Contemporary writers – Page 2 – Contemporary Russian Literature

Dmitrii Bykov

Dmitrii Bykov

Dmitrii Bykov is maybe one of the most popular and prolific writers in Russia today but is not known to the broad public in the West as much as Pelevin, Ulitskaia or Sorokin. It is not surprising: his works are not translated into English. The epoch of his discovery in the West is coming after the appearance of the first translations of his works: the novel Living Souls was translated in 2011 by Cathy Porter for publishing by Alma Books.

But in Russia Bykov’s status is unique. Nick Harkaway after the conversation with him noted: Bykov is elemental; a huge man with a huge voice and huge passion. In Russia he’s basically a rockstar – radio host, biographer of Pasternak, novelist, poet, TV personality… he’s a kind of cross between Melvyn Bragg and Bob Geldoff; a cultural force who takes delight in causing outrage to enlighten“.

Indeed, the writings and the personal qualities of Bykov put him in the center of public attention in Russia. This is due not only to his unquestionably huge literary talent, but also to the magnetism of his personal appeal which has made him “a cultural force”, or as Rachel Polonsky noted in recent article for “The New York Review of Books ” the citizen poet”.

Dmitrii Lvovich Zilbeltrud (Bykov is his alias) was born in 1967 in Moscow. It was the year of the 50th anniversary of the Communist revolution in the Soviet Union celebrated with a big pomp. Paraphrase his words, it could be considered as the sign of his future fate: it influenced his formation as a person and his interest in the history of Russia in some “mystic ways”.

After school Bykov spent two years in military service. Bykov remembered it with his usual irony: “Well, speaking frankly – my most honorable honorarium was a regular double portion of food in the Soviet Army, where I served for two years like most Soviet students. That was my pay for the rhymed letters which I had been writing for our regiment’s cook who was in love with a romantic schoolgirl. . [ http://www.almabooks.com/page.html?id=26]

He graduated from Moscow University in 1991 with the degree in journalism, and started to work in Sobesednik and Vremechkoand also to cooperate with Ogonyok – famous pro-democratic media outlet in Russia at that time.

The Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991. However, Bykov’s fascination with the processes of the formation of the Soviet state emerged in almost all his novels. Even more, the global changes in Russian culture and the fates of many remarkable people who happened to live during these unfortunate times in Russia became the major focus of his literary works. Bykov started to write prose in the early 90s. On the question what led him into writing, he answered:

“I really don’t know. I understand only that the reasons for this strange choice are mysterious and dramatic. Balanced and self-satisfied people tend to do something else. Maybe I clearly realized from early childhood that I wouldn’t do well in any other sphere of activity. Maybe the only reason for writing is a fear of death. Maybe – and this version sounds preferable – I was too fond of reading and understood even before school that writing was the only serious and powerful way to influence things: all other methods are expensive, traumatic and temporary.[ http://www.almabooks.com/page.html?id=26}

One of the most famous representatives of the so called modern Russian “Magical Historism”, Bykov produced bestsellers with frequency. Among them: Justification («Оправдание», 2001), Orthography ( “Орфография”, 2003), Removal Service («Эвакуатор», 2005) ZhD («ЖД», 2006) Ostromov,(2011) Boris Pasternak («Борис Пастернак», 2005) were all acclaimed by the critics and received broad recognition among the public in Russia. Bykov also published six books of poetry.

Probably one of the major characteristics of some of his novels could be described as the attempt to create the whole new reality in his books, and recreate the history of the Soviet Union through the “magical” (metaphysical) point of view. Modern Russian critics often consider this kind of literature as the departure from the traditional spheres of the literary interest such as “psychology or the social analysis of everyday (meaning contemporary) life” (Mark Lipovetsky and Alexander Etkind. “The Salamander’s Return” in Russian Studies in Literature, vol. 46, no. 4, fall 2010, p.7.) Association with the “Magical Historism” in their eyes is clear departure from the traditional literature: “ Such post-Soviet authors as Pelevin, Sharov, Sorokin, and Dmitrii Bykov are indeed heirs to the “junior branch” of late Soviet and anti-Soviet literature (the Andrei Siniavsky branch). Those authors’ greatest vested interest lies in two spheres of human experience, which they combine in strange and shocking permutations. The spheres are history and religion.”

However the influx of the religious ideas into the writing and the historical approach to the literary work is continuation of the traditions of the great Russian classic writers and as such could be only welcomed. It answered to the demand of Russian society in clear understanding of the processes that led to the disaster of the Soviet period in the history of Russia. Bykov offers his version. Together with his bright literary talent, scholar’s knowledge of Soviet history, it creates the phenomenon of Bykov’s popularity in Russia and makes his novels bestsellers.

Especially it appeared in his recent work Ostromov whichwon the National Bestseller prize in 2011. In his own words “It’s a novel about the 1920s, about the so-called “Case of the Leningrad Freemasons” – their trial, banishment and further adventures. Some more words in addition: being based on real facts, this novel – called The Pupil of the Magician (– is a strange mixture of mystic, picaresque and satiric prose, something between The Master and Margarita and the Twelve Chairs, but more sentimental and surely much worse.”

The opening lines of Ostromov are striking and one immediately becomes enveloped in the narrator’s story:

Part One. Spring:

“There exist houses where nobody has been happy.

Such house is not glad to itself. It stays at the town’s outskirts, at the end of a crooked street, blocking it and by itself meaning a dead end. Behind it is the ravine, burdock, the umbrellas of angelica, goutweed, the rusty carcasses of the beds, overgrown lilac, where sometimes you find something that after you can not even remember the idea of the lilac without a chill. There is the end of the city, the beginning of the chaos. Everyone who walks in there wants to leave.

Such a house stays aside from life, in a wrinkle of time, built by gloom, a grim man, who made the shameful mistake at the moment of his birth and realized that it was not possible to correct it. He builds it for his family to torment his wife and to tyrannize his kids. Or for the office where he intends to do bitter and meaningless business; or it could happen that the priest who doesn’t believe in God moves in…”

[Translated by Oleg Dimov]

This genre is not unusual in Russian literature; Bykov remembered Bulgakov as one of his predecessors and indeed his writing continues the traditions of beloved by Russians Master and Margarita. There are also other writers working in this genre: such as Sorokin.

Not only in the fiction, but also in his biographical works, Bykov understands Russian history as the scene of the powerful and incomprehensible interactions. His books are intriguing and make you to re-think old clichés, as it happens with his acclaimed biography of Boris Pasternak which was published in 2005 in the series Zhizn’ Zamechatel’nikh liudei and became a bestseller. It was the first time that a biography of a writer became a bestseller in Russia. It was written in a wonderful language, and not only his literary skill or the knowledge of the details of Pasternak’s life made the biography a bestseller. The biography was written through the prism of joy of the literary genius of Pasternak: maybe for the first time in history Pasternak’s life was portrayed as the joyful life even in the terrible circumstances of his fate and the fate of his country. As if the gift of Pasternak’s poetry went into the written words of Bykov. His analysis of Doctor Zhivago was outstanding but was not accepted by all critics:

“Doctor Zhivago is a symbolist novel written after symbolism. Pasternak himself called it a tale. The book undoubtedly ‘went through Pasternak ’because he was one of few survivors. It had to appear – because somebody needed to rethink the history of the last fifty years of Russian history from the position of symbolic prose which is paying attention not to the events but to their origins. But this kind of interpretation could be possible only in the second half of the century, with the account of everything that these events brought. The failure of the Hozhdenie po mukam was an indication of it. We have to admit that only one full novel about the Russian revolution exists- written by Pasternak, because his book was written not about people and events, but about the powers which preside over the people, and the events, and the author himself.

Only from this point of view should we look at this book. The novel of Pasternak is a parable full of metaphors and exaggerations. It is unreliable, as life is unreliable at the mystic historic turning point.

The novel’s plot is simple and its symbolic plan is obvious. Laura – Russia – combines unpreparedness to life with the amazing domestic alertness, there are the fatal women and the fatal country attracting the dreamers, adventurers, and poets…

Yuri Zhivago in the impersonation of Russian Christianity of which the main characteristics according to Pasternak were sacrifice and generosity, (Bykov. Pasternak, p.721-723.)

Public activity

Some words should be said about Bykov’s public activities. His many appearances in the media and his public activity create the image of a powerful writer involved in the life of his country and willing to influence the social and political processes in Russia. Bykov has periodically hosted a show on the radio station Echo of Moscow, and he was one of the hosts of an influential TV show Vremechkotill 2008.

In 2005 he published the New Russian Tales’ How Putin became the president of the United States’ – his attempt to renew the genre of satiric prose, invented by Saltykov-Shchedrin: “in 1999 I began without any hope for the fast publication to write the New Russian tales… In Russia this genre was invented by Shchedrin, reinvented by Gorky, and renewed by your servant’.

His personal appeal to mass media could be seen as evidence of Bykov’s motivation to make a statement about the current state of affairs in Russia, and it was accepted by the public. Especially important was his appearance at many public events in the context of the recent mass manifestations in Russia at the end 2011 and – beginning of 2012.

It appears that nowadays you can see Bykov anywhere: at the manifestations waving the flags, in social media where his page is extremely popular with the readers, in video-clips etc. It manifests his credo: writing as a way of influencing modernity and challenging the traditional views of history and the role of the person in history.

By Elena Dimov. Edited by Bud Woodward.

On youtube.com

Bykov is reading his poem “I was not happy in my life for one minute.”..

Scenes from Russia

Excerpt from “Balustrade in Bykovo” by Maria Stepanova

“Russian Gothic,
Domes-lamps.
Girls-sweethearts.
Church and mallows…”

“Русская готика
Купола-лампочки.
Девочки-лапочки.
Церква и мальвы….”

[Maria Stepanova. Stikhi i proza v odnom tome. Moscow: NLO, 2010.p.94]

About the author: born in Moscow in 1972, Maria Stepanova is one of Russia’s leading contemporary poets and the chief editor of the online cultural portal openspace.ru. Among her many awards are the Andrei Bely Prize (2005), the Hubert Burda prize (Germany, 2006), and the Lerici-Mosca Prize (Italy,2011).

Excerpts from works of contemporary writers are used for educational purposes only.

The Early Poetry of Vladimir Nabokov Remembered Today

Gleb Struve, a renowned twentieth-century critic, called Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov “émigre Russia’s greatest gift to Russian literature”. Born in 1899 to a family of aristocrats in St. Petersburg, Nabokov received an excellent education, attaining fluency in English, French, and Russian before the age of five. Fleeing the turmoil of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Nabokov traveled first to the Crimea, then to England in 1918, where he enrolled in Trinity College at Cambridge, then to Berlin in 1922, where he first took up his professional career of letters, then briefly to France before the onslaught of World War II, and then to America, where he continued his literary pursuits while teaching at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell.

Despite the controversial nature of his novels, Nabokov’s works have received international acclaim and scholarly recognition. His most famous texts include The Defense (1930), The Gift (1938), The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941), Lolita (1950), Speak Memory (1951), Pale Fire (1962). It’s been a privilege this semester to be enrolled in Professor Julian Connolly’s seminar here at the University of Virginia on writings by Nabokov and other émigre authors. See Professor Connolly’s most recent work A Reader’s Guide to Nabokov’s “Lolita.”

Before finding his artistic strengths in the realm of prose, Nabokov tried his hand at poetry. The following two short works represent foundational expressions of Nabokov’s creative consciousness and provide a glimpse into the early outlooks a great artist whose works seem ready to span generations and cultural contexts.

—————————-

Live. Do not complain, and

Do not count past years or planets,
And well-composed thoughts will merge
Into a single answer: there is no death.
Be merciful. Do not summon kingdoms.
Gratefully value all.
Pray– for a cloudless sky,
And cornflowers in wavy rye.
While not despising the dreams of the worldly-wise,
Persevere to create the best.
Among birds, the trembling, and the scant,
Learn to bless, learn to bless!

–February 14, 1919

Translated by Michael Marsh-Soloway

Original Russian

Живи. Не жалуйся, не числи

ни лет минувших, ни планет,
и стройные сольются мысли
в ответ единый: смерти нет.

Будь милосерден. Царств не требуй.
Всем благодарно дорожи.
Молись — безоблачному небу
и василькам в волнистой ржи.

Не презирая грез бывалых,
старайся лучшие создать.
У птиц, у трепетных и малых,
учись, учись благословлять!

—————————-

The almond tree blossoms at the crossroads,

The almond tree blossoms at the crossroads,
Mist flickers over the mountain,
Silver speckles hurry
Along the azure surface of the sea.
The chatter of birds, inspired
The evergreen leaf more brightly.
Blessed is he who on this spring day
Exclaims earnestly: “I am pure!”

– March 24, 1918

Translated by Michael Marsh-Soloway

Original Russian
Цветет миндаль на перекрестке,
Мерцает дымка над горой,
Бегут серебряные блестки
По глади моря голубой.

Щебечут птицы вдохновенней,
Вечнозеленый ярче лист.
Блажен, кто в этот день весенний
Воскликнет искренно: “Я чист!”

– By Michael Marsh-Soloway

The Librarian by Mikhail Elizarov

Born in 1973 in Ivano-Frankovsk, Ukraine, Mikhail Elizarov could barely remember the Soviet era of his parents’ and grandparents’ generation. In 2007, however, the young writer wrote a book that would come to be associated with the lost generation of Soviet people and won the 2008 Russian Booker Prize. It was the fourth and biggest book of the bright debutant of the 90s and, in essence, the first major post-Soviet novel showing the reaction of the generation of the 30s to the world in which they lived.

The title of the book, Библиотекарь (The Librarian ), deceptively conjures up the expectation of perhaps a quiet evening’s reading. Indeed, The Librarian is a novel about books, about the mystical powers of the written word. At the beginning, one hardly expects the strange upheavals that such books can cause, including the violent refusal of the books’ readers to acknowledge the end of the era by the obscure writer Gromov, and an almost Kafkaesque ending to the book. Gromov’s books had deceptive titles like Fly Happiness or Silver-Flat Waters, but in fact they had the magical power to change the person who read them, and readers began to organize “libraries” or armies to fight for these books. Alexei inherits a The Book of Memory and becomes a “Librarian” without knowing it. Gromov’s books gave different powers to readers; Narva, known as the Book of Joy, has a euphoric effect, and Книга Ярости (The Book of Rage) stimulates anger. But the most important prize in the battle between the libraries is the lost Book of the Meaning. We understand that it is Gromov’s eulogy to Stalin.

The Librarian starts with a quotation from The Foundation Pit by Andrei Platonov. And in a way, Elizarov’s book is a continuation of the ideas of Platonov’s great and tragic book about wasted lives:

“The worker must fully understand that baskets and engines can be made as necessary, but it’s not possible to simply make a song or a sense of excitement. The song is more valuable than mere things…”

Andrei Platonov

Gromov

“The writer Dmitry Alexandrovich Gromov (1910-1981) lived his final days in complete obscurity. His books completely disappeared in the debris of Lethe, and when political disasters destroyed the Soviet motherland, it appeared as though there was nobody left to remember Gromov.

Hardly anyone read Gromov. Of course, the editors who determined the political loyalty of the texts and the critics read it. But it was unlikely for somebody to be worried about and interested in titles like “Proletarian” (1951), “Fly, Happiness!” (1954), “Narva” (1965), “On the Roads of Labor” (1968), “The Silver Flat-Water” (1972), or “The Calm Grass” (197).7).

The biography of Gromov went side by side with the development of the socialist fatherland. He finished middle school and pedagogical college and worked as executive secretary in the factory newspaper’s editorial board. The purges and the repression did not touch Gromov; he quietly endured until June of ‘41 before he was mobilized. He came as a military journalist to the front. In the winter of 1943 Gromov ‘s hands were frostbitten; the left wrist was saved but the right was amputated.

Thus, all of Gromov’s books were created by a forced left-handed man. After the victory, Gromov moved his family from the Tashkent evacuation to Donbass and worked in the editorial office of the city newspaper until his retirement.

Gromov started to write late, as a mature forty-year-old man. He often addressed the theme of the formation of the country, glorified the cotton being of the provincial cities, towns and villages, wrote about mines, factories, the boundless Virgin Soil and harvest battles. The heroes of his books were usually the Chairmen of the Kolkhozes, red directors, soldiers returning from the front, the widows keeping their love and civil courage, the pioneers and Komsomol members – strong, cheerful, and ready for heroic labor. Good triumphed with painful regularity: the metallurgic factories were built in record time, the recent student during his sixth month internship at the factory became a skilled specialist, the plant exceeded the plan and accepted the new one, and the grain in the fall flowed by the golden mountains to the Kolkhoz’s granaries. Evil was rehabilitated or went to prison.”

* * * *

“Although Gromov published more than half a million copies of his books, only a few copies survived in club libraries in distant villages, hospitals, ITKs, orphanages, or otherwise rotting in basements among party congress materials and serials of Lenin’s collected works.

And yet Gromov had devoted fans. They scoured the country for surviving books and would do anything for them. In normal life, Gromov’s books had titles about some shallow waters and grasses. However, Gromov’s collectors used significantly different titles – “The Book of Power”, “The Book of Strength”, “The Book of Rage”, “The Book of Patience”, “The Book of Joy”, “The Book of Memory”, “The Book of Meaning”…

By Mikhail Elizarov

Moscow: Ad Marginem, 2010.

Translated by Elena Dimov, edited by Margarita Dimova

Disclaimer

Translations of the excerpts from the works by the contemporary writers are used in educational purposes for students of modern Russian literature or for literary criticism only.

Provincial Russia by Maria Stepanova

Among many voices of young contemporary Russian poets, the poetry of Maria Stepanova is one of the most intriguing. Her first major collection Songs of Northern Southerners (2001) was so unusual, that the critics immediately called her poetic style a “new epic” and announced it as a new direction in the development of modern poetry in Russia. It was defined by the absence of the author’s presence or any kind of emotional interpretation of the developing story in the verses. Her poetic language is deceptively simple; the story in the verses develops without the emotional intervention of the author. But her ability of creating the dramatic undertones in the poetic story is outstanding.

The story usually starts as a non-emotional narrative staged in several small cities in a Russian province, but then the attention shifts to powers beyond the comprehension of the author, or the readers. Similar to Airman, or in The Prose of Ivan Sidorov the story develops into a metaphysical saga where ordinary Russian people or personages have certain places in the process. Among the main characters of The Prose are the drunken man, the chicken and the sleeping girl – an incredible combination of the personages…However, their place was only one part of the general movements of space and time which constructed the contemporary epic in the poetry of Stepanova.

The story in The Prose of Ivan Sidorov starts with the appearance of the main hero in the small provincial town somewhere in Russia:

In the provincial town, so to speak,
but in a low-minded way
with white steep cliffs,
with on-shore over the giant strides,
with the tubes of heavy industry,
with women, similar to the touch
like bottles with tight tops, arrives a drunken man.

The background around him is that of the peaceful Russian provincial city:

“The city, say, under the Snowy Shroud. The lights are off.
Carefully-painted, fences are dark, and even in the square there are no cops.
The new emptiness breathes a quilt,
the Moscow bullet train
that night, is about to depart.”

But this tranquility concealed the phantasmagoria of the incredible events starting with the meeting of the drunken man with the chicken and a sleeping girl and ending with the skirmish and the reunion of the heroes in the different reality:

In a waiting room a screaming hen runs across.
In the glass doors emerges a night patrol.
A sleeping girl – below the steering medium-sized adult bike –
and where is her mother? and who is she, trash?
Her eyes open, with nodes stands up –
and accounting, as if in water, into the arms of a neighbor
and “grandfather” murmurs with her lips, all uselessness,
but to sleep for some reason does not cease”….
…“A bullet train stretches along the platform,
long and silky, like a stocking.
The author draws on the memory
and stops the narrative,
leaving the hero to show us yet unknown talent.

The inner consonance with the historic development of Russian folklore and ballad poetry makes the poetry of Stepanova remarkable example of modern epic folklore. The Prose of Ivan Sidorov was first published on-line in 2006 at Vavilon.

Since 2007 Maria Stepanova has been the chief-editor of the Russian literary web portal OpenSpace.ru and the participant in the project Vavilon – publication of contemporary Russian literature on-line, started by Dmitry Kuzmin. Maria Stepanova is the recipient of several major international prizes for her poetry, among them the Joseph Brodsky Foundation memorial fellowship (2010).

Russian texts on-line in Zhurnalniy Zal.

[slideshare id=12185075&doc=rossia-120327215919-phpapp01]

From Airman by Maria Stepanova

Maria Stepanova at Dacha on Pokrovka. From: http://gallery.vavilon.ru

“When he returned from there,
he screamed in his sleep and bombed towns,
and spirits appeared to him.
He used to get up to smoke and open the window,
our ragged clothes lay together in a heap
and I gathered up a bag for them in the darkness.
But that is nothing yet”.

Translated by Richard McKane

Excerpt from Russian text:

“Когда он вернулся оттуда, куда,
Во сне он кричал и бомбил города,
И духи казались ему,
Курить он вставал, и окно открывал,
Совместные тряпки лежали внавал,
И я в темноте собирала суму,

Но это еще ничего.

Копать приусадебный наш огород,
Семейного рода прикорм и доход,
Не стал он и мне запретил.
Не дал и притрагиваться к овощам.
Отъелся, озлел, озверел, отощал
И сам самокрутки крутил.

Но жизнь продолжала себя…”

Translations of the excerpts from the works of modern writers are made under Fair Use.

Post-Soviet Émigré Literature

Contemporary Russian émigré literature has long been overlooked by Russian critics and the Russian public, as if this niche of Russian literature had not been of interest since the days of the charismatic Sergei Dovlatov or the famous Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

When discussing contemporary Russian émigré literature in the United States, it is important to emphasize that the recent wave of Russian émigré writers in the United States is a diverse entity that includes both Russian- and English-language writers. Two distinct trends can be observed, one of which could be defined as part of what is known as Russophone literature-that is, post-Soviet literature written by immigrants to the United States who continue to create literary works in Russian and in the Russian literary pattern. Others, especially those who came to the United States as adolescents, have switched to English, which has become their first language. Have their works become part of the broader American literature? In a sense, they get some recognition. For many young and talented creative writers who found themselves in the United States during the last wave of post-Soviet immigration in the 1990s and early 21st century, the dilemma has been whether to continue writing in Russian and face limited recognition among the Russian-speaking diaspora and a subdued reception in literary circles in the Russian metropolis, or to switch to an adopted language and try to succeed in the new country. The choice has often been English.

For the purpose of literary criticism, both trends can be seen as a continuation of the Russian literary tradition in the West. At the same time, it is obvious that the English-language works of Russian-origin émigré writers are moving further away from mainstream Russian literature in terms of themes and style and are being influenced by modern Western literature. On the other hand, the literary output of post-Soviet Russian émigrés over the past twenty-five years seems to show signs of the disappearance of a distinctive Russian literary identity. If the “first wave” of Russian émigré writers sought to preserve and develop the traditions of original Russian literature based on intense self-consciousness and preoccupation with philosophical issues, the new generation of émigré writers seems to lack the artistic merit of the great novelists and poets who preceded them.

In the midst of absolute freedom of thought and expression in the West, contemporary Russian émigré literature seems to be losing its unique appeal. According to Margarita Meklina, a bilingual Russian-American writer living in California, unlike the prolific, “albeit frightening, ‘white emigration era,’ recent Russophone literature in the West is not flourishing” (Meklina, Margarita. “Letter from Russia.” Context, N.16). Indeed, it is rare to see the works of recent emigrant writers on a par with the great works of earlier generations of Russian literary emigration, such as Nabokov, Bunin, or Gazdanov.

This is not the case with authors who have switched to English in their works. The credit for this goes to one of the most successful Russian-American novelists, NYT bestselling author Gary Shteingart, and perhaps to Olga Grushin, author of the highly praised novel The Dream Life of Sukhanov (2005). Speaking of contemporary Russian-American writers, Columbia University professor and journalist Keith Gessen emphasized that they all “emerged from the mantle of Shteyngart,” who in fact began the “odyssey” of the post-Soviet Russian immigrant’s wandering and survival in modern America. And indeed, the theme of “Russians in America” was brilliantly introduced by Gary Shteyngart. His literary triumph began with The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2002), which “The Guardian” called one of the best debuts of the year. Its main hero, Vladimir Girshkin, became the prototype for a whole series of characters written in the genre of “black comedy” based on the immigrant experience. Shteyngart’s Absurdistan (2006) continued the theme and was named one of the ten best books of the year. More recently, after exploring the Russian Jewish immigrant experience in America in Lake Success (2018), Shteyngart turned to the theme of American multiculturalism in his award-winning novel Our Country Friends (2021). There, eight friends of different national origins find themselves in the home of a Russian-American writer during the pandemic quarantine.

The aura of the “American immigrant novel” genre is well accepted in the United States, and many emigre writers writing in English have explored this theme. This genre is particularly popular among recent Jewish immigrant women writers. Anya Ulinich and Lara Vapnyar, Sana Krasikov and Ellen Littman, Yelena Akhtiorskaya and Maria Kuznetsova have written excellent books about the lives of Jewish, Ukrainian, Russian and Georgian immigrants in America, based on their own based on their own experiences.

What are the main factors influencing the literary work by Russian-language authors in the U.S.?

Cultural shock, displacement and nostalgia, as well as a new linguistic environment, are factors that many writers say influenced their work at the beginning of their literary careers in the United States. Ellen Litman, who immigrated to the U.S. with her parents while she was in college, says that the presence of her past life had a lasting effect: “So I was always interested in the question: How would my life have turned out if I had stayed? And that parallel, imagined life exists somewhere” (Satchkova, Svetlana. “The immigrant era Seven Soviet-born writers who made it big in the U.S. reflect on their lives,” Meduza, April 24, 202o). In her recent interview to “Long River Review”, Litman reflects: “Everything my life was built on was disappearing. It felt unimaginable to leave. Immigration is really hard on your ego…Your whole sense of self and identity changes. It was incredibly hard on my parents. It felt like everything was breaking apart in various ways. Nothing felt normal.” (An interview with Prof. Ellen Littman, “Long River Review,” May 8, 2021).

There are many factors that influence Russian émigré literature in the U.S. Perhaps one of the most important is the difficulty of reaching a broad Russian audience by writing in Russian in America. Margarita Meklina argues that “there is almost no Russian literary criticism abroad; writers outside of Russia feel that their literature has no meaning and write without hope of seeing their work published” (Meklina, ibid.). Literary success in the Russian metropolis often depends on recognition by literary critics and participation in prestigious literary competitions such as the NOS, Andrey Bely, or the Russian Prize.

It is sometimes difficult for young writers to find a publisher. Local publishers often reject their work on the pretext of lack of commercial interest. For talented but unknown Russian-speaking writers living in the United States, breaking through this “containment wall” is sometimes almost impossible. Often arriving as teenagers with their parents, they struggle to find their identity in a new land. The lack of opportunities and decent jobs for educated Russian immigrants, who have to start from the bottom in order to succeed, is mentioned in almost every “immigrant novel”. In fact, many successful immigrant writers in the United States have told similar stories in their books. Anya Ulinich, in her book Petropolis, wrote a wonderful, funny, and sad story about the adventures of the “Russian bride” Sasha in America, who could be a prototype for many other characters. Vasily Aksyonov, who walked the path of being an émigré writer in the US after being a successful author in Europe, articulated this in a 1992 interview with the LAT: “Whether it is easier to be a writer here (in America) is another question. Again, it’s easier to be a writer if you have a professorship.” Aksyonov lived for twenty years in Washington, D.C., and Virginia, where he taught Russian literature at George Mason University and other colleges, and worked as a journalist for Radio Liberty in Europe. And indeed, a university professorship often paves the way to a literary career very quickly.

However, it would be a mistake to assume that being “uprooted” from one’s homeland results in a loss of creative potential or the ability to write outstanding works in one’s native language. Yuz Aleshkovsky (1929-2022), one of the best contemporary Russian émigré writers, emphasized in his interview with the BBC that Russian literature in America still depends on the mother tongue: “It has become even more treasured because it was with me in my exile, although the linguistic space, the main one, all its music and sound remained there. So, there was a sense of deep kinship mixed with the sense of language. What was obvious to me there (in Russia) was perceived by me here (in the USA)” (BBC, March 22, 2022).

Some Russophone novelists and poets, living in the United States have become popular names in the thriving literary market in Russia today. Among them are the wonderful poets Polina Barskova and Bakhyt Kenzheyev, Anna Glazova, Andrei Ivanov, and the New York-based Russian writer and doctor Alexander Stressin, whose book New York Rounds won the 2019 NOS Prize; as well as Vadim Mesyats with his interesting publishing project “New Gulliver,” and others. Speaking about poetry, Alla Gorbunova, a prominent Russian poet, writer, and critic, emphasized the duality of contemporary Russophone poetry, which can be deeply rooted in the Russian poetic tradition and at the same time completely open to the experience of other cultures and languages (An Interview with Alla Gorbunova, by Alexandra Tkacheva. Punctured Lines, 02/09/2022).

What’s next for Russian émigré authors?

The emergence of several writers of Soviet origin who have achieved both literary and commercial success in the United States confirms that at least some Russian writers living in the United States feel drawn to Anglophone literature. Having successfully mastered the “American immigrant” theme and achieved a certain literary recognition in the United States, they turn to the realities of the new country. Their names are probably little known to readers in Russia, but many of them have achieved a special status as Russian-American writers who have successfully explored the themes of immigration, identity, the previous life, and adventures in the new country. They have very different literary styles, but they are distinctive authors who have already taken their place in American literature and can still be considered part of the Russian cultural tradition. Olga Grushin, in an interview with Alden Mudge, emphasizes the unique situation of Russian-American writers: “I strive for a kind of fusion of Russian and English in my use of language… I think it’s important for me to preserve the Russian cadences and feel in my work. On the other hand, I live here and I’ve been writing in English for 20 years, which has obviously changed me.” And perhaps this is the best answer to the question of the future development of Russian-American literature as a unique part of the great world literature.

06/29/2022

POLINA BARSKOVA

Bio: Polina Barskova was born in Leningrad in 1976, began writing poetry at age eight and published her first book of poetry in 1991. Her poetry has won her recognition as one of the best Russian poets of her generation. Barskova immigrated to the United States at age 20 to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, having already earned a degree in classical literature from St. Petersburg State University. She received her doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2006. She is currently an assistant professor of Russian literature at Hampshire College. Three books of her poetry have appeared in English translation: This Lamentable City, The Zoo in Winter, and Relocations. Her poignant masterpiece, Living Pictures, about the siege of Leningrad during World War II, was published in Russia in 2019; an English translation was published in 2022.

OLGA GRUSHIN

Bio: Born in Moscow, Olga Grushin spent her early childhood in Prague. After returning to Moscow, she was educated at Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and Moscow State University before receiving a scholarship to Emory University in 1989. She graduated from Emory in 1993. She became a naturalized US citizen in 2002, but retains Russian citizenship. Since coming to the United States, she has been an interpreter for President Jimmy Carter, a cocktail waitress in a jazz bar, a translator at the World Bank, a research analyst at a Washington law firm, an editor at Harvard University’s Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. She is the author of three previous novels, Forty Rooms, The Line and The Dream Life of Sukhanov. Her debut novel, The Dream Life of Sukhanov, won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, earned her a place on Granta’s once-a-decade Best Young American Novelists list, and was one of The New York Times’ Notable Books of the Year. Both it and The Line were among The Washington Post’s Ten Best Books of the Year. Grushin writes in English, and her work has been translated into sixteen languages. Her latest novel The Charmed Wife was published in 2021. A citizen of Russia and the United States, Grushin lives outside Washington, D.C.

OLGA ISAEVA

Bio: Olga Isaeva is a writer, journalist, laureate of the Russian America contest, and participant of the Moscow Poetry Biennale 2007. She was born in Kazakhstan in 1958 and graduated from the Krupskaya Moscow Pedagogical Institute. Before immigrating to the USA, Isaeva worked as a high school teacher. Since 1988, she has lived in New York. She has published her work in the Russian and émigré magazines Novy Zhurnal, Time and Us, Word, Interpoeziya, New Youth.

SANA KRASIKOV

Bio: Sana Krasikov is a Russian-American writer. She was born in Ukraine and grew up in the Republic of Georgia as well as in the United States. She graduated from Cornell University in 2001. Krasikov’s debut short story collection, Another Year, published in 2008, gained critical acclaim for its exploration of the lives of Russian and Georgian immigrants in the United States. In 2017, Krasikov published The Patriots, a novel that explores the complicated relationship between Russia and America through the life story of three generations of American family moving back and forth between America and Russia. The novel’s protagonist, Florence Fine, returned from Brooklyn to Moscow during the Great Depression. In 2017, Krasikov was named one of the best young American writers by Granta magazine.

IRINA MURAVYOVA

Bio: Irina Muravyova was born in 1952 in Moscow. She immigrated to the United States in 1985 and currently lives in Boston. Muravyova has several books of prose to her credit. Her novel The Angel’s Day covers history of three generations of Russian émigrés, her Young Lady is a finalist for the Bunin Prize. Muravyova’s novel, Beatrice’s Reflection (2012) examines Dante’s life through his love at first sight for Beatrice.

Helga Landauer (Helga Olshvang)

Bio: Helga Landauer (Olshvang) was born in Moscow, Russia, where she graduated from Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), received her Bachelor’s and Master of Fine Arts degree and worked on Russian National Television, writing and directing programs for broadcast. Her poems have been published in major Russian magazines and anthologies. Since 1996, she lives in the United States. Helga works as a writer and filmmaker. Her documentaries Being Far from Venice (1998), Objects in Mirror are Closer than They Appear (2002), A Journey of Dmitry Shostakovich (2006, co-directed with Oksana Dvornichenko), A Film About Anna Akhmatova (2008), and Diversions (2009) have been screened at many international film festivals and significant American and European venues such as Carnegie Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Louvre Auditorium.

Kseniya Melnik

Bio: Kseniya Melnik was born in Magadan in the northeast of Russia and immigrated to Alaska in 1998, at the age of fifteen. Melnik’s birthplace in one of the harshest and most exotic places in the Russian Far East, Magadan, as well as her immigration to Alaska, set her apart from other former Soviet immigrants who mostly settled in New York or California. She received her Master of Fine Arts from New York University, her work has been published in Brooklyn Rail, Epoch, Prospect, Virginia Quarterly Review, and was selected for Granta’s New Voices series. Her wonderful debut book of short stories Snow in May (2016) tells about ordinary Russian people from Kolyma and Magadan.

Gary Shteyngart

Bio: Gary Shteyngart is the New York Times bestselling author of the memoir Little Failure and the novels Super Sad True Love Story, Absurdistan, Lake Success. He was born in 1972 in Leningrad. He was only seven years old when his family immigrated to America from the Soviet Union. His debut novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2002), written in the genre of black comedy, had a great success with readers. His new novel, Our Country Friends, was published in 2021. Steingart is one of the few contemporary writers of Russian descent to gain fame in the West. He writes in English.

Maxim Shrayer

Bio: Maxim Shrayer, an author, scholar and translator, is a professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College. Born in 1967 to a writer’s family, Shrayer grew up in Moscow and immigrated to the United States in 1987. Shrayer attended Moscow University, Brown University, Rutgers University and Yale. Since 1996, he has been teaching at Boston College. Among his books is autobiographic Waiting for America (2007).

Lara Vapnyar

Bio: Lara Vapnyar is a Russian-American author currently living in the United States. She was born in Moscow in 1975 and earned a degree in Russian Language and Literature from Moscow University. In 1998 she immigrated to the United States. Vapnyar recalled that her first experience in the new country was “a feeling of loneliness and alienation”. Vapnyar began to write stories in English and her first work was published in 2002. In 2011, Vapnyar received a Guggenheim Fellowship and is currently working as a professor of creative writing at Columbia University. Vapnyar has published several novels and two collections of short stories. Similar to other relatively young Russian-American authors, who immigrated to the United States in 90s, Vapnyar is writing exclusively in English but considers herself a “transcultural writer”. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and others.

Selected Bibliography Compiled by Bud Woodward

Bezmozgis, David. The Free World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.

Bezmozgis, David. Natasha and Other Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.

Budman, Mark. My Life at First Try: A Novel. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2008

Gorokhova, Elena. A Mountain of Crumbs: A Memoir. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2010.

Grushin, Olga. The Dream Life of Sukhanov. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2005.

Grushin, Olga. The Line. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2010.

Grushin, Olga. Forty Rooms, New York: Marian Wood Books/Putnam’s

Kaminer, Wladimir. Russian Disco: Tales of Everyday Lunacy on the Streets of Berlin. London: Ebury, 2002.

Kaminsky, Ilya. Dancing in Odessa. Dorset, Vt: Tupelo Press, 2004. Print.

Krasikov, Sana. One More Year: Stories. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2008.

Litman, Ellen. The Last Chicken in America: A Novel in Stories. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.

Makine, Andreï, and Geoffrey Strachan. Music of a Life: A Novel. New York: Arcade Pub, 2002.

Makine, Andreï, and Geoffrey Strachan. Confessions of a Fallen Standard-Bearer. New York: Arcade Pub, 2000.

Makine, Andreï, and Geoffrey Strachan. Human Love: A Novel. New York: Arcade Pub, 2008.

Makine, Andreï. Le Testament Français: Roman. Paris: Mercure de France, 1995.

Makine, Andreï, and Geoffrey Strachan. Once Upon the River Love. New York: Arcade Pub, 1998.

Makine, Andrei. Requiem for the East. London: Sceptre, 2001.

Makine, Andreï, and Geoffrey Strachan. The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme: A Novel. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2005.

Makine, Andreï, and Geoffrey Strachan. Requiem for a Lost Empire. New York: Arcade Pub, 2001.

Makine, Andreï, and Geoffrey Strachan. Dreams of My Russian Summers. New York: Arcade Pub, 1997.

Makine, Andreï. The Life of an Unknown Man. London: Sceptre, 2010.

Makine, Andreï, and Geoffrey Strachan. The Crime of Olga Arbyelina. New York: Arcade Pub, 1999.

Makine, Andreï, and Geoffrey Strachan. The Woman Who Waited: A Novel. New York: Arcade Pub, 2006.

Reyn, Irina. What Happened to Anna K: A Novel. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.

Shrayer, Maxim. With or Without You: The Prospect for Jews in Today’s Russia. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2017.

Shrayer, Maxim. Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2013.

Shrayer, Maxim. Yom Kippur in Amsterdam: Stories. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009.

Shteyngart, Gary. Absurdistan. New York: Random House, 2006.

Shteyngart, Gary. The Russian Debutante’s Handbook. New York: Riverhead Books, 2002.

Shteyngart, Gary. Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel. New York: Random House, 2010.

Shteyngart, Gary. Lake Success. New York: Random House, 2018.

Vapnyar, Lara. Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love. New York: Pantheon Books, 2008.

Vapnyar, Lara. Memoirs of a Muse. New York: Pantheon Books, 2006.

Vapnyar, Lara. There Are Jews in My House. New York: Pantheon Books, 2003.

Vapnyar, Lara. Divide Me By Zero: A Novel. New York: Tin House Books, 2019

Vapnyar, Lara. Still Here: A Novel. Hogarth, 2016.

Book summaries in WorldCat

9/9/11

National Bestseller Literary Prize

The Russian National Bestseller Prize is an annual literary prize awarded in St. Petersburg in June for the best novel written during a calendar year. It was established in 2001 by Konstantin Tublin, publisher, writer and founder of Limbus Press, and Viktor Toporov (1946-2013), Russian writer, translator and literary critic. The prize’s motto is “Wake Up Famous!” Проснуться знаменитым!

2022

In 2022, for the first time in 20 years, the National Bestseller Prize was not held in Russia. The Organizing Committee decided not to award the prize in 2022 and to cancel the award ceremony.

The shortlist includes 6 books:

Sergei Avilov. Kapibaru liubiat vse. M.: Gorodez, 2021.

Pavel Basinskii. Podlinnaia istoriia Anny Kareninoi. M.: AST, 2022.

Islam Khanipaev. Tipa ya. Dnevnik superkrutogo voina. M: Alpina – non fikshn, 2021.

Iuliia Kisina. Bubush. M.: AST, 2021.

Kirill Riabov. Fashisty. M.: Gorodez, 2022.

Sofiia Sinitskaia. Khronika Gorbatogo. M.: Limbus-press, 2022.

2021

Alexander Pelevin. Pokrov-17.

The winner of the prestigious National Bestseller Award was announced in St. Petersburg on May 29th. The prize was awarded to the writer and journalist Alexander Pelevin for his novel “Pokrov-17”. Pelevin’s novel won the National Bestseller Award, but it also caused a controversy among critics. All in all, it is an entertaining story that combines Russian reality with mysticism, and the author manages to keep the reader’s attention until the very last page. It is October 1993 in Moscow. There is a standoff between the parliament and the new president, and the streets of Moscow are drenched in blood. Moscow journalist Andrei Tikhonov is sent to the city of Pokrov-17, a secret military zone, a place of intense fighting during the Second World War. From the first minutes, he encounters extraordinary events that take him out of ordinary life and into a kind of nightmarish war zone. The journalist desperately tries to understand what is happening in this closed zone and what are the monsters he meets on the streets around him. The novel is a story in which the main hero is scattered in time, drawn to the time of the great war. It ends unexpectedly… but we understand that it was destined to happen.

2020

Mikhail Elizarov. Земля. (Zemlia) M.: Redakzia Eleny Shubinoi, 2019, 746 p.

After years of silence, Mikhail Elizarov has published Earth, a novel of extraordinary scope and scale. In the 746-page book, Elizarov continues his depiction of late Soviet and post-Soviet society, begun by his ferocious Librarian. The novel is about Volodya Krotyshev, known as “Krot”, a young man who has just finished his military service and lives and works in a cemetery. The plot is seemingly simple: this is the story of the life of the main character, Volodya. After completing his service in an army construction battalion, Volodya returns to his hometown of Rybninsk, where he hopes to get into university on his second try. However, the hero’s plans are interrupted by his half-brother Nikita, who invites Volodya to the city of Zagorsk to work in his funeral business. Since childhood Volodya has felt a mystical attraction to “graves”, even in kindergarten he dug “graves” for insects, so he accepted the offer. What makes this novel unusual, and what has aroused great interest among readers and made it a national bestseller, is that in addition to the events of everyday life and work at the cemetery, there are long philosophical conversations, reflections on life and death, time on earth and the hereafter, and destiny. Critics consider the novel “the first large-scale understanding of the Russian Thanatos,” but, as Elizarov notes, “the Earth is a very transcendent concept… My gut feeling is that this is what the Germans called ‘der Boden’.” In short, readers get a picture of coming of age in post-Soviet Russia, but in a Shakespearean sense: “And this, our life, freed from public haunting, finds tongues in trees, books in running streams, sermons in stones, and good in everything.”

2019

Andrei Rubanov. Финист – ясный сокол. (Finist -Yasnyi Sokol) M.: Redaktsiia Eleny Shubinoĭ, 2019, 576 p.

“Finist, the Bright Falcon” is a Russian fantasy novel. This novel about a female warrior is actually a Russian folk tale retold by Andrei Rybanov. The young girl Marya, in search of her true love Finist the Falcon traveled around the earth and reached the sky. Casual acquaintances did not believe that Marya would find her Finist, but they helped her on her way. A whole group of strange characters from Russian fairy tales appeared: kikimory, serpents, shishigi, mavki, leshaki, anchutki and werewolves. Three men along the way fell in love with Marya and helped her. The first is the skomoroch Ivan Koren’, who witnessed the very first meeting between the maiden Marya and Finist. The second is the warrior Ivan Remen’, a warlord who led the army to kill the ancient serpent and met Marya in worn iron boots at her grandmother Yaga’s hut. The third is Nightingale, who was banished from the heavenly city of Vertograd and longed for his homeland. It was he who was destined to deliver Marya to her lover, and it was he who would tell the tale of the blacksmith’s daughter.

2018

Aleksei Salnikov. Петровы в гриппе и вокруг него. (Petrovy v grippe i vokrug nego) M.: Redaktsiia Eleny Shubinoĭ; Izdatelʹstvo AST, 2018, 411 p.

Aleksei Salnikov may not be well known to the general public, but he has written an outstanding book, Petrovy v grippe i vokrug nego. The hero of the novel, the recently divorced car mechanic Petrov, goes home by bus and feels that he is getting a flu, so the whole novel is overshadowed by it. All of his subsequent adventures begin with this bus ride and his meeting with Igor, a random acquaintance who lures him into a drinking trip in a catafalque to another strange character – the philosophy teacher. The novel begins slowly, with a lot of subplots, a lot of descriptions of people and places in Petrov’s environment, which at first seem unnecessary. Suddenly everything changes, and the reader is drawn into a hellish madness, writes critic Galina Yuzefovich: “A striking, unique language, a grounded and tangible material world that surprisingly does not exclude fleeting fantasy, and a truly magical ambiguity (whether everything that happens in the novel is a flu hallucination of the three Petrovs, or whether the mystical underside of the world is really revealed for a moment).” In her opinion, it is “an excellent novel and a real pleasure to read,” but its background is the dark side of some main characters’ consciousness, which makes it questionable.

2017

Anna Kozlova. F20. (F20). M.: Ripol-Klassik, 2016, 240 p.

In Anna Kozlova’s novel F20, the heroine lives with the terrible diagnosis of schizophrenia or “F20.” The publisher writes: “Reading this ruthless, funny and deeply dramatic text, one cannot help but ask the question: who should really be considered normal? This novel is not about schizophrenia, but about all the others who live alongside the “normal” majority and pretend they do not exist. Kozlova’s F20 can be read as a case history, but as usual in works with a mad protagonist, the disease is not an individual, but a society. “

2016

Leonid Yuzefovich. Зимняя дорога. (The Winter Road). M.: ACT, 2015, 432 p.

Yuzefovich’s Winter Road, published in 2015, won both the National Bestseller Prize and the Big Book Award. Yuzefovich wrote a fascinating documentary novel about the events of the Russian Civil War and the confrontation between two individuals, using archival materials and documents from the Russian Civil War in Siberia. The book describes the confrontation between two extraordinary historical figures during the Russian civil war in the Far East in 1922-23: the white general and poet Anatoly Pepelyaev, who was in charge of the Siberian corps of the White Army, and the Red Army commander, anarchist and future writer Ivan Strod. Strod was responsible for defeating a white general, Anatoly Pepelyaev, during the Yakut Uprising, for which he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. His fate was not good either, as he became the victim of the Great Purge.

2015

Sergei Nosov. Фигурные скобки. (Figurnye skobki) M.: Limbus Press, 2015.

2014

Ksenia Buksha. Завод “Свобода.” (The Freedom Factory) M.: OGI, 2014, 238 p.

An economist by training, Ksenia Buksha has worked in finance, marketing, and advertising in her native St. Petersburg, so it’s not surprising that she would write a book about something she understands well – the history of a real military defense factory. Sarah Kapp reviews the novel as an interesting experiment in retelling the Soviet idea through the story of a factory: “While a factory story may not sound particularly exciting, it’s not for nothing that the book won Russia’s National Bestseller Award in 2014. Reading The Freedom Factory is like looking into a kaleidoscope, turning to see what the next prisms will reveal. Forty short chapters – each with its own language and life – bring together excerpts from interviews, monologues, film reels, snapshots and memories of former and current factory workers.”

2013

Figgle-Miggle (Ekaterina Chebotareva). Волки и медведи. (Wolves and Bears ) St.Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo K. Tublina, 2013, 496 p.

The book was shortlisted for the National Bestseller Award while still in manuscript, but it used the unoriginal cliché that was a hit in Russia in the first decade of the 21st century. The publisher describes the novel as the story of St. Petersburg in the distant future, which is no safer than a medieval city: police gangs are in competition with drug cartels, armed smugglers and special services, etc. “The Chancellor of Okhta” is obsessed with the idea of building an empire on the ruins of civilization. The protagonist, a bearer of supernatural abilities, carries out a secret mission of the Chancellor, going to the most remote – and dangerous – areas of the city”.

2012

Alexander Terekhov. Немцы. (Germans). M.: ACT, 2012, 572 p.

2011

Dmitry Bykov. Остромов, или Ученик чародея. (Ostromov, or the Sorcerer’s Apprentice) M.:Prozaik, 2010, 750p.

SuperNatsBest

Zakhar Prilepin won the SuperNatsBest — a special version of the National Bestseller prize worth $100,000 — for his novel in short stories ” Sin”. The SuperNatsBest shortlist consisted of NatsBest winners from the past 10 years. Prilepin won that award in 2008.

2010

Eduard Kochergin. Christened with Crosses. (Kreshchennye krestami)

St Petersburg.: Vita Nova, 2009, 272 p.(Russian) Glagoslav Publications, 2012. (English)

This award-winning memoir is the gripping story of a young boy’s dangerous, adventurous journey from Siberia to Leningrad along the railways of postwar Russia. After his parents are arrested as enemies of the people before World War II, young Stepanich is sent to the Siberian children’s institution. The boy escapes from the orphanage after the end of the WWII in search of his mother. Along the way, he encounters many characters, including a gang of train robbers, stops in a northern Russian village, and displays an inner strength that allows him to triumph over danger and hardship and miraculously find his mother in Leningrad. The publisher says: “Based on a true story of Kochergin’s amazing life, this book depicts the awakening of artistic talent under highly unusual Russian circumstances. It is the memoir of an old man who, as a boy, learnt to find his way between extortionate state control and marauding banditry, the two poles that characterize Russia to this day”.

2009

Andrey Gelasimov. Степные боги. (Gods of the Steppe) M.: Eksmo, 2008.