Wednesday, December 4, 2013

2013 Russian Booker & Andrei Bely Awards


Andrei Volos won the Russian Booker Prize today for Возвращение в Панджруд (excerpts) (Return to Panjrud), a novel featuring Persian poet Rudaki, who lived during 858-941, as its main character. Return to Panjrud also won a Bunin Prize this fall and was shortlisted for the Big Book.

I have no excuse whatsoever for having never read Volos, particularly since I’ve heard so many good things about him over the years and even more particularly since his Хуррамабад (Hurramabad) has been staring down at me for months from the top shelf of The Bookshelf… Hurramabad, by the way, is available from Glas, in Arch Tait’s translation. As for the rest of the Booker shortlist, the only books I’ve read so far are Evgeny Vodolazkin’s Laurus and Margarita Khemlin’s The Investigator, though I’m now reading Denis Gutsko’s Beta Male, which gets off to a good start.

Booker edit, December 5: The news items I saw yesterday didn't mention the Booker grant award but today I learned that Margarita Khemlin won the first grant, for publication of one of her novels in England!

In other news, Andrei Bely Award winners were named last week. Denis Osokin won the prose prize for his novel Небесные жены луговых мари (Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari), a book that was adapted for screen, directed by Aleksey Fedorchenko, in 2012. This year’s Bely Award poetry winner was Anna Glazova, for the collection Для землеройки (For the Shrew), and the service to Russian literature prize went to poet Ivan Akhmetyev for his work publishing unofficial poetry. Poetry by Glazova is included in Relocations: Three Contemporary Russian Women Poets, a bilingual book just out from Zephyr Press. Relocations also contains poems by Polina Barskova and Maria Stepanova; translators are Catherine Ciepiela, Anna Khasin, and Sibelan Forrester. Information about additional Bely Award categories is available on the Bely Award site and Lenta.ru.

Fun Bonus! Poet and translator Alex Cigale posted on Facebook about the Bely Awards, including links to some of his own translations of Akhmetyev’s minimalist poetry… as one who loves sleeping in on weekends, I particularly like the first poem on this page from Alba, but for maximum minimalist variety, check out these other pages, too: Exchanges, The Brooklyn Rail, and Fiera Lingue.

Disclaimers: The usual.

Up Next: We’ll see… I have a couple books waiting for posts…

8 comments:

  1. Do you happen to know when the novel Небесные жены луговых мари was published? I'm finding lots of mentions of the prize but no mentions of the actual book.

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    1. Thanks for the question, Languagehat. I don't know: I first learned about this one when I read a review of the film some time ago. I've only done a casual search for this (book) title but wonder if perhaps the novel was renamed because of the film. I seem to remember that some of Osokin's work has been published on Журнальный зал; it's possible there's a mention there.

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  2. Osokin's Wikipedia page has a сборник «Небесные жены луговых мари» listed for 2013, but Идель from 2008 refers to "отрывки из романа «Небесные жены луговых мари»," so it's all very confusing.

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    1. Aargh, titles causing trouble yet again! I'm starting to get more curious about this myself... maybe I'll do a bit of searching over the weekend. Perhaps articles about the film or reviews would have some helpful information!

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  3. If you find out anything, I'm all ears (well, eyes)!

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  4. In the better-late-than-never category: I also found lots of pages mentioning the 2013 сборник plus this article, which explains a bit about the delay to publish said сборник. I hope that's helpful!

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    1. Ah, so it wasn't published until after the movie was made! Strange but true. Thanks, and I hope you're having a happy Christmas!

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    2. Yes, this is a bit different as a reason, isn't it? We had a nice, relaxing Christmas that began with a long sleep-in... sometimes that's the best gift of all. I hope you enjoyed your Christmas, too!

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