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The Time of the Russian Novel

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The Time of the Russian Novel

10.12.2015

The Big Book Prize, Russia’s national literary award, will be handed out for the tenth time this year, with modern authors from 46 Russian regions and 15 countries in contention. The shortlist was revealed as early as May, with just 9 books selected out of 300 submissions. The winners will finally be announced on 10 December.

The Big Book Prize, one of Russia’s most important literary awards, enjoys constant support from such organizations as the Russian Library Association, the Russian Book Union, the Center for Support of Russian Literature at the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian Culture Ministry, the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, Gazprom Media Holding and others. Every year, over 100 cultural, scientific, public and political figures, as well as journalists and businessmen, judge the contest. Mikhail Seslavinsky, Head of the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications, called the award ‘an invitation to the intelligentsia to read modern literature.’


The winner of the online readers’ poll—Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes by Kazan writer Guzel Yakhina—was announced yesterday. The debut novel has already received the Yasnaya Polyana Award and the Book of the Year Prize. The novel was published in the prestigious AST Publishing House’s ‘Prose: Feminine Singular’ series. Many critics point out the book is an event in modern women’s literature, as legitimate as any book written by a man. The novel tells the story of a woman from a remote Tatar village who finds herself in a Siberian gulag in the 1930s. However, the book is not about political repressions but about love that defies everything. Incidentally, Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich won the online poll last year.

In addition to Guzel Yakhina’s book, the shortlist includes Anna Matveyeva’s short-story collection Nine from the Nineties, Alexei Varlamov’s novel The Imagined Wolf, Igor Virabov’s biography of Andrei Voznesensky, Viktor Pelevin’s novel Love for Three Zuckerbrins, Boris Yekimov’s Autumn in Zadonye, Dina Rubina’s Russian Canary, Valery Zalotukha’s The Candle and Roman Senchin’s Flood Zone.

You can read all of the shortlisted books on the Bookmate website or using the Bookmate application

Writer Mikhail Butov, head of the award’s expert panel, noted that the anniversary contest marked another occasion when “a rather traditional novel, with a characteristically strong accent on history, came to the foreground again. We have never dealt with as many huge, sometimes multivolume novels. This year has been surprisingly traditional, with no tellurian mythology in sight; it’s all going back to the traditional Russian novel, with obligatory historical references, no matter to what era.”

The winner of the Big Book Prize will be announced at the Pashkov House tonight. The first-prize winner gets 3 million roubles, with second and third prizes amounting to 1.5 million and 1 million respectively.

We met with Georgy Urushadze, Director General of the Big Book Prize, to discuss the award.

Have youor the jurymade any discoveries this year?
The Big Book discovers new writers every year. For instance, Guzel Yakhina’s Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes is a very strong debut novel for a young writer.

The results will be announced tonight. Could you share the details with us right now?
No-one knows the results yet. There are 109 people on the jury, and they are sending ballots up until the award ceremony begins.

Do you agree with Mikhail Butov that modern authors are favoring historical novels again?
Most of the texts that made the shortlist are devoted to various 20th-century events, from the revolution to the tumultuous 1990s. Like Mikhail Butov said, those works are ‘about time that is seemingly gone but cannot come to an end.’

With such ‘mastodons’ as Dina Rubina and Viktor Pelevin in competition, one can’t help but wonder if the jury had to make a very difficult choice… The contestants are in different weight categories, aren’t they?
I’ve just imagined Mrs. Rubina as a mastodon and it made me laugh. You know, the Big Book is not about the writers, it’s about the writings. A writer’s previous works could probably influence the judges, but I’d say debut authors have an advantage: there is no ‘baggage,’ no-one compares their books to their earlier works.

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