Read Russia Journal
New York, NY, May 29, 2015 - Read Russia today announced the winner of the 2015 READ RUSSIA PRIZE, celebrating the best translation of Russian literature into English published in 2014: Vladimir Sharov’s Before and During, translated by Oliver Ready and published by Dedalus Books. The annual literary prize carries a cash award shared by translator and publisher.
In a unanimous vote the READ RUSSIA PRIZE jury of scholars, translators, and authors praised Ready’s translation in its citation:
"Translation should not strive for perfection, but for excellence. Perfection is impossible, whereas excellence is only nearly impossible. And excellence is what Oliver Ready achieves in his rendering of Before and During by Vladimir Sharov. He captures the clear voice and confused mentality of the narrator who is able to love both Christ and Lenin, who prays for the sinner Ivan the Terrible and who tries to unravel the legacy of the Bolsheviks.
"Vladimir Sharov was born in 1952, the same year as Vladimir Putin. We have heard a great deal from Putin both in terms of his speeches and press conferences as well as in his actions – which, as the saying goes, speak louder than words. In a time when the Russian and American leadership both speak past one another, it is especially important to hear other voices from Russia, voices that can speak directly to us and directly of Russia which we in the West all too easily either romanticize or demonize. And it is possible for us to hear Sharov’s voice due to the hundreds of hours of detail-by-detail labor on the part of Oliver Ready, a solitary effort that has now resulted in the public, i.e. published, version in English of Sharov’s own long and solitary labor. His translation gives us all both pleasure and practical value – it is, as they used to say, dulce et utile.
"It is therefore fitting that the excellence of Ready’s achievement and the vision of Dedalus Books in publishing it be recognized by this prize."
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On behalf of the READ RUSSIA PRIZE 2015 jury, Read Russia is pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2015 READ RUSSIA PRIZE to be awarded Friday, May 29, at the Grolier Club in New York City. The list is presented here in alphabetical order by author:
READ RUSSIA PRIZE
Celebrating the best translations of Russian literature
2015 Shortlist
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Translated by Oliver Ready
Penguin UK
Sergei Dovlatov, Pushkin Hills
Translated by Katherine Dovlatov
Counterpoint Press
Vladislav Khodasevich, Selected Poems
Translated by Peter Daniels
Overlook Press
Vladimir Sharov, Before and During
Translated by Oliver Ready
Dedalus Books
Anna Starobinets, The Icarus Gland
Translated by Jamie Rann
Skyscraper Press
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Translated by Rosamund Bartlett
Oxford University Press
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Translated by Marian Schwartz
Yale University Press
Congratulations to all the talented nominees!
The READ RUSSIA PRIZE is awarded in New York every year for works of Russian literature in English translation. The 2015 READ RUSSIA PRIZE awards ceremony will be held at the very end of Book Expo America on Friday, May 29, at the Grolier Club in New York.
Professor Gary Saul Morson, author, translator, and Frances Hooper Professor of the Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University, will help present the awards to the winning translators and publishers. Professor Morson, whose popular classes at Northwestern on Russian literature touch hundreds of students every year, also will present a special new lecture: "Because Everyone Needs a Little Russian Literature."
More than 20 new titles, listed below, have been nominated by their publishing houses in 2015. The shortlist will be announced online here on May 20.
AUTHOR |
TITLE |
TRANSLATOR |
Mikhail Bulgakov |
Don Quixote |
Margarita Marinova |
Zakhar Prilepin |
Sankya |
Mariya Gusev and Jeff Parker with Alina Ryabovolova |
Leo Tolstoy |
Anna Karenina |
Rosamund Bartlett |
Vladimir Lorchenkov |
The Good Life Elsewhere |
Ross Ufberg |
Vladimir Sharov |
Before and During |
Oliver Ready |
Leo Tolstoy |
Anna Karenina |
Marian Schwartz |
Sergei Lukyanenko |
The Genome |
Liv Bliss |
Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
Crime and Punishment |
Oliver Ready |
Alexander Pushkin |
The Captain’s Daughter |
Robert and Elizabeth Chandler |
Vladimir Kozlov |
USSR: Diary of a Perestroika Kid |
Andrea Gregovich |
Fyodor Tyutchev |
Selected Poems |
John Dewey |
Liudmila Petrushevskaya |
There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children Until They Moved Back In |
Anna Summers |
Sergei Dovlatov |
Pushkin Hills |
Katherine Dovlatov |
Andrei Bitov |
The Symmetry Teacher |
Polly Gannon |
Andrei Gelasimov |
Rachel |
Marian Schwartz |
Nikolai Gogol |
The Night Before Christmas |
Anna Summers |
Lilianna Lungina |
Word for Word |
Polly Gannon and Ast A. Moore |
Vladislav Khodasevich |
Selected Poems |
Peter Daniels |
Andrei Sen-Senkov |
Anatomical Theater |
Ainsley Morse and Peter Golub |
Nikolai Gogol |
The Inspector |
Richard Nelson, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky |
Mikhail Yeryomin |
Selected Poems, 1959-2009 |
J. Kates |
Anna Starobinets |
The Icarus Gland |
James Rann |
Lev Rubinstein |
Compleat Catalogue of Comedic Novelties |
Philip Metres and Tatiana Tulchinsky |
The 2014 READ RUSSIA PRIZE winner was Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s Autobiography of a Corpse, translated by Joanne Turnbull with Nikolai Formozov and published by New York Review Books.
FOR THE BEST ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE
Read Russia invites publishers worldwide of Russian literature in English translation to submit newly published works for the 2015 READ RUSSIA PRIZE!
The annual Read Russia English-language Prize is awarded in New York each May for works of Russian literature in English translation in the following categories:
- contemporary fiction written after 1990;
- 20th-century fiction written between 1900 and 1990;
- 19th-century fiction written between 1800 and 1900; and
- poetry (classic and contemporary).
The READ RUSSIA PRIZE is a cash award of up to $10,000, divided at the discretion of the prize jury between the original English-language publishing house and the translator(s) of the work. The winning publisher also receives the opportunity to have a complementary audiovisual book trailer produced for the winning work or for a new work of Russian literature in translation that it is publishing.
Several new Russian and international documentary films about Russian literature are screening at the 7th Russian Documentary Film Festival in New York, October 10-12, 2014:
RUSSIA’S OPEN BOOK: WRITING IN THE AGE OF PUTIN
Directors: Paul Mitchell and Sarah Wallis, Wilton Films
Intelligent Television, USA
55 minutes – 2013
Who are the new Russian Tolstoys and Dostoevskys? Hosted by author and actor Stephen Fry and featuring the work of Dmitry Bykov, Mariam Petrosyan, Zakhar Prilepin, Anna Starobinets, Vladimir Sorokin, and Ludmila Ulitskaya.
VASILY GROSSMAN: I UNDERSTOOD THAT I HAD DIED
Director: Elena Yakovich
RACORD-TV, Russia
56 minutes – 2014
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Congratulations to the winners of the 2014 Read Russia Prize, celebrating the best translations and translators of Russian literature into foreign languages:
Alejandro Ariel Gonzales for his Spanish-language translation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novella The Double – the best translation of “classic 19th-century Russian literature”
Alexander Nitzberg for his German-language translation of Mikhail Bulgakov's novel Master and Margarita – the best translation of “20th-century Russian literature”
Marian Schwartz for her English-language translation of Leonid Yuzefovich's Harlequin's Costume – the best translation of “contemporary Russian literature”
Liu Wenfei for his Chinese-language translation of lyrical works by Alexander Pushkin – the best translation of “poetry”
Congratulations!
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