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.

The 2017 Russian Booker Prize Shortlist: Hmm.

The Russian Booker Prize announced its 2017 shortlist last week. No real surprises here: there are three “usual [shortlist] suspects” plus several books that have been longlisted (some serially) but not shortlisted for various other awards. One of the books in that second trio is the only finalist written by a woman. I can’t say this list sends shivers of anticipation down my spine but at least not every book here was shortlisted elsewhere. (The bar seems set pretty low for excitement this award season, doesn’t it?)  The winner will be announced on December 5. And so:

Mikhail Gigolashvili’s Тайный год (The Mysterious Year) already won the Russian Prize and hit the Big Book shortlist. I’ve read a full novel’s worth of it (225+ pages of small print, large pages; that’s only about a third) but just can’t move myself to go on. The novel is an interesting construct that combines a short period in the life of Ivan the Terrible, lots of dense language with word play, and a somewhat repetitive brew of humor and brutality. On its own terms, it’s brilliant in some odd way but, sorry to say, I don’t find it very readable. I’m especially sad to write that, given my undying love for Gigolashvili’s The Devil’s Wheel (previous post).

Igor Malyshev’s Номах. Искры большого пожара (Nomakh. Sparks from a Big Fire) is essentially a novel in stories that describe slices of life with someone very strongly resembling anarchist Nestor Makhno. I read the first several pieces in Nomakh but the book didn’t grab me at all: it felt, hmm, something akin to pedestrian, despite the historical subject matter.

Vladimir Medvedev’s Заххок (Zahhak) (part 1) (part 2) is the only book on the list that I’ve read and finished. And I truly enjoyed it, thanks to Medvedev’s polyphonic account of unrest in Tajikistan in the early 1990s. Like the Gigolashvili book, this novel blends brutality with bits of comic relief but it’s not repetitive, the length is reasonable, and the varied voices mean Zahhak finds ways to speak to a broader readership.

Aleksandr Melikhov’s Свидание с Квазимодо (A Date/Meeting with Quasimodo) involves a criminal psychologist. It’s on the shelf.

Aleksandra Nikolaenko’s Убить Бобрыкина. История одного убийства (To Kill Bobrykin. The Story of One Killing) sounds thoroughly mysterious, like some sort of odd inner dialogue…

Dmitrii Novikov’s Голомяное пламя (hmm, the first word is an adjectival form of “голомя,” a Pomor word that means open sea or distant sea… so maybe something like Flame Out at Sea or Flame Over the Open Sea…). This book hit so many longlists that a major shortlist had to come eventually. About the Russian North. On my shelf.

Disclaimers: The usual. I translated excerpts from Zahhak.

Up Next: Trip report on the American Literary Translators Association conference in Minneapolis and the Frankfurt Book Fair. Books: Zahhak. Anna Kozlova’s F20, about which my feelings are far more mixed. Sukhbat Aflatuni’s Tashkent Novel, which I enjoyed.

The 2017 Russian Booker Prize Longlist

I was planning to blog today about Vladimir Medvedev’s Заххок (Zahhak), which is very good… but then the Booker longlist popped up last week. The Yasnaya Polyana shortlist will be on the way soon, too, so award season is definitely upon us.

And so. Here are some of the nineteen books that hit the 2017 Booker longlist. The shortlist will be announced on October 26 and the award ceremony is scheduled for December 5.

First off, here are books that have already won or been shortlisted (Big Book shortlist) (National Bestseller shorlist) for other large awards that I track. A reminder: you can read Big Book finalists (other than the Pelevin novel) for free on Bookmate.

• Mikhail Gigolashvili’s Тайный год (The Mysterious Year). Won the Russian Prize; Big Book shortlist.
• Anna Kozlova’s F20. Won the NatsBest.
• Igor Malyshev’s Номах (Nomakh). Big Book shortlist.
• Andrei Rubanov’s Патриот (The Patriot). Big Book and NatsBest shortlists.
• Aleksei Slapovsky’s Неизвестность (Uncertainty). Big Book shortlist (previous post).

A few other books are already on my shelves:

• Andrei Volos’s Должник (a chapter from it) (The Debtor). Book three of a tetralogy. I read the very beginning of this novel about a man who’s drafted and sent to Afghanistan. It looks promising.
• Vladimir Medvedev’s afore-mentioned Заххок (part one) (part two) (Zahhak). An excellent, harrowing (how often do I get to say that?) polyphonic novel about Tajikistan in the early 1990s.
• Aleksandr Melikhov’s Свидание с Квазимодо (A Meeting [not sure what kind] with Quasimodo) is about a criminal psychologist.
• Dmitrii Novikov’s Голомяное пламя (hmm, the first word is an adjectival form of “голомя,” a Pomor word that means open sea or distant sea… so maybe something like Flame Out at Sea or Flame Over the Open Sea…). This book has hit about a million longlists but hasn’t made any of the major award shortlists yet. About the Russian North.

There are several books by authors I’ve read before – Irina Bogatyreva, Sasha Filipenko, and Elena Chizhova – and several others I’m interested in but since learning about new writers from longlists has become something of a hobby, I’ll mention three books by authors I’d never heard of. Based on brief looks, none of these are calling out to me. Then again, several books that became big favorites had the same initial (lack of) effect on me.

• Kalle Kasper’s Чудо: Роман с медициной (The Miracle: A Novel with Medicine).
• Vladimir Lidskii’s Сказки нашей крови (literally Tales of Our Blood). About/related to the 1917 revolution. (Oops, this one turns out to be a cheat! I wondered if something sounded familiar here and saw that the book was already a runner-up for the Russia Prize.)
• Aleksandra Nikolaenko’s Убить Бобрыкина. История одного убийства (Killing Bobrykin. The Story of One Murder). (Also a bit of a cheat: I forgot this title was on the NatsBest longlist, too. I guess there really is nothing new under the sun.)

Up Next: Medvedev’s Zahhak. Shamil Idiatullin’s Brezhnev City, which got off to a slow start for me… but reads very differently now that I’m reading it as a novel-in-stories. And the Yasnaya Polyana Award shortlist, which I’m looking forward to very much.

Disclaimers: The usual. I’m translating excerpts from Zahhak. (How could I turn down polyphony!?)

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.

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.

The 2016 Russian Booker Longlist

The Russian Booker Prize announced its 2016 longlist last Wednesday: the list contains 24 books chosen from 71 eligible nominations. Finalists will be announced on October 5 and winners—one laureate plus one English-language publication grant—will be announced on December 1.

Here are a few of the books on the list. Six titles are familiar from the Big Book shortlist and I’ve read books by other writers on the list, but I’m also very happy to see quite a few author names I’d never heard before.

First off, the books that are already on the Big Book shortlist (because it’s just so easy to cut and paste on a hot, stuffy summer night):

• 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 earlier this year 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.
• 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’m in the middle of Jacob’s Ladder and finding it pleasant reading, particularly the story thread that begins in the more distant past.
• Sasha Filipenko’s Травля (Persecution, perhaps?) sounds fairly indescribable: 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.

A few others, some by authors I’m not at all familiar with, so was curious about:

• Anatolii Korolev’s Дом близнецов (The House of Twins would be the literal version, hmm) sounds like it’s an intellectual thriller/detective novel about positivism (as a Gemini, I’d been hoping for zodiac madness, but alas!); Korolev has referred to it as a treatise (тракат).
• Anna Berdichevskaya’s Крук (Kruk, which looks to be a shortened version of Круглосуточный клуб, or round-the-clock club; the title also sounds like the word круг, which means circle, among other things, and is part of the “round-the-clock” word) is described as a historical novel about a very recent time; six people (five young, one elderly) meet.
• Oleg Nesterov’s Небесный Стокгольм (excerpt) (excerpt) (Heavenly Stockholm, perhaps) is set in the early 1960s and, how ‘bout that, written by the leader of Megapolis, a fairly well-known (rock) band. (The Megapolis YouTube channel… “Эхо” sure hit my mood on a summer night… maybe for the Hawaii sound with the piano and water…)
• 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 still sounds interesting.
• Sukhbat Aflatuni’s Поклонение волхвов (Adoration of the Magi) 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.

Disclaimers. The usual.

Up next. Eugene Vodolazkin’s The Aviator, which, yes, I’m still mulling over, trying to figure out how to write about the book without giving away the whole story; Alexander Snegirev’s Vera, which I am now officially calling Faith; Maria Galina’s ever-mysterious Autochthons; and Ludmila Ulitskaya’s Jacob’s Ladder, a family saga that reads along easily. The Vodolazkin, Galina, and Ulitskaya books are Big Book finalists.

The 2015 Russian Booker Goes to Snegirev!

I was so excited on Thursday to see that Alexander Snegirev won the 2015 Russian Booker that I screamed (nothing creative, just a very loud “Snegirev!”) when I saw his picture on Lenta.ru. Snegirev won for Вера, which, as I’ve noted in past posts, could be translated as Vera or Faith, and I can’t wait to read the rest of the book on paper after enjoying the beginning of the electronic copy he sent me earlier this year… I was just yearning to take lots of notes on paper margins. I’ve enjoyed other Snegirev novels—Petroleum Venus and Vanity—so am thrilled to see him win a major prize. He’s not just a good writer, he’s also a wonderful person, something that I think comes through in his work.

This year’s Booker translation prize, for publication of an English-language translation, went to Alisa Ganieva, who was a Booker finalist for Жених и невеста (Bride and Groom), which Carol Apollonio is already translating for Deep Vellum Publishing, a new press with an almost painfully impressive list of translated fiction. Deep Vellum has already published Apollonio’s translation of Ganieva’s Праздничная гора, as The Mountain and the Wall. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed meeting Ganieva a number of times over the years, too, so am also very, very happy for her. Beyond that, I can’t wait to read the book, which is on the shelf waiting for me.

Up Next: Big Book Award winners. Trip reports for ALTA and Russian Literature Week, which is coming right up, starting tomorrow, in New York! I hope to see some of you at events; just check that link for a full schedule and to RSVP. And books: Sergei Nosov’s Curly Brackets.

The 2015 Russian Booker Shortlist & a Nobel Note

The Russian Booker Prize jury announced the 2015 Russian Booker shortlist on Friday. What feels most notable this year is that the writers are so young: Pokrovsky, born in 1954, has been on the planet the longest, Senchin is in his mid-forties, and the rest are in their thirties. The list also feels pretty varied and appealing (!). The (!) is because some Russian Booker shortlists have seemed a bit, hmm, dry. Here you go:

• Alisa Ganieva’s Жених и невеста (Bride and Groom), which Carol Apollonio is currently translating for Deep Vellum Publishing, for release in 2017. The novel apparently looks at the institution of marriage (including tradition and superstition) among young people in rural Dagestan.
• Vladimir Danikhnov’s Колыбельная (Lullaby). This book’s description says it’s a noirish novel set in a nameless southern city beset with serial killings. It also indicates the writing reminds of Platonov’s. An excerpt is available on Ozon.ru; epigraph from Mickey Spillane.
• Yuri Pokrovsky’s Среди людей (Among People) is set in the 1970s, also in a nameless city (top secret military stuff), and is composed of 49 connected “fragments” related to nine main characters.
• Roman Senchin’s Зона затопления (Flood Zone) examines what happens when everyone’s forced out of a village to make way for a hydroelectric plant. Not my favorite Senchin—I couldn’t bring myself to finish it and my favorite is still The Yeltyshevs—but Flood Zone is on this year’s Big Book and Yasnaya Polyana shortlists, too. I have to think it will win a major award as a sort of “makeup call” after The Yeltyshevs didn’t win. Excerpts available on Журнальный зал; I read more than half the book and thought “Чернушка” was one of the best chapters I read.
• Alexander Snegiev’s Вера (Vera or Faith, depending on whether you’d like to translate the meaning of the name or not…). Either way, Vera was on the NatsBest shortlist, too; I’ve seen Snegirev’s writing in Vera compared to Platonov’s, too (for example here). I enjoyed reading the beginning of Vera on an electronic reader but was just jonesing to take real notes in the margin, with a real pencil…
• Guzel Yakina’s Зулейха открывает глаза (Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes) is also a finalist for the Big Book and Yasnaya Polyana awards. I very much enjoyed reading Zuleikha and translating excerpts was at least as much fun (previous post). An excerpt is available on Ozon.ru.

In other news, I’m sure everybody already knows that Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize in Literature last week. With my big old fiction bias, I haven’t read any of her books but thought I’d note current translations in English. (Thanks to a project for the Institute of Translation last week, I just happen to know what’s on the list!) I’ll just mention the English-language titles here, without the original Russian. There may be more excerpts of various works available online: they aren’t easy to track down due to varying spellings, titles, and multiple versions. These variables make my poor, addled head spin. Please note, too, that the author’s last name is sometimes spelled Alexievitch. Here’s her page on the site of her literary agent, Galina Dursthoff so you can keep track of new books on the way. I welcome any and all corrections and additions to this list—I’m sure there are other pieces available!

Books

I think the Nobel Prize’s site has the best listing of current translated books so will send you there rather than retype book information. Time Second-Hand, which was a Big Book Award finalist last year and won the reader award, will be out from Fitzcarraldo Editions next year, in Bela Shayevich’s translation.  

Shorter Pieces and Excerpts that I believe are from the same cycle or collection:

• “The Wondrous Deer of the Eternal Hunt,” a short story translated by Marian Schwartz
• “Landscape of Loneliness,” translated by Joanne Turnbull (more about it here, from Glas)

There are also several pieces in various issues of Autodafe: The Journal of the International Parliament of Writers; some pages are blocked so I’m not always sure exactly what’s where or there.

• “Inquiries into Love in Russia,” translated by Marian Schwartz
• Three pieces, not sure who translated them…
• “Go Where You Shouldn’t,” translated by Marian Schwartz

Disclaimers: Having translated work by Senchin and Yakhina, and met Ganieva and Snegirev multiple times.

Up Next: So many books! Narine Abgaryan’s People Who Are Always With Me.

Lots more books from the Big Book finalist list, including Boris Yekimov’s Autumn in Zadon’e, which I finished but didn’t like very much (at all), some books I didn’t finish, plus the ones I’m working on now: Alexei Varlamov’s The Imagined Wolf (it really is “imagined”), Valery Zalotukha’s super-long but ridiculously mesmerizing The Candle, and Igor Virabov’s “biography” of Andrei Voznesensky that I might want to call “kitschy” or “tacky,” though/therefore that factor does keep me turning the pages. And there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages, all with very small type. We’ll see if I tire…

Better Late Than Never: The 2015 Russian Booker Prize Longlist

Hmm, I just realized, yesterday, that I missed the Russian Booker Award’s longlist announcement on July 9. Here, then, are a few belated notes on the 24-book list. The six finalists will be named on October 9 so time’s running short for the longlist! Or even for a short version of the longlist.

There are lots of books—a third, if I’ve caught everything—that are already finalists for or winners of other awards this year:

• Aleksei Varlamov’s Мысленный волк (The Imagined Wolf, perhaps?). A novel set in the 1910s that involves some real-life figures, including our old friend Grigory Rasputin. Big Book Award finalist. I’ll be reading this one very soon so hope to figure out the title.
• Danila Zaitsev’s Повесть и житие Данилы Терентьевича Зайцева (The Life and Tale of Danila Terentyevich Zaitsev). In which a Russian Old Believer born in China and living in Argentina tells his story. Already a Yasnaya Polyana Award finalist.
• Tatyana Moskvina’s Жизнь советской девушки (Life of a Soviet Girl): Apparently a memoir about life in Leningrad during the 1960s through 1980s, with lots of detail. National Bestseller Award finalist.
• Sergei Nosov’s Фигурные скобки (Curly Brackets): Described by fellow finalist Anna Matveeva as magical realism about a mathematician who goes from Moscow to Saint Petersburg for a conference of микромаг-s. Big winner at the 2015 NatsBest Award; I already bought this one for when I finish all the Big Book Award finalists. It looks fun.
• Dina Rubina’s Русская канарейка ((The?) Russian Canary). Trilogy, a family saga set in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A Big Book finalist; Rubina’s canary and I did not get along.
• Roman Senchin’s Зона затопления (Flood Zone). A 2015 Big Book Award and Yasnaya Polyana Award finalist; a new take on themes from Valentin Rasputin’s Farewell to Matyora: a village is about to be flooded for a hydroelectric plant. Not my favorite Senchin.
• Alexander Snegirev’s Вера (Vera, a name and noun that translates as Faith): A short novel about a forty-year-old woman who is unmarried. Snegirev’s Facebook description, posted at the time of the NatsBest long list, includes words like dramatic, comic, erotic (a bit), and political (a little). NatsBest finalist. I read the beginning and enjoyed it but want to read the book on paper.
• Guzel’ Yakhina’s Зулейха открывает глаза (Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes). Another Big Book and Yasnaya Polyana finalist (previous post); I’m now enjoying it even more as I work on excerpts. A historical novel in which a kulak woman is exiled.

There are several other writers I’ve read before:

• Alisa Ganieva is on the list for Жених и невестa (Bride and Groom), which you can read about here. I’m looking forward to this one. Edit: an English translation, by Carol Apollonio, will be on the way next winter, from Deep Vellum.
• Andrei Gelasimov’s Холод (Cold), the name of which makes me want to wait to read this book in winter, even without knowing what it’s about. (I love winter.)
• Anna Matveeva made the list for a novel, Завидное чувство Веры Стениной (Vera Stenina’s Enviable Feeling, I think?); Enviable Feeling is apparently about female envy. (Here’s chapter one.)

And then there’s a whole pile of books—I’ll list a few already published in book form—I know nothing or very little about:

• Platon Besedin’s Учитель (The Teacher), which was nominated twice for the NatsBest but not shortlisted, is apparently a novel about a Ukrainian boy, the first book in a tetralogy (!). (Mitya Samoilov’s Big Jury review)
• Unsurprisingly, Vasilii Golovanov’s Каспийская книга (The/A Caspian Book) discusses all sorts of aspects of travel around/near the Caspian Sea. Golovanov won the 2009 Yasnaya Polyana Award for Island, which I’ve had on the shelf for three years but not yet read.
• Oleg Radzinskii’s Агафонкин и время (Agafonkin and Time) is about a time-traveling courier. Hmm.

Bonus Links on a Translated Book! Since Alisa Ganieva’s latest book is on the Booker longlist… and since I spent the fateful Russian Booker date, July 9, with old friends visiting Maine… and since we talked about the situation in the Caucasus, including Dagestan, which Alisa writes about... and since I mentioned Alisa’s books to them, this seems like the perfect time to mention The Mountain and the Wall, Carol Apollonio’s translation of Праздничная гора. The translation was published by Deep Vellum, with an introduction by Ronald Meyer. Though I felt a bit ill-prepared for The Mountain and the Wall—I’m not nearly as informed about Dagestani political and religious issues as I should be—I still enjoyed reading about reactions and unrest that follow rumors of being walled off from Russia. Various forms of chaos struck me and stuck with me the most, whether Alisa was describing personal relationships, skipping through a book (something that always reminds me of good old Pierre Bezukhov!), a visit to a club, or street demonstrations. I haven’t read the Russian original and was grateful that Carol sorted out the Avar and other languages that make appearances in the novel. I also enjoyed Carol’s enjoyment of Alisa’s humor. I’m looking forward to Bride and Groom, which sounds more personal and more “my” book, though I would certainly recommend The Mountain and the Wall to anyone interested in Dagestan or the Caucasus. Links: excerpts on Body, reviews on The Rumpus and Tony’s Reading List.

Disclaimers: The usual. Thank you to Deep Vellum for the copy of The Mountain and the Wall. (I know everyone whose names I listed for this book and would have just kept quiet if I hadn’t liked it!)

Up Next: Lots of books! More books from the Big Book finalist list, including Boris Yekimov’s Autumn in Zadon’e, which I finished but didn’t like very much (at all), and Anna Matveeva’s story collection Девять девяностых (Nine from the Nineties). Also: Narine Abgaryan’s People Who Are Always With Me.

More Miscellany: Booker Goes to Sharov… AATSEEL Awards… Russian Literature Week… Two Translations...

1. The Russian Booker Prize was awarded yesterday to Vladimir Sharov for Возвращение в Египет (Return to Egypt). Sharov won third prize from the Big Book Award jury last week, too, so he’s had a busy award season. In other Booker news, Учительская газета reported, in a newsy article, that Natalya Gromova’s Ключ. Последняя Москва (The Key. The Last/Final Moscow) won the Booker’s grant award, which covers the book’s translation into English. 

Return to Egypt has not (yet) been translated into English, Sharov’s До и во время does exist in English, in the form of Oliver Ready’s translation, Before & During. I’m not even sure where or how to begin describing Before & During: this complex novel’s frame story involves a man checking himself into a psychiatric hospital, where he begins compiling stories for a Memorial Book. The novel’s primary character, though, turns out to be Madame de Staël, who seems to give birth to just about everyone, including herself. I’ve seen the word “phantasmagoria” used to describe the book more than once, and it’s more than appropriate for Sharov’s quirky combination of religion, Russian history, and culture… Stalin, Lenin, Scriabin, and Tolstoy are among the real-life figures who put in appearances, making for alternative history at its most peculiar. Before & During has a peculiar charm, too: I don’t usually have much patience for monologues but something about the book’s wackiness and, I’m sure, Oliver’s lucid translation, mesmerized me and I finished, even though I’m not exactly sure what I read. This is (yet another!) book it would be fun to research while rereading. For detailed descriptions of Before & During, see Anna Aslanyan’s review for The Independent and Russian Dinosaur’s detailed account. Caryl Emerson’s review in the April 11, 2014, issue of The Times Literary Supplement (which I happened to buy) contains a summary of the scandal at the journal Novyi mir when Before & During was first published in the nineties.

2. The American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) announced its annual book awards last week. Most exciting (for me anyway!) was that Sibelan Forrester won the scholarly translation award for The Russian Folktale, by Vladimir Propp, published by Wayne State University Press. I loved reading Propp years ago in grad school so this was a great reminder that I’ve been meaning to buy Sibelan’s book of Propp. The best literary translation award went to Anthony Anemone and Peter Scotto for I Am a Phenomenon Quite Out of the Ordinary: The Notebooks, Diaries, and Letters of Daniil Kharms, published by Academic Studies Press. Sophia Lubensky’s revised Russian-English Dictionary of Idioms (Yale University Press) won the language pedagogy award—I use an older edition of this book and find it ridiculously helpful in my translation work. Part of the fun of Lubensky’s dictionaries is that they include quotations from literature, with English translations… the new edition apparently includes contemporary authors like Akunin, Pelevin, Ulitskaya, and Sorokin. Finally, Katia Dianina won the award for literary and cultural studies for When Art Makes News: Writing Culture and Identity in Imperial Russia, published by Northern Illinois University Press.

3. I spent about 1.5 days in New York last week for Read Russia’s first annual Russian Literature Week festivities, enjoying two panel discussions: one panel looked at nineteenth-century classics, with translator Marian Schwartz, New York Review Books editor Edwin Frank, and Esther Allen, a translator from the Spanish and associate professor at Baruch College; the other panel focused on differences between translating classics and contemporary literature, with Marian Schwartz, Russian and Polish translator and New Vessel publisher Ross Ufberg, and translator and Columbia University professor Ron Meyer. I kept terrible notes but, in the midst of hearing about books like Marian’s translation of Anna Karenina, The Captain’s Daughter from Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, and Ross’s work on Vladimir Vysotsky’s stories, my memory zeroes in on two topics that I always find especially relevant and interesting: making sure the beginning of a book, particularly the very first page, has, as Marian put it, “zing,” and the special challenges of working on what will be an author’s debut in English. I also jotted down that someone said the word “pal” dates back to Shakespeare… this was interesting to learn since I’m using the phrase “be a pal” for a contemporary-sounding utterance in my translation of Vodolazkin’s Laurus, a book set in the Middle Ages that includes a spectrum of language ranging from archaicisms to modern slang. Flexibility is fun!

Speaking of fun: a highlight of Russian Literature Week was seeing translator friends. And it was particularly fun to see Katherine Dovlatov after reading Pushkin Hills, her translation of Sergei Dovlatov’s Заповедник. I read the first half of Pushkin Hills on a non-fun JetBlue flight last summer. But if ever there was a perfect book for a delayed flight on a stifling plane, this is it. Pushkin Hills tells, in first-person narrative, the story of one Boris Alikhanov, who has marital troubles as well as a job as a tour guide at the Pushkin Hills Preserve. Although I will always prefer the first half of the book—for its focus on the wonderful absurdity of working at a place dedicated to Pushkin (Our Everything!)—I came to appreciate the second half more. The novel’s second act includes a visit from Alikhanov’s wife and a visit to a KGB officer. Dovlatov’s humor felt absolutely perfect on that hot, tardy plane, thanks to, of course, a very funny original plus, of course, Katya Dovlatov’s translation, which renders her father’s short sentences into funny, colloquial English that reads beautifully. (Let me just say: that is not easy.) I think Katya succeeded so well because, as she notes in this Paris Review interview, she read the Russian out loud and then tried things out in English, “to keep the same musicality, the same tone.” She made lots of bang-up word choices, like scrud and booze-up, that capture the feel of her father’s novel and keep the text lively. And keep me laughing. No easy feat on a late airplane, particularly for a book I first read and enjoyed in Russian. Pushkin Hills was published in the U.S. by Counterpoint Press and in the U.K. by Alma Classics. Also of interest: Marisa Robertson-Textor’s “All Dovlatov’s Children: Recent Soviet Émigré Literature.”

Up Next: Back to the books, starting with Marina Stepnova’s Безбожный переулок (Italian Lessons) or Evgeny Vodolazkin’s Solovyov and Larionov. There are also lots more English-language translations and originals on the shelves, just waiting. I’m not sure, though, about Prilepin’s The Cloister… it might have won the Big Book last week, but after nearly 300 pages, The Cloister feels a little too big, a little too wordy, and a little too stuffed with, well, stuff that could have/should have been pared down a bit. Or a lot. But we’ll see.

Disclaimers: The usual, for knowing so many people in this post. Thank you to Dedalus Books for the copy of Before & During and Counterpoint Press for Pushkin Hills. Read Russia brought me to New York for Russian Literature Week.