The 2022 Big Book Longlist

The Big Book Award’s 2022 longlist was released about two weeks ago but I’m still sluggish so here we (finally) are! This year’s list truly is long: 48 books. I’ve read three in full, have one in the cart, and am very interested in a bunch more. Only four authors are totally unknown to me, which is a bit of a disappointment since I’m always looking for new authors to read. Even more of a disappointment is that not even quite a third of the longlisted titles are written by women.

The shortlist should be announced by mid-June. For now, here’s a sliver of the longlist.

I’ll start with three books I read and enjoyed very much:

• Vera Bogdanova’s Сезон отравленных плодов (The Season of Poisoned Fruits) explores the lives of three characters – three cousins whose parents hover in the background – as well as societal norms and events (notably terrorism) that formed their (millennial) generation. I particularly liked Bogdanova’s use of a dacha setting. I’ll be posting about this book soon.
• A dacha settlement also figures prominently in Natalia Repina’s Жизнеописание Льва (Lev: A Life) (previous post), which was shortlisted for the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Award.
• Dmitry Danilov is a friend and a perennial favorite author. His Саша, привет! (I still hear this title more as Hey, Sasha! than Hi, Sasha!) concerns a man who’s committed a moral crime and is being punished in an odd way. Everything about Hey, Sasha! hit me just right: form, content, and absurdity. And it just keeps feeling truer and truer…
• I’ll note that there’s one book on the list that I blogged about but didn’t finish: Timur Valitov’s Угловая комната (The Corner Room) (previous post). To keep the chain going: that post also describes a book by Sasha Filipenko who’s on the 2022 Big Book longlist for Кремулятор (The Cremulator), a novel that’s available online here and here.

What else? How about two slightly familiar titles that sound promising?

• I have Ivan Shipnigֶóv’s Стрим (Stream), a 2021 NatsBest finalist, in the book cart. It sounds like a promising polyphonic novel.
• Sofia Sinitskaya’s Хроника горбатого (The Hunchback’s Chronicle) combines history and fiction. Languagehat reported in a comment to my 2022 NatsBest shortlist post that “apparently the novel features the descendants of the crusader Thomas the Hunchback and the pagan weaver Ursula, for what that’s worth.”

Among the unknowns are:

• Sergei Dmitrenko’s Салтыков (Щедрин) (Saltykov (Shchedrin)), a biography of none other than Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, whose absolutely crushing The Golovlyov Family I’d recommend to just about anyone.
• All I need to know about Katerina Kozhevina’s Лучшие люди города (The City’s Best People, in the sense of “elite” though I’m not sure what would fit the novel’s tone) is that the geographical setting is Sakhalin Island, a favorite place, and the temporal setting is vague.

Finally, here’s something a bit unusual that I hope comes into being:

• The book listed as “Manuscript No. 296” is На небе никого (There’s Nobody in the Sky, I guess?), which you can read about on this crowdfunding page. It’s described as “a book about people at war” and it combines photographs from Artur Bondar’s collection with texts by Ksenia Buksha that are based on diaries and recollections. I hope it receives funding.

There are plenty of other books on the list that sound promising, including several that I’ve read in part (some await my return…) but I’ll leave further explorations to you!

Disclaimers and Disclosures: The usual. I served on the Big Book jury for seven seasons; I left the Literary Academy this year, though, something I’d been contemplating for a year or two. On another note, the Big Book longlist isn’t the award’s only news: Georgy Urushadze, who headed up the organization that ran the award and is also the person who invited me to join the jury, recently left his job. I’m very grateful to him for the opportunity to become part of Big Book.

Up Next: I truly do plan to write more about books I’ve read! I’ve promised posts about several, among them Danilov’s Sasha, Kirill Ryabov’s 777, and Bogdanova’s Season… and there are a few more. I swear I’ll get to them soon.

 

 

National Bestseller Award Ends 2022 Season With Sort of a Shortlist

In an unusual but – considering the times – unsurprising turn of events, the National Bestseller Award announced a six-book shortlist on April 11, adding that no prize will be awarded this year. Vladislav Tolstov’s commentary on the shortlist (which he says, in my paraphrase, is not so much a shortlist as final ratings of books that attracted jurors’ attention) ends with uncertainty about the future of NatsBest.

Have written (and attempted to digest) that, I think I’ll just stick to what we know, which is that the six books I’ll list below tallied the most points when NatsBest’s “big jury” voted. I’ll also remind readers that the NatsBest site archives jury members’ reviews.

Here’s the not-a-shortlist for 2022:

• Kirill Ryabov’s Фашисты (Fascists) is a collection of short stories. (7 points) 
• Sofia Sinitskaya’s Хроника Горбатого (The Hunchback’s Chronicle?) sounds like it combines history and fiction; it’s apparently set in Vyborg, a place I’ve ridden through on trains once or twice. (7 points)
• Islam Khanipaev’s Типа я (The first-person narrator constantly uses “типа,” which is like “like,” so maybe Like, Me or something similar, though this title makes my head ache!) is the diary of an eight-year-old boy trying to figure out the world. It was a NOS(E) Award shortlister last season. (7 points)
• Pavel Basinsky’s Подлинная история Анны Карениной (The Real Story of Anna Karenina) is apparently just what it purports to be. (6 points)
• Yulia Kisina’s Бубуш (Bubush) is an abstract, metaphysical sort of book… (6 points)
• Sergei Avilov’s Капибару любят все (Everybody Loves a/the Capybara, I guess?) involves a forty-year old man who goes to the Barents Sea with a woman. It sounds like there may not be any capybaras in the book. No wonder it totaled… (5 points) rather than 50!
  

 

Up Next: Well, yes, I think I’m back, at least sort of. I have been reading, albeit not at my usual pace and generally preferring novels that are heavy on plot since this year’s been a tough one from the very first week and never quite seems to get much easier. In any case, I do hope to at least write a roundup post soon! 

Disclosures and Disclaimers: The usual. And knowing a few people involved with some of these books.

The 2022 National Bestseller Award Nominees/Longlist

Every year I write about how much I enjoy sifting through the National Bestseller Award’s list of nominees (a.k.a. the longlist), which usually consists of several dozen books, most of which I’d never heard of. This year’s list, announced yesterday, fits the usual pattern, though I think I’ve read more of the nominees than usual. Two! My next post, in fact, will likely be about those books, which were two of my favorites from 2021. There are forty-seven NatsBest nominators this year and it appears there are forty-seven books nominated, about fifteen of them written by women.

I’ll start with the two books I’ve already read in full:

• Dmitry Danilov’s Саша, привет! (I hear this more as Hey, Sasha! than Hi, Sasha! for some reason) concerns a man who’s committed a moral crime and is being punished in an odd way. Danilov’s a favorite writer and the form, content, and absurdity of Hey, Sasha! hit me just right. 
• Kirill Ryabov’s 777, about a man who gets instantly rich when an ATM goes haywire, made me laugh out loud more than just about anything else (other than maybe Ulysses?) I’ve read in recent years. Absurdity wins the day again. (And I learned that “777” denotes more than just cheap wine. Having never been to Vegas, I had no idea.)

I’ve also read two nominees in part:

• Ksenia Burzhskaya’s Мой белый (My [Beloved Color] White, perhaps since white covers the whole spectrum?) is about a girl and her two mothers, who have broken up. I intend to finish reading.
• Timur Valitov’s debut novel, Угловая комната (The Corner Room), is about a young man who returns to his native city after his father dies (previous post).

And then there are forty-three more… There are so many – including so many by authors I know and/or have read – that I picked a few pretty randomly by scrolling up and down the page and pointing at the screen (while looking away!). It’s quite a variety:

• Having claimed randomness, I confess that I deviated on choosing this one: Sasha Filipenko’s Кремулятор (The Cremulator), which is in manuscript (and nominated by Vremya publisher Boris Pasternak), stood out because I had no idea what the title means, though the root is certainly a clue. Brrr!
• Vera Bogdanova’s Сезон отравленных плодов (literally something like The Season of Poisoned Fruits, I guess) isn’t quite out yet, though it’s on the way; I have no idea what it’s about but after reading Bogdanova’s Pavel Zhang and Other River Creatures and translating a sample (previous post), I’m looking forward to it.
• The description of Aleksandr Velin’s Сердце Демидина (The Heart of Demidin or Demidin’s Heart?) is a bit vague: it’s apparently about the late USSR with a heavy dose of (European) myth mixed in. The KGB is mentioned in early pages I looked at online. So: ?
• Pavel Basinsky’s Подлинная история Анны Карениной (The Real Story of Anna Karenina) is apparently just what it purports to be.
• Valery Pecheikin’s Стеклянный человек (literally The Glass Person) is described (in a Russian phrase that I’ve translated) as “splendid intellectual standup where the topic is life itself.” Apparently brief essays/vignettes (as in his previous book, which I have) with a play at the end.
• Dasha Blagova’s Южный ветер (A Southern Wind? The Southerly Wind? Lots of options here…) is utterly mysterious; it’s only available in manuscript but a print version (with “18+” on the cover) is apparently on the way from a small publisher.
• Finally, Tatyana Mlynchik’s Ловля молний на живца (hm, I think I’ll go for the easy way out, though it’s probably not very correct: The Human Lightning Rod) is about a schoolgirl with enough electricity in her body that she can charge phones and other devices.

Up Next: Danilov and Ryabov.

Disclaimers and Disclosures: The usual, including knowing some of the nominators and nominees and having received electronic versions of a few of these books from authors or agents.

2021-2022 NOS(E) Award Winners

The NOS(E) Award, run by the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation, announced 2021’s award winners yesterday, in live debates. Oksana Vasyakina won the jury prize and the critics’ prize for her Рана (The Wound), which I think is very, very good (previous post). Meanwhile, Evgenia Nekrasova won the regional “Wanderer” prize (which wanders off to a new city each year) for Кожа (Skin). Finally, Vladimir Shpakov’s Пленники амальгамы (Prisoners of Amalgam, I think?) won the readers’ choice prize.

I think that pretty much sums up this year’s NOS(E) Award. I’d expected Vasyakina to win at least one jury award and it came as no surprise that she won both the regular jury prize and the critics’ prize. The Wound has really stayed with me. The Wound, by the way, is on the way in English translation, from Catapult and MacLehose, though I’m not sure who’s translating.

Up Next: National Bestseller Award longlist, a.k.a. National Bestseller Award nominees. Coming right up…

Disclaimers and Disclosures: Nothing but the usual. I did receive a PDF of The Wound as a member of the Big Book’s Literary Academy.

An Inelegant Potpourri: Fun With Genres for the n+1th time

Nancy Drew mysteries – along with A Wrinkle in Time – were some of my favorite books as a kid and I suspect they’re at the root of my continuing love for books that are commonly considered genre fiction. I’ve written before about my enjoyment of detective novels, science fiction, eighteenth-century Russian sentimentalism, and, yes, even socialist realism and am likely to write more on those topics in the coming months. That’s partly because last winter I bought an assortment of Russian genre fiction that, for better or worse, I set aside because of work-related reading. I’m now slowly working my way through that bin of my book cart, where there are, of course, some new additions. Here are some brief notes on a retro detective novel and a work of Soviet science fiction, plus a bonus book that was written in English.

I don’t often use the word “preposterous” to describe anything at all but I’ve found myself saying and writing it recently because it fits Alexander Belyaev’s Продавец воздуха (The Seller/Vendor of Air or The Air Seller in a translation by a certain Maria K.) so perfectly. The brief plot summary: meteorologist Klimenko and a local guide named Nikola are investigating odd changes in the weather in Yakutia but (suddenly!) are held against their will in a strange underground compound where a megalomaniac and proud capitalist named Mr. Bailey is condensing air with the intent to sell. Klimenko is pressed into service in a lab, where he fancies a young Swedish woman whose scientist father is a key part of the operation. Two mild spoilers: Klimenko doesn’t like being held captive and tries to escape and, yes, the Red Army saves the day in this novel from 1929! And the ultracold temperatures needed for the condensed air are put to, hm, interesting use. I had a million questions about practical issues like how this compound could have even been engineered and built (permafrost is only one concern) not to mention the plausibility of this one facility, which doesn’t sound very large, having such an impact on the climate that it affects atmospheric pressure and causes deaths. Maybe all that preposterousness is why I kept reading? That and the fact that there’s an odd genre blend – science fiction with an environmental twist and, in a sense, socialist realism – aptly sums up The Air Seller’s odd effects, though it did require me to suspend a lot of disbelief. Wikipedia has a plot summary with more details, including a big old spoiler on the modes of death for two important characters. I’m sure there will be more Belyaev on the way: I was finally able to find a copy of Amphibian Man.

Anton Chizh’s Опасная фамилия (A Dangerous Family/Surname) is also a peculiar blend of genres: it’s contemporary fiction, a retro detective novel set in 1897, but it’s also an homage, even (almost?) an alternate literary history sequel to none other than Anna Karenina. I bought the book because it was the earliest of Chizh’s Rodion Vanzarov series that I could buy. I didn’t read the description so imagine my surprise when I saw the cover illustration with a locomotive, a woman, and a portrait of Tolstoy... And then opened the book and found Karenins and Stiva Obolonsky in the first pages. The fun here is that Chizh picks up with Tolstoy’s characters twenty years after Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and investigator Vanzarov meets Serge Karenin, a suspect in the murder of his own father. And then Vanzarov starts having doubts about certain aspects of Anna Karenina’s death. Maybe I’m a mean person but I took great glee in finding that Levin’s not very popular. (And oof, poor Dolly and Kitty!) Chizh tosses in many subplots and includes the ballet business, railroad matters (!), country houses, and loads of St. Petersburg sites and atmosphere, adding up to lots of fun.

Since we’re on the topic of Anna Karenina and since there seem to be enough derivatives of the original Anna Karenina to claim there’s a genre of sorts, I’ll also add a quick note on Irina Reyn’s What Happened to Anna K., which I read last year. Reyn transfers the basics of Tolstoy’s plot to modern-day New York City, where Anna K. is married to a Russian-Jewish businessman. An early chapter called “The Great Russian Soul” felt almost eerily familiar and the book feels very much of its time and places thanks to mentions of (random page here) things like Borodinsky bread, Boris Akunin’s mystery novels, and Okudzhava’s music. Somehow – perhaps (maybe even probably) because What Happened looks so much at identity and cross-cultural matters? – Reyn works all sorts of New York and Russian details into the novel without making them feel gratuitous. Even better, though I knew how the book would end, how it had to end, it still got me. Reyn combines comedy and tragedy to good effect throughout.

Disclaimers and Disclosures: The usual.

Up Next: Books by Dmitry Danilov and Kirill Ryabov, which both balance comic relief and serious incidents. And Leonid Yuzefovich’s The Philhellene. And, eventually, more genre fiction, with a historical novel about the Moscow plague riot in 1771.