As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues along with the war of information accompanying it there has been a tendency to turn away from anything Russian as a gesture of solidarity with Ukraine. What this leaves out are Russian voices of dissent, voices that speak out despite the growing and significant risks involved. Among those […]
Throughout August, Literalab will be asking writers, translators and publishers to comment on both the women writers from their own language they most appreciate having been translated into English as well as those they would most like to see make the leap. Natasha Perova is the editor of the Russian publishing house Glas, which specializes […]
“I sat down on the edge of the couch. The Radiotechnika radiola was playing music, something non-Russian. Vova poured the rest of the wine into the glasses – there turned out to be just a bit left — and they drank up. I was sorry Igor had interfered, and that they didn’t give me any […]
He stepped into the bushes to fool around a little. “What can I say about Grigory,” he thought later, “when I don’t even know whether I exist?” From The Sublimes by Yuri Mamleyev, translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz. This highly influential cult classic from 1968 has never before been translated into English and […]
1. The Devil’s Workshop by Jáchym Topol (translated by Alex Zucker) Like my favorite book of the year before, my favorite book of 2013 delves into the ultimate horrors that man inflicts on his fellow man, but does so with a surplus of imagination, suspense and humor. Whereas Selvedin […]
At Deutsche Welle there is article about the new Berlin-based publisher Frisch & Co. Run by E.J. Van Lanen the e-book publisher is putting out a fascinating selection of novels in translation from Germany, Austria, Spain, Argentina and Italy. I have just read the debut novel they put out by Argentine writer Carlos Busqued, Under […]
“Here Sasha and I are on our way, on the road, walking along a strip of asphalt through the woods. Around us it is May, the first green leaves, the first butterflies. After the winter we crawl out of Moscow into the big wide world as blind as moles, crusted with fungus and mildew. We […]
Literary roundup: Pre-war Warsaw and Russian dystopias The first English translation of a book by Polish-Jewish author Józef Hen will be published later this month, according to the Polish Book Institute’s website. Nowolipie Street is a 1991 memoir of growing up in the lost world of Jewish Warsaw in the 1920s and 30s, up until […]
Big Russian novels are in the air as of late. At The Millions eight experts weigh in on George Steiner’s Tolstoy or Dostoevsky question. I read Steiner’s book a fairly long time ago and don’t remember him actually answering that question, which seems to be the standard reaction among the experts. Actually, I think the […]
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky has been receiving a lot of critical attention lately due to the NYRB’s publication of his novel The Letter-Killers Club (most recently today in the latest Quarterly Conversation) but it was another of his unpublished, unseen works that recently saw the light at Princeton University. For the 1937 centennial of Alexander Pushkin’s death, […]
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