Young Translators Award 2012 « Academia Rossica

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Rossica Translation Prize and RYTA winners to be announced

Excitement is building as we prepare for the announcement of the winners of the Rossica Translation Prize and Rossica Young Translators Award! The winners will be revealed on Wednesday 23 May.

The Rossica Translation Prize Shortlist

		The Cathedral Clergy: A Chronicle By Nikolay Leskov Translated by Margaret Winchell Slavica; 2010; pp. 532 ISBN 978-0-89357-373-7 As beloved by Russians as the works of Leskov’s better known fellow writers, The Cathedral Clergy offers, in its unusual subject matter and unconventional structure, a unique approach to the Russian Realist novel. It is the tale of a town, an adventure story, a love story, a life of a modern martyr, a comedy as well as a tragedy. Given its vivid style The Cathedral Clergy has proven nearly impossible to translate. This expert annotated translation, however, now affords English speakers the pleasure of discovering a nineteenth-century Russian novel.

		The Golden Calf By Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov Translated by Konstantin Gurevich and Helen Anderson Open Letter; 2009; pp. 336 ISBN 978-1934824078 The Golden Calf—the first complete translation of the novel—restores the absurd, manic energy of the original and reaffirms the judgment of the Soviet censors, who said: "You have a very nice hero, Ostap Bender. But really, he's just a son of a bitch." Ostap Bender, the "grand strategist," is obsessed with getting one last big score—a few hundred thousand will do—and heading for Rio de Janeiro, where there are "a million and a half people, all of them wearing white pants, without exception."

		Petersburg By Andrei Bely Translated by John Elsworth Pushkin Press; 2009; pp. 569 ISBN 978-1-901285-96-3 Petersburg is a story of family dysfunction, parricide, political terror, conspiracy and murder, but it also points to apocalypse and redemption. The world of history−the revolution of 1905−and the world of myth−in the figure of Saturn, who devours his children and in turn is devoured by them−are intertwined. Russia is torn apart by the conflict between revolutions and reaction, at the level of myth, these opposites are indistinguishable. The Ableukhovs, father and son, embody this conflict, but are scions of the same Mongol lineage.

		The Road By Vasily Grossman Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler with Olga Mukovnikova Maclehose Press; 2010; pp. 392 ISBN 9781906694258 Vasily Grossman is widely recognized as one of the outstanding literary figures of the twentieth century. The short fiction collected here - satire, comedy, tragedy and pure narrative - illustrate the remarkable breadth of his work, and demonstrate all the bold intelligence, delicate irony and extraordinary vividness for which he has become known. In addition to the eleven stories, this volume includes the complete text of 'The Hell of Treblinka', one of the first descriptions of a Nazi extermination camp.

		The Village By Ivan Bunin Translated by Galya and Hugh Aplin Oneworld Classics; 2009; pp. 200 ISBN 9781847491046 Ivan Bunin's first published novel, "The Village" is a bleak and uncompromising portrayal of rural life in south-west Russia. Set at the time of the 1905 Revolution and centering on episodes in the lives of two peasant brothers - 'characters sunk so far below the average of intelligence as to be scarcely human' - it reveals the pettiness, violence and ignorance of life on the land.At once nostalgic for a bygone more innocent age and foreshadowing the turbulences of the twentieth century, Bunin's narrative is a triumph of bitter realism, shot through with the author's classical style and precision of language.