Aleshkovsky and Yuzefovich Win Russian Booker Prize and Grant

Pyotr Aleshkovsky won the 2016 Russian Booker Prize today for his novel Крепость (The Citadel). Aleshkovsky has been a Booker finalist in the past—in 1994 for Жизнеописание Хорька (Skunk: A Life), in 1996 for Владимир Чигринцев (Vladimir Chigrintsev), and in 2006 for Рыба (Fish)—so I wasn’t surprised to see The Citadel win. The Citadel, which I began but did/could not finish, is also a finalist for the Big Book Award; Big Book Award winners will be announced next week.

Several of Aleshkovsky’s books have been translated into English: Arch Tait translated Skunk: A Life for Glas (the original title refers to a ferret), and Nina Shevchuk-Murray translated Fish: A History of One Migration and Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices, which combines stories from Aleshkovsky’s Институт Сновидений and Старгород, for Russian Life Books. I wrote about Fish here, mentioning in that post that I’d enjoyed nature passages from Skunk (Ferret!) very much: some of Aleshkovsky’s winter scenes in that book have stuck with me longer than my more recent readings of Fish and The Citadel. Please note that Aleshkovsky’s first name is spelled “Peter” on all these translations.

In other news, Leonid Yuzefovich won the Booker’s grant award, for an English-language translation of his The Winter Road, a beautifully compiled and composed book about Civil War figures in the Russian Far East. The Winter Road also won this year’s National Bestseller Award and is on the Big Book shortlist, too; it was one of my top three books in the eleven-book list of finalists.

Edit: Links!
-The Booker has yet to post a story about the awards but TASS did: here.
-TASS also posted a piece by Konstantin Milchin (an acquaintance of mine) about the award, in which he discusses his dissatisfaction with the Booker jury's decision, which, in effect, says The Citadel is the best novel of the year--that's the Booker's stated goal, after all. The piece is here and, as so often happens, I agree with Kostya's points, which get at some of the reasons I didn't/couldn't finish the book. I was also interested to see that he mentioned, as I did in my post, the fact that Aleshkovsky was thrice a Booker finalist before The Citadel. (I have to think that fact and being able to point to the novel's positive hero were deciding factors for the jury.) The quotes that Kostya included seem to have inspired readers to dig up other awkward passages that, hmm (repurposing Kostya's words a bit), show a lack of compassion for the reader, see, for example, Meduza, here.
-I'll add more links when/if I find them!
-Here's another one, very favorable to Aleshkovsky's win, by Maya Kucherskaya: link.

Disclaimers: Russian Life Books sent me copies of Fish and Stargorod. I received electronic copies of The Citadel from both the Big Book and Aleshkovsky’s literary agency, and The Winter Road from the Big Book Award.

Up Next: Big Book winners; Sukhbat Aflatuni’s The Ant King, which is just plain weird but also suspenseful and mysteriously compelling; book roundup; and two books in Boris Minaev’s Soft Fabric trilogy, which were, combined, a Booker and Yasnaya Polyana finalist.

Big Book 2016 Finalists: A Summary

This year’s Big Book Award finalists (previous post with the list is here) fit neatly into three categories: three books I praise highly, three books I enjoyed well enough to finish, and five books I couldn’t finish. Five in the “did not finish” category might sound high, but it’s not unusual for me to finish only about half the books I start; one of the reasons I don’t write more posts about books is that I abandon so many without finishing. Big Book winners will be announced on December 6. Here’s a brief summary of my reading:

Those I praise highly. It probably comes as no surprise that Evgenii Vodolazkin’s Авиатор (The Aviator) was my favorite in the bunch (previous post) and is a big favorite for the year, too. The Aviator looks at the nature of time, life, and Soviet history from an angle that I particularly like… but won’t reveal. Translating The Aviator is a treat for the emotions it raises, its simple elegance, and the multiple settings Vodolazkin manages to create. Alexei Ivanov’s Ненастье (Nenast’e) is a treat of an entirely different sort (previous post, which discusses the title) and not just because I’m not translating it: this social novel about Afghan War veterans is suspenseful, dark, and painful, a well-plotted novel about all kinds of relationships. It’s very good and I’ve been pleased to see it garner so much praise among readers. I’m still reading away on Leonid Yuzefovich’s Зимняя дорога, (The Winter Road), one of the most enjoyable works of nonfiction I’ve read in a long time, with Civil War figures and wonderful details about people, places, and politics.

Those I enjoyed well enough to finish. Maria Galina’s Автохтоны (part one/part two) (Autochthons) still mystifies me more than a bit since I’m still not exactly sure what happens (previous post) but Galina’s dark-but-cozy combination of tasty meals, cultural history, and a small city setting on the edge of Europe—not to mention humor and the possibility of a character being a sylph—remain vivid in my memory. And I do want to reread it. Using the book light again. Sasha Filipenko’s Травля (Hounding) (previous post) also stuck with me, though for opposite reasons: there’s only darkness, nothing cozy, in this story of a journalist who’s being hounded for political reasons. And there are certainly no sylphs. I think I appreciated most the account of bitterness after the 1998 default. Ludmila Ulitskaya’s Лестница Якова (Yakov’s Ladder or Jacob’s Ladder, though I’ll use Ulitskaya’s agent’s title with “Yakov”) (previous) is a family saga that’s told in story-like episodes and includes letters from Ulitskaya’s own family archives. This isn’t my favorite Ulitskaya novel but the familiarity of Ulitskaya’s style and settings made this rather long book read easily, though I often wanted the balance to tip more toward character development than history.

Those I just couldn’t finish. This is the section that gives me no joy whatsoever. Vladimir Dinets’s Песни драконов (Dragon Songs) wasn’t the fun surprise that Nature Girl here dared to hope for. My parents live in Florida—where there seem to be alligators everywhere—and I’ve been to crocodile country in Australia, so I thought I was off to a decent start but somehow I just couldn’t sink my teeth into things like descriptions of alligators “dancing,” and I just wasn’t interested in Dinets’s personal details. Alexander Ilichevsky’s Справа налево (From Right to Left) book of essays is a mishmash that, I’m sorry to say, didn’t grab me at all. Even sadder, though, I thought all the novels in this category lacked narrative drive, a coherent structure, and/or the sense of a good story. I gave Pyotr Aleshkovsky’s Крепость (The Citadel) 106 pages to show me where it was going and, to borrow from what I wrote on Goodreads, was sorry it couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be a serious social novel about an honest archaeologist or a melodrama with family hysterics. (The big sign I was done: I kept finding excuses to compare recipes in 660 Curries and think about what I needed to buy at the Indian grocery store…) Anna Matveeva’s Завидное чувство Веры Стениной (Vera Stenina’s Envy; the Russian title is closer to Vera Stenina’s Enviable Sense but that is, indeed, tough to sort...) was equally painful, though I read nearly 200 pages, hoping something might develop beyond a rather utilitarian tale of one woman’s envy (envy is visualized as a bat here) of her friend. I made it through less (about 50 pages) of Sergei Soloukh’s Рассказы о животных (Stories About Animals), the tale of a man who travels a lot for work. I can’t say I much enjoy reading about driving (perhaps because I don’t especially enjoy driving?) so Stories and I didn’t get off to a good start. Though I’d hoped for a compelling novel about what causes people to lose their humanness, particularly in times of social upheaval, alas, Stories was too muddled to tell me much.

Disclaimers: The usual. I received electronic texts of all these books from the Big Book, for which I serve on the Literary Academy, the award’s jury; I received a couple from the authors’ literary agents, too. Among other things: I’m currently translating The Aviator and have translated excerpts of some of Maria Galina’s other books.

Up Next: I think I’ll write more summary posts: travel, books read in Russian, and books read in English. And a full-length post on Boris Minaev’s Soft Fabric, volume one…

Russian Booker Prize Finalists for 2016

The Russian Booker Prize announced its six-book shortlist today. The winners—of both the regular prize and the English-language translation prize—will be announced on December 1. Here, very quickly, are the finalists, in Russian alphabetical author order:

• Pyotr Aleshkovsky for Крепость (The Citadel), which is also a Big Book Award finalist. It’s waiting patiently on the shelf for me.
• Sukhbat Aflatuni for Поклонение волхвов (The Adoration of the Magi), which is also a Yasnaya Polyana Award finalist.
• Sergei Lebedev for Люди августа (People of August).
• Alexander Melikhov for И нет им воздаяния (They Get No Recompense/No Recompense for Them were my title translation guesses when this book made the Booker long list in 2012, hmm, how did that happen? I knew there was something familiar about this title…).
• Boris Minaev for his two-book Мягкая ткань: Батист (part 1) (part 2) (Batiste) and Сукно (Broadcloth or something similar, a heavyish fabric, often woolen). This one’s a Yasnaya Polyana finalist, too, and it’s also on my shelf.
• Leonid Yuzefovich for Зимняя дорога (The Winter Road), which already won the National Bestseller Award and made the short lists for the Big Book and Yasnaya Polyana Awards, too. This “documentary novel” about the Civil War is very absorbing.

Up Next: Moscow trip report. American Literary Translators Association conference trip report. Alexander Snegirev’s Vera/Faith and Oleg Zaionchkovsky’s Timosha’s Prose.

Disclaimers: The usual. I’ve received copies, in various formats, of several titles on this list.

2016 Big Book Finalists: Lizok’s Summer Reading Plan

Today the Big Book Award announced eleven finalists for its 2016 season. Here’s the list, in Russian alphabetical order, by author surname, followed by a bit of commentary:

• Pyotr Aleshkovsky’s Крепость (The Citadel), which I bought after reading the beginning of the PDF that Aleshkovsky’s literary agency sent me: archaeology and medieval constructions caught me.
• Evgeny (Eugene) Vodolazkin’s Авиатор (The Aviator), which I read recently and loved for its blend of genres, epochs, and themes, some familiar from Laurus and Solovyov and Larionov. I’m translating this book and enjoying it all over again as I see, up-close, how the book works.
• Maria Galina’s Автохтоны (part 1) (part 2) (Autochthons, I guess), which is, I can now confirm, a Galina-esque combination of phantasmagoria, magical realism (though hmm?), history, and a regular-guy (anonymous) hero. I finished Autochthons yesterday and still wonder what I read—not, apparently, an unusual reaction—because the book is (usually) cozily disorienting.
• Vladimir Dinets’s Песни драконов (Dragon Songs) is, according to the full title, about love and adventures in the world of crocodiles and other relatives of dinosaurs. Dinets, who lives in the US, writes in Russian and English, and an English version of the book already exists: Publishers Weekly loved it. This could be a fun surprise. For online animal pictures, check Dinets’s blog.
• Aleksei Ivanov’s Ненастье (Nasty Weather, this title is a toponym, too, so I’m going to rethink it) is about an Afghan War veteran who robs an armored car, betraying his comrades. I enjoyed Ivanov’s Geographer (previous post) and this one, which I began last night, is off to a good start.
• Alexander Ilichevsky’s Справа налево (From Right to Left) contains essays.
• Anna Matveeva’s Завидное чувство Веры Стениной (Vera Stenina’s Envy; the Russian title is closer to Vera Stenina’s Enviable Sense but that is, indeed, tough to sort...) is a novel about two women and their relationship, which, yes, has strong elements of envy.
• Sergei Soloukh’s Рассказы о животных (Stories About Animals) is, contrary to the title, a novel about human beings, concerning a former academic who’s now working in a business. (brief interview + excerpt)
• Ludmila Ulitskaya’s Лестница Якова (Jacob’s Ladder) is a family saga set during 1911-2011; I read the beginning after Ulitskaya’s agent sent me the text. This one’s already on the shelf.
• Sasha Filipenko’s Травля (Persecution, perhaps?) sounds as indescribable as Galina’s book: I find mentions of youth, irony, cynicism, and this time we live in.
• Leonid Yuzefovich’s Зимняя дорога, (The Winter Road) is described as a “documentary novel”: the cover sums up the details with “General A.N. Pepeliaev and anarchist I.Ia. Strod in Yakutia. 1922-1923.” I’ve been reading small chunks of The Winter Road each night and thoroughly enjoying Yuzefovich’s absorbing, masterful characterizations of people and a time. He works wonders with archival material.

As for commentary, there were a few books I was especially sorry didn’t make the list… Vasily Avchenko’s Кристалл в прозрачной оправе (excerpt) (Crystal in a Transparent Frame), with its ocean theme, and Dmitry Danilov’s Есть вещи поважнее футбола (There Are Things A Little More Important Than Football/Soccer) are at the top of my list. Our cats were rooting for Aleksandr Arkhangelsky’s Правило муравчика. Сказка про бога, котов и собак (excerpt) (The Rule of the Purrer/The Right Cat Rule. A Tale About God, Cats, and Dogs), which I’ll have to read if only to figure out what to do with the title. Based on some good reviews, I was a little surprised Sergei Kuznetsov’s Калейдоскоп (excerpt) (Kaleidoscope) didn’t make it, though wonder if the combination of dozens of characters and their stories (including, apparently, sex and vampires, which I wouldn’t think would put people off!) might have, nevertheless, put off the experts. Sasha Okun’s Камов и Каминка (Kamov and Kaminka), which purports to involve art and a detective story, looks so appealing that I may have to read it sooner rather than later. And, finally, as I mentioned in a quick note to Klarisa Pul’son, who wrote this prediction of the finalist list, I was surprised that crocodiles knocked poets out of contention for this year’s award: I was expecting either Zakhar Prilepin’s book on Anatoly Mariengof, Boris Kornilov, and Vladimir Lugovskoi, or Dmitrii Bykov’s book on Vladimir Mayakovsky to make the short list. I thought Klarisa did pretty well by (correctly) predicting six out of eleven books that made the shortlist: even without having read all the books on the long list, I was nearly certain Yuzefovich, Ulitskaya, Ivanov, and Vodolazkin would be finalists; I would have put Aleshkovsky, Avchenko, and Kuznetsov at the top of my “probably” list.

I’ll start posting about finalists soon since I’ve already finished two. All in all, this list looks far more to my taste than last year’s—with some old favorites plus some new names and species—so I’m very much looking forward to reading the finalists as well as the books from the long list that are already on the shelf.

Disclaimers: I’m a member of the Big Book’s jury, the Literary Academy, and will vote on finalists later this year. Authors and literary agents have given me electronic copies of several of these books. I am translating one of the finalists.

Up Next: The National Bestseller Award winner. Then three books, all difficult to write about: Eugene Vodolazkin’s The Aviator, which truly does soar, Alexander Snegirev’s Vera, which I do think I’ll call Faith, and Maria Galina’s Autochthons. I’m now reading Aleksei Ivanov’s book, which I’m thinking of as Nasty Weather for now, because of the sound play.

Aleshkovskii’s “Fish”: The Big Novel that Got Away

That’s it: I’ll limit myself to just one fish pun for this post. But I can’t help myself for calling Petr Aleshkovskii’s (Peter Aleshkovsky) Рыба. История одной миграции (Fish. The Story of One Migration) a big novel that got away.

Fish begins in Tadzhikistan, where a teenage girl named Vera (Faith) lives with her Russian parents. Vera works one summer on an archeological dig, where she helps reconstruct, like a puzzle (пазл=pazl!), a fresco with a fish. Later that summer, Vera’s personal horseman of the apocalypse arrives: an Uzbek on a black horse who rapes her after drugging her with a nasty drink he’s brewed.

The trauma affects Vera, directly and indirectly, for the rest of the book. She becomes a nurse with somewhat mystically therapeutic hands and takes care of others, including her husband, a former patient, who, medically unable to work as a policeman, takes a job at a slaughterhouse and becomes an alcoholic. He’s the one who begins calling Vera a cold fish. Through the course of the book, Vera’s migrations take her to Dushanbe for education, a border town in Russia to escape war, the country for quiet after a son overdoses and her husband becomes a monk, and, finally, Moscow for a live-in nursing job. When the book ends, Vera is about to move to Italy to become a nanny.

All of which means that Fish, which was short-listed for the 2006 Russian Booker Prize, contains plenty of great material about life in Central Asia, the stresses of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and personal trauma. Unfortunately, though, Fish plods its way through geographical and emotional territory, squandering opportunities to expand the book beyond an accounting of sites seen and indignities experienced.

A few very vivid scenes stand out – a voyeuristic, sensual passage in a Tadzhik garden and Vera’s walk in the woods are particularly good – but other portions of the book are woefully underdeveloped. I kept waiting for details about Vera’s family’s fish-based business in the border town, after they’ve migrated to Russia, but nothing ever came. Aleshkovskii’s strength is in writing about nature – the beautiful chapters in the woods in Жизнеописание хорька (mistranslated as Skunk: A Life) made that book well worth reading – so expanding the fish theme seemed natural.

I think a big part of the problem in Fish is the first-person narrative. I don’t believe Aleshkovskii fails in writing from a woman’s perspective, but I think a third-person narrative would have enabled far broader and more nuanced observations of Vera’s experiences. There are tremendous inherent difficulties with narrating a book from the point of view of a person who’s so emotionally spent.

Vera fills her days and nights with extra work, much of it menial, as if she is carrying a saintly burden. She rarely reflects on her past… until the very last page, when she starts thinking back on the people and events in her life, and feels her “я” (“I”) separate from her body as she did when she was raped. This time, though, she calls the experience спасение (salvation) and, remembering the advice of an elderly Estonian man who rescued her after a failed pilgrimage of sorts, she realizes she needs to радоваться (be glad, feel joy). All the pieces of her life, like the puzzle of the fish fresco, seem to come together.

One interesting aspect of this rushed ending is that it occurs in a Moscow apartment at Metro “Беговая” (“Begovaia”), named for the nearby hippodrome. The root of Begovaia, beg, means run(ning). The name neatly brings back the horse theme and, perhaps, Vera’s move away from Begovaia will finally signify the end of her numbness and escape from her self. Numbness is an important theme: others in Fish anesthetize themselves with alcohol and drugs, and some do not survive.

Unfortunately, I can’t argue too much with a Russian friend who thinks Aleshkovskii is just plain boring. I can’t say Fish was just plain boring, and I wanted very much to like it, but it wasn’t always very compelling, despite the cultural, religious, and current history motifs that Aleshkovskii wove in. With more detail and depth, Fish could have become a very significant book about social and personal changes, but instead it feels like an uneven draft, a big novel that slithered away.

Image: Auroqueiro, via sxc.hu

Favorite Russian Writers A to Я: Akunin and Akhmatova

It’s nice that the Russian Cyrillic and Roman alphabets both begin with A… And that the gift of a Boris Akunin book, Любовница смерти (The Lover [fem.] of Death), pushed me to begin reading in Russian again back in 2001.

Akunin’s first nine books in the Новый детективъ (New Detective) series, starring Erast Fandorin, are wonderfully entertaining books that contain numerous allusions to Russian classics. Fandorin, whom Akunin purposely made vulnerable and appealing to women, knows martial arts, is a natty dresser, and wins in games of chance. The books take place in roughly 1875-1900 and are a wonderful combination of period atmosphere and postmodern techniques.

Each of the New Detective books is intended to represent a subgenre of detective novels: conspiratorial, hermetic, spy, and so on. Unfortunately, to borrow the terms of a Russian woman I once met, I think Akunin wrote himself out after the first nine Fandorin books: the prequels and sequels felt like potboilers, particularly the story where Fandorin visits the Wild West.

I read the Fandorin series out of order, starting with the eighth book, but I’d recommend beginning with the beginning, Азазель (The Winter Queen), and following the list. But… Non-Russian readers getting a start reading in Russian might want to begin with the Lover books: my recollection is that their language is much easier. Suspense makes detective novels a great way to take up reading in a foreign language.

Part of the fun of the Fandorin books is picking out references to classics. The Winter Queen plays on themes from Nikolai Karamzin’s “Бедная Лиза” (“Poor Liza”), which is fitting for the first book since Karamzin’s 18^th-century sentimental tale is one Russian literature’s earliest classics. 

One of my Fandorin books, Особые поручения (Special Assignments), includes an excellent piece by critic Lev Danilkin that discusses Akunin’s technique, calling him a Jack the Ripper of a writer who tears apart the canon and reassembles it. Danilkin also notes that Russian readers feel comfortable with the series because of familiarity with subtexts and characters. I read the books so quickly the first time (the suspense!) that I’d like to reread them to catch more of the allusions.

Though I don’t read a lot of poetry, I want to mention Anna Akhmatova, whose “Реквием” (“Requiem”) [Russian-English page] is a haunting cycle of poems about the Stalinist repression. I have a particular affinity for “Requiem” because a Russian theater troupe performed it here in Portland, in Russian, in a beautiful production composed entirely of poetry. The Anna Akhmatova Museum is one of my favorite places in St. Petersburg. (The photo shows a monument to Akhmatova near the Kresty prison, which is mentioned in “Requiem.”)

The A-List for Future Reading: Petr Aleshkovskii’s Рыба. История одной миграции (Fish. The Story of One Migration) is tops on my list for when I finish War and Peace. Another A-book on my shelf is Viktor Astaf’ev’s Печальный детектив (The Sad Detective). Chingiz Aitmatov’s Плаха (The Scaffold) is out on loan but I’m particularly curious about it after reading Amateur Reader’s accounts of Aitmatov’s И дольше века длится день (The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years).

Boris Akunin on Amazon

Anna Akhmatova on Amazon
Peter Aleshkovsky on Amazon
Chingiz Aitmatov on Amazon
Viktor Astaf'ev on Amazon

Cold & Snow in Russian Fiction

Last night at a Christmas party, a friend looked out the window and said the accumulating snow made her think of Doctor Zhivago… that, of course, got my mind churning about other Russian books and stories in which cold and snow play important roles. Here are some personal favorites. Please add yours in a comment!

-“Плотники” (“Carpenters”), one of the first stories in Varlam Shalamov’s Колымские рассказы (Kolyma Tales) collection about prison camp in Kolyma, mentions that the camp had no thermometer. But prisoners could discern the temperature: frosty fog, for example, equaled minus 40, and anything below minus 60 meant spit would freeze in the air. I recently took the advice of Josefina at Transparent Language’s Russian Blog and started reading one Kolyma story each evening. These are beautifully written stories about a horrifying time. I recommend them very highly.

-Akakii Akakevich, from Gogol’s “Шинель” (“The Overcoat”) has all sorts of troubles related to dressing for cold weather. Gogol’s descriptions of St. Petersburg’s cutting cold induce shivers. (Previous post)

-I also love the scenes in Война и мир (War and Peace) about святки (sviatki), the time in January between Orthodox Christmas and Epiphany that often involved costumes and fortunetelling. (A brief description.) Tolstoy’s scenes include a troika ride on a cold winter night with a bright moon. It probably helps that I have fond memories of sviatki fortunetelling with a friend in northern Russia – she even showed me traditional techniques.

-One other: Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin’s Господа Головлёвы (The Golovyovs), in which relationships and weather are often very, very cold.

-Okay, one more: The descriptions of winter and living off the land in Petr Aleshkovskii’s (Peter Aleskhovsky) Жизнеописание хорька (Skunk: A Life) are beautiful. 

Your turn... I welcome comments from all climates! 

Photo: lusi via stock.xchng

Happy 2008! -- С новым годом!

If the Russian belief “as you greet the new year, so you will live it” proves true, I look forward to my 2008 reading after a so-so 2007. I met 2007 reading Vasilii Aksenov’s uneven Московская сага (Generations of Winter) trilogy, leading to a year of uneven, mostly post-Soviet, reading. I’m finishing a very satisfying Dovlatov kick as I see in 2008, so hope that’s a positive omen for next year’s reading!

Favorites for the year. Vladimir Makanin's short novels Лаз (Escape Hatch) and Долог наш путь (The Long Road Ahead). Sure they’re a little dreary, but they’re so good I bought them as a Christmas gift for my brother. (Previous entry)

Favorite post-Soviet book not by Makanin. Petr Aleshkovskii’s (Peter Aleskhovsky) Жизнеописание хорька (Skunk: A Life). I have no idea why the translator or publisher felt compelled to change the title character from ferret to skunk, but you have been warned! Aleshkovsii’s conglomeration of genres – notably life of saint with mysticism, crime, road novel, adventure, coming of age, fable – doesn’t always mesh, but there are lots of high points. My favorite episodes are set in the wilderness, where Ferret (instinctively, of course) fits with nature better than with people in his native town. Less a novel than a fictional biography. (Translation excerpt)

Biggest overall surprise. Somehow, I made only one dip back to the 19^th century during 2007: Dostoevsky’s Insulted and Injured, which I was moved to read when I saw that a Moscow theater had adapted it into a musical.

Most unexpected reading. Arkadii Gaidar’s “Судьба барабанщика” (“The Fate of the Drummer”). I read about this story and its significance in a film journal and pulled it off my shelf… I’m not sure if this novella is available in English translation, but it’s an intriguing and entertaining combination of a “Home Alone”-type young adult adventure story with the author’s personal confessions. Gaidar is best known as a writer of children’s stories, but memories of his excessive actions during the Civil War always haunted him. Former Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar is Arkadii Gaidar’s grandson.

Best unexpected book loan. Four volumes of Sergei Dovlatov. It’s been odd spending the holidays with Dovlatov’s dark humor, beginning with Компромисс (The Compromise) and moving on to Иностранка (A Foreign Woman). A Foreign Woman, a novel about the émigré community in New York, disappointed a little after Compromise, though I’m glad I read it. I think Dovlatov works best with linked stories: in Чемодан (The Suitcase) he tells of clothing he packed to bring to America, remembering how he acquired each item in the USSR. Previous entry on The Compromise.

Best book-length nonfiction. Orlando Figes’s The Whisperers by default since I rarely read book-length nonfiction. I’m reading a bit at a time, filling in the gaps of my knowledge of Stalin-era history. The book sometimes feels overfilled by stories from individual families – there are many – but the stories are also the book’s strength. Fortunately, Figes places these accounts in context, sometimes gently reminding the reader who’s who. The book has enough background to be an introduction to the era for general readers but plenty of details to satisfy people like me, whose knowledge of the time is quite good but not very methodical. I’m especially interested in the story of writer Konstantin Simonov, whose life Figes describes in detail. My biggest complaint about The Whisperers is pretty minor: the book is so physically heavy that it’s difficult to read!

2008 reading. Beyond finishing The Whisperers, I’ve already got a shelf full of books I can’t wait to read in 2008, including my Russian Reading Challenge books, Aleksandr Kuprin’s Duel, and a trilogy by Aleksei Tolstoi.

I wish everyone a very happy new year’s holiday and plenty of quiet time to read lots of good books in 2008! С новым годом!

Books on Amazon:

Makanin's Escape Hatch & the Long Road Ahead: Two Novellas

Aleshkovsky's Skunk A Life(Glas 15)

Figes's The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia