February 09, 2010

A "very bouncy" translation of The Little Golden Calf


The Louisville Courier-Journal has a nice feature this morning on Anne Fisher, the translator and driving force behind our new translation of The Little Golden Calf. It talks about how the book went in and out of favor with the Soviet regime, and how Anne was inspired to bring the work out in English because it had been so instrumental in forging her own understanding of all things Russian.

As an American undergraduate exchange student in Karelia, a province in northwestern Russia, Anne O. Fisher wanted to deepen her appreciation of her host country's culture. So her Russian classmates introduced her to a fictional confidence man, Ostap Bender, the hero of Ilya Ilf's and Evgeny Petrov's obscure satirical novels The Twelve Chairs and The Little Golden Calf "My friends told me, if you want to understand Russia, you have to read these books,â? said Fisher, who lives in Louisville and works as a Russian translator. She quickly became obsessed with the books and with Bender, a Huck Finn with a Slavic accent, a Marx Brother mugging among the Marxists. She went on to write her doctoral dissertation on Ilf and Petrov, then helped translate 2006's Ilf & Petrov's American Road Trip: the 1935 Travelogue of Two Soviet Writers, a Borat-like book about the satirists' journey across the United States.

There is also a bit that any translator can appreciate:

"I thought I knew these stories backwards and forwards, inside and out," Fisher said. "But as soon as I sat down and started translating, going over every word, I felt like I was enjoying them in a way I hadn't before, because I was fully understanding the extent of what makes them so funny and topical."

The Courier-Journal writer also spoke with Jeff Brooks about Anne's work:

"Bender's escapades in this novel amount to a tour of early Stalinist Russia on a full measure of laughing gas,â? said Jeffrey Brooks, professor of Russian history at the Johns Hopkins University and author of When Russia Learned to Read"Of course, Russia at that moment was violent and nasty. You would not know it from this novel, but then, humor requires some distance from some things," he added.

And it ends with a nice plug for the book:

Brooks calls Fisher's translation "very bouncy," giving it the advantage for being based on the most complete and least-censored original text available. Two comprehensive introductions and a full set of notes and appendices explaining the novel's colorful characters and frequent catchphrases offer English-speaking readers a detailed legend for the road map of Soviet culture provided by Ostap Bender's wild ride, keeping his irrepressible spirit alive.

Anne will be giving gave a reading of The Little Golden Calf at Carmichael's Bookstore in Louisville, in case anyone reading this is in striking distance (Wed, Feb 10, 7 pm). [Here is a photo of her hard at work (thanks to Gabriela Nunez):]

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Some of our Books

Little Golden Calf
February 01, 2010

Little Golden Calf

Our edition of The Little Golden Calf, one of the greatest Russian satires ever, is the first new translation of this classic novel in nearly fifty years. It is also the first unabridged, uncensored English translation ever, and is 100% true to the original 1931 serial publication in the Russian journal 30 Dnei. Anne O. Fisher’s translation is copiously annotated, and includes an introduction by Alexandra Ilf, the daughter of one of the book’s two co-authors.

Moscow and Muscovites
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Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 

Marooned in Moscow
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Murder at the Dacha
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The Moscow Eccentric
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The Moscow Eccentric

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Faith & Humor
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Faith & Humor

A book that dares to explore the humanity of priests and pilgrims, saints and sinners, Faith & Humor has been both a runaway bestseller in Russia and the focus of heated controversy – as often happens when a thoughtful writer takes on sacred cows. The stories, aphorisms, anecdotes, dialogues and adventures in this volume comprise an encyclopedia of modern Russian Orthodoxy, and thereby of Russian life.

Life Stories
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Life Stories

The Life Stories collection is a nice introduction to contemporary Russian fiction: many of the 19 authors featured here have won major Russian literary prizes and/or become bestsellers. These are life-affirming stories of love, family, hope, rebirth, mystery and imagination, masterfully translated by some of the best Russian-English translators working today. The selections reassert the power of Russian literature to affect readers of all cultures in profound and lasting ways. Best of all, 100% of the profits from the sale of this book are going to benefit Russian hospice—not-for-profit care for fellow human beings who are nearing the end of their own life stories.

Survival Russian
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Survival Russian

Survival Russian is an intensely practical guide to conversational, colloquial and culture-rich Russian. It uses humor, current events and thematically-driven essays to deepen readers’ understanding of Russian language and culture. This enlarged Second Edition of Survival Russian includes over 90 essays and illuminates over 2000 invaluable Russian phrases and words.

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