December 02, 2016

Peter Aleshkovsky: 2016 Russian Booker Laureate


Peter Aleshkovsky: 2016 Russian Booker Laureate

We were excited to learn today that one of our authors, Peter Aleshkovsky, was awarded the 2016 Russian Booker Prize, arguably Russia's most prestigous literary prize. Peter won it for his most recent novel, Крепость (The Fortress), which was nominated for all of Russia's top literary prizes this year.

The prize is long overdue. Peter has authored a dozen fine books over the past three decades, and has been thrice shortlisted for the Booker, for Skunk: A Life (1994), Vladimir Chirgintsev (1996), and Fish (2006). A full list of his books is here, along with links to some other material on Peter's work, including an interview about Fish he did with the novel's translator, Nina Murray, who also translated Stargorod.

The only books that have been translated into English are Skunk, Fish, and Stargorod.

In announcing the Booker Prize on December 1, Olesya Nikolayeva, the jury's chairman, said:

"Today, we, the members of the jury discussed and chose the leading candidate for the prize, although he was known to me well before this. From the very beginning I have been a fan of this novel. The jury was divided: three against two. Then we conducted a literary contest: each member had to speak on the two novels and give their conceptual assessment. After that, the votes changed. This novel is truly alive, it has a true character, a hero, a positive hero, I shoul say. The laureate of the Russian Booker Prize is Peter Aleshkovsky, for his novel Крепость."

In an authorial biography that Peter penned for us some years ago, he concluded that he 

is continually surprised at how people, like paintings in a museum, are everywhere as unlike one another as they are alike, such that they can even read a novel written in Russian and translated into another language.

But if it is an Aleshkovsky novel, then there is no surprise, for it is sure to be a fine work of literature.

Kudos, Peter, we could not be more proud of your achievement!

You Might Also Like

Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

Driving Down Russia's Spine

Driving Down Russia's Spine

The story of the epic Spine of Russia trip, intertwining fascinating subject profiles with digressions into historical and cultural themes relevant to understanding modern Russia. 
Jews in Service to the Tsar

Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.
Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod is a mid-sized provincial city that exists only in Russian metaphorical space. It has its roots in Gogol, and Ilf and Petrov, and is a place far from Moscow, but close to Russian hearts. It is a place of mystery and normality, of provincial innocence and Black Earth wisdom. Strange, inexplicable things happen in Stargorod. So do good things. And bad things. A lot like life everywhere, one might say. Only with a heavy dose of vodka, longing and mystery.
Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

This is the work that made Chekhov, launching his career as a writer and playwright of national and international renown. Retranslated and updated, this new bilingual edition is a super way to improve your Russian.
The Moscow Eccentric

The Moscow Eccentric

Advance reviewers are calling this new translation "a coup" and "a remarkable achievement." This rediscovered gem of a novel by one of Russia's finest writers explores some of the thorniest issues of the early twentieth century.
Tolstoy Bilingual

Tolstoy Bilingual

This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious. 
Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

In this comprehensive, quixotic and addictive book, Edwin Trommelen explores all facets of the Russian obsession with vodka. Peering chiefly through the lenses of history and literature, Trommelen offers up an appropriately complex, rich and bittersweet portrait, based on great respect for Russian culture.
The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.
Murder and the Muse

Murder and the Muse

KGB Chief Andropov has tapped Matyushkin to solve a brazen jewel heist from Picasso’s wife at the posh Metropole Hotel. But when the case bleeds over into murder, machinations, and international intrigue, not everyone is eager to see where the clues might lead.
The Samovar Murders

The Samovar Murders

The murder of a poet is always more than a murder. When a famous writer is brutally stabbed on the campus of Moscow’s Lumumba University, the son of a recently deposed African president confesses, and the case assumes political implications that no one wants any part of.
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955