readable!) than last year’s, though (cue my perennial gripe) only 11.5 of this year’s longlist titles were written by women. That’s a bit better than last year’s eight out of thirty-nine although, as always, I don’t know much about what books were nominated.

I started this post last weekend but didn’t finish (an all-life-cycles mouse infestation in the garden shed was a complete downer) but am picking back up today and attempting to accentuate the positive and focus on some books that sound good.

First off, three books overlap with this year’s National Bestseller Award shortlist. It’s probably no coincidence that these three had the top scores in NatsBest voting and are also the (unread, for me) books that interest me most:

• Mikhail Gigolashvili’s Кока (Koka) is a continuation (of sorts?) of The Devil’s Wheel (previous post), which I loved so very much about ten years ago. The friend who bought Koka seems to be enjoying it. 
• Alexander Pelevin’s Покров-17 (Pokrov-17) is set in the Kaluga area in 1993 but the action somehow connects to a World War 2 battle. Pelevin loves playing with time like this, which is one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed two of his other books (The Four) and (Kalinova Yama) so much. I’ve actively avoided learning more about Pokrov-17 before reading.
• Vera Bogdanova’s Павел Чжан и прочие речные твари (Pavel Zhang and Other River Creatures) sounds scarily intriguing, with its digital concentration camp and “total chipization.” I’ve seen lots of praise for this book and am looking forward to reading it.

 Then there are some books I’ve read or have on the shelves:

• I’m still rereading Eugene Vodolazkin’s Оправдание Острова (The History of Island), which I loved on the first reading for its chronicle-like format (sometimes!) and stylization (varying!) and blend of timelines. It’s a very Vodolazkonian novel; he’s exceptionally skilled at writing about favorite themes from new angles that make his material fresh, relevant, and related to his others works without repeating them.
• Shamil Idiatullin’s Последнее время (it sounds like this is more likely Last/Final Time(s) than, say, Of Late, though who knows!) concerns an invented country. Maria Galina’s back-cover blurb calls it ethnofantasy. I haven’t been a big fan of Idiatullin’s realistic work so bought this with the hope of enjoying something that’s less a part of this world.
• Sergei Samsonov’s Высокая кровь (High Blood) is a thick (630+ pages of small print) book set during the Civil War that (among other things) borrows on themes from Sholokhov. Translating a sample was very, very challenging thanks to Platonovesque stylistics, regional language, and literary references. The text is dense and interesting. I need to read the rest of the book.
• Leonid Yuzefovich’s Филэллин (The Philhellene) is a novel where characters converse through journals, letters, and mental conversations. Yuzefovich’s own back-cover description of the book refers to it as being closer to “variations on historical themes than a traditional historical novel.” This is another book where I’ve purposely avoided trying to learn too much before reading.
• Bulat Khanov’s Развлечения для птиц с подрезанными крыльями (perhaps something like Diversions for Birds With Clipped Wings) is described as a book about rebels but I read about a third and found it a bit slow to develop, even plodding, as it follows four people who seem to be all too fated to meet. I suspect part of my problem with Birds is that, well, its wings feel so clipped, making it feel very safe compared to Khanov’s much briefer, far riskier, and higher soaring Rage (previous post). William Barclay, by the way, translated an extended sample of Rage, under the RusTRANS project.
• I’ve had so many similar problems with books by familiar (even favorite) authors in the last year, that I wonder if my problem is due to my pandemic-era pickiness rather than flawed novels. To wit… Narine Abgaryan’s Симон (Simon) also didn’t quite hit me though I wonder if that’s because her Three Apples Fell From the Sky, which I translated, still feels so familiar and very dear to me. Similarly, Marina Stepnova’s best-selling Cад (The Garden, a.k.a. A New Breed) interested me far less for its nineteenth-century plot and characters than for its stylized language, which made me more than happy to work on a sample; this could be a matter of familiarity, too, after so enjoying translating two Stepnova novels set in later times.

Now a few potentially interesting books and/or authors I hadn’t known anything about. The pool isn’t very big – I’ve read twenty-seven of the authors on the longlist – so first I’ll cheat and mention a few more familiar authors on the list: Irina Bogatyreva, Ilya Boyashov, Sergei Nosov, Aleksei Polyarinov, Roman Senchin, and Alla Gorbunova. Since I’m always looking for novels (preferably novels with plots!) that narrows my choices a lot for unknown books and authors. But here are three books, one of which has only been published in a journal thus far, making it all the more mysterious:

• Ksenia Dragunskaya’s Туда нельзя (which I really want to call Don’t Go There, in the literal sense) sounds like it might connect several characters’ stories because of a lake. (?)
• Olga Pokrovskaya’s Летучий корабль (Airliner, perhaps?) is apparently about aviation.
• Roman Shmarakov’s Алкиной (Alcinous, I guess) is set in the fourth century, in the late Roman Empire. Although it’s apparently often described as a “philological novel,” Artyom Roganov’s review for Gorky Media says it’s more. (And even cites humor! We enjoy humor!)

Up Next: Two rereads: Vodolazkin’s History of Island and Svetlana Kuznetsova’s The Anatomy of the Moon, which I nominated for the Big Book and am translating. I reread very slowly!

Disclaimers and Disclosures: The usual, including having translated some of the authors on the longlist. I signed a request to call in an unnominated Pavel Krusanov collection for Big Book; he’s a good writer so I’m glad it made the list. I’ve received a number of the books on the list from agents, authors, or publishers in either electronic or print copies.