Lizok's Bookshelf
View my complete profile Lisa C. Hayden
Reading ideas from Russian classic and contemporary fiction
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The Big Book Award announced this year’s winners yesterday evening. The point totals from the jury’s voting were almost shockingly close. Here are some rather rambling (I’m a little distracted as I get ready for a Slavist convention!) thoughts on the winners.

The jury’s top prize (493 points) went to Maria Stepanova for Памятипамяти (In Memory of Memory or Post-Memory). I seem to recall admitting to a certain trepidation about reading this book, largely thanks to hearing colleagues’ strong opinions: some loved it (the pedestal factor for books deemed “very important” can be difficult to surmount) but others hated it and claimed their eyes glazed over (I was also warned, as if to doom, that there was no plot… and I do love plot). I read a decent chunk and suppose it’s most accurate to say I fall somewhere in the middle, admiring the quality of the writing but not always fully appreciating the detail and density of what Stepanova writes. Despite that downside – and please note that I wrote “not always fully” – I found something very comforting about the pages that I read, both because of the very fact that Stepanova writes about memory, history, and family, things that are, indeed very important, and because she writes about them in a way that’s both elevated and very engaging. I ended up ranking it in my top clump of books. I plan to read more, very slowly – although sometimes the book feels almost addictively readable, it’s better to read in very small doses, to absorb, even try on, levels of meaning and significance. Post-Memory is painfully difficult to describe – I appreciated a tweet calling it a “meta-novel” – so I’ll leave you with Suhrkamp’s summary and a link to Cynthia Haven’s interview with Stepanova for Los Angeles Review of Books. As well as congratulations to Maria Stepanova and a note saying the book is on the way in English, published by Fitzcarraldo in the UK and New Directions in the US; I’ll see if I can find out who’s translating. Edit: Translator friend and colleague Ian Dreiblatt reports that Sasha Dugdale, who has translated some of Stepanova’s poetry, is translating.

In my biggest personal surprise of the ceremony, Alexander Arkhangelsky won second prize (486 points) for Бюро проверки (Verification Bureau or something of the sort), a novel set in 1980 Moscow (think: Olympics), a time that certainly interests me, though Arkhangelsky’s meandering, slow-burn narrative fizzled, failing to fire my imagination. (Sorry but it’s wood-burning season.) I’d like to say that’s despite Arkhangelsky’s vivid description of Moscow life at the time but I’m afraid it’s because of it: any sense of plot or forward motion gets lost in details, details, details and so much atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere (not to mention an irritating girlfriend who’s not irritating in a good “unlikeable character” way) that I stopped reading at about 75 percent (reading that far was thanks to inertia and misplaced optimism that the book would improve), after nearly drowning in familiar reminiscences that felt more unsatisfying than leftover champagne – structure (or even anti-structure, depending on the book) is as important to a novel as bubbles are to champagne. As so often happens, Konstantin Milchin’s review for Izvestia discusses many of the problems I found with the book.

Dmitry Bykov took third prize (473 points) with his Июнь (June), a novel composed of three very loosely connected stories (long, medium, and shorter). The first piece in June was, by far, my favorite reading on the entire Big Book list: it often felt jarring, disturbing, and uncomfortable to read this novella about war-era sexual misconduct (I’ve purposely chosen a broad term here) during our #Metoo times, particularly since I was reading June during the Kavanaugh hearings. Bykov’s primary characters felt almost universally unappealing to me and the love (?) triangle he draws feels both schematic and real but this long story moves along at a quick clip, with a fair bit of psychological suspense. Alas, I found the second piece dully typical and nothing grabbed me about the third, either, though I may attempt them again later, though that would already be a third or fourth try. No matter, part one of June was good enough reading to land this book in my top picks.

People’s choice voters awarded first prize to Dmitry Bykov’s June; no surprise there. Same for second prize going to Andrei Filimonov’s Рецептысотворениямира(World Creation Recipes), an often humorous novel that describes family history and is so short that finishing it took minimal effort, even though the novel petered out toward the end and concluded with what felt more like vignettes about Soviet life than episodes in a novel. That may have been the point but, for me, anyway, it didn’t make for especially good fiction. Finally, Oleg Yermakov’s РадугаиВереск (the one with the difficult title that’s probably not really Rainbow and Heather in English) won third prize. The Yermakov book started off okay enough (despite far too many mentions of Richard Ashcroft and The Verve), with a wedding photographer going on a reconnaissance trip to Smolensk. Mysterious things happen that send the reader back a couple centuries but I grew impatient in the past because of a mishmash of languages that felt rather overdone (so many footnotes!), history, and a lack of steady plot drive. Since this book is so long (736 pages), my “quickly” is relative – I skipped and skimmed my way through several hundred pages before giving up, despite understanding the book’s homey appeal for many readers.

This year’s Big Book finalists were the weakest bunch I’ve seen since I joined the Literary Academy (the award’s jury) several years ago. Is this a statement on the state of current fiction? Did some good books go unnominated? Answers: I’m not sure and I don’t know. Beyond Post-Memory and June, there was only one other book that I thought was at all prize-worthy: Olga Slavnikova’s Прыжок в длину (Long Jump) is well-constructed, though, for my taste, it’s overly burdened with metaphors (some of which feel pretty forced) and detail, which means that I’ll confess to not finishing that one, either, despite appreciating Slavnikova’s discipline in creating such a consistent and well-imagined set of contemporary characters and circumstances, qualities that landed the book in my top clump.

In other news, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, an author well-known in English translation, won a special award for her contributions to literature. And I’m excited that Big Book began recognizing literary bloggers this year: Yevgenia Lisitsyna, who writes as @greenlampbooks on Telegram, is the winner. I’d love to read her work but oh my, am I ready for another platform?! I may just have to try.

Up Next: Eduard Verkin’s Sakhalin Island, Alisa Ganieva’s Offended Sensibilities, the ASEEES (Slavist!) conferenceconvention I’m about to go to (hence my addled post, hope it makes sense!), and who knows what else.

Disclaimers: The usual. I received Big Book finalist books in electronic form, though colleagues gave me a couple in hard copy at various times, for various reasons.

The blog turned eleven on Tuesday but I was still a bit out of focus after my trip to the Frankfurt Book Fair so decided to wait on festivities until the weekend. As I noted last year, those posts are less interesting to compile now anyway since there’s no point in looking at readership statistics these days. Even so, what’s most important about readership now is what’s always been most important about these posts: thanking you, the readers, for visiting, whether you do so occasionally or regularly. One of the biggest surprises of this blogging endeavor is that people continue visiting, reading, and (apparently) finding useful information on the blog, something that I think of as a sort of online filing cabinet, as, really, an extension of my brain, which is ever more stuffed with details I need to offload.

I’ve started considering my trip to Frankfurt as a sort of birthday present to my professional self since, after all, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now – translating Russian fiction – if it weren’t for the blog. (This is good justification to go back again next year, too.) So here, in lazy listicle form, are eleven things I particularly enjoyed about this year’s Frankfurt fair.

No Wifi at the Messe! I’ll start with something that brought joy. The book fair promises wifi but my devices this year and last failed to accept it. People with lots of Frankfurt experience told me this is an eternal problem and not a device-specific issue. (Some kind people from the Uzbek stand, for example, had a theory that the wifi doesn’t like Samsung, which is what I have.) Whatever the wifi issue, it was a treat not to have Internet access during the days. Next year I’ll just print out my calendar and leave the device in the safe.

Book Surprises. I never quite know what Russian-to-English translations I’ll find at book fairs. Of course I already have Oliver Ready’s translations of Vladimir Sharov, published by Dedalus Books, and was happy to see them, thanks to my friendships with both Sharov and Ready. And I knew of Tatyana Tolstaya’s Aetherial Worlds, published by Knopf, translated by Anya Migdal, and prominently displayed on The Wylie Agency’s stand. I was, thus, far curiouser about a few translations on the shelves at the Seagull Books stand: a clutch of books by Sergei Eisenstein, translated by multiple translators, The Prison Poems of Nikolai Bukharin, translated by George Shriver (!), and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Time within Time: The Diaries 1970-1986, translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair. Seagull kindly gave me Eisenstein’s On the Detective Story, translated by Alan Upchurch, and just paging through has been interesting: there’s a cast of thousands, thanks to references to Lenin, Hitchcock, Pushkin, Gogol, and many more.

Other Books I Brought Home. I received books at various other stands, too. There’s Yulia Yakovleva’s The Raven’s Children, the first book in a trilogy (from Samokat) for kids that discusses the Stalin era; Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp has already translated the book into English for Penguin. I’m especially excited to give Eduard Verkin’s Sakhalin Island a try (I love a good post-apocalyptic novel), and was happy to find copies of Ksenia Buksha’s Opens In and Yuri Buida’s The Fifth Kingdom after hearing good things about them and forgetting to pick them up in Moscow. There’s also an English-language treat from Maclehose Press: Frank Wynne’s translation of Virginie Despentes’s Vernon Subutex 1, a finalist for this year’s Man Booker International Prize, still unavailable in the U.S.

Speaking About Books. I talked about books at the Russia stand, largely basing my comments on some lists – of authors I think have done particularly well in translation and books I consider big favorites – that I’d come up for a panel on contemporary novels with Maya Kucherskaya, Natalia Osipova, Maria Tsiruleva, and Galina Yuzefovich. The lists also came in handy for a talk with Anne Coldefy-Faucard about translation in France and the U.S., moderated by Evgeny Reznichenko. The lists certainly wouldn’t hold any surprises for regular blog readers (and even if you’re not, you can find a favorites list on the sidebar as well as year-end posts that mention reading highlights) so I’ll just say that I was happy to hear that Maria and I share a love for Dmitry Danilov’s Description of a City (previous post) and Horizontal Position (previous post).

An Award to Katharina Raabe. I don’t know a lot about what gets translated from Russian into German but I do know that Katharina Raabe, a literary editor at Suhrkamp, is a major force in bringing Russian and Eastern European literature to German-language readers. Knowing her dedication, I was very happy to see that the German Literary Translators’ Association recognized her work with the Übersetzerbarke (“Translators’ Barque”) award. When we talked a bit later about Suhrkamp’s list, she mentioned Maria Stepanova’s Памятипамяти (In Memory of Memory), a Big Book and Yasnaya Polyana finalist (Suhrkamp’s description, including English translation information) that I’ll be reading soon. Raabe was Katja Petrowskaja’s editor for Vielleicht Esther, which I enjoyed in Shelley Frisch’s translation from the German, Maybe Esther (previous post).

The Serendipity Factor. The serendipity factor is part of what gives book fairs – and even travel to and from Frankfurt – their energy. Last year, a woman asked me in the subway if she was on the correct platform to catch a train to the airport; we were both at the right track, then figured out we were both Buchmesse attendees so talked the whole way to the airport… and ended up meeting this year, on purpose, to talk about books and translation. Beyond running into people I wasn’t expecting to see and being introduced to lots more people I was glad to meet, wandering the fair’s food section (which I hadn’t planned on doing) brought me a bag of nice Georgian tea as well as a stop at a Russian cookbook publisher’s stand – their painfully beautiful books drew me. (And then we talked about food translation issues!)

Georgia Stories. Georgia was the guest of honor at this year’s fair – the tagline was “Georgia – Made by Characters” – and about seventy authors were listed in the thick (nearly a hundred pages) catalogue for the Georgian program at the Georgian national stand and pavilion. The Georgian pavilion was a stylish and otherworldly place: dark, uncrowded, a bit hushed, and almost eerie, in part thanks to a mesmerizing and mysteriously moving installation with slow-motion video of authors’ faces. I loved the pavilion so made daily visits. I especially enjoyed hearing Shota Iatashvili, a friend from translation congresses in Moscow, speak about his story in collection The Book of Tbilisi, along with fellow author Zviad Kvaratskhelia, editor Becca Parkinson, and moderator Gvantsa Jobava. I need to order up the book! And look up other Georgian books that have been translated into English.

Georgian Music & Poetry. Shota and I went to the Georgian café in the pavilion after the story event: I was in serious need of coffee but they’d run out (!) so, well, what was I to do but settle for a glass of Georgian red wine? Which, of course, tasted very nice. The wine turned out to be for the best because it fit so well with an electronic poetry performance from Rati Amaglobeli and Gogi Dzodzuashvili on the nearby large stage. I loved it. Here’s a sample.

Being Part of Something Bigger. Getting a sense of my tiny place in the book world – with the emphasis on “world” – and learning a little about how the book industry works is why the Frankfurt Book Fair feels so important to me. I’m not sure how the book fair counts visitors but 285,024 is a lot, even if it’s not unique visitors, and I’m glad I got out of my quiet home office for a few days to make sure the visitor count reached 285,023 + 1. (Or 285,020 +4 if the stats are per visit!)

Next Year. I’m already looking forward to next year when Norway – one of my favorite places on earth – will be the guest of honor. Time to take out all the Norwegian books I’ve accumulated but haven’t read.

Glad I Made It at All! Finally, travel being what it is these days, with so many indignities even on a good day and then unusual delays on bad ones, I’m glad I made it to Frankfurt as scheduled! (Doubly glad because I’d co-organized a dinner gathering with colleagues for that night!) I arrived at Logan Airport only about forty-five minutes before my flight because my bus was delayed for more than an hour on the highway thanks to a car fire in New Hampshire. The good people at the Aer Lingus desk told me I could make it – I’d checked in online and could carry on my tiny suitcase – and then they expedited me through security, watching to make sure I got through. I wouldn’t have made it if I hadn’t already checked in (something I often slack on) and packing light meant no luggage complications (plus plenty of room to bring home books). Lessons learned!

I hadn’t meant to write an epic – so much for that “lazy listicle”!

Thank you again for your visits and kind words!

Up Next: Yasnaya Polyana Award winner. Reading roundups for English-language books and Big Book finalists.

Disclaimers: The usual. Although I went to Frankfurt on my own this year, I thank the Institute of Translation for helping me out in several ways in Frankfurt. Huge thanks, too, to everyone else who treated me to books, happy hour wine, and lovely meals!