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Riveting Russian Writing Edition Two, August 2017 Russian EDITORIAL BY ROSIE GOLDSMITH Can you remember your first time? thrillers, sci-fi, satire and surrealism by Mine was with Dr Zhivago. I was fifteen, men and women from all parts of the seduced into reading my first Russian Russian-speaking world which were, literature by Omar Sharif. Then came thanks to a parallel wealth of translators, Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Crime and available in English. Punishment, Turgenev’s short stories, The Publishing in the Age of Putin is not Master and Margarita, Chekhov’s plays, the easy. Pussy Riot and homophobia, Crimea poetry of Pushkin and Akhmatova. I was and Ukraine, have exposed the limits a teenager galloping through the Russian of Kremlin tolerance. Bookshops and Classics, drunk on their depth, breadth libraries are closing, and more writers are and ambition, devouring the descriptions emigrating online. It’s the same all over of imperial cities, tormented aristocrats, the world, but according to The Moscow glittering ballrooms and brave, down- Times, in the capital only 226 bookshops trodden peasants; of war, death, love, cater for a population of 12 million; in religion, of battles for the soul. Russian Paris, a city with a population five times writers seemed to me to aspire to smaller, there are 700 bookshops. something nobler, deeper, darker, richer. But what of creativity in adversity? The Russian Revolution, two world wars, Thanks perhaps to the harsher spotlight the Cold War, Stalin followed, my mind directed at Russia today, possibly also opened to pain and suffering through thanks to this year’s centenary of the Solzhenitsyn and Irina Ratushinskaya. Russian Revolution and the accompany- Then, as a student and later a BBC ing exhibitions and new commissions, I journalist, I read mainly prescribed books see a greater interest in Russian writing. and newspapers. With the collapse of the There’s been an explosion of poetry, of Soviet Union I began a career tracking ebook reading. Today you can read not down “stories”, not literature. Real-life just about Moscow and St Petersburg Russia was more exciting, trips to Moscow but about Kiev and Makhachkala. Today, and Vladivostok better, Gorbachev and novels, stories and poems feature Putin more challenging. And in this oligarchs and drug addicts, prisoners atmosphere, I found myself asking: Where and poets, political activists, corrupt had all the writers gone? Who was writing policemen and soldiers, office workers the great Russian novel now? and farmers, and as many women as men. It took me years to reconnect with For my own reawakening my personal Russian literature, to ditch the news and thanks go to the indefatigable literature 1 the nostalgia and to tackle the modern programmers of the British Council in the UK and Russia (see one example of their ground-breaking Russian authors, such work here: literature.britishcouncil.org/ as Hamid Ismailov, Maria Stepanova, project/the-uk-russia-year-of-language- Dmitri Bykov, Ludmila Ulitskaya, Zakhar and-literature-2016) and to the Transla- Prilepin, Alisa Ganieva, Boris Akunin, tion Institute in Moscow: institutperevo- Andrei Kurkov, Zinovy Zinik, Oleg Kashin da.ru. Download their wonderful Read and Mikhail Shishkin. They’ve bowled me Russia Anthology for free here: readrus- over. You too can meet some of them here sia.org/anthology/read-russia-anthology in this, the second edition of our (courtesy of Read Russia). magazine, our “Russian Riveter” – a Personal thanks too to my fellow selection of Riveting Reviews, and, of riveters Anna Blasiak and West Camel for course, Riveting Reads. helping make this Riveter possible. Over the past few years I’ve been Rosie Goldsmith is Director of the European Literature Network and Riveter-in-Chief. lucky to read, meet and interview some Russian INTRODUCTION BY WEST CAMEL I first came to Russian literature, as so in this, the second edition of The many native English-speakers have, as a Riveter magazine, is the centenary of young person – finding myself astounded the Russian Revolution, and the comme- by Dostoyevsky’s ability in Crime and morative exhibition and programme of Punishment to evoke both terror, when events taking place this summer at the Raskolnikov returns to the scene of his British Library. More specifically, two crime, and chagrin for Katerina Ivanova as British Library events in collaboration she brandishes her “certificate of honour”. with our very own European Litera- I relished the matro- and patronymics I ture Network Riveter-in-Chief, Rosie found in Tolstoy, and vowed to one day Goldsmith. write short stories like Chekov’s. But, also In the afternoon of 3 August the like so many other English-speaking Riveting Russian Translation Workshop readers, my subsequent knowledge of brings together expert and aspiring Russian literature has been spare. Editing Russian-to-English translators to discuss and writing for this magazine has the literary translation of classical and rejuvenated my interest in the vast scope contemporary Russian fiction, and to in- of literature produced by this fascinating dulge in some in-depth text analysis. In region and its diaspora(s). All of us the evening Rosie hosts Riveting Reads: working on this Russian Riveter hope that Russian Literature Today, with celebrated we can prompt the same enthusiasm in Russian language writers, the Caucasian, you for this Riveting Russian writing. Alisa Ganieva and Russian émigré Lon- The reason for our eastward trek doner Zinovy Zinik, alongside historian 2 and novelist Boris Akunin and Ukrainian humorist Teffi, Nobel-winner Svetlana writer and satirist Andrey Kurkov. Alexievich’s Chernobyl Prayer, as well as Naturally, with such an impressive contemporary crime, gothic and specula- and varied line-up, reviews of their work tive fiction. take prime position in this, our Russian The growing range of Russian Riveter. We have also taken the opportu- literature now available to English nity to garner from our Famous Four their readers is commented on in an Riveting Reads: their recommendations article by Natasha Petrova about her of the books in Russian that are most ground-breaking publishing house Glas; important to them. We didn’t influence and by translator Lisa Hayden’s roundup them at all in their choices – it was a of this year’s Russian-to-English completely free vote. However, three of translations. them have chosen to recommend a work We also have the pleasure of by Tolstoy! offering our Riveting Reader a Russian It will likely come as no surprise to fairy tale: Sister Vixen and the Grey Wolf anyone who loves Russian literature by Alexander Afanasyev, translated that the work of Tolstoy still holds such exclusively for us by Katherine Gregor. sway, also demonstrated by the fact that We have some poems by Marina articles from two of our contributors Tsvetaeva, too, and an extract from the compare different translations of award-winning novel of our special guest Tolstoy’s novels. author, Alisa Ganieva. But Russian writing is not just about All this riveting content has been classic nineteenth-century authors, selected, contributed and provided to you, important as they are. We review a our Riveting Readers, for free. It may be range of work, from surreal children’s free but it has great value. We therefore writing of the modern day by the eminently hope you will cherish it and recommend versatile Anna Starobinets, to diaries it as riveting to all interested in European written in Yiddish by Bella Chagall (wife literature. of the Russian-French-Jewish artist), a collection by the twentieth-century West Camel is Editor of The Riveter. CONTENTS Editorial Riveting Reviews. Fiction.............................................10 by Rosie Goldsmith............................................................1 Riveting Reviews. Nonfiction.......................................30 Introduction by West Camel...................................................................2 Riveting Russian Literature. Part 2 Five poems by Marina Tsvetaeva...................................36 Riveting Russian Literature. Part 1 Sister Vixen and the Grey Wold Riveting Russian Reads................................................40 by Alexander Afanasyev...................................................4 Further Riveting Russian Reads.................................43 The Mountain and the Wall (extract) by Alisa Ganieva..6 3 Part 1 Part Russian literature SISter VIXEN AND THE GREY WOLF BY ALEXANDER AFANASYEV A FAIRY tale, TRANSlated AND adaPTED BY KatHERINE GREGOR There was once a man and his wife. The man said to his wife, “Bake some pies, woman, while I go fishing.” He caught a lot of fish – an entire cartful – and was bringing them home, when, on the way, he saw a vixen curled up at the side of the road. The man got down from his cart and approached the vixen, but she didn’t stir. She just lay there, looking dead. “This will make a fine gift for my wife,” he said, and picked up the vixen, put it into his cart and carried on straight ahead. The vixen, however, took advantage of this time in the cart to start throwing the fish out, slowly, one at a time. Once she had thrown all the fish out, she jumped off the cart. “Look, woman,” said the man . “I’ve brought you a beautiful fur collar for a coat.” “Where is it?” she asked. “Out there, in the cart. With the fish.” The wife went out to the cart. No collar and no fish. So she began chiding her husband: “You so-and-so! And a liar, too!” At this point, the man worked out that the vixen hadn’t been dead. He got very upset, but there was nothing he could do about it. Meanwhile, the vixen gathered all the fish she had scattered on the road, piled them up in a heap and sat eating them. A grey wolf came up to her. “Good day to you, sister.” “Good day to you, neighbour.” “Won’t you give me some of your fish?” Alexander Afanasyev “Go and catch some yourself.” “I don’t know how to.” “Heavens! I managed.