Read Russia Journal

Announcing the winners of the 2014 Read Russia Prize

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!


Read Russia Prize global shortlist announced

Russian typewriter

Moscow, August 2014—The Read Russia Prize’s organizational committee has announced the Read Russia Prize’s global shortlist of 17 translators and translations of Russian literature into other languages worldwide. The competition, open to works published between 2014 and 2012, received 112 nominations from 16 countries around the world: Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, China, France, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Morocco, Poland, Serbia, Spain, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States.  

The Read Russia Prize was established in 2011 by the Institute of Translation in Moscow, a nonprofit organization dedicated to furthering the development of the theory and practice of literary translation. The competition is conducted every two years with support from the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communication and the Boris N. Yeltsin Presidential Center. The prize is awarded to a translator or group of translators for outstanding translations of prose and poetry works from Russian into a foreign language and published by a foreign publisher during the previous two years.

The Read Russia Prize aims to popularize works of Russian literature; encourage foreign translators who translate Russian literature into other languages; encourage foreign publishers who publish translations of Russian literature, and strengthen and develop cultural ties between Russia and other countries. The shortlist of 2014 nominees include two titles published in the United States:

For 19th-century classic Russian literature:

1. Vera Bischitzky for her translation of Ivan Goncharov’s novel Oblomov (Germany);

2. Alejandro Ariel Gonzales for his translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novella The Double (Argentina); and

3. Jorge Ferrer Diaz for his translation of Alexander Herzen’s work My Past and Thoughts (Spain).

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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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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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Read Russia Comes to London!

Lodon Book Fair logo

Read Russia events at and around the London Book Fair (Booth Y455) include writer talks, new book presentations, and a sneak preview of “Russia’s Open Book,” a feature-length documentary hosted by author & actor Stephen Fry, narrated by actress Juliet Stevenson, and directed by acclaimed filmmakers Paul Mitchell and Sarah Wallis.  A co-production of Intelligent Television and Wilton Films, Russia’s Open Book brings viewers closer to the work of the most exciting authors writing in Russia today.

Several of the authors profiled in the film, including Ludmila Ulitskaya, Dmitry Bykov and Anna Starobinets, are participating in Read Russia London, where they will join translators, literary scholars and publishing professionals at the London Book Fair (Earls Court Exhibition Centre, April 15-17) and around London.  Featured writers include distinguished authors Oleg Pavlov and Maria Galina and Debut Prize winners Alexander Snegirev, Irina Bogatyreva.  UK-based writers Zinovy Zinik, Irina Kirillova, Layla Alexander-Garrett, and Hamid Ismailov also will be presenting. 

More info at: 
[url=http://www.readrussia2013.com/london/bookfair]http://www.readrussia2013.com/london/bookfair[/url]
[url=http://www.readrussia2013.com/london/literaryshowcase]http://www.readrussia2013.com/london/literaryshowcase[/url]

Read deep!  Read smart!  Read Russia!


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