NatsBest’s 2014 Longlist

The National Bestseller Award announced its longlist last week: 48 books were nominated by an assortment of publishers, literary agents, writers, editors, critics, and other assorted characters. NatsBest added a new category this year, too: Нацбест-начало (literally NatsBest Beginning), an award for writers under 35. The longlist for that award apparently includes 12 writers.

Here’s a summary of some of the nominees for the main award, including the names of the nominators…

Books nominated more than once:

• Vladimir Sorokin’s Теллурия (Tellurium), nominated by writers Ksenia Buksha and Igor Sakhnovsky: A polyphonic novel in 50 highly varying chapters. I read about 150 pages before setting Tellurium aside: Sorokin’s use of a futuristic medieval setting, tiny and huge people, kinky stuff, sociopolitical observations, and a novel (ha!) psychotropic agent all felt way too familiar after Day of the Oprichnik, The Blizzard, and The Sugar Kremlin. I’ll be the first to admit that Tellurium is clever, funny, and insightful at times but, to paraphrase that bass player I once knew, I just didn’t feel like I was getting any new information.
• Nadezhda Belenkaya’s Рыбы молчат по-испански (Fish Keep Quiet in Spanish ), nominated by writers Maria Arbatova and Anna Matveeva: A novel about international adoptions of Russian children. (For more on this title, which is known as Children of Rogozhin in English: Elkost literary agency)
• Evgenii Chizhov’s Перевод с подстрочника (excerpt) (literally Translation from a Literal Translation) nominated by critic Lev Danilkin and writer Leonid Yuzefovich: A novel about a translator who goes to an invented country with a name ending in –stan to get some literal translations of poetry that need to be translated into real Russian. This one sounds busy but interesting.

Books by writers who’ve already been translated (book-length) into English:

• Sergei Shargunov’s 1993, nominated by writer Vasilii Avchenko.
• Gleb Shulpiakov’s Музей имени Данте (chapters) (Museum Named for Dante), nominated by poet Maxim Amelin.
• Roman Senchin’s Чего вы хотите? (What Do You Want?, albeit in a slangier version, like “Whataya Want”), nominated by critic Natalya Babintseva.
• Eduard Limonov’s Апология Чукчей (Chukchi Apologia? The Chukchis’ Apologia?), nominated by critic Vladimir Bondarenko.
• Vladimir Sharov’s Возвращение в Египет (excerpts 1 & 2) (Return to Egypt), nominated by writer Evgeny Vodolazkin.
• Valery Paniushkin’s Отцы (Fathers), nominated by publisher Iulia Kachalkina.
• Elizaveta Aleksandrova-Zorina’s Маленький человек (The Little Man), nominated by writer Igor Savelyev. The Little Man will be out in Melanie Moore’s English-language translation this spring, from Glas; the author’s name on the cover is Liza Alexandrova-Zorina.
• Svetlana Aleksievich’s Время секонд-хэнд (Second-Hand Time?), nominated by critic Vladislav Tolstov.
• Ilya Boyashov’s Кокон (The Cocoon), nominated by Konstantin Tublin.
• Anna Starobinets’s Икарова железа (The Icarus Gland), nominated by Artyom Faustov of “Vse svobodny”. This book, “a collection of speculative stories,” will be coming out in English translation in 2014, from a new publisher, Skyhook Press.
• Elena Kostiukovich’s Цвингер (Zwinger), nominated by publisher Elena Shubina.

I have to admit I didn’t think that particular part of the list would be so long: I think the relatively large number of translated authors speaks to what I (and some other translators I know) see as an uptick in Russian-English translation activity.

A few others: one recommended, one written by a writer I’ve already read, the third randomly chosen by my mouse:

• Miroslav Nemirov’s Большая Тюменская энциклопедия (The Big Tiumen Encyclopedia?!), nominated by Maxim Semelyak: Writer Dmitry Danilov, whose recommendations usually work well for me, mentioned on Facebook that he liked this book, which isn’t, alas, yet out in book form.
• Yana Vagner’s Живые люди (Truly Human), nominated by literary agent Natasha Banke: This is a sequel to Vagner’s Vongozero, which I enjoyed very much.
• Vsevolod Nepogodin’s Французский бульвар (French Boulevard, a real place in Odessa. Ukraine.), nominated by writer Anna Kozlova.

I could go on and on but won’t… it’s snowing yet again (with, good golly, more snow allegedly on the way early next week), which is as good a reason as any to finish up, have some dinner, and read by the fire. Besides, the NatsBest shortlist will be announced in two months, on April 17!

Up Next: Yuri Buida’s Poison and Honey, a finalist for the Belkin Prize, which I’ll be writing about when the winner is announced later this month. I’m also planning to start a new and semi-regular series of posts about some of the many, many translations I receive. A reminder: I’m compiling a list of translations coming out in 2014 so be sure to send me titles you’d like listed.

Disclaimers: The usual; I’ve translated, collaborated with, and/or met a number of the people mentioned in this post.

Reading and Sochi: May the Games Begin!

A reader sent me a note last week asking for book recommendations to complement the Olympics: he specifically asked for thoughts on books translated into English, preferably about the Caucasus. Here are some thoughts, most of which are fiction… with a few other items thrown in for fun. I’m sure I’ve missed plenty so will look forward to comments with other ideas. Alas, the closest I’ve ever been to Sochi is Krasnodar, where I spent a couple days in the nineties. When my co-worker and I left the Krasnodar airport we were accosted by taxi drivers wanting to take us to Sochi. Very tempting, since we were going to a seminar on agriculture.

Classics in the Caucasus: My first thought for the list was Mikhail Lermontov’s Hero of Our Time, which I’ve loved each time I’ve read it (previous post) over the past 25 years or so. It’s wonderfully old but modern, plus the title is much played-upon in contemporary Russian fiction. Then there’s Lev Tolstoy, who wrote lots of fiction involving the Caucasus. One of the three books Andrew D. Kaufman mentions in an Olympics-related piece for NPR is Tolstoy’s short novel Hadji Murat, a good choice with a setting in Chechnya, though it’s never been a favorite of mine. For a Caucasian theme, I’m more partial to The Cossacks, though admit I’ve only read it once or twice, in translation, many years ago. For something shorter, there’s “Prisoner of the Caucasus,” which was adapted into a film in the 1990s, Sergei Bodrov’s Prisoner of the Mountains, with a change in temporal setting. I’ve enjoyed the story and the movie several times. Other classics include Alexander Pushkin’s poem “Prisoner of the Caucasus.” If prose is more your thing, there’s A Journey to Arzrum, which is often described as a “travel narrative.” If neither of those appeals, the stories in The Belkin Tales are all-time favorites (previous post). Everybody should read Pushkin!

Contemporary Fiction: My first thought among contemporary writers was Alisa Ganieva, who’s from Dagestan: her Salam, Dalgat! is a thoroughly enjoyable novella that won the Debut Prize for long prose (previous post). Salam, Dalgat! (translated by Nicholas Allen) appears in the Squaring the Circle anthology, which also includes two stories by Arslan Khasanov (tr. by Ben Hooson), a writer from Chechnya. Ganieva’s short story “Shaitans” is in the Read Russia! anthology (tr. Marian Schwartz), which also includes “Chechnya, to Chechnya,” a chapter from Sergei Shargunov’s A Book Without Photographs (previous post) (tr. John Narins) and “The Day When You Phone the Dead,” by German Sadulaev, (tr. Anna Gunin). Shargunov’s book is now available in English translation from Glagoslav (tr. Simon Patterson), though most of the book focuses on Moscow. Two books by Sadulaev are also available in translation: I Am a Chechen! (tr. Anna Gunin) and The Maya Pill (tr. Carol Apollonio), though the latter doesn’t sound like it’s about the Caucasus, at least not any real place. Last but not least: I’ve only read assorted stories by Fazil Iskander—most about a boy known as Chik—but I recommend him very highly (previous post). Lots of readers have recommended Iskander’s Sandro of Chegem stories; I have a big, thick fat book of them on the shelf, just waiting for a dreary day when nothing else feels right.

And then…: I can’t resist adding Valentin Kataev’s Time, Forward!, a socialist realist novel I read and enjoyed before I started the blog: even if the record to be broken is for concrete production rather than, say, skiing, this is, as the title indicates, a decent novel about speed. I read Time, Forward! in preparation for leading a workshop on Soviet-era fiction and wrote this in my notes: Most interesting here is the way that characters talk about concrete production like some people today talk about Johnny Depp: constantly and passionately. I didn’t love this book but I did find it oddly compelling. Recommended but not at high cost… Finally, this list wouldn’t be complete without a cookbook or two: Darra Goldstein’s The Georgian Feast has lots of good recipes, including chakhokhbili (chicken with herbs) and basturma (marinated grilled meats). If you want to cheat, I’ve found that adding a little khmeli suneli herb and spice mix will make just about any meat, even a hamburger, taste almost Georgian. (I buy it prepackaged from a local Russian store but there’s a recipe on Wikipedia, here.) And then there’s Please to the Table, by Anya von Bremzen and John Welchman: I’ve used so many recipes from this book that I couldn’t possibly list them all. Big favorites, though, include the Georgian pkhali sauce (served over fried eggplant), green beans with ground lamb, plov (albeit with adaptations), and croquettes Pozharsky.

Disclaimers: The usual.

Avoiding Existential Dread: Masha Regina

I’ve been dreading writing about Vadim Levental’s Маша Регина (Masha Regina) for months now, even using a whole arsenal of procrastination techniques (from focusing on award news to telling myself I’m just too darn tired to blog) to avoid this post, all because some books are scary as hell to write about. Particularly books I enjoy and respect as much as Masha Regina, which is, by way of brief summary, a beautiful, tightly structured character sketch of a novel—in my experience, it’s rare to find “character sketch” and “novel” combine so well—about a young woman who comes to Leningrad from a small city and becomes a film director.

There are lots of themes, threads, and subplots I could describe and analyze for pages and pages—Masha’s love interests, studies, use of her life and family as cinematic material, outsiderness, ambitions, temperament, wishes for immortality, and so on and so forth—but it’s the immortality I’ve seemed to fixate on, first as I read, later as I translated excerpts, and now, too, months after finishing the book. One of my favorite phrases in the book refers to work (труд, often translated as labor) as “единственная возможность сбежать от экзистенциального ужаса,” or “the only option for escaping existential horror/dread.” Masha’s immortality may be anchored in celluloid (and/or digital zeroes and ones, hmm, I don’t remember) but Masha Regina begins, appropriately enough, with Easter, the ultimate celebration of immortality, and a subsequent “Christ is risen from the dead,” and then, shortly thereafter, a brief description of teenage Masha’s desire for immortality.

Underlying Masha’s quest for immortality are all sorts of other circumstances that produce everyday dreadfulness worthy of escape: a father who drinks, a dull and empty city, and a fear of getting stuck in a life she doesn’t want. It’s no wonder Masha draws things as she sees them, even as a little girl, whether it’s a cross-section of a river or a bird with four wings. Of course Masha is stuck in her old life despite leaving it—I suppose we all are, in some way—because she keeps coming back cinematically, which raises lots of questions about ethics and representation. Masha truly is a queen, and she’s also that rare literary character who’s simultaneously sympathetic and unsympathetic: ambitious, ruthless, damaged, regal, and also, in many ways, untouchable. Her life looks more painful than glamorous despite all her success and awards.

I think my dread of writing about Masha Regina came about largely because I found the book so inexplicably satisfying and indescribable. I mentioned months ago that when a friend and I met for coffee we realized we were both reading Masha Regina… and agreed the book would read along very nicely for a chapter or so, feel for a while like it might get dull, but then become thoroughly engrossing again. A little like life, I suppose, which may explain why I enjoyed the book so much: it’s a book about art, life, and existential dread (my favorite!) that actually feels like an inexplicably satisfying slice of art, life, and existential dread.

Disclosures: The usual. I read an electronic copy of Masha Regina that I requested from Levental’s literary agency after the book was shortlisted for the Big Book Award; I later translated excerpts of the novel.

Up Next: Marina Stepnova’s The Surgeon.

News Digest: NOS(E) Award, Lists, UK Events, a Finnish Book &tc.

So many bits of news have accumulated over the last couple weeks that I think a news digest post is in order…

This year’s NOS(E)award went to Andrei Ivanov for Харбинские мотыльки (The Moths of Harbin), a novel about Russians in Estonia during 1920-1940. The novel will be released in book form at the end of February from Elena Shubina Editorial, an imprint of AST. (Unfortunately, only the first half of the book, published by the journal Znamia, seems to be available,officially, online.) Readers voting online opted for Mikhail Elizarov’s Мы вышли покурить на 17 лет (something like We Went Out for a Seventeen-Year Smoke). The short list for this past NOS(E) season is here.

There are (occasionally) times when I wish I lived in New York so I could attend certain readings and literary events and there are (occasionally) times when I wish I lived in London so I could attend certain readings and literary events. Right now I’m wishing for London, where Pushkin House will host two events with translator Oliver Ready. The subject on February 5 will be Vladimir Sharov’s Before and During, published by Dedalus; Sharov will participate, as will Philip Ross Bullock. On February 19, the topic is Crime and Punishment, published by Penguin Classics. Russian Dinosaur has already written a wonderful “Digested Dostoevsky” post about Oliver’s introduction to Crime and Punishment. I haven’t read Crime and Punishment since high school so all this makes me wonder about a reread, something I half-heartedly attempted years ago, before I started the blog… and before Oliver’s essay.

Speaking of new translations, it’s list time! I’m already working on the 2014 list of new translations, so I’d love to hear from translators and publishers with Russian-to-English translations coming out in 2014. For some instant list-induced gratification, here’s a link to a link where you can download the 2013 translation database, courtesy of Chad Post/Three Percent/Open Letter Books. As Chad notes, this is the first year the database, which covers all-languages-into-English, has listed more than 500 books.

I won’t write a full post about Daniel Katz’s novelish book Kun isoisä Suomeen hiihti, which I read in Vladimir Smirnov’s Russian translation, Как мой прадедушка на лыжах прибежал в Финляндию--the book is known as When Grandfather Skied to Finland in English--but I do want to mention it. Alas, the book doesn’t seem to exist in English translation, which is too bad because it’s a beautifully concise family saga of sorts telling the story of a Jewish family in Finland. Katz focuses largely on Benya, who’s originally from Polotsk, Belarus, and serves in the imperial Russian Army. Katz works a lot into this small book, covering Benya’s military school experiences and trumpeting mess-ups, World War 2 in Finland, and Jewish life in Finland. Though the book leans a bit more toward novel-written-in-stories than I generally prefer, I thoroughly enjoyed it thanks to Katz’s blend of dark humor (nicely rendered by Smirnov), Jewish storytelling, and aspects of Russian and Soviet life overlaid on a Finnish setting. The book has been translated into a bunch of languages (apparently nine?), including Polish, German, and Spanish.

A few other random items… I always enjoy the XIX век blog (which is, BTW, written in English) but especially lapped up two posts about the recent AATSEEL conference: one’s about Gothic novels, the other is about Russian biographies… I was pleasantly surprised a couple weeks ago to find not one but two pieces about Russian literature in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal: first there was Sam Sacks’s lengthy review of Andrew Bromfield’s translation of Mikhail Shishkin’s Письмовник, known in English as The Light and the Dark; Sacks also mentions Shishkin’s Maidenhair (Венерин волос), which Marian Schwartz translated into English. After reading Sacks on Shishkin, I found Leon Aron’s “Learning to Love Life on the Downslope,” about Pushkin’s “Elegy”. Weeks like that make me sorry my free six-month subscription to the WSJ will soon end… Finally, if you’ve always itched to read Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s Что делать? (What Is to Be Done?) but just never seem to get around to it, well, you have no more excuses. Just drop by Wuthering Expectations and tell Amateur Reader (Tom) you’d like to join in his readalong, which looks set to begin in late April. I read an abridged translation of What Is to Be Done? back in grad school because the book was on my reading list. I remember rather enjoying it (despite numerous warnings) during a heat wave but have to admit I’m not sure if I’m ready to commit to reading the whole thing this spring. We’ll see!

Up Next: Vadim Levental’s Masha Regina. Marina Stepnova’s The Surgeon. Denis Gutsko’s Beta Male, though I may set this one aside until I can get a paper version of the book: not all books lend themselves to electronic reading.

Disclaimers: The usual.

The Road to Somewhere: Vagner’s Vongozero

I’ve always loved genre-bending fiction so it was no surprise to thoroughly enjoy Yana Vagner’s Вонгозеро (Vongozero), a novel about a road trip in a time of virus-based havoc. The combination of road story, psychological thriller, race for survival, horror story, and, yes, winter snow was a perfect antidote to holiday madness for someone (that would be me) who doesn’t much like shopping or Christmas carols.

Vagner’s narrator is Anya, a thirty-something woman who lives in a beautiful-sounding house outside Moscow with her husband, Sergei, and son, Misha. When a virus starts killing so many people—including Anya’s mother—that Moscow is quarantined, they decide to head for an isolated and very small house near the Russian-Finnish border. That decision is largely forced by Anya’s father-in-law, a domineering but inventive type, the sort of guy you want to tell you to get out of town and then want to have along for the journey, too. Over time and miles, their group grows to include Sergei’s ex-wife and their son, two rather annoying neighbors and their daughter, two rather annoying friends, a dog, and a doctor. They make for quite a caravan, particularly with all their supplies. (Of course I wondered from the start when the cigarettes would run out…)

It’s Anya’s narrative voice that made the story work for me: her honest (but not quite whiny) admissions about wanting to ride with her husband, disliking the neighbors, and just wanting to be alone (or not) thoroughly endeared her to me. Even better, Vagner’s writing is nice and plain, the sort of writing that looks easy to craft but just isn’t. Even better again, it’s the sort of writing that lets Vagner and Anya reveal characters’ motivations and tell stories rather than focusing on linguistic pyrotechnics that wouldn’t have fit the cold, snowy environment or the cold paradoxes of survival.

The miles roll out slowly in Vongozero, balancing bursts of excitement and quiet introspection. Some of the obstacles and difficulties are fairly standard—a serious injury that requires amateur medical assistance, some lone helpers who turn up at random, deserted cities, government malfeasance, a glimpse of certain death—but I think part of the fun of genre norms is observing individual writers’ variations on plot twists we’ve all seen many times before. Vagner also makes sure her characters have plenty of firearms from the start, so Chekhov’s gun is along for the ride, too, and Misha, a teenager, seems to become a man almost overnight. And did I mention snow? Winter fits perfectly in Vongozero, both as the season that always seems to symbolize the difficulties of survival (at least in northern climes) and harsh, cold realities, and as a beautiful blank white slate of a setting perfect for people setting off for what they hope will be a new life.

Disclaimers: After liking a Facebook post from Vagner’s literary agency, Banke, Goumen & Smirnova, mentioning that the Slovak translation of Vongozero had hit the e-book bestseller list in Slovakia, I received an electronic copy (Russian, not Slovak!) of Vongozero from BGS. I’d been meaning to ask for the book for several months just because it sounded like my kind of fun reading. One other thing: I didn’t know until I read Vongozero that it started off as an online book that Vagner posted to her Live Journal… it was eventually published by Eksmo, one of Russia’s largest publishing houses, after what BGS’s catalogue (PDF) calls “a heated auction among major Russian publishers.” The real disclaimer: I’ve translated excerpts for BGS and am working on a book by another of their authors.

Up Next: Vadim Levental’s Masha Regina and Denis Gutskov’s Beta Male.