In 2017, 80 works were nominated for participation in the Russian Booker Prize competition, 75 were accepted. 37 publishing houses, 8 magazines, 2 universities and 11 libraries took part in the nomination process. Chairman of the jury of the award Petr ALESHKOVSKY: “The short list of the Booker reflects the completeness and diversity of today's prose. The finalists work in different novel genres. These are authors, both beginners and those already established in our literature.”
Finalists for the 2017 Russian Booker Prize for the best novel in Russian:
1. Mikhail Gigolashvili. Secret year. M.: AST, Edited by Elena Shubina, 2016
2. Malyshev Igor. Nomah. Sparks big fire. M.: New world. 2017. № 1
3. Medvedev Vladimir. ZAHHOK. M.: ArsisBooks, 2017
4. Melikhov Alexander. A date with Quasimodo. SPb.: Neva. 2016. No. 7
5. Nikolaenko Alexandra. Kill Bobrykin. The story of a murder. M.: NP "TsSL", Russian Gulliver, 2016
6. Novikov Dmitry. Holomyanaya flame. M.: AST, Edited by Elena Shubina, 2016
The 2017 jury included:
Alexey PURIN (St. Petersburg), poet, critic;
Artem SKVORTSOV (Kazan), literary scholar, critic;
Alexander SNEGIREV, prose writer, laureate of the Russian Booker Prize - 2015;
Marina OSIPOVA, director regional library(Penza).
In 2017, Russia's oldest independent literary prize will be awarded for the 26th time. New – the sixth during its existence – Trustee of the Prize“Russian Booker” became the film company “Fetisov Illusion” of producer and entrepreneur Gleb Fetisov, whose portfolio includes ambitious projects in domestic and international market, including Russian painting 2017 “Loveless” (Jury Prize at the Cannes Festival, Grand Prix at the festivals in London and Munich, nomination for an Oscar in the category “Best Foreign Film”).
In “Fetisov Illusion” they noted that “it was good year for a Russian-language novel, and we are now negotiating with several authors of the current Russian Booker about an option for a script based on the texts submitted for the prize.”
The size of the prize fund remains the same: RUB 1,500,000. the laureate receives, the finalists of the award receive 150,000 rubles each.
Then he will announce his laureate and the jury "Student Booker"– youth project. Started in 2004 on the initiative of the Center for the Study of Contemporary Russian Literature at the Russian State University for the Humanities, thanks to access to the Internet, the student competition is all-Russian. The expansion of its geography continues - systematic cooperation has begun with universities in Tomsk, Kemerovo, Vladivostok, etc.
Literature news
July 9, 2019 July 10 in the library named after. Dostoevsky will host a lecture by poet and essayist Dmitry Vodennikov about artists with mental disorders. The event will take place as part of a campaign to collect books for PNI residents, carried out by charitable foundation"Lifestyle".
At a traditional press conference in Moscow's Golden Ring Hotel, the organizers and jury of the Russian Booker literary award announced the name of the laureate for 2017.
The winner of the award was Alexandra Nikolaenko with her novel “Kill Bobrykin. The story of a murder." will also receive a cash prize of 1.5 million rubles.
Nikolaenko is a Muscovite, an artist, a graduate of Stroganovka, a member of the Moscow Union of Artists, the daughter of a physicist, a doctor of sciences from, and an artist. Her works are in private collections in France, Great Britain and Russia.
Nikolaenko herself admitted that she “couldn’t even imagine this,” reports. According to her, literary world For a long time I did not accept her as a writer - only as an illustrator. She had been writing since school, but before this book was published, she was better known as an illustrator - for example, the books “Bury Me Behind the Baseboard.”
“Kill Bobrykin” was on the long list of “ National bestseller"(the St. Petersburg writer Daniel Orlov became the nominee), but did not go further. On the website of the publishing house “Russian Gulliver” that published the book, the novel is destined to rank “on a par with “School for Fools” and “Moscow - Petushki”.
“It’s not just the amazing language in which it is written, but the strength of the tragic tension on which it rests,” the message says.
"This is very cool novel. Here the Russian language is a ten, the architecture of the novel is ten. This is not a standard. This is a brilliant work, written in Russian,” said the chairman of the jury, poet and prose writer, winner of the Russian Booker 2016, Pyotr Aleshkovsky, who received the award for his novel about the difficult everyday life of an archaeologist, “Fortress.”
Later, the situation with the Russian Booker practically returned to normal, although at the same time as the restoration of the broken premium process, the award had to restore its reputation. The fact is that in 2010 the winner of the award was historical novel“Flower Cross”, which returned the word “aphedron” to the Russian language; This book also received the “Full Paragraph” anti-award for dubious literary achievements. However, for the next five years, the choice of the “Russian Booker” was closer to the general literary process.
In the spring of this year, the secretary of the Russian Booker, a literary scholar and critic, said that the prize was “at a crossroads”, and the start of the prize season was postponed.
But then the longlist was announced, and in September, a shortlist of six candidates for the award was announced.
This year, 80 works were nominated for the award. Participants included 37 publishing houses, 8 journals, 2 universities and 11 libraries. The longlist, announced in September, included 19 novels, including works by the 2009 laureate (The Sinologist) and the 2013 laureate (The Debtor).
The new sponsor of the Russian Booker was the film company Fetisov Illusion (this year, together with the Non-Stop Production studio, they released the Oscar-nominated film Lovelessness), which also promised to film some of the novels of the award winners and nominees.
According to the Kino-Teatr.Ru portal, for now we're talking about about two books - “Kill Bobrykin. The Story of a Murder” by now Russian Booker winner Nikolaenko and “Bullying” by Alexander. Filipenko was presented on the longlist, but with his other novel -; “Bullying” was included in the shortlist of another literary award - “ Big Book" - in 2016.
The Russian Booker Prize, established in 1991 on the initiative of the head of the British trading company Booker plc and the British Council in Russia, was conceived as an analogue of the British Booker. The first winner of the prize in 1992 was Mark Kharitonov and his novel “Lines of Fate, or Milashevich’s Chest.” The winners of other years included novels by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Olga Slavnikova and other writers.
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FINALISTS OF THE RUSSIAN BOOKER 2017 ANNOUNCED
October 26, 2017Today at a press conference at the Golden Ring Hotel, the jury of the RUSSIAN BOOKER literary award announced “ short list» works that made up the six finalists for the 2017 award for best novel in Russian:
1. Mikhail Gigolashvili. Secret year. M.: AST, Edited by Elena Shubina, 2016
2. Malyshev Igor. Nomah. Sparks from a big fire. M.: New world. 2017. No. 1
3. Medvedev Vladimir. ZAHHOK. M.: ArsisBooks, 2017
4. Melikhov Alexander. A date with Quasimodo. SPb.: Neva. 2016. No. 10, Eksmo, 2016
5. Nikolaenko Alexandra. Kill Bobrykin. The story of a murder. M.: NP "TsSL", Russian Gulliver, 2016
6. Novikov Dmitry. Holomyanaya flame. M.: AST, Edited by Elena Shubina, 2016
In 2017, 80 works were nominated for participation in the Russian Booker Prize competition, 75 were accepted. 37 publishing houses, 8 magazines, 2 universities and 11 libraries took part in the nomination process.
Assessing the results of the nomination, the chairman of the jury of the 2017 Russian Booker Prize, poet and prose writer Pyotr ALESHKOVSKY, said:
“The Booker short list reflects the completeness and diversity of today's prose. The finalists work in different novel genres. These are authors, both beginners and those already established in our literature.”
The 2017 jury also included: Alexey PURIN (St. Petersburg), poet, critic; Artem SKVORTSOV (Kazan), literary scholar, critic; Alexander SNEGIREV, prose writer, laureate of the Russian Booker Prize - 2015; Marina OSIPOVA, director of the regional library (Penza).
In 2017, Russia's oldest independent literary prize will be awarded for the 26th time. New – the sixth during its existence – Trustee of the Prize"Russian Booker" became a film company producer and entrepreneur Gleb Fetisov, a notable participant in the Russian film industry, whose portfolio includes ambitious projects on the domestic and international markets, including the world's most famous Russian film of 2017, “Loveless” (Jury Prize at the Cannes Festival, Grand Prix at the London and Munich festivals, Oscar nomination "in the nomination "Best Foreign Film"). Fetisov Illusion noted that “this has been a good year for Russian-language novels, and we are now negotiating with several authors of the current Russian Booker about an option for a script based on the texts submitted for the prize. Moreover, the company intends to sign these authors, even though the list of our favorites may well differ from the jury’s choice.”
The size of the prize fund remains the same: RUB 1,500,000. the laureate receives, the finalists of the award receive 150,000 rubles each.
At the same time, the jury of the “Student Booker” will announce its laureate - a youth project, the trustee of which remains the Russian Communications Corporation (RCCC), a manufacturer of trusted telecommunications equipment. Started in 2004 on the initiative of the Center for the Study of Contemporary Russian Literature at the Russian State University for the Humanities, thanks to access to the Internet, the student competition is all-Russian. The expansion of its geography continues - systematic cooperation has begun with universities in Tomsk, Kemerovo, Vladivostok, etc.
American heavyweight writers Paul Auster and George Saunders are neck and neck in this year's Booker Prize shortlist, while other big writers have been overtaken by debutants.
The jury, chaired by Baroness Lola Young, announced the shortlist of six titles on the morning of Wednesday 13th September. Along with Auster and Saunders, 29-year-old British debutant Fiona Moseley and American newcomer Emily Friedland made it to the finals.
Young authors will have to compete with writers whose books have already been included in the Booker shortlist. Scotland's Ali Smith competes for Grand Prize for the fourth time, this year with the novel “Autumn,” which is dedicated to the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union. British-Pakistani author Moshin Hamid, who was already shortlisted for 2007's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, wowed the judges this time with Exit West, in which refugees can use a strange black door to find salvation in different parts Sveta.
However, many writers who have won the Booker Prize in previous years have failed to repeat the achievements: Roy Arundhati, Sebastian Barry, Kamila Shamsi and Mike McCormack failed to make it into the top six. British authors Zadie Smith and John McGregor were also sidelined.
Another high-profile “loss” was the book by the American Colson Whitehead “Underground Railway" This work was considered a favorite among bookmakers, and has already won several prestigious awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for the best art book, the National Book Award for Fiction, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
Section Buyer fiction British book chain Waterstones Chris White was among many surprised by the absence of Whitehead's name on the shortlist:
“We're used to surprises from the Booker jury, but the fact that The Underground Railroad didn't make the final six was one of the most shocking decisions I've ever seen.”
Instead, the judges found Saunders' (who usually works in the short story) first major work, "Lincoln in the Bardo," about President Lincoln's graveyard visits to his son Willie, worthy of the finale. Auster's book "4321" about the boy Archibald Isaac Ferguson, whose life develops simultaneously in four fictional directions, also received the favor of the jury.
Moseley was among the best with her debut novel about a man and his children who live in a grove in the British kingdom of West Reading (modern Yorkshire). Another debutant, Emily Friedland with “The History of Wolves,” dedicated her work to a fourteen-year-old girl who grows up in the midwestern United States, in conditions of experiencing better times religious cult.
Young described the shortlisted works as "unique and bold books that speak out against restrictive conventions."
“Fun, sincere, exciting, bright - these novels grew on traditional soil, but turned out to be radical and modern. The emotional, cultural, political and intellectual depth of these books is noteworthy, and the ways in which they challenge our thinking are proof of the power of literature as an art."
Lola Young
Half of the authors were from the USA, and questions arose from the judges about the possible “Americanization” of the main British literary award. Three years ago American authors got the opportunity to fight for prize fund in the amount of £50,000, and last year the American Paul Beatty beat the competition with his novel The Sale.
Bookmaker Landbrokes immediately named Saunders as favorite and gave him 2/1 odds of winning. Hamid and Moseley are in second place, the odds for them are 4/1, bets on Oster are 5/1, the odds of Friedland and Smith are at 6/1.
Young stated that "nationality is not a criterion in the selection process of the winner, the only thing that matters is which of the six books we think is the best."
“We judge the books submitted to us not for the nationality or gender of the author, but for what is written on the pages.”
Lola Young
Another judge literary critic Lila Azam Zanganeh added that less than 30% of the books participating in the selection were authored by Americans, which is much less than last year.
“I think we are becoming more and more multicultural.”
Lila Zangane
Author Sarah Hall, who is also on the judging panel, said a common element across all the shortlisted books was "the idea of spatial thresholds, be they moving doors, breaking through the walls of our perception or the barriers of life."
“All six books leave a sense of the existence of spaces of different levels, into which each reader can bring a bit of his own experience.”
Sarah Hall
“Selecting from the longlist to the shortlist was a difficult task,” – admitted jury member, traveler and writer Colin Tabron.
“There were a few novels that one judge felt were too lenient, allowing them to compete with others on the longlist. We made mutual concessions. But overall, there’s not a single book on the shortlist that shouldn’t have been there.”
Colin Tabron
The jury, which included Tom Phillips in addition to those mentioned above, took six hours to make their selections, and it was, according to Young, "a fairly heated discussion."
"There is no such thing as perfect romance. So if a book passes the criteria of technique, internal content, believability of characters, it becomes more difficult to choose, because how can you choose the perfect novel?”
Sarah Hall
2017 Booker Prize shortlist
4321
/ Paul Auster
History of Wolves/ Emily Friedland
Exit to the West/ Mohsin Hamid
Elmet/ Fiona Moseley
Lincoln in the Bardo/ George Saunders
Autumn/ Ali Smith
In October, two most prestigious literary prizes made two very correct and balanced decisions. If this is a polite and respectful nod towards the mass reader (and even the viewer), then the case of George Saunders, who received the Man Booker Prize statuette ( Man Booker Prize), is a completely different calico. The victory of his novel “Lincoln in the Bardo” is a triumph of the underground (whatever that concept means now), a basement classic and, perhaps, predictable, but right choice. The jury's decision proves that this time the Booker was given for literature for literature's sake, and not for merit, political correctness or agenda.
"Lincoln in the Bardo" is a truly worthwhile novel, although Saunders's debut: before that the author worked exclusively with short prose. This is a book that you will either abandon after the first twenty pages or read from cover to cover.
1862, Abraham Lincoln is hosting a social reception, and at this time his son William dies of typhoid fever on the second floor. It was said that Willie was his father's favorite, and some newspapers claimed that the president was so broken that he spent the night in the crypt with his son's deceased body. Only Willy cannot find peace - his soul is stuck in a world vaguely reminiscent of purgatory, in that very bardo. According to Tibetan book of the dead the bardo is an intermediate state between life and death, and Saunders turns this border world into a whitish nothingness, inhabited by all kinds of demons and clots of energy. Here Willie remains with a host of other souls, while somewhere behind an invisible partition his father is crying.
"Lincoln in the Bardo" can be called a historical novel with a big, big stretch - however, it does not pretend to be a documentary. On the contrary, Saunders takes a reliable fact about the death of his son American President and begins to interweave it with fictitious documents, opinions of eyewitnesses and contemporaries, thus playing on the usual postmodernism postulate about the looseness of truth and the vagueness of facts.
For such a comparison, they may throw literary critics’ stools at them, but I still want to compare “Lincoln in the Bardo” with “Bardo il not Bardo” by Antoine Volodin. Firstly, if you are not a Buddhist or a follower of Asian mystical practices, then you won’t be able to find much literature—let alone fiction—about this place. Such an analogy is also necessary in order to show how different the approach of the authors is when they fit their heroes into such settings. If Volodin kicks the corpse of postmodernism and, like Beckett, talks about the impossibility and exhaustion of writing, then Saunders takes the defibrillator - and the numb postmodernity in his novel begins to fill with blood.
First of all, "Lincoln in the Bardo" is a polyphonic novel with the voices of more than a hundred lost souls who echo each other, buzzing louder and louder - and breaking off mid-sentence; this is a fusion novel historical fact and schizophrenic narrative. And this is also a kind of Saunderian katabasis about the mystical stay of a boy in a clouded bardo until his soul turns into a thin clot of energy or reincarnates. And, last but not least, this is a great conversation about love and suffering, a heart-warming and at the same time grotesque private story about the loss of a son.
Saunders' novel, translated into Russian, will be published by Eksmo publishing house in 2018.
FINALISTS 
1. Emily Fridlund - “A Tale of Wolves”
Fridlund's debut is frankly weak, although it outlines the rich potential of the writer. This is the story of Linda's coming of age - a lonely wolf cub, raised in a commune along with northern rednecks and hippies and vegetating in the endless whirlwind of life and routine. But at some point Linda meets Patra, Leo and their sick son Paul - followers of Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science - and they turn her life upside down.
In essence, “The Tale of Wolves” is a coming-of-age novel, baked by a frosty wind, in which there is hopelessness, awareness of one’s own sexuality, and outsiderism. But we've already seen this somewhere.
2. Mohsin Hamid - "Western Exit"
Exit West, it would seem, a novel about the important and necessary - about refugees and coups. But in fact, it tells about two lovers Nadiya and Said, hugging each other against the backdrop of plague, devastation and rebels. Unable to be oppressed any longer, young people flee first to London and then to the USA, where they find the happiness they have been waiting for.
Yes, this is a significant alternative voice of a Pakistani writer, a story about a painful boil of the third world, but for some reason - either because of the sweet story of kindred spirits, or the narrative based on emigration - this voice begins to deflate and irritate. In addition, novels of this kind have been included in every Booker longlist for the last few years.
3. Paul Auster "4 3 2 1"
If Paul Auster had received the Booker, it would have been no less fair. But on the other hand, he is a widely known novelist and has been awarded several other prestigious awards, so enough is enough for him. In addition, unlike other authors, Oster is almost completely translated into Russian.
His new Rabelaisian-sized volume tells the story of Archie Ferguson's life - in four alternative versions. The factual basis of the novel is the same - the boy grows up in the same middle-class Jewish family and has fun with the same friends - but depending on small parts Archie's fate unfolds differently, and historical reality (the Kennedy assassination or the Vietnam War) changes frighteningly.
The novel in Russian will be published by Eksmo publishing house in 2018.
4. Ali Smith - "Autumn"
At first glance, “Autumn” may seem somewhat ragged and unfinished, however, once you get used to the intonation, you will be struck by the poetry and velvety quality of its language, caressed by the poems of John Keats.
Like Hamid, Smith also puts love at the center of the novel against the backdrop of a country crumbling and withering as a result of Brexit. Love, however, is slightly deviant: Daniel is 101, and Elizabeth is only 32. But, unlike the Pakistani, the Scottish writer filled her short novel with genuine lyricism and openness, which makes her want to be believed. By the way, this is the first of her “seasonal novels”, which will be followed by “Winter”, “Spring” and “Summer”.
The novel in Russian will be published by Eksmo publishing house in 2018.
5. Fiona Moseley - "Elmet"
Another debut. This time, a fusion of rural noir with gothic, intertwined with legends and ancient history Yorkshire and the vanished kingdom of Elmet, from which the novel takes its title. Surprisingly, this young writer is old-fashioned in a good way, since she began to compose melancholic bucolic prose, as if the twentieth century had not even thought of moving.
Daniel and Katie live in a house that they and Daddy built with their bare hands. Together with him they lead quiet life: they hunt, prepare cider and help each other in every possible way, when suddenly a heap of problems hangs over the family in the form of cruel landowners, and the family saga begins to rhyme with the myth of the lost Elmet.
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