10 best Russian books published in English in 2021
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Loading... - Amelia McPherson
- 29 Dec 2021
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From a 17th century priest’s biography and Pushkin’s prose to modern writers - these translations of both contemporary and classic books are definitely worth your time. Add them to your Christmas reading list.
1. Archpriest Avvakum. The Life Written by Himself
As part of the Russian Library series by Columbia University Press, a new translation of this very old story has been published. Archpriest Avvakum is the famous 17th century Old Believer who was one of the first to reject reforms in the Orthodox Church and become a dissident. He had previously been a widely admired priest who was close to the tsar. However, that didn’t save him from exile and jail.
While even Russians struggle to read this story, written in an archaic language, English readers are lucky to be able to read it more easily in the beautiful translation by Kenneth N. Brostrom.
2. Alexander Pushkin. The Captain’s Daughter. Essential Stories
The Captain’s Daughter is a romantic novel which takes us back to the 18th century in the time of the massive Pugachev Rebellion, which plunged half of the country into chaos. “'God save us from seeing a Russian revolt, senseless and merciless” is a quote from the novel that today is an aphorism.
The collection includes other stories, such as The Queen of Spades, where a man becomes obsessed with cards and goes mad. These works are published in the "finely nuanced translations" of Anthony Briggs who earlier brought into English Pushkin’s famous novel in verse, Eugene Onegin.
3. Fyodor Dostoevsky. A Bad Business. Essential Stories
A writer who is a heavy drinker finds himself at a cemetery where dead people talk to each other in the short story, “Bobok”. In “The Crocodile”, a Gogolesque short story, a civil servant is swallowed alive by a crocodile. Considering the attention this causes, he starts working with great passion. There’s also the sad “Christmas Tree” short story about a beggar boy on the eve of the great holiday. As the publisher notes, Dostoevsky masterfully showed scenes "from the turbulent underbelly of St Petersburg". He breathed life into the lowest and most miserable members of society, and showed their dark sides in a deeply psychological manner.
The collection is translated by Maria Slater and Nicolas Pasternak Slater, a nephew of Doctor Zhivago's author, Boris Pasternak, who earlier translated many great stories by Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, and other Russian writers.
4. Andrei Bely. The Symphonies
Andrei Bely is an early 20th century writer, most famous for his modernist novel titled Petersburg. It depicts the city on the eve of the first Russian Revolution and the narrative sometimes reminds one of a stream of consciousness. Critics often compare the work with James Joice’s Ulysses.
The Symphonies is Bely’s early experimental work, a modernist play with literature and music. Not an easy read! "Fantastically strange stories that capture the banality of life, the intimacy of love, and the enchantment of art", says the publisher, presenting the book translated by Jonathan Stone, who is associate professor of Russian at Franklin & Marshall College focusing on Russian modernism. Read More…
