Pushkin House Russian Book Prize 2017 Winner Announced

H-SHERA ANN: Pushkin House Russian Book Prize 2017 Winner Announced

Discussion published by Yelena Kalinsky on Thursday, June 8, 2017

Dear SHERAns,

The Pushkin House has announced the winner of the fifth Pushkin House Russian Book Prize: art historian (and SHERA member and CCRAC Co-Director) Dr Rosalind Polly Blakesley. The press announcement follows.

ART HISTORIAN ROSALIND BLAKESLEY WINS FIFTH PUSHKIN HOUSE RUSSIAN BOOK PRIZE

Teffi’s Memories given special award for best Russian book in translation

Art historian and curator Rosalind Blakesley has won the fifth annual Pushkin House Russian book prize for her work The Russian Canvas: Painting in Imperial Russia, 1757-1881. Her book, published by Yale, was selected by a panel of five distinguished judges from a shortlist of six strong contenders.

Professor Simon Franklin, chairman of the judges, said: "Rosalind Blakesley’s The Russian Canvas is a magnificent achievement. It weaves a wonderfully subtle and compelling story of the emergence of a national school of Russian painting. In its range, depth and accessibility it has no parallel in any language. Beautifully produced, with over 250 illustrations, it will surely remain not only the authoritative scholarly account of its subject for many years, but also a much-browsed presence on the shelves of anybody interested in the history of Russian art and culture.”

Rosalind P. Blakesley is reader in Russian and European art at the University of Cambridge. She is a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery, and has curated numerous exhibitions. She said: "I'm thrilled. The Pushkin House Book Prize shines a spotlight on the complexity of Russia's culture, politics and history, and the rich ways in which people think and write about this. It is a great privilege to work on such a fascinating country, and to be the recipient of this year's award."

The judges, in agreement with Pushkin House, also agreed to award a special subsidiary prize for the best Russian book in translation, to Teffi’s Memories from Moscow to the Black Sea, translated into English for the first time by Robert Chandler, Irina Steinberg and Anne Marie Jackson, and published by Pushkin Press.

Prof Franklin said: "Witty, disarmingly modest and alive to the tragic contradictions of the Revolution unfolding around her, Teffi's Memories describes the collapse of a whole world. It makes for the perfect reading for this centenary year, particularly in this elegant and engaging new translation."

On behalf of the translators, Robert Chandler said: "This prize matters to us because it will bring more readers to Teffi, whose account of her experience as a refugee is, sadly, more relevant than ever to today’s world. We also hope it will encourage more translators to work together in the

Citation: Yelena Kalinsky. ANN: Pushkin House Russian Book Prize 2017 Winner Announced. H-SHERA. 06-08-2017. https://networks.h-net.org/node/166842/discussions/182851/ann-pushkin-house-russian-book-prize-2017-winner-announced Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-SHERA productive and enjoyable way that we have done. Our work is the fruit of collaboration between a huge number of people including at dozens of workshops including at Pushkin House and the annual translation summer school at City University.”

Douglas Smith & Stephanie Ellis-Smith, funders of the prize, said: “We are thrilled to congratulate Polly Blakesley on winning this year’s Pushkin House Russian Book Prize. Her book on Russian painting is both path-breaking and enthralling and offers for Western readers a world of discovery into this forgotten chapter of Russian art.”

Marc Polonsky of the Polonsky Foundation, also funders of the prize, said: "Rosalind Blakesley's magnificent history of Russian painting is an outstanding winner of the Pushkin House Prize, which has again demonstrated the high calibre and diversity of contemporary writing about Russia."

Andrew Jack, chair of the prize advisory committee, said: "These are very worthy winners among a very strong list of books on a diverse range of subjects. All of them deserve a wide readership."

The panel of judges for the 2017 Pushkin House Russian Book Prize comprises: Anne Applebaum, visiting professor at the London School of Economics and Washington Post columnist; Petr Aven, supervisory board member of Alfa Group Consortium; Simon Franklin, professor of Slavonic Studies at Cambridge University; Charlotte Hobson, author, journalist and translator; and Dominic Lieven, senior research fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, and winner of the 2016 Pushkin House Russian book prize.

For further press information, author and jacket images, and interview requests please contact Rebecca Ostrovksy at rebecca.ostrovksy @pushkinhouse.org.uk +44 20 7269 9770.

Notes to Editors

1) About the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize

The annual prize of £5,000 is awarded to the author of the best book about Russia or the Russian- speaking world accessible to the general reader, and published in English for the first time during the previous calendar year. Translations from other languages are eligible and actively sought.

The award is made possible thanks to generous contributions from Douglas Smith and Stephanie Ellis-Smith, and The Polonsky Foundation.

Previous winners are: Douglas Smith for Former People: the Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy (Macmillan); Catherine Merridale for Red Fortress: The Secret Heart of Russia’s History (Allen Lane); Serhii Plokhii for The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union (Oneworld); and Dominic Lieven for Towards the Flame (Penguin).

The advisory board for the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize comprises:

∙ Sir Rodric Braithwaite, former British ambassador to Moscow and author of Afgantsy

∙ Andrew Jack (chair), chairman emeritus, Pushkin House, and journalist at the Financial Times ∙ Bridget Kendall, Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge University ∙ Andrew Nurnberg, managing director, Andrew Nurnberg Associates literary agency ∙ Marc Polonsky, trustee, The Polonsky Foundation ∙ Douglas Smith, historian, translator, author and winner of the 2013 Pushkin House Russian book prize

2) About Pushkin House

Founded in the 1950s, Pushkin House is the leading centre for Russian culture in London. With a focus on Anglo-Russian exchange, it hosts a diverse cultural programme and is a meeting place for those interested in Russian culture, history and language.

Pushkin House is politically independent. Events hosted by the House include lectures, exhibitions, film screenings, concerts and readings. It welcomes collaborations with others dedicated to Russian culture. It holds true to its original aims: to create a welcoming meeting-place: ‘for the enjoyment, understanding and promotion of Russian culture in all its forms, and for the exchange of views in a lively, informal atmosphere, with freedom of speech a core principle’.

3) About the 2017 shortlisted books

The House of the Dead. Daniel Beer. Allen Lane.

About the book

It was known as 'the vast prison without a roof'. From the beginning of the nineteenth century to the Russian Revolution, the tsarist regime exiled more than one million prisoners and their families beyond the Ural Mountains to Siberia.

The House of the Dead, brings to life both the brutal realities of an inhuman system and the tragic and inspiring fates of those who endured it. This is the history of common criminals and political radicals, the victims of serfdom and village politics, the wives and children who followed husbands and fathers, and of fugitives and bounty-hunters.

About the author

Daniel Beer is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of Renovating Russia.

The Russian Canvas: Painting in Imperial Russia, 1757-1881. Rosalind Blakesley. Yale UP.

About the book

The Russian Canvas charts the remarkable rise of Russian painting in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the nature of its relationship with other European schools. Starting with the foundation of the

Imperial Academy of the Arts in 1757 and culminating with the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, it details the professionalisation and wide-ranging activities of painters against a backdrop of dramatic social and political change.

The Imperial Academy formalised artistic training but later became a foil for dissent, as successive generations of painters negotiated their own positions between pan-European engagement and local and national identities. Drawing on original archival research, this book recontextualises the work of major artists, revives the reputations of others, and explores the complex developments that took Russian painters from provincial anonymity to international acclaim.

About the author

Rosalind P. Blakesley is reader in Russian and European art at the University of Cambridge.

Putin Country. A Journey into the Real Russia. Anne Garrels. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

About the book More than twenty years ago, the NPR correspondent Anne Garrels first visited Chelyabinsk, a gritty military-industrial center a thousand miles east of Moscow. The longtime home of the Soviet nuclear program, the Chelyabinsk region contained beautiful lakes, shuttered factories, mysterious closed cities, and some of the most polluted places on earth. Garrels’s goal was to chart the aftershocks of the U.S.S.R.’s collapse by traveling to Russia’s heartland.

Returning again and again, she found that the area’s new freedoms and opportunities were exciting but also traumatic. As the economic collapse of the early 1990s abated, the city of Chelyabinsk became richer and more cosmopolitan, even as official corruption and intolerance for minorities grew more entrenched. Sushi restaurants proliferated; so did shakedowns. In the neighboring countryside, villages crumbled into the ground. Far from the glitz of Moscow, the people of Chelyabinsk were working out their country’s destiny, person by person. In Putin Country, Garrels crafts an intimate portrait of Middle Russia.

About the author

Anne Garrels is a former foreign correspondent for NPR and the author of Naked in Baghdad.

Bolshoi Confidential. Simon Morrison. HarperCollins.

About the book

With exclusive access to state archives and private sources, Morrison sweeps through the history of the Bolshoi ballet, tracing the political ties that bind the institution to the varying Russian regimes, and detailing the birth of some of the best-loved ballets in the repertoire. From its disreputable beginnings in 1776, the Bolshoi became a point of pride for the tsarist empire after the defeat of

Napoleon in 1812.

After the revolution, Moscow was transformed into a global capital; meetings of the Communist Party were hosted at the Bolshoi, and the Soviet Union was signed into existence on its stage. Recently, a 450 million restoration has returned the Bolshoi to its former glory, even as prized talent has departed. Under Vladimir Putin, the Bolshoi Theatre has been called on to preserve Russia’s lengthy artistic legacy and to mirror its neo-imperial ambitions.

About the author Simon Morrison is a professor of music at Princeton University, a contributor to the New York Times and the New York Review of Books, and the author of The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev.

The Romanovs. 1613-1918. Simon Sebag Montefiore. Orion.

About the book

This is the intimate story of twenty tsars and tsarinas, some touched by genius, some by madness, but all inspired by holy autocracy and imperial ambition. Montefiore reveals their secret world of unlimited power and ruthless empire-building, overshadowed by palace conspiracy, family rivalries, sexual decadence and wild extravagance, and peopled by a cast of adventurers, courtesans, revolutionaries and poets, from Ivan the Terrible to Tolstoy, from Queen Victoria to Lenin.

To rule Russia was both imperial-sacred mission and poisoned chalice: six tsars were murdered and all the Romanovs lived under constant threat to their lives. Peter the Great tortured his own son to death while making Russia an empire, and dominated his court with a dining club notable for compulsory drunkenness, naked dwarfs and fancy dress. Catherine the Great overthrew her own husband - who was murdered soon afterwards - loved her young male favourites, conquered Ukraine and fascinated Europe. The Romanovs climaxes with a fresh, unforgettable portrayal of Nicholas and Alexandra, the rise and murder of Rasputin, war and revolution - and the harrowing massacre of the entire family.

About the author

Simon Sebag Montefiore is a prizewinning historian whose books include Catherine the Great and Potemkin; Stalin: the court of the Red Tsar; Young Stalin; Jerusalem: the biography; and the novels Sashenka and One night in winter.

Memories - From Moscow to the Black Sea. Teffi, translation Irina Steinberg, Anne Marie Jackson, Robert Chandler. Pushkin Press.

About the book

The writer and satirist Teffi was a literary sensation in Russia until war and revolution forced her to

Citation: Yelena Kalinsky. ANN: Pushkin House Russian Book Prize 2017 Winner Announced. H-SHERA. 06-08-2017. https://networks.h-net.org/node/166842/discussions/182851/ann-pushkin-house-russian-book-prize-2017-winner-announced Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 5 H-SHERA leave her country for ever. Memories is her blackly funny and heartbreaking account of her final, frantic journey into exile across Russia-travelling by cart, freight train and rickety steamer-and the 'ordinary and unheroic' people she encounters.

From refugees setting up camp on a dockside to a singer desperately buying a few 'last scraps' of fabric to make a dress, all are caught up in the whirlwind; all are immortalized by Teffi's penetrating gaze. This is a portrayal of what it means to say goodbye, with haunting relevance in today's new age of diaspora.

About the author and translators

Teffi (1872-1952) wrote poems, plays, stories, satires and feuilletons, and was renowned in Russia for her wit and powers of observation. Following her emigration in 1919 she settled in Paris, where she became a leading figure in the émigré literary scene. Her work was translated into English for the first time by Irina Steinberg, who was born in Moscow but emigrated to England with her family at the age of eight. Anne Marie Jackson is a literary translator and works exclusively from Russian into English. Robert Chandler is a British poet and prize-winning translator of numerous works including Pushkin, Platonov and Grossman.