The “Russian Booker Prize” is the most authoritative, credible and influential annual award for Russian literature in today’s Russian literary world. It plays an important guiding role in the development of contemporary Russian literature. In a sense, it can even be said that, The Russian Booker Prize-winning works represent the current trend of Russian literature development, from which we can get a glimpse of the evolution and evolution of contemporary Russian literature. Some scholars believe that the Man Booker Prize in Russian has developed simultaneously with the new Russian literature, recording the ups and downs and footprints of contemporary literature, and is a microcosm of the history of Russian literature after the disintegration of the former Soviet Union. Therefore, the Russian Booker Prize’s annual awards and awards activities have become a grand event in Russian literature and even in the world literary world, and are favored and concerned by professional researchers and literature lovers.
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March 5, 2013, the selection of the 22nd Russian Booker Prize officially kicked off. The members of the jury are: essayist, screenwriter, and 2012 Russian Booker Prize winner Andrei Dmitriev; essayist and philosopher Vladimir Cantor; Yelena Pogleraya, Executive Secretary of Issue magazine, Sergey Belyakov, critic and deputy editor-in-chief of Ural magazine, and Evgeny Margulis, musician and rock singer. Among them, Andrei Dmitriev is the chairman of the jury.
This time, 58 publishing houses, 10 magazines, 5 universities and 10 libraries jointly recommended 87 novels, of which 82 met the selection requirements, and the jury selected 24 novels as primary selection works. Results were announced on July 10, 2013. Many of the primary candidates are young and middle-aged contemporary Russian writers and their works, such as Alexander Arkhangelsky’s “Museum of Revolution”, Yevgeny Vodolazkin’s novel “Lavre”, “Aunt Morja” by Mya Kucherskaya, “Mura’s Love” by Nikolai Bytov, “The Old Man and the Angel” by Alexander Kabakov, Anatoli Kurchat Jin’s “Water Roaming Adventure” and so on, these works have various themes, styles and techniques.
On October 3rd, a short list of six players entered the final. They are: Yevgeny Vodolazkin’s novel “Raffle”, Andrei Volos’s historical novel “Return to Pangirud”, Denis Gutsko’s psychological novel “Beta Man”, Estonian author Andrei Ivanov’s Harbin Moth about life in the Russian diaspora, Margaret Hemling’s The Investigator and Vladimir Shapko’s At the Feet of the Boundless World “.
The plot of Yevgeny Vodolazkin’s novel “Lavre” took place in ancient Russia in the 15th century, but the author called it a “non-historical novel” because it does not describe historical events, but Tells about the personal fate of the hero doctor and monk Arseni. Arseni seems to have lived four lives at the same time: he was a doctor, a holy fool, a pilgrim to Jerusalem, and finally a monk. According to the author, this is a “novel about the compassion, love and loyalty that are so necessary in our day”.
Beta Man by Dennis Gutzko is the story of a 40-year-old single man who is successful in business. His friend and business partner is the minister’s son. The protagonist, who agrees to play a secondary role, is a typical beta male. But he’s forced to step up and take care of things after his partner slaps him to death.
Andrei Ivanov’s “Harbin Moths” tells the story of the Estonian bourgeois diaspora, but, the author points out, is a non-historical novel. The protagonist, Boris Lebrov, is an orphan, a failure, an exile, a poor man, a prodigal son, a cocaine addict, a wandering vagabond. The novel uses the popular Russian language in the 1920s and 1930s.
Margaret Hemlin’s “The Investigator” is an adventurous detective plot. The story takes place in a provincial city in Ukraine in the 1930s and 1950s. A young woman was beaten to death. Various theories followed: Was it a criminal offense or part of a political conspiracy? Everyone is skeptical.
The poetic novel “At the Feet of the Boundless World” was written by Vladimir Shapko for 20 years. The first part was completed in 1991, and then affected by the domestic turmoil, the author did not engage in writing for a long time, and it was not until 2012 that the manuscript was finally completed. The protagonist of the work is a little boy named Vitka Ilyin, who spent his childhood in a small city in the Transbaikal region. He absorbed everything that happened around him, including conversations between adults, post-war Daily life, memories, quarrels in the simple wooden house, etc.
On December 4, 2013, Andrey Dmitriev, chairman of the jury of the Russian Booker Prize, announced that the winner of the 2013 Russian Booker Prize was Andrei Volos, whose award-winning work “Return to Panjrud” also It also won this year’s “College Man Booker Award” and entered the short list of “Big Book Award”. When presenting the award, Andrei Dmitriev noted that most of the entries were “exhaustive attempts to actualize a historical or mythical past. The meaning of a bygone era is needed and urgent for today. For criticism critics judge high-quality, intelligent fiction.”
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Andrei Germanovich Volos was born on August 4, 1955 in a family of geologists in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. He graduated from the Moscow Oil and Gas Industrial Institute in 1977 and returned to his hometown after graduation to work in Tajikistan. Poetry translation work; Later, he worked as a geophysical researcher and programmer in Moscow for a long time, and ran a real estate business. Currently living in Moscow, he is a member of the Moscow Writers Association and a member of the Social Science Department of “New World” magazine. In 1979, he published his first poem in the “Pamir” magazine. In 1988, he published his first collection of poems “Old Highway”. In 1986, he published his first short story. Three years later, he published his first collection of short stories. Published many short stories and novels in magazines such as “New World”, “Flag”, “October” and “National Friendship”. His collection of short stories “Hullamabad” has won several awards including the National Award. Like his later novella “Real Estate”, this book is a portrayal of the author’s own experience, but it is not strictly autobiographical. Novel. In 2006, Andre Volos was nominated for the “Big Book Award” for his novel “The Painter Who Made Animation”, which was evaluated by the critics as a “combined reality and fantasy, psychological novel and dystopian novel, etc. “Elements” novel, that Andrei Volos “found a middle way between sharp fiction and serious literature, creating a truly contemporary novel in the tradition of classic Russian prose”.
Andre Volos is not only a famous novelist, but also a poet. In his view, the poet and the novelist are inseparable: “The poet—this is a state of mind, in the sense that a poet may also be an essayist; and a good novelist cannot be a poet. In any case, A poet does not refer to a person’s social status. If we talk about social status, then the poet’s social status is not even as good as an edible egg. Undoubtedly, he may be poor and have nothing…”
His award-winning work “Return to Panjrud” embodies the author’s painstaking efforts for more than 20 years. The protagonist of the novel is the famous Tajik-Persian poet Abu Abdullah Jafar bin Mohammad Rudaki in the 9th century. 858-941), the father of Persian poetry and the founder of modern Persian (Tajik) poetry. He was born intelligent and knowledgeable. When he grew up, he went to Samarkand, the famous city at that time, to seek advice from his teachers and learn how to compose poetry. The ruler of the dynasty, Nassar II (reigned 914-943), invited him to the capital Bukhara to become a court poet, extremely prominent and respected. Due to the civil strife in the palace, Rudaki unfortunately became a victim of the political conspiracy of those in power. He lost power in 937, had his eyes gouged out, was expelled from the palace, and was demoted back to his hometown, Panjirud (“five streams” in Tajik). He had a miserable evening and spent the rest of his life in poverty and illness.
Most of the characters and life stories about the poet Rudaki in the book are fictionalized by the writer. The author believes that “the main task of literature is not to describe the truth, but to communicate with people’s hearts: to resonate and empathize…” The novel has three The plot threads interweave. The first clue mainly narrates that the old poet Rudaki was demoted and exiled to return home. A 16-year-old boy, Sheravkang, accompanied the old man all the way and acted as a guide. The old man taught him how to read and read, and told him the true meaning of life. This is the obvious clue of the novel, and also the leading plot of the work; the second clue traces the development of the poet from childhood to adulthood, learning from a teacher, reaching the pinnacle of his career, and then falling from the pinnacle. the whole journey. This is told in the form of the poet’s own memories; finally, the third clue mainly tells about the formation of the Saman dynasty, the wars within the family groups among the princes, and the disputes between different factions of Islam, etc., the scale Grand, numerous events, complex content, thrilling and vivid.
At first, the boy didn’t know that the old man was the famous “King of Poets”, so he reluctantly took the old man on the road. On the way, the young man and the old man witnessed many events that shocked him. With the passage of time, Sheravkang became more and more impressed by the old man’s delicate and sensitive perception of things and his insightful and wise words, and was deeply intoxicated by the legendary stories told by the old man about the rise and fall of ancient dynasties… The old man told him The stories of glorious poets and great warriors, recalling the past and prophesying the future. Unknowingly, in the mind of the young man, the old man has already become his spiritual enlightener and spiritual mentor. The wise blind man Rudaki leads the young man Sheravkang, gradually revealing the mysteries of life to him, and prevents many unexpected and dangerous incidents that may occur along the way. Under the pen of Andre Volos, the image of the poet is vividly portrayed, full of flesh and blood, unique in personality and full of charm.
According to Andrei Dmitriev, chairman of the jury, it is “not so much a work about poets as it is about poetry, which no one would venture to write these days, A work of poetry about a cruel world—a world that is both cruel and beautiful in every age.In addition, Rudaki in the work is a typical wise man who knows his time very well and knows all the times. people.” Most of the finalists for the 2013 Russian Booker Prize set the past historical era as the background, created characters, portrayed characters, and tried to use individual life courses with distinctive personalities as narrative objects to find and reveal some intriguing, Thought-provoking important connotations.
