tiganeasca
Moderator
I am unable to find a thread on this (general) topic, so thought I would start one. (If I am wrong, please feel free to append this to the correct thread.)
I just discovered, courtesy of my other literary-ish website (Library Thing) a fascinating list of what a group of "experts"(*) deemed the 100 best (prose) Russian books of the 21st century so far. To my semi-expert eye, one of the nice things about the list is that it seems to represent a relatively wide range of ethnicities; there are many surnames that are not ethnically Russian. In addition, despite the inevitable fact that some authors are represented by multiple volumes, there is not much of that--meaning that there are lots and lots of different names.
There is, of course, an obstacle, it's only available in Russian. My Russian is not up to the task (thank you Google Translate!), but I will share the list of their top five:
1. Maria Stepanova. Memory Memory (2017) [shortlisted for this year's Booker as In Memory of Memory]
2. Evgeny Vodolazkin. Laurel (2012)
3. Alexey Salnikov. Petrovs in and around the flu (2017)
4. Alexander Chudakov. The darkness falls on the old steps (2001)
5. Vladimir Sorokin. The Blizzard (2010)
Of these five, I'll confess that Stepanova and Sorokin (who also has books at #6 and #15) are the only names I'm familiar with. But there are some interesting appearances further down the list, such as:
11. Victor Pelevin. The Holy Book of the Werewolf (2004) (another of his is at #73);
14. Mikhail Shishkin. The Letterman (2010) (also has a book at #27);
28. Leonid Yuzefovich. Cranes and Dwarfs (2009) [Archipelago has two of his novellas--The Storm and Horsemen of the Sands--available in a single volume...a very interesting writer, in my opinion];
36. Lyudmila Ulitskaya. Daniel Stein, Translator (2006)
48. Vladimir Makanin. Asan (2008)
57. Svetlana Alexievich. Second Hand Time (2013)
There are some others worthy of note as well. The difficulty, of course, is that they're not likely available in translation yet (though I will confess to being too lazy to check them all). But at least this is a list of authors/titles to be on the lookout for. And finally, even if you can't read Russian and have no interest in the books themselves, do yourself a favor and go to the website anyway: many of the covers are absolutely stunning!
(*) At the bottom of the list is the complete identification of the experts; from my distinctly layman's viewpoint, it seems a pretty impressive list.
I just discovered, courtesy of my other literary-ish website (Library Thing) a fascinating list of what a group of "experts"(*) deemed the 100 best (prose) Russian books of the 21st century so far. To my semi-expert eye, one of the nice things about the list is that it seems to represent a relatively wide range of ethnicities; there are many surnames that are not ethnically Russian. In addition, despite the inevitable fact that some authors are represented by multiple volumes, there is not much of that--meaning that there are lots and lots of different names.
There is, of course, an obstacle, it's only available in Russian. My Russian is not up to the task (thank you Google Translate!), but I will share the list of their top five:
1. Maria Stepanova. Memory Memory (2017) [shortlisted for this year's Booker as In Memory of Memory]
2. Evgeny Vodolazkin. Laurel (2012)
3. Alexey Salnikov. Petrovs in and around the flu (2017)
4. Alexander Chudakov. The darkness falls on the old steps (2001)
5. Vladimir Sorokin. The Blizzard (2010)
Of these five, I'll confess that Stepanova and Sorokin (who also has books at #6 and #15) are the only names I'm familiar with. But there are some interesting appearances further down the list, such as:
11. Victor Pelevin. The Holy Book of the Werewolf (2004) (another of his is at #73);
14. Mikhail Shishkin. The Letterman (2010) (also has a book at #27);
28. Leonid Yuzefovich. Cranes and Dwarfs (2009) [Archipelago has two of his novellas--The Storm and Horsemen of the Sands--available in a single volume...a very interesting writer, in my opinion];
36. Lyudmila Ulitskaya. Daniel Stein, Translator (2006)
48. Vladimir Makanin. Asan (2008)
57. Svetlana Alexievich. Second Hand Time (2013)
There are some others worthy of note as well. The difficulty, of course, is that they're not likely available in translation yet (though I will confess to being too lazy to check them all). But at least this is a list of authors/titles to be on the lookout for. And finally, even if you can't read Russian and have no interest in the books themselves, do yourself a favor and go to the website anyway: many of the covers are absolutely stunning!
(*) At the bottom of the list is the complete identification of the experts; from my distinctly layman's viewpoint, it seems a pretty impressive list.
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