Born: 1985
Quick Study: Evgenia Nekrasova’s short stories, novellas, and novel, Kalechina-Malechina jolt the reader with a unique combination of humor, harsh realities, and tenderness worked into plot elements ranging from domestic violence to an everchanging epidemic to a cantankerous kitchen spirit. Nekrasova masterfully tosses in elements like folkore, magic, and verse for good measure.
The Nekrasova File: Evgenia Nekrasova began writing fiction and screenplays in the early 2010s, publishing her work in “thick” literary journals. Her breakthrough to broader recognition came when a collection of her stories, Unhappy Moscow – the title story features a character living through a strange epidemic in Moscow – won second prize in the 2017 Litsei competition for young writers. Her first novel, Kalechina-Malechina, was published the next year by Elena Shubina’s imprint at AST: this novel about a latchkey schoolgirl, Katya, involves a classroom where Katya faces bullying, a mean teacher, a bit of exhibitionism, and an inane knitting assignment, though Katya’s life changes significantly after she befriends a kitchen spirit that shows up in her apartment. Kalechina-Malechina was shortlisted for the National Bestseller, Big Book, and NOSE awards during the 2019 award season. Nekrasova’s story collection Sistermom followed in 2019.
Psssst………: Nekrasova has worked as a copywriter in Moscow ad agencies… she graduated from the Moscow School of New Cinema, where she studied screenwriting; she has taught screenwriting to student directors at her alma mater…
The Word on Nekrasova: In a piece for Sobesednik about important books from July 2018, writer Dmitry Bykov praised Nekrasova and her Kalechina-Malechina, calling Nekrasova “a very big writer” and Andrei Platonov’s “direct descendent,” thanks to a “Platonovesque melancholy that fills the world” in Kalechina-Malechina. He concluded his brief review of the novel by writing, “in short, remember this name and expect a lot.”
Nekrasova on Nekrasova and Writing: In an interview with Yulia Lysova on Mnogobukv, Nekrasova said it’s not possible to teach someone to write, but “you can teach [someone] how to listen to themself. The main task is to help the person understand what’s important for them to write about. Then the text will work.” In a discussion with writer Olia Breininger about literature and writing, partially transcribed on Afisha, Nekrasova said, “I don’t write autofiction but I really do use a lot of personal feelings and scenes. All of Kalechina-Malechina grew out of a scene on a roof, where a girl was sitting and swinging her feet – I saw her when I was the same age as my main character Katya. And the scene with getting stuck in an elevator happened to me: I experienced that same feelings of complete fear and loneliness of a child locked in a metal box. Those feelings helped me a lot in writing that text.”
Nekrasova’s Places: Kapustin Yar (in the Astrakhan Oblast), where she was born, then the Moscow region, where she grew up… Manchester, Liverpool, London, and Athens, places where she lived during 2008-2012…
Nekrasova Recommends: Toni Morrison, to whom she wrote a letter the day before Morrison died. Andrei Platonov, whose Happy Moscow she says has a "feminist message." Nekrasova has also said that Alexei Remizov is an important writer for her: the title Kalechina-Malechina comes from a song that he wrote and she has said “his work never gets old. He uses folklore, an important part of language and culture.”
Born: 1970
Quick Study: Alexei Makushinsky’s meditative, digressive writings combine distinctly Russian themes and figures with stylistics and rhythms that have earned him comparisons to such authors as Proust, Mann, and Nabokov.
The Makushinsky File: Alexei Makushinsky is a writer of diverse texts – poetry, essays, translations, and novels – who published his first novel, Max, in 1998 and began winning broad recognition in the 2010s after Steamship to Argentina, a novel about emigration, twentieth-century history, and time, won the Russkaya Premiya and hit the Big Book Award shortlist, winning third place in Big Book’s reader’s choice competition. He returned to the Big Book finalist circle in 2020 with The Outskirts of Thought. A Philosophical Stroll, a book that visits places where Nikolai Berdyaev and Jacques Maritain (among others) lived in Paris. Among his other novels is World Brought to a Standstill (2018), which features an insomniac narrator who sits in poses for Zen Buddhist meditation while his memory works; Makushinsky has also written two poetry collections a one book of essays.
Makushinsky’s Places: Moscow, where he was born and graduated from the Gorky Literary Institute… German, where he has lived since 1992 and now teaches Russian literature and culture at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz…
Psssst………: Makushinsky began writing poetry at the age of fifteen…
The Word on Makushinsky: Anna Berseneva begins her review of Makushinsky’s Outskirts of Thought for Novye Izvestia by noting her reaction to his previous book, World Brought to a Standstill: “There are some texts where you can’t explain your passion for them in a logical way. That’s what I thought as I read Alexei Makushinsky’s previous book World Brought to a Standstill. Both its plot and the main character’s consciousness are connected with Buddhism, something I perceive very much as an outsider. That novel, however, so hypnotized me when I was reading that it I couldn’t surface from its strange, nervous nirvana for a long time.” Berseneva goes on to write that she began reading Outskirts of Thought with a similar feeling of hypnosis, later notes that Makushinsky follows the “spiritual route of his characters,” and concludes by saying the reader doesn’t want to stop the philosophical stroll and calls the book “an important intellectual event for our literature.”
Makushinsky on Makushinsky & Writing: In an interview for Lenta.ru with Igor Igritsky, when asked about living in Germany but writing in Russian, Makushinsky answers, “I write in Russian because I know how the language is constructed. I know how the machine is assembled and taken apart. I see the pieces from within. I’ll never be able to write in another language with the feeling of control that I have with Russian. I know German very well but it’s a foreign language to me even so.”
Makushinsky Recommends: When Makushinsky’s publisher, Eksmo, interviews him for their site, the interviewer notes that Makushinsky is sometimes compared to Vladimir Nabokov, to which Makushinsky comments, “I regard Nabokov wonderfully, adore him, and am sometimes horribly envious of him.” In the Lenta interview, when asked about “literary authorities,” Makushinsky agrees that Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust fit that category for him.
Born: 1955
Quick Study: Timur Kibirov’s career began with samizdat poetry during the Soviet era and has come to encompass not only published poetry collections but also works of fiction that have won him a broader readership.
The Kibirov File: With over twenty volumes of poetry to his name, Timur Kibirov is probably best known to Russian readers as a poet: words like conceptual, postmodern, irony, memory, meta, and allusive have followed him, as have labels like “popular.” He began publishing his poetry during the Soviet years as samizdat then was able to publish officially in the late perestroika era when his work, some of it lengthy (indeed, the label “epic” can also be found in descriptions of his poems), faced fewer limitations because of political and religious threads. Many of the features of Kibirov’s poems carry over to his novel The General and His Family, a 2020 Big Book Award finalist. The lengthy novel’s cozy, intimate feel draws the reader in with descriptions of not only family difficulties but also the minutiae of Soviet-era life, complete with humor and cultural references, both high and low. The title character “Lada” in Kibirov’s first book of prose, Lada or Joy: A Chronicle of Loyal and Happy Love, is a dog.
Psssst………: Kibirov began writing poetry as a teenager… He won the “Poet” award in 2008, which came with a $50,000 purse; the award was founded by Anatoly Chubais (news item)…
Kibirov’s Places: Moscow, where he lives…
The Word on Kibirov: Gregory Freidin, emeritus professor of Slavic languages and literatures at Stanford University, wrote of Kibirov’s Sentiments, “As civilizations fall, many poets hear the call for the art of memory that would preserve the traces of past life, but in the end few are chosen. Ostensibly a lyric, self-consciously sentimental poet, Kibirov is among the chosen few whose record of Soviet civilization is savoured by the post-Soviet reader. Every poem in his collection may be used as a basis for a reconstruction of that world, as its clamour continues to resonate in the hearts of its former citizens.”
Kibirov on Kibirov & Writing: Jamie Olson, who has translated many of Kibirov’s poems, quotes Kibirov in this note to his translation of a portion of Romances of the Cheryomushki District for Poetry Northwest, “His poems often feature playful reinterpretations of classic texts, including ancient myths, canonical literary works, Soviet ideology, and even scripture. In a recent interview, Kibirov said, ‘The only thing that a poet needs to do is write good poems. What this means, I can’t begin to judge; no one can know this, there are no criteria . . . And whether a poet uses Old Church Slavonic or the current slang is simply a matter of technique.’”
Kibirov Recommends: In a 2007 poll conducted by the site Seance, Kibirov is noted as saying his favorite childhood book was Ivanhoe and his favorite book as an adult is The Gift.
Born: 1971
Quick Study: Journalist and novelist Shamil Idiatullin writes books in a variety of genres – thrillers, fantasy, children’s books, and psychological dramas – that combine a journalist’s attention to detail with a fiction writer’s imagination.
The Idiatullin File: Shamil Idiatullin’s first published novel, in 2005, was the novel Rucciя (a.k.a. The Tatar Hit), a political thriller that imagines World War 3 breaking out because of a conflict between Tatarstan and Moscow. Fifteen years and several books later, Idiatullin hit the Big Book Award shortlist for the second time with his novel Former Lenin Street – a book covering topics like local politics, personal relationships, and a scandal over waste disposal. His Brezhnev City, a novel about a young boy living in a rough city with an automobile factory in 1983, won third-place jury and readers choice Big Book prizes in 2017. Idiatullin’s most recent book, The Last Time, takes an entirely different tack and has been described as “ethnofantasy,” shuffling his deck of motifs once again.
Psssst………: Idiatullin’s work as a journalist has included serving as the head of newspaper Kommersant’s regional editions department…
Idiatullin’s Places: Ulyanovsk, where he was born, and Naberezhnye Chelny, where he grew up… Kazan, where he studied journalism at Kazan State University…
The Word on Idiatullin: In a review of Former Lenin Street for the National Bestseller Award, critic Mikhail Vizel notes that, "Shamil Idiatullin is a tenacious and observant author who loves not only puns but also unexpected turns of phrase and metaphors."
Idiatullin on Idiatullin & Writing: In discussing his books in an interview with Egor Mikhailov of Afisha, Idiatullin says this of his writing, “I’m a person who’s out screaming on the street corners that I love to write and read about the here and now, that I don’t gravitate toward historical texts. That doesn’t look too sincere after City of Brezhnev turned into my best-known text but what can you do, I haven’t changed that much. That’s why I’ve always proceeded from the assumption that I’m writing about contemporary life, though readers who more or less know me clearly figure that [one of my] books will, ninety percent of the time, be about us, the here and now. And I’m still not used to the fact that a lot were disoriented after City of Brezhnev.”
Idiatullin Recommends: In an interview with Olesya Razina of Literatura Today, Idiatullin mentions that he reads a lot of contemporary Russian authors, adding that the list of authors he thinks should be read keeps growing, thanks to new discoveries. When asked who’s on the list, he names Maria Galina, Sergei Zharkovsky, Eduard Verkin, Leonid Yuzefovich, Alexei Salnikov, Andrei Lyakh, and Linor Goralik. He also notes Guzel Yakhina and Eugene Vodolazkin, saying they write quality texts and also enjoy “huge popularity, print runs of half a million in Russia, and dozens of translations into other languages.”
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