AmazonCrossing will be publishing my translation of Andrei Gelasimov’s Thirst in November, and to whet the public’s appetite they’re offering an excerpt from the novel, which you can download here.

Seaman writes one of the most accurate descriptions of the book I’ve read:

Strange things are happening in the rugged Riphean Mountains in this rambunctious novel of Russian society 100 years after the revolution, winner of the Russian Booker Prize. Slavnikova’s imaginary mountains, which resemble the Urals where she grew up, harbor mischievous spirits protecting deep veins of rubies that attract two unlikely rock hounds, the impervious professor Anfilogov and his humble, steel-toothed conspirator, Kolyan. As Slavnikova’s high-strung, stubbornly romantic narrator, Krylov, a down-and-out historian turned gem cutter, sees them off at the train station, he falls in love with a stranger. Their affair is so clandestine they don’t know each other’s names or why they’re being followed. more

I’ve already mentioned Kyle Semmel’s wonderful review for Three Percent, and now there are also reviews in Russian Life, ForeWord Reviews, and New York Journal of Books.

In the course of their life in translation, the best novels shed their skin more than once. The time for Mikhail Bulgakov’s White Guard has been long overdue. Marian Schwartz’s excellent translation of Bulgakov’s early novel is both timely and elegant, preserving the shape, texture, and richness of the original text.

And in conclusion:

Schwartz sustains careful attention to detail throughout the whole of the translation project. She faithfully reproduces the bewildering kaleidoscope of detail that makes White Guard both difficult and intriguing, capturing the ornamental imagery, tone, pacing and phrasing of the original. Marian Schwartz’s new translation of White Guard treats Bulgakov’s work honorably and performs a great service to Bulgakov’s present and future readers.

For the full review, see Slavic and East European Journal, vol. 53, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 680-681.

Two Lines, the CAT blog, has posted a piece giving a taste of my demo here.

Olga Slavnikova’s Booker-winning 2017 is so tough to describe that I think I’ll do something very lazy and begin with words that compactly list some of its themes: rock hound, translucence, rubies, Looking Glass (beyond), death, carnival, existentialism, false, genuine, mountain spirits, nature, reality, emptiness, illegal, companionship, revolution, secrets, Bazhov… more

Kudos to Yale University Press and its then senior editor Jonathan Brent for conceiving of the project and producing such a fine edition, with a serious and essential introductory essay by Professor Evgeny Dobrenko of the University of Sheffield in the UK.

The translator is always the last to know.  Slate chose my Oblomov translation as one of its Best Books of 2008!  Read about it here.  And be looking for the paperback edition, coming in February from Yale University Press.