Yet More Award Info: Another Better-Late-Than-Never Post

Better-late-than-never posts seem to have become a bit of a habit here at the Bookshelf. Then again, this does seem to be award season: posts about the Big Book shortlist, Yasnaya Polyana longlist, and NatsBest winner will all be on the way relatively soon, too. In a more timely manner. I hope.

For now, though, a few bits of old news.

I’m often remiss in writing about the annual Pushkin House Book Prize since it covers only nonfiction, but this year’s shortlist includes a few titles that sound particularly interesting even to a fiction freak like me. One, Teffi’s Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea, is a translation by Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson, and Irina Steinberg, with an introduction by Edyth C. Haber. Another is Daniel Beer’s The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars, which I’ve been interested in since reading several enthusiastic reviews when it was released. (I suspect the title helps, too, since I thought Dostoevsky’s House of the Dead was so good…) And then there’s Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs: 1613-1918, which sounds especially vivid. The other titles—Rosalind P. Blakesley’s The Russian Canvas, Anne Garrels’s Putin Country, and Simon Morrison’s Bolshoi Confidential—help create a nicely rounded shortlist. Pushkin House’s page with the shortlist includes links to helpful individual pages about each book so I’ll leave the details to them. The winner will be announced on June 7.

And then there’s the Russian Prize, the Русская Премия—for writers who live outside Russia and write in Russian—which was awarded in late April, just when I was so caught up in finishing a translation that I completely missed the news. Oops. Mikhail Gigolashvili won the long fiction award for his Тайный год (The Secret Year, I guess…), which should arrive at my doorstep any day now. Second and third prizes went to, respectively, Shirin Shafieva for Сальса и Веретено (Salsa and Vereteno) and Vladimir Lidskii for Сказки нашей крови. Метароман (hmm, maybe The Fairytales of/in Our Blood. A Metanovel, or even “tall tales,” depending on the book…). Short fiction awards went to Tatiana Dagovich, Leia Liubomirskaia, and the team of Andrei Zhvalevskii and Evgenia Pasternak, and poetry awards were made to Gennadii Rusakov, Sergei Solovyov, and Oleg Iuriev. All titles, along with countries of residence and brief descriptions, are available on the information-packed Год литературы site, here, or on the Russian Prize site, here.

Finally, two brief items on translations. I’m very excited that my translation of Vadim Levental’s Masha Regina, published by Oneworld, is a finalist for this year’s Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, which will announce results on June 3. Contemporary Russian fiction was represented on the 2017 Best Translated Book Award prose shortlist, too, by Oblivion (Предел забвения in Russian), written by Sergei Lebedev, translated by Antonina Bouis, and published by New Vessel Press. Since this one’s all over, I’ll mention that the BTBA winner for prose was Lúcio Cardoso’s Chronicle of the Murdered House, translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson and published by Open Letter Books. The poetry winner was Alejandra Pizarnik’s Extracting the Stone of Madness, translated from the Spanish by Yvette Siegert, and published by New Directions.

Disclaimers: The usual.

Up Next: There’s a bit of a backlog around here, particularly with more award posts coming… There’s also the Afanasy Mamedov novella set in Baku that I mentioned in previous posts. And some reading in English, including Charlotte Hobson’s The Vanishing Futurist, which was perfect reading for (and about) a hectic time; it pairs nicely with James Womack’s translations of Vladimir Mayakovsky in “Vladimir Mayakovsky” & Other Poems, which arrived not long ago. There’s also a shortish novel by Aleksandr Gadol that won third place in last year’s Russian Prize competition… I just finished it but it got under my skin enough that I may write about it first.

Award News: Spender Prize Winners & the Russian Prize Longlist

Gray weekends with rain and snow flurries seem to make my mind wander… making today the perfect time for a cup of tea and a bit of prize news from the last several days:

Poetry’s not really my beat but I thoroughly enjoyed reading the winning poems from the 2014 season of the Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Prize, which recognizes translations of poetry from the Russian. The three winners are:

• Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky won first prize for their translation of Anastasia Afanasieva’s “Untitled,” which, in the words of the translators, “tells of loss and exile following the 2014 war in Eastern Ukraine.”
• Second prize went to Peter Oram for “White Day,” Arseny Tarkovsky’s “Белый день,” into which Oram inserted italicized lines to give it the feel of an English folksong. (I’ve borrowed here from Oram’s description.) I love the effect.
• I’m especially excited that Katherine Young won third prize for her translation of a poem by Xenia Emelyanova, “Spring rain beats on broken branches.” Kate read several of her translations of Emelyanova’s poems at last November’s ALTA conference and they were wonderful. In her commentary to the translation, Kate writes, “I chose this poem because it reminds me of the playground in the apartment courtyard where I lived in Moscow – the poem so perfectly captures the often-melancholy air of those spots.” I think the poem’s last lines evoke, beautifully, the feeling of being airborne.

The Spender Prize Web site includes judges’ reports, which are fun reading for anyone interested in poetry and/or translation. Congratulations to all the winners, as well as the translators who were commended for their entries: Peter Clark (for Andrei Voznesensky), Robert Isaf (for Alexander Blok), and Vlanes (for Valery Brusov). Maksymchuk and Rosochinsky (for Vladimir Gandelsman), and Oram (for Tarkovsky) were also commended for second entries.

By the way! The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry, edited by Robert Chandler, Boris Dralyuk, and Irina Mashinski, is now out. I heard lots of translations from the book during my trip to Oxford and London in 2013 (previous post) so have been looking forward to the book for, well, years.

The Russian Prize (Русская премия) longlist is far, far messier because it’s three lists—poetry, short prose, and long prose—and each list has 13 or more entries. The Russian Prize is open to writers who write in Russian but live outside Russia. I think the only writer I’ve read at any length (meaning a full book) is Evgenii Kliuev, whose novel Something Else for You (previous post) I enjoyed a few years ago: Kliuev is on the RP list for a book of poetry with the strangely appealing title Музыка на Титанике (Music on the Titanic). I’ve also read a few pieces by Bakhyt Kenzheev and Elena Suntsova, both of whom I know a bit from book fairs and events.

As for prose, there are a few familiar names, though, yikes, I haven’t read any of them yet: Platon Besedin for the collection Рёбра (Ribs); Ulyana Gamayun, whose Осень в Декадансе (Autumn in Decadence) is also longlisted for the National Bestseller; Aleksei Makushinsky, whose Пароход в Аргентину (Steamship to Argentina) was a finalist for last year’s Big Book award and won third prize in reader voting; and Maria Rybakova for Черновик человека (Rough Draft of a Person, I suspect… or at least want to think). Rybakova won the Russian Prize’s second prize award for short fiction in 2012 for her Гнедич (Gnedich), which is on the way from Glagoslav Publications this fall, in Elena Dimov’s translation. Some of Dimov’s excerpts from Gnedich, dated 2012, are available here.

Disclaimers and the Like. The usual for knowing some of these people.

Up Next. Evgeny Vodolzakin’s Solovyov and Larionov and Lena Eltang’s Cartagena, a complex murder mystery of sorts that I’m still reading slowly to appreciate all the details. Plus maybe a novella or two…

More Award News: Russian Prize Winners & Big Book Long List

Another spring month, another post about awards… this time it’s winners of the Russian Prize plus the long long list for the Big Book Award.

The Russian Prize is awarded to writers who write in Russian but live outside Russia. Yuz Aleshkovsky won in the long fiction category for his Маленький тюремный роман (A Little Prison Novel). It’s been on the shelf waiting for me for a few months… which isn’t so long, considering I’ve been meaning to read Aleshkovsky for years. The other long fiction winners were Darya Vilke for Межсезонье (Off Season) and Lena Eltang for Другие барабаны (Other Drums).

The short fiction winner was Dmitry Vachedin for the short story collection Пыль (Dust), with second prize going to Maria Rybakova for the novel in verse Гнедич (Gnedich), and third to Evgenii Abdullaev for the novella Год барана (Year of the Sheep). The top poetry award went to Ilya Rissenberg for Третий из двух (The Third of Two), followed by Alexei Tsvetkov for Детектор смысла (Sense Detector) and Feliks Chechik for Из жизни фауны и флоры (From the Life of Fauna and Flora).

Now for the Big Book long list. And all these awards programs really do put the “long” in the long list: Big Book claims this year’s list contains 46 books, three of which are manuscripts listed without author names. I’ll just trust their count. And I won’t list everybody. A few names that popped out:

Lena Eltang’s Other Drums is on the list as are two books that recently made the 2012 NatsBest short list: Marina Stepnova’s Женщцны Лазаря (excerpt) (The Women of Lazarus) and Sergei Nosov’s Франсуаза, или Путь к леднику (Françoise, Or the Way to the Glacier); Figgle-Miggle’s Ты так любишь эти фильмы (You Love Those Films So Much) was on last year’s NatsBest short list. Nikolai Kononov’s Фланёр (The Flâneur) and Nikolai Baitov’s Думай, что говоришь (Think When You Speak) were both shortlisted for the 2012 NOSE award.

I’ve only read one book on the list: Roman Senchin’s Information, which I wrote about here. I’ve also read bits of Oleg Pavlov’s Дневник больничного охранника (Diary of a Hospital Guard), which felt a little too intense to read in the PDF Pavlov sent to me.

There are several books by authors whose previous books I’ve particularly enjoyed: Vladimir Makanin’s Две сестры и Кандинский (Two Sisters and Kandinsky), Zakhar Prilepin’s Черная обезьяна (The Black Monkey), and Vsevolod Benigsen’s ВИТЧ (VITCh). A few more: Alexander Ilichevsky’s Анархисты ( [The?] Anarchists), Elena Chizhova’s Терракотовая старуха (The Terracotta Old Lady), and Sergei Samsonov’s Проводник электричества (Conductor of Electricity).

I could go on and on… but I’ll just note that the Big Book covers fiction and nonfiction. And mention that the books on the long list were selected from a total of 401 (!!) works. The short list will be announced on May 31, and winners will be named by November 30.

Disclosures: The usual.

Up Next: Andrei Rubanov’s All That Glitters. Rubanov is also on the Big Book long list, for Стыдные подвиги (Shameful Feats). I hope to get back to my usual reading pace soon, now that I’ve finished a couple of projects and my teaching semester is winding down.

Misc. Awards News for Early March + A Penguin

There’s more award news this week: for one thing, Oleg Pavlov won the Solzhenitsyn Prize, an annual prize that carries an award of $25,000. I’ll take the easy way out and quote the message I received from Pavlov’s literary agency, Elkost, which says the prize recognizes “works in which troubles of the Russian life are shown with rare moral purity and sense of tragedy, for consecutiveness and steadiness in search of truth.” That’s not too far from the jury’s quote that’s included in a news item on lenta.ru. Previous Solzhenitsyn Prize winners include Valentin Rasputin, Aleksei Varlamov, and Viktor Astaf’ev. I’ve written about two of Pavlov’s novels: Казенная сказка (A Barracks Tale) and Асистолия (Asystole or Flatline).

Meanwhile, the Russian Prize (Русская премия) announced their longlist last week. The long fiction longlist includes Yuz Aleshkovskii’s Маленький тюремный роман (A Little Prison Novel), which I bought a few weeks ago, and Elena Katishonovk’s Когда уходит человек (When a Person Leaves). Maria Rybakova’s Gnedich (a novel in verse) and Sasha Sokolov’s Триптих (Triptych) are among the short fiction entries. The full longlists for poetry, short prose, and long prose are all on the Russian Prize Website. The Russian Prize is awarded to writers who live outside Russia and write in Russian.

Misha is a king penguin.

Finally, (in more ways than one!) I read Andrei Kurkov’s Death and the Penguin, in George Bird’s translation… I’d included the novel on my list of books for a program at my town library last week and realized too late that I could get the original through interlibrary loan. The book seems to have more than one Russian title; the most common being Пикник на льду, literally Picnic on the Ice. Picnics on the ice are a pastime of Viktor, a writer in Kiev who composes obituaries of people still among the living: Viktor and his pet penguin, Misha, go with a mutual friend to the Dnepr, where Misha swims under the ice while the humans enjoy snacks.

I was glad not to know much about the book before reading so will just say that Kurkov’s plot includes Viktor finding himself caring for a small girl and needing to keep a low profile because of post-Soviet dangers linked to those obituaries. Of course Viktor also frequently buys frozen fish. I thought the book was enjoyable, fairly light reading with an apt blend of absurdity and social commentary. And who can resist a sad, affectionate penguin, a precocious little girl, and their lonely caregiver? I almost want to say that Melancholic Absurdity is the novel’s main character.

Blogger Marie Cloutier, also known as Boston Bibliophile, recently heard Kurkov speak at a bookstore event and said he discussed similarities between penguins and Soviets. To quote Marie, “both, he said, are used to rigid civil structures and don’t know how to operate outside of their group.” I thought Aleksei Balakin’s review of Picnic on the Ice, in a 2006 issue of the journal Критическая масса (Critical Mass) offered a nice analysis of the paradox of Kurkov’s work, which is popular in Europe but relatively unknown in Russia.

Melville House, which published Death and the Penguin in the U.S. last year, has released two other Kurkov books in Bird’s translations: Penguin Lost (2011) and The Case of the General’s Thumb (2012). Additional Kurkov books are available in English translation from U.K. publishers.

Up Next: That darn list of recent and upcoming translations. And Roman Senchin’s Информация (The Information). We’ll see which I finish first.

Disclaimers: The usual.

Image Credit: King penguin photo by Samuel Blanc, via Wikipedia.

Old News Is Good News

As has become my not-so-good habit, I’ve been hoarding news…

1. Marina Palei won the Russian Prize (Русская премия) recently for her novel Хор (The Chorus/Choir), which is also on this year’s Big Book long list. Many of Palei’s other texts are available on her Web site. Iurii Serebrianskii won the short prose prize for “Destination. Дорожная пастораль” (“Destination. A Road Pastorale”), and Natal’ia Gorbanevskaia won the poetry award. The Russian Prize is awarded to writers outside Russia who write in Russian; background is available here. [Update: For more, in Russian, on the Russian Prize, here's an OpenSpace.ru interview with the prize's coordinator.]

2. A Московские Новости interview with writer Oleg Pavlov mentions that Pavlov’s trilogy Повести последних дней (Tales of Recent Days) will be published in English translation by And Other Stories. The first two books of the trilogy, in an edition that Oleg kindly brought to London for me, are waiting on the Bookshelf. Pavlov’s interview answers are quite candid as he discusses presentations at the book fair, reactions to the Russian booth, and politic aspects of who goes abroad to fairs.

Pavlov also says only three social novels came out of the noughties: his own Asystole/Flatline, Zakhar Prilepin’s Sank’ya, and Roman Senchin’s The Yeltyshevs. I’m sure I’d think of another title or two to offer for consideration if I went through my blog archives but – given my admiration for (and work on) Senchin’s book, my appreciation for the difficult but very affecting Asystole, and Sank’ya’s up-close look at political opposition and violence – I would certainly agree that these three novels are some of the decade’s most important social prose. They form a bleak triptych of various types of post-Soviet social breakdowns and disconnects.

3. Meanwhile, the book fair circuit continues: Russia is the guest country at the Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino, which opens on giovedi, 12 maggio. And what better way to practice your Italian than reading the program? Some of the same writers who were in London – e.g. Liudmila Ulitskaya, Mikhail Elizarov, Zakhar Prilepin – will be there, as will Sasha Sokolov, Viktor Erofeev, and Julia Latinina. And film director Aleksandr Sokurov.

4. Finally, for those of you who will be in the New York area in late May: Causa Artium will host Olga Slavnikova in events on May 20, 22, and 25 in, respectively, Jersey City, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. Marian Schwartz, who translated 2017, will participate in the event on May 25, in Manhattan. I’ll be there, too! Each Slavnikova event will be followed by a “New Faces, New Voices: Rising Stars of Russian Writing” program featuring four winners of the Debut Prize. I enjoyed hearing two of these writers speak in London so will make sure to have an extra afternoon coffee so I can stay for the second half of the evening. And stay awake after a day at Book Expo America. All the events are free. RSVP on Causa Artium’s Facebook listings, if you’d like.

Up Next: Aleksandr Snegirev’s Тщеславие (Vanity), then Mikhail Shishkin’s Венерин волос (Maidenhair).

Disclosures: Standard disclosures apply.