Read Russia Journal

Announcing the 2014 Read Russia Prize

Book cover for Autobiography of a Corpse

New York, NY, May 30, 2014 – Read Russia today announced the winner of the 2014 READ RUSSIA PRIZE for the best translation of Russian literature in English published in 2013: Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s Autobiography of a Corpse, translated by Joanne Turnbull with Nikolai Formozov, published by New York Review Books.  The annual literary prize carries a cash award shared by translator and publisher.       

The READ RUSSIA PRIZE jury of scholars, translators, and authors praised the Turnbull translation of this “great” “powerful;” and “fantastic” writer as “imaginative, resourceful, and elegant”:         

Autobiography of a Corpse, the third volume from translator Joanna Turnbull and NYRB Classics of the works of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (1887-1950), collects eleven thoughtful and macabre tales.  A powerful and fantastic writer virtually unknown until he was discovered during the perestroika years, Krzhizhanovsky is now widely considered to be one of the great Russian writers of the twentieth century.  Krzhizhanovsky’s tales explore the associations, links and seams between the animate and the inanimate, the physical and the abstract, the real and the fantastic, thought and the physical realization of thought. The sudden materialization of an apartment out of a slip of paper during the 1920s housing crisis in Moscow (“Autobiography of a Corpse”) is no less fantastic than the corpse’s autobiography – or the fingers of a pianist running away (“The Runaway Fingers”). “Postmark: Moscow,” which is certain to join the ranks of the Moscow stories of Bulgakov and Platonov, presents a vivid picture of the great city told in Krzhizhanovsky’s characteristically masterful and stark prose.  Turnbull’s translation, with Nikolai Formozov, is imaginative, resourceful, and elegant. The English-language reader is in her debt.

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Read Russia events in London

Book cover of Living Souls by Dmitry Bykov

Read Russia comes to the United Kingdom with exhibitions and readings and events at the London Book Fair April 8-10 and with the Read Russia Literary Showcase, being held at bookstores, universities, and other cultural sites across the UK in April.   

Some of the most respected authors in contemporary Russian literature will be presenting their work - among them award-winning writers Zakhar Prilepin, Alexander Terekhov, and Pavel Basinsky, all of whom have highly-anticipated books planned for publication in English this year.

Both sets of events are designed to promote the UK-Russia Year of Culture 2014.  This year Read Russia also will be presenting Russia’s biggest literary award, the Big Book Prize, and the first-ever Read Russia English Translation Prize this May in New York.

Come and visit these Read Russia events, panels and presentations across the UK and at the London Book Fair involving many of the biggest names in Russian literature, translation and publishing!

Schedule of Events:


RUSSIA’S OPEN BOOK

WRITING IN THE AGE OF PUTIN

ON SELECT PBS STATIONS AND STREAMING ONLINE

Some of the greatest literary achievements of the 19th and 20th century are Russian: Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Gogol’s Dead Souls, Olzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. RUSSIA’S OPEN BOOK: WRITING IN THE AGE OF PUTIN, new on PBS, asks the question: Who is the new Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, or Gogol waiting to be discovered by the English-speaking world?

A co-production of Intelligent Television and Wilton Films, RUSSIA’S OPEN BOOK premiered nationally on PBS beginning in New York in December, and the film is now streaming online at:

Hosted by actor, author, and activist Stephen Fry, RUSSIA’S OPEN BOOK celebrates contemporary Russian authors carrying on one of the world’s greatest literary traditions. Contemporary authors are interviewed extensively in the film, with contributions from their literary critics, publishers, and peers. Excerpts from their recent works are brought to life by vivid animated sequences created exclusively for the film - with Fry providing dramatic readings in English.

The sheer size of Russia, its brutal climate, the violence of its history, and the heroism and genius of its people all have contributed to a world of literature like no other. “You may think Russian literature is no more than a catalog of suffering and misery and woe,” says Fry, “but actually it’s so much more than that. There’s so much joy, there’s so much hope, there’s so much about the human spirit in it.” says Fry in the film. These Russian writers “must grapple with the past, live in the present, and create fictional worlds that will continue to exist in the future.”

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Book Launch Party for Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

Tuesday, December 17 at 6:30 p.m.
2nd Floor on Clinton
67 Clinton Street*
Manhattan

Presented by
Read Russia and
New York Review Books

RSVP below

“Krzhizhanovsky is one of the greatest Russian writers of the last century.”
– Robert Chandler, The Financial Times

The holidays are a magical time when it feels like anything is possible... and these newly translated tales from a playful Soviet master are sure to transport you through the cracks of everyday reality and into the extraordinary.

Join Read Russia for an intimate gathering on December 17 as we sip on inventive cocktails and celebrate the launch of Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, the latest literary treat from New York Review Books. NYRB Classics editor Edwin Frank and book critic and translator Liesl Schillinger will be our guides through Krzhizhanovsky's fantastic and blackly comic philosophical fables, which have been compared to the works of Poe, Gogol and Beckett. Frozen under Soviet censorship for years, his work was published for the first time only in 1989.

Autobiography of a Corpse collects eleven mind-bending and spellbinding stories—the tale of a journalist who moves to Moscow to find himself engrossed in the identity of his room’s previous tenant; the fingers of a famous pianist depart the musician’s body and spend a night in the city alone; a man’s desire to bite his own elbow results in a circus act and some large philosophical ramifications—into a volume of Krzhizhanovsky’s most brilliant conceits. Translated by Joanne Turnbull, Autobiography of a Corpse joins The Letter Killers Club and Memories of the Future as the only works by Krzhizhanovsky translated into English, all published by NYRB Classics.

Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (1887-1950), the Ukrainian-born son of Polish emigrants, studied law and classical philology at Kiev University. After graduation and two summers spent exploring Europe, he was obliged to clerk for an attorney. A sinecure, the job allowed him to devote most of his time to literature and his own writing. In 1920, he began lecturing in Kiev on theater and music. The lectures continued in Moscow, where he moved in 1922, by then well known in literary circles. Lodged in a cell-like room on the Arbat, Krzhizhanovsky wrote steadily for close to two decades. His philosophical and phantasmagorical fictions ignored injunctions to portray the Soviet state in a positive light. Three separate efforts to print collections were quashed by the censors, a fourth by World War II. Not until 1989 could his work begin to be published. Like Poe, Krzhizhanovsky takes us to the edge of the abyss and forces us to look into it. “I am interested,” he said, “not in the arithmetic, but in the algebra.”

*Enter through Barramundi on the ground floor, go straight to the back and ring the doorbell on the left.


Read Russia at the Frankfurt Book Fair

The Institute of Translation, under the aegis of the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communication, will present the “Read Russia” program at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

During October 9-13, the Russian stand (pavilion 5.0, stand C 136) will display around 1,000 books from more than 60 publishers from Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and other Russian regions. There will be 40 events – both at the stand and at other venues at the fair– offering opportunities to meet with Russian publishers and literary agents who sell rights for publishing Russian writers, as well as with writers themselves. The writer delegation will include Albert Likhanov, Eugene Vodolazkin, Alexander Kabakov, Marina Stepnova, Maya Kucherskaya, Aleksey Varlamov, Maxim Amelin, Marina Akhmedova, Sergei Sedov, Igor Mikhailov, Viktor Erofeev, Arina Kaledina, Elizaveta Aleksandrova-Zorina, and Nikolay Nazarkin, as well as Russian writers living abroad, including Irina Muravyova, Valerii Voskoboinikov, Victor Bejlis, Aleksei Makushinsky, Anatoly Kudryavitsky, Daria Wilke, and Dmitry Vachedin. Svetlana Alexievich, laureate of the 2013 Peace Prize of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association, will be a special guest.

Translators of Russian literature will also take part in the program: Vera Bischitzky, Christiane Körner, Claudia Zecher, Annelore Nitschke, Andreas Tretner, Alexander Nitzberg, Elena Kostioukovitch, Yulia Dobrovolskaya, and many others.

Literary critics, editors, publishers, and other literature specialists will participate in a series of roundtables, seminars, and presentations about new developments in contemporary Russian literature; literary awards in Russia and abroad, including the “Read Russia” prize; as well as the Institute’s grant program and the “Russian Library” project for major world languages. Participants will include: Irina Barmetova, Natasha Perova, Galina Dursthoff, Elena Shubina, Tatiana Voskovskaya, Kseniya Moldavskaya, Irina Balakhonova, Dmitry Bak, Sergei Chuprinin, Valery Dudarev, Lev Danilkin, Georgy Urushadze, Alla Gladkova, Olga Aminova, Olgert Libkin, Dmitry Likhanov, Maria Vedenyapina, Yana Kovalskaya, Wolfgang Matz, Manfred Quiring, Dmitry Antsupov, Guntram Kaiser, Balthasar von Weymarn and Olga Vaulina.

The Russian stand’s children’s program will offer screenings of animated films, special “Russian Lessons,” and an exhibit of children’s book illustrations prepared by Anastasia Arkhipova, a member of the International Board on Books for Young People (pavilion 5.0 A 118, A 138).  The Institute’s full program of events may be found on the Frankfurt Book Fair Web page.

GET THE FULL SCHEDULE

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In Conversation with Paul Mitchell

Contemporary Russian Politics and Culture Through the Prism of Film

Wednesday, May 22, 7:00 - 8:30 p.m.
Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery
Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center
165 W. 65th Street
Plaza Level

Free, RSVP below.

Read Russia presents an evening of conversation with documentary filmmaker Paul Mitchell, director of the 2012 Peabody Award-winning BBC/NatGeo series Putin, Russia and the West. Paul Mitchell will discuss contemporary Russian politics and culture and the issues surrounding their portrayal through film. The evening will include screenings of  excerpts from Putin, Russia and the West, Mitchell's 2002 PBS documentary on Chechnya Greetings from Grozny, and a sneak preview of Russia's Open Book, a new feature-length documentary on contemporary Russian literature hosted by actor and author Stephen Fry, due for its U.S. television release this fall. The conversation will be moderated by Eliot Borenstein, Professor of the Department of Russian & Slavic Studies at New York University and author of numerous books and articles on contemporary Russian culture and society.

Paul Mitchell, born in Boston, began working in television in 1986 for ABC News Moscow. Since 1990 he has lived in the UK producing award-winning films for the BBC, Discovery Channel, Channel 4, France Télévision, PBS, and National Geographic. His films have covered subjects as diverse as the history of perestroika and rock and roll in the USSR to the fate of the orphans of Argentina's dirty war.  The Death of Yugoslavia (1995) is no. 87 on the British Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest British television programmes of any genre ever to have been screened. Mitchell's films have won the du-Pont Columbia Journalism, the Peabody, the Emmy, BAFTA, Royal Television Society, New York Festival, and the Greirson awards.


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