Marian Schwartz is a prize-winning translator of Russian fiction, history, biography, criticism, and fine art. She is the principal English translator of the works of Nina Berberova and translated the New York Times bestseller The Last Tsar, by Edvard Radzinsky, as well as classics by Mikhail Bulgakov, Ivan Goncharov, Yuri Olesha, and Mikhail Lermontov. Her most recent book translations are Olga Slavnikova's 2017 (Overlook Press), Mikhail Bulgakov's White Guard (Yale University Press) and Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov (Seven Stories Press), now out in paperback from Yale University Press. She is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts translation fellowships and is a past president of the American Literary Translators Association.
I was thrilled to read a very positive review of my translation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s White Guard by Sidney Eric Dement of the University of Kansas in the Slavic and East European Journal. He begins:
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.
The graphics used on this site were inspired by the work of Liubov Popova (1889-1924), a Russian artist and designer influenced by Constructivism and Futurism, as seen in her biography, by D.V. Sarabianov and N.L. Adaskina, Liubov Popova, translated by Marian Schwartz and published by Harry N. Abrams in 1990.