A New Anthology of Russia's Greatest Gothic Writers

Muireann Maguire's Red Spectres: Russian Gothic Tales from the Twentieth Century, a new collection of supernatural fiction featuring eleven short stories from both classic and lesser known Russian writers, is out later this week. Featuring nine pieces never before translated into English, the anthology combines many of the best-loved aspects of the traditional ghost story with the full Gothic repertoire of insanity, obsession, retribution, and terror.

In a starred review, Kirkus calls Red Spectres, "An excellent anthology of psych-and-spook mischief from behind the Iron Curtain, where a literature rich in such things held sway during the Soviet era." Over at Languagehat, Stephen Dodson recommends the book, "warmly to anyone with the slightest interest in stories of the uncanny, in early-twentieth-century Russia, or simply in good writing."

At her personal blog, Russian Dinosaur editor and translator Muireann Maguire has been walking readers through the back story behind her new book. In this excerpt from her ongoing "Translator's Tale" series, Maguire looks at some of the problems that confront any first time translator, as well as how she tackled these issues when it came to translating twentieth century Russian Gothic fiction. Click here to read the whole post!

"In the current (Spring #13) issue of the New Ohio Review, Rosamund Bartlett has a delightful short piece about the tribulations of translating Tolstoy. (She is currently completing a new version of Anna Karenina for Oxford World's Classics.) It describes her experience of 'spending a long time staring' at Tolstoy's 'inimitable, participle-laden, congested sentences'; two passages on bees prove particularly convoluted. Previous translators of AK produced their own unique versions of each sentence; they couldn't all be right. In the end, it was Bartlett's prior research into Tolstoy's hobbies (including, for some time, beekeeping) for her biography that helped her to unlock his prose: two peculiar verbs were exposed as highly specific beekeeping terminology, rather than ambiguous grammar. Another problem was Tolstoy's use of the singular noun pchela (bee) in a context that suggested multiple bees. Finally her 'apiarial research' led to the revelation that Tolstoy was, unusually but correctly, using pchela to signify an entire hive rather than a solitary insect. This insight allowed her to translate the 'bee passage' from Chapter Twelve of Part Two correctly, perhaps for the first time in the history of Tolstoy translation. One wonders what she would make of the Moscow/beehive passage in War and Peace.

I can't claim similarly research-intensive breakthroughs in my translation of Aleksandr Chayanov or the other authors featured in Red Spectres. However, I did repeatedly confront three perennial problems of translation: what do you do when your author's prose just isn't that good? How can you be sure you're getting it right? And, last but not least, how can you check whether to pay copyright fees? As every translator can be sure to stumble up against at least two of these, I'll describe my (fairly Jurassic) approach to all three."

New Additions to the Ardis List

Overlook is proud to announce the release of Manuscripts Don’t Burn and Theater as Life, two extraordinary new titles from Ardis, the premier source for Russian literature in translation. For theater enthusiasts, those with an abiding interest in Russian history and culture, or simply anyone looking for an enriching end-of-summer book, Manuscripts Don’t Burn and Theater as Life are indispensable new volumes.

Theater as Life presents the major theatrical works of Nikolai Evreinov: The Main Thing, for which he is perhaps best known, A Merry Death, Ship of the Righteous, The Theater of the Soul, and The Theater of the Eternal War. A director, historian, and prolific playwright, Nikolai Evreinov remains a founding figure of modern Russian theater. Known particularly for his association with Russian Symbolism, Evreinov was profoundly interested in the relationship between reality and illusion and the intersection of theater and real life, themes which he explored—and captured—in the fantastical staging, intricate plot twists, and signature surprise endings of his plays. Now back in print, this essential anthology immerses the reader in Evreinov’s works and creative identity and, by extension, the theatrical experience of early 20^th century Russia at large. Scholar and translator Chris Collins’s extensive and enriching introduction, as well as portraits, production photographs, and Evreinov’s own sketches, complete the volume.

Expertly researched, compiled, and interpreted, Manuscripts Don’t Burn offers a biographical account in letters and diaries of Mikhail Bulgakov, one of Soviet Russia’s greatest literary figures. This remarkable documentary history delivers the impact of a scholarly work with the poignancy of a novel—creative, personal, and political writings tell of Bulgakov's development as an artist, the intimate details of his own life, and the daily uncertainty of life under the Stalinist regime. Censored during his lifetime, Bulgakov is celebrated and made brilliantly accessible for current readers in this fascinating new anthology.

Theater as Life is currently available, and Manuscripts Don't Burn will go on sale at the end of this month. Don’t miss these critical additions to the Ardis list!

Overlook Publisher Peter Mayer Talks to GalleyCat

Peter Mayer spoke to Jason Boog of GalleyCat this week in Overlook's SoHo office. Here's the post: "GalleyCat caught up with Overlook Press founder Peter Mayer to study the fine art of literary obfuscation. This month, Overlook Press will publish The Stranger by Max Frei--a literary fantasy novel supposedly written by the novel's main character. In reality, The Stranger was written by a reclusive female artist and has sold millions of copies in Russia. After hearing Russian readers rave about the book, Mayer scooped up the eight-book series. "A great deal of Russian literature has been disguised," he explained. "Russia was an autocratic state with great curtailments on people's personal lives... [obfuscation] is a feature that kept a lot of writers out of jail for many years."

Mayer saw some recession-era parallels in the book: "Max arises from his despair in life and creates his own reality. People are looking for escapism during a recession... But the recession was the last thing I was thinking about when I bought it." Mayer said Overlook picked up fantasy books "by accident," but carved out a niche in the market. "There's a dumb world of fantasy and an intelligent world of fantasy. I'd like to think we inhabit the later."

The publisher also told readers to look out for A Quiet Belief In Angels, R.J. Ellory's thriller by set in Georgia, USA. Overlook will publish between 50,000 to 100,000 copies of the British thriller this fall. "This guy can really write. He wrote 22 novels before he published," Mayer said. "He said, 'Those books were my university. That's how I learned how to write.'"