“This isn’t the placelessness of a fellow modernist writer like Kafka, but more closely resembles that of a hyperrealistic painting, where the attention to detail – the glint of light on a bottle, the folds of skin on the figure’s neck – obscure any sign of the surroundings. Felsen isn’t looking at the world through […]
The latest issue of The Continental, a magazine I am editing and writing for, is out. The theme of the issue is Noir and includes work from a darker, crime-ridden era of New York City (otherwise known as the good ‘ol days) to a futurist Hungary, Russia, the Czech Republic and elsewhere. Founder of Punk […]
In the opening week of B O D Y’s Spring Issue we hit you with a double dose of Russian writer Andrey Filimonov. First, there’s an exclusive excerpt of the translation from his novel Retsepty sotvoreniya mira (World Creation Recipes), a book that delves into Russia and the writer’s family’s convoluted 20th century with some hallucinogenic […]
The Spring Issue of B O D Y kicks off today with some poetry. I’ll have some fiction from Russia by Andrey Filimonov translated by Richard Coombes and Anne O. Fisher followed by a discussion the two translators had with Filimonov about his work, his influences, growing up in Siberia, Slavic word games and where […]
“As evening drew on, I tore myself away from my desk, went out into the field, and wandered this way and that, this way and that, until at some point I found myself dancing. At first it was awful: I kept stopping and looking around. But then awareness yielded to motion. I was scooping up […]
Russian writer Aleksei Lukyanov begins his story “Entwives” with a reference to the aforementioned entwives from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the female tree creatures lost to their male tree-creature counterparts. But then the story takes a precipitous turn into pretty rough Russian schoolyard banter before taking a few darker a very […]
Two short pieces by Daniil Kharms from the mid-1930’s translated by Alexander Cigale, one about an invasive cuckoo bird among other things, the other miraculously seeming to foreshadow every hipster’s worst nightmare scenario. You can also go back to the last installment of Saturday European Fiction for more Kharms. Read more Saturday European Fiction
“And so, it once happened that Nikolay Ivanovich found himself in Hotel Europe, in their restaurant. Nikolay Ivanovich sits at his table, and the table over from him is occupied by some foreigners, and they’re gobbling up apples. And that’s when Nikolay Ivanovich said to himself: ‘A curious thing,’ Nikolay Ivanovich said to himself, […]
In 2015 a new and far from typical star arrived on the Russian literary scene. Guzel Yakhina won multiple literary prizes for her debut novel Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes, including the Big Book Award and the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Prize. Yakhina was born in Kazan, Tatarstan (a semi-autonomous Russian republic) and her novel tells the […]
Alisa Ganieva will be in New York City on Thursday, June 18 for a launch of her newly translated novel The Mountain and the Wall. The event is sponsored by Read Russia and will involve a discussion between the author and translator, publisher and academic Ronald Meyer at Book Culture on 112th St. The novel […]
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