Curiouser and Curiouser: The 2020 Big Book Award Winners

Well. Yes. So. Here we are. The Big Book Award announced winners this past ThBlursday. It’s easy enough to list the awardees. But what to say beyond that is beyond me.

The jury’s first prize went to Alexander Ilichevsky for Чертеж Ньютона (Newton’s Sketch). Timur Kibirov took second prize for his Генерал и его семья (The General and His Family). And Shamil Idiatullin won the bronze for Бывшая Ленина (Former Lenin Street, if I’m to keep it simple). The reader’s choice awards went to (first place through third) Mikhail Elizarov for Earth, Dina Rubina for Napoleon’s Caravan/Convoy, and Alexei Makushinsky for Предместья мысли. Философическая прогулка (The Outskirts of Thought. A Philosophical Stroll, something like that, perhaps?).

What to say? First, of course it’s supremely disappointing, yet again, that there weren’t many books written by women on the shortlist and that only one of six awards went to a woman. Then again, my second point is that this year’s shortlist was not the “lucky thirteen list” I’d hoped for when I wrote my post about the 2020 Big Book finalists back in June! The short version: not many of the books made positive impressions on me. Has the pandemic affected my reading this year? Of course it has. This year’s list, though, felt like a historical Big Book low, in terms of readability and literary quality. My top two books were Ksenia Buksha’s Churov and Churbanov (previous post), which I thoroughly enjoyed, and Elizarov’s Earth (previous post), which is a thought-provoking, carnivalistic novel about death. I appreciated Ch and Ch even more after some of the other books on the list for the simple reason that Buksha knows how to create a world. And knows when to stop writing. Elizarov is different in that he has not stopped writing – Earth is only book one of some sort of multi-tome something or other – but even though some scenes run too long, Elizarov certainly creates a world and certainly drew me in, made me curious, and made me want to keep reading. As I wrote before, the book has purpose.

Alas, I can’t say those things about many of the other books on this year’s long Big Book shortlist, though I’ll continue attempting to revisit a couple. I’m still hoping to find a way to break into Sofia Sinitskaya’s world and I thank Vasily Avchenko and Alexei Korovashko for Олег Куваев: повесть о нерегламентированном человеке (Oleg Kuvaev: Story of an Unregulated Person), my introduction to Kuvaev, whose Territory is now on the shelf. So Sinitskaya and Avchenko/Korovashko are two other pluses for this year.

In general, though, this year’s Big Book results left me sad, particularly since I’ve run across lots of social media evidence that other members of the Literary Academy, as well as non-jury observers, have similar feelings. I’ve seen the Ilichevsky win referred to with words including “catastrophe” and “scandalous,” though I’m not convinced it’s a debacle on the level of the 2010 Booker’s choice that popularized the word “афедрон” (RIP Russian Booker!). I’m usually the person who doesn’t fuss when my favorite books don’t win awards – for better or worse, juries and award administrators can do whatever the hell they want with jury awards – but I just can’t get this year’s ceremony, which I watched live on YouTube, out of my head.

It’s not just the eerie ambient music and Pushkin/quarantine graphic that looped during the start delay and, later, the tabulation delay. It’s not just that the tabulation delay was caused by (déjà vu!) a recount. Or that the votes were so very painfully close. (View the final tally here!) Or that Irina Barmetova, speaking about jurors’ ballots, said scores were lower this year, something she attributed to jurors taking greater care with their reading. Or that I did the exact opposite, still grading hard but using the full range of one to ten, awarding more high scores than usual given the large number of books on the list, the very obvious and very subjective differences in enjoyment and literary quality that I perceived and wanted to recognize, and the fact that ballot instructions specifically ask jurors not to give the same score too many times. Based on social media evidence, my guess is that I’m not the only juror who wasn’t thrilled with this year’s list.

I can say I felt grateful, almost relieved, when I clicked a link on a post from Natalya Lomykina, a Facebook Friend I’ve never met in real life. She wrote this piece for Russian Forbes. What she writes here doesn’t just tell me I’m far, far from alone in my surprise/shock/disbelieF about the results. Natalya’s article also addresses the literary quality of Earth, the shortcomings of the Ilichevsky book (which she calls многословный, wordy/verbose; I agree), Ilichevsky’s speech, and the possibility that Ilichevsky’s win says more about mathematics than literature. The math question is another reason I gave higher points to my favorite books this year: I’m one of dozens of jurors and wanted to give my top books all the help they could get. If you don’t read Russian but are interested in the Big Book and/or Russian contemporary literature in general, do run Natalya’s article through Google Translate: I tested and it generates a surprisingly readable English-language translation. Some of Natalya’s other Facebook Friends commented that it was brave of her to write the piece.

On some level, I’d love to keep things simple and say I don’t know why I can’t let this go. But I know exactly why I can’t let it go. It’s because I care about Russian contemporary fiction. I particularly care about books (of any genres and written in any languages) that are written well, that read well, and that keep all kinds of readers reading. And Big Book is, according to many Russian colleagues, the one Russian literary award that tends to raise awareness and sales for current Russian literature. Yes, I’m an outsider and no, Russian isn’t my first language, but I read enough contemporary Russian fiction to say that this year’s shortlist simply doesn’t feel representative of the creative range of current literary fiction that even I can observe, from a distance, acquiring books without the possibility of visiting a Russian bookshop and flipping through printed pages. (Caveat: I have a harder time assessing nonfiction.)

Since most awards (the National Bestseller is an obvious exception) don’t release nomination lists, it’s hard to say what award committees start with when they form longlists. I do know, though, that there are at least two books on this year’s Big Book longlist – Inga Kuznetsova’s weird, utopian Intervals (previous post) and Alexander Stesin’s New York Rounds, which I read (present tense) bits of some nights and appreciate for its concise characterizations and generous doses of humanity – that I’ve enjoyed far more than many, even most, of the 2020 shortlisters. Kuznetsova and Stesin surprised me in positive ways. They made me think but they didn’t constantly force me to slog through paragraphs, even pages, of superfluous material that could/should have been edited. They balance content and formal devices, too, but what’s particularly interesting is that these two books feel utterly, utterly personal but also utterly, utterly universal and (repeating a key word!) human as they appeal to readers’ emotions and sense of wonder. As I’ve been writing, I’ve realized that if I had to choose one phrase to express what went wrong for me when attempting this year’s finalists, it’s that the majority of this year’s finalists failed to generate a sense of wonder (there’s my phrase!) because they felt too predictable, wooden, and/or contrived to touch me emotionally and/or intellectually. That’s what I want from literature. Creative use of form and content to generate wonder, emotional reactions, and thought. Your wonder may not be quite the same as mine but there are many books, such as Kibirov’s, where I can recognize successful elements and understand (or at least imagine) someone else’s wonder even if I don’t share it.

Well, that was cathartic! I think I feel like I can let this go now, particularly since I realize that I’m right back where I started: reading as broad a range of books as possible, many of them written by women, to find books with enough heart, soul, structure, and smarts to keep me reading.

Up Next: Evgeny Vodolazkin’s latest novel, about residents of an island, did not disappoint. I’m now reading Guzel Yakhina’s new historical novel, Special Train to Samarkand, which will apparently be published next year. Plus Marina and Sergey Dyachenko’s mysterious Vita Nostra. I’m enjoying both! I’ll also be posting soon about this year’s list of new translations.

Disclaimers and Disclosures: The usual. And acquaintance/involvement with certain books and/or authors mentioned in this post, including Earth.

Big Book Finalists for 2020: A Lucky Thirteen List for Lizok’s Summer Reading Plan

Well, this year’s Big Book shortlist came in an unusual way: the announcement was held on Zoom rather than at a GUM luncheon this time around so I dragged myself to my computer at seven in the morning to watch. Despite the early (for me) hour, it was fun to see some friends and experience (yet again!) the oddly voyeuristic feeling of observing people in their Zoom habitats.

Since there are thirteen finalists this year, I’ll get to the list without further ado, listing the shortlisters in the order they were named over Zoom. In a few cases, I’ll mention brief the authors’ brief answers to questions from Dmitry Bak, who served as the broadcast’s genial, smiling host.

• Timur Kibirov’s Генерал и его семья (The General and His Family) is a long family saga written by a writer who’s probably best known as a poet. (For his part, Kibirov says he has not switched to prose and is working on a new book of poetry.) The novel is set in the late Soviet period. My colleague Jamie Olson has translated some of Kibirov’s poetry; you can find a few of his translations here.
• Shamil Idiatullin’s Бывшая Ленина (Former Lenin [Street, though not only “street,” from what I gather]) is set in a provincial city with all sorts of problems and takes place, hm, last year.
• Evgeny Chizhov’s Собиратель рая (Collector of Heaven or Collecting Heaven?), which I read in part and called “good-natured” in my longlist post, is a slow, meandering novel about a woman with dementia and her son, who loves flea markets. There’s some good humor and lots of atmosphere but I found the book disappointing, perhaps in part because I loved Chizhov’s The Translation (previous post) so much. I will, however, revisit Collector.
• Alexander Ilichevsky made the list with Чертеж Ньютона (Newton’s Sketch), which apparently features three journeys and settings including Nevada, the Pamirs, and Jerusalem. The narrator mentions in the novel’s first sentence that he works with dark matter…
• Pavel Selukov’s Добыть Тарковского ([Verbing, I think perhaps Procuring or somesuch] Tarkovsky) is a collection of short stories that are apparently set in Perm in the nineties and noughties. Thank you to Bak for asking Selukov which Tarkovsky the title refers to… though Selukov deflected the question. (Now that I have the book, I know the answer but won’t spoil anything for anyone…)
• Grigori Arosev and Evgenii Kremchukov’s Деление на ноль (Division by Zero) apparently concerns a dystopia. Which feels right up my alley these days. [Guilty pleasure: I confess that I was almost pleased to see Kremchukov confess that he forgot what he wanted to say when it was his turn to speak. Zoom seems to have the exact same effect on me perhaps because I’m always watching people in their little boxes…]
• Vasily Avchenko and Alexei Korovashko’s Олег Куваев: повесть о нерегламентированном человеке (Oleg Kuvaev: Story of an Unregulated Person) is a biography of Oleg Kuvaev, who has a cult following and is best known for a book called Territory. And, evidently, a life of adventure.
• Sofia Sinitskaya will continue to haunt me with her titles! Her Сияние «Жеможаха» (The Glimmering [of the] Zhemozhakha, though I’m loving the idea of The “Zhemozhakha” Shining since the title’s other word is the same as the Russian title of a certain Stephen King book) is now on my summer book list. Sinitskaya said that word I can’t really translate (yet!) is a sort of symbol of the absurd. I’ll return to my notes and report back after revisiting her previous book involving Zhemozhakha and then reading this one where [OMG!] Zhemozhakha apparently drives a car! Maybe zhemozhakha can become a word in English.
• Dina Rubina is back with another trilogy – Наполеонов обоз (Napoleon’s Caravan/Convoy or somesuch) – that looks like another family saga. When Bak asked Rubina why the story is so long, Rubina said [long story short here] she couldn’t leave anything unsaid.
• Natalia Gromova made the list with an autobiographical novel, Насквозь (Through and Through, perhaps?).
• Mikhail Elizarov’s Земля (Earth) is the only book I’ve already read in full (previous post).
• Alexei Makushinsky’s Предместья мысли. Философическая прогулка (The Outskirts of Thought. A Philosophical Stroll, something like that, perhaps?) visits places where Nikolai Berdyaev and Jacques Maritain lived.
• I’m currently reading Ksenia Buksha’s Чуров и Чурбанов (Churov and Churbanov), which I’d already bought in bound, printed form (hurray for old-fashioned books!), chronicles the lives of two classmates. It’s very readable and a bit light, though I feel like there may be some dark turns ahead.

I’ll leave it there for now, other than to note that – as in years past – I was disappointed not to see more books written by women on the list. I was especially surprised that Olga Pogodina-Kuzmina’s Uranium didn’t make the list. But, as last year, I’ll be sure to buy Uranium and some of the other longlisters by women writers, though that list of 39 books had only eight written by women, meaning there are not many there to choose from.

Disclaimers and Disclosures: I’m on the jury of the Big Book Award and have received electronic copies of all the finalists. I’ve met some of the writers on the list and translated an excerpt of Earth.

Up Next: The long-promised potpourri. Busksha’s Churov and Churbanov.

Big Book Winners for 2017

The Big Book Award announced its winners on Tuesday. This year’s results were nearly identical for the jury and reader awards.

The jury’s choices: 

First prize went to Lev Danilkin’s Ленин. Пантократор солнечных пылинок (Lenin. Pantocrator of Dust Motes, I believe, since Lenin refers to dust motes in Aristotle’s De Anima). A biography of V.I. Lenin, né Ulyanov. A heavyweight checking in at 784 pages. This is an almost ludicrously lively biography; it was my top pick.

Sergei Shargunov won second prize for Катаев: «Погоня за вечной весной» (Kataev: “The Pursuit of Eternal Spring”) about author Valentin Kataev. This one’s 704 pages long; I have enjoyed reading Kataev so was disappointed that this biography just didn’t grab me.

Third prize was awarded to Shamil Idiatullin’s Город Брежнев (Brezhnev City, at least sort of: Naberezhnye Chelny was called “Brezhnev” during 1982-1988), which looks at adolescence in an automobile industry city during the late Soviet period… I read a very large chunk of this book (it’s also 700 or so pages) before reluctantly giving up. Though there’s lots of great material, it felt unsorted, like there was just too much book.

Readers chose the same three books but in a slightly different order: Shargunov, Danilkin, Idiatullin.

In other Big Book news, Viktoriia Tokareva, a novelist and screenwriter whose work I have barely read, won a special award for her contributions to literature. 

For a summary of the 2017 finalists, here is an article by Elena Makeenko, aptly titled “Брежнев против Ленин” (“Brezhnev Against Lenin”).

Up Next: 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. Yana Vagner’s Кто не спрятался (Accomplices), which I have barely started but which also seems pretty atmospheric and entertaining...

Disclaimers: The usual. I’m a member of the Big Book’s jury, the Literary Academy.