![]() ![]() Poet, fiction writer, and artist Ksenia Buksha was born in Saint Petersburg. Fisher won the Cliff Becker Prize for Poetry in Translation The Freedom Factory has echoes of this same device.” ―Gennadiy Kalashnikov “Ksenia Buksha has successfully done what no one else, it seems has been able to do: combine utopia and anti–utopia.” ―Nadezhda Sergeyeva ” ―Maxim Amelin “ I thought of Spanish Nobel laureate Camilo José Cela and his novel The Hive… which through the blending of many disparate voices gives an image of the time, the characters, the particular atmosphere. “ The Freedom Factory is a thriller, a romance, and a social drama all in one, and―this is especially important―it’s a book by a post–Soviet person about the Soviet experience.” ―Dmitriy Bykov “My first impression was that of a … novel written by a slightly drunk Joyce. Fisher has rendered it in an English text that is just as dazzling as the original." ―Sarah Kapp, The Moscow Times August Is Women in Translation Month: Translations."Rife with laugh-out-loud moments, heartbreak, and arresting lyricism, Buksha’s The Freedom Factory brings a bygone era to life in all of its madness, harshness, and beauty.I've abandoned a whole lot of books lately but that shouldn't be read as damning with faint praise! Anyway, happy reading, I'm glad you're enjoying the Gigolashvili. and it's one of the most consistently interesting books I've read in Russian (and English, too, maybe?) in a long time. It's still difficult but it's so suspenseful that it keeps me up at night. Заххок is like that, though Medvedev divides the storytelling between lots of narrators, which mitigates the difficulty since he truly does create distinct voices, some of whom explain unfamiliar concepts and terms. Your choice of words, about "ploughing along," is just perfect: that's what I do, too, very happily, when a story is absorbing and vocabulary is difficult. Other than the prologue! There's very strong atmosphere and I'm very interested, but I'm waiting for the/a story to come together. Gigolashvili really knows how to tell a story right from the first page but so far, even dozens of pages in, Idiatullin hasn't really started to do that for me. I suspect that a difference in storytelling is at least as important, though. ![]() I think part of the difference for us as non-native readers is the language itself: the Idiatullin book feels slangier to me, in a more total or global way, though that may be partially because more of the slang in the Gigolashvili novel was familiar to me from other books, even back when I read it. ![]() I read about 50-60 pages of Brezhnev City before getting totally sucked into Заххок and agree about the language: it's more difficult for me than Чертово колесо, too. Thank you for your comment, Philip! These are excellent observations about reading as a non-native speaker. This translation also received a star from Publishers Weekly. ![]() It’s great to see a translation of a nineteenth-century novel writtenīy a woman… and this one sounds like particular fun. Translated by Nora Seligman Favorov (Russian Library/Columbia University Sofia Khvoshchinskaya’s City Folk and Country Folk,.Russian reading: her writing and characters are clear, and she always seems toĪddress social and political issues, too. Novels, including this one, in the early 2000s, when I got myself back into Polina Dashkova’s Madness Treads Lightly, translatedīy Marian Schwartz (Amazon Crossing).Which I’ve heard so many good things about over the years. I’m embarrassingly long overdue to read this National Bestseller Award winner, Ksenia Buksha’s The Freedom Factory, translated by Anne Fisher (Phoneme Media).Trying to find ways to counter the negative-I want to highlight three of theīooks on this year’s translation list that are written by women and that (bias Since I’m one to accentuate the positive-while simultaneously Post) will soon be edited and I’ll be starting on Narine Abgaryan’s Three Apples Fell from the Sky ( previous I’m also at various stages with two other books, both for Oneworld, written by women that Iĭidn’t mention in that post because I hadn’t yet read them: Guzel Yakhina’s Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes ( previous Post) is already available from Glagoslav. Vellum, and Melanie Moore’s translation of Khemlin’s The Investigator ( previous Meanwhile, Carol Apollonio’s translation of Alisa Ganieva’s Bride and Groom ( previous Library/Columbia University Press and my translation of Marina Stepnova’s Безбожный переулок ( Italian Lessons) ( previousĮditions. That’s a downer of a datum, but I’m happy there areīooks-meaning books translated into English-already available or on the wayįrom some of the authors I mentioned in my old post. ![]()
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