From Dostoevsky to Sorokin
First and New Translations of Russian Literature into German in 2015
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Among the 30 titles from 2015, 22 are first translations, most of which come from contemporary literature. This literature likes to address the “wild” 1990s with their halfhearted reforms and painful distortions of political and social life (striking examples are the novel Liudi v avguste [People in August] by Sergei Lebedev, which has been repressed in Russia, and Aleksandr Ilichevskii’s novel Matiss [Matisse]). Vladimir Sorokin sketches a grotesque vision of a mediaeval future for Russia in the novel Telluriia. Appearing for the first time in German are long forbidden works by Olga Berggolts, Mikhail Prishvin, and Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. Standouts among the new translations are Anton Chekhov’s late short stories, as translated by Peter Urban, and Mikhail Osorgin’s novel Quiet Street.
(Osteuropa 11-12/2015, pp. 155–186)