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Russia

The covers of the books featured in the Watchlist: Sweetlust, Stravaging Strange, Black Foam, and...
The Watchlist: February 2023
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends exciting new books translated from Arabic, Croatian, Spanish, and Russian.
A black microphone on a stand
Photo by Ilyass SEDDOUG on Unsplash
A Village Fest
By Alisa Ganieva
“It needn’t be me. I mean . . . I . . . I’m not much of an orator.”
Translated from Russian by Will Firth
Two log cabins, one with a grass roof, in a field next to the water
I, Argus fin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Sharing Stories: A Brief Introduction to Sámi Literary History
By Mathilde Magga
For Sámi literature to continue playing its essential role in our culture and to expand its benefits, we need more writers, readers, and translators, which is impossible without support—both financially and through the education system.
The book covers of Animals in Our Days, Brisbane, Flowers of Lhasa, Radio Siga, Linea Nigra, and...
The Watchlist: May/June 2022
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends noteworthy new books translated from Tibetan, Vietnamese, Arabic, Russian, Spanish, and Croatian.
Until the Threads Burn to Ash
By Aleksey Porvin
Hold an assault rifle with my hand, use my mouth
Translated from Russian by Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler
The Water Freezes
By Alla Gorbunova
Your cheeks are pinked with Parnassus rose.
Translated from Russian by Elina Alter
There Was No Adderall in the Soviet Union
By Olga Breininger
I am the same sort of export as a Kalashnikov rifle or our great suicidal writers.
Translated from Russian by Hilah Kohen
blurry image of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in St. Petersburg behind a canal
Murashko olga, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
About Time to Smile at Homeless People
By Dinara Rasuleva
Dinara Rasuleva questions received notions of home and national identity in this poem about her relationship to Russia.
Translated from Russian by Hilah Kohen
Multilingual
Stories from “Ings & Oughts”
By Alla Gorbunova
It wasn’t a plane at all, but a car flying through the sky.
Translated from Russian by Elina Alter
Multilingual
Three Observations, Untitled
By Ksenia Zheludova
The most horrible things, remember this, are incremental.
Translated from Russian by Josephine von Zitzewitz
MultimediaMultilingual
Destined from Birth
By Xenia Emelyanova
Enough of their butchery.
Translated from Russian by Katherine E. Young
Multilingual
“Reality (Unfortunately?) Varies”: A Conversation Between Galina Rymbu and Ilya Danishevsky
By Galina Rymbu
It seems to me—perhaps naively—that poetry has the ability to examine things in a maximally authentic way.
Translated from Russian by Anne O. Fisher & Helena Kernan
Six Musical Moments by Schubert
By Natalia Rubanova
She smelled of Schubert.
Translated from Russian by Rachael Daum
Six Proposals for Participation in a Conversation about Bread
By Rasha Abbas
“That’s what we get for supporting Communism: standing in line for this black loaf.”
Translated from Arabic by Alice Guthrie
A Pun, an Idiom, and an Expletive Walk into a Bar: International Humor
By Susan Harris
When we think of translating humor, we may think in terms of capturing jokes.
The Trial
By Dalia Grinkevičiūtė
“Aren’t you ashamed, you, a schoolgirl, to be sitting here on this bench?”
Translated from Lithuanian by Delija Valiukenas
A Parallel Convergence: Three Contemporary Russian Poets
By Alex Cigale & Dana Golin
The three poets collected here are “outliers,” who yet may be read as having points of commonality with developments in post-war American poetry.
Translated from Russian
From “Poems”
By Mikhail Eremin
The post-war ruins (Roofs ripped off, / The charred walls.)
Translated from Russian by Alex Cigale
Multilingual
Eddie’s Funeral
By Amarsana Ulzytuev
But his dirty ears are resistant to their tender entreating, / And the thick lips will not stretch from these ears into a smile
Translated from Russian by Alex Cigale
Multilingual
The World on Stage: Micro-Plays in Translation
By Sarah Maitland
It is this ready route to the public, and the immediacy of response to some of the most urgent questions of our time, that gives microtheater its enduring appeal.
Grandmother’s Little Hut
By Andrei Platonov
“No one in our family lasts long. And I’m no different—I only look like I’m doing OK . . . ”
Translated from Russian by Jesse Irwin
Learn
from “The Eternal Road”
By Antti Tuuri
I had not seen meat on my plate since I left home.
Translated from Finnish by Jill Timbers
Slaves of Moscow
By Victoria Lomasko
Once there, they had been robbed of their passports and forced to work without pay for twenty hours a day.
Translated from Russian by Thomas Campbell
LearnMultimedia
The Bed
By Vladimir Vertlib
All decent Jews go to America.
Translated from German by David Burnett
Learn
The Queer Issue V: Impressions from a Passing Train
By Rohan Kamicheril
The appeal of the Queer Issue is in seeing that great ambition writ small, in discovering the swarm of details and experience that cohere into the big picture of world writing.
from “Adam’s Apple”
By Olga Pogodina-Kuzmina
His skin and hair gave off an intoxicating scent of apples.
Translated from Russian by Andrew Bromfield
February 2014 The Girls Of Nizhny Novgorod Victoria Lomasko Preview Cropped
The “Girls” of Nizhny Novgorod
By Victoria Lomasko
It's the cops who make legalization necessary.
Translated by Thomas Campbell
On the Moscow Metro and Being Gay
By Dmitry Kuzmin
In the catalogue of sins in his Divine Comedy, which is as random as it is insanely detailed, Dante found room for the sin that “dared not speak its name” long before Oscar Wilde’s trial—one of which…
Translated from Russian by Alexei Bayer
Learn
from “Butterfly Skin”
By Sergey Kuznetsov
It is good to kill in spring.
Translated from Russian by Andrew Bromfield
Petroleum Venus
By Alexander Snegiryov
From the heavens black gold pours down.
Translated from Russian by Arch Tait
LearnMultilingual
None of Your Business
By Natalia Klyuchareva
His mother smiled stupidly, flapped her heavily mascaraed eyelashes, and missed the plate with her fork.
Translated from Russian by Marian Schwartz
LearnMultilingual
Hello?
By Dmitry Biriukov
Admit it, pal, you’re Hoovering up every word.
Translated from Russian by Arch Tait
LearnMultilingual
An Uncoincidence, a Noncoincidence
By Larissa Miller
Someone rushes to a house that's been moved away.
Translated from Russian by Richard McKane
LearnMultilingual
Drawings on a Soccer Ball
By Andrei Sen-Senkov
the last name of the player / on the german team / translates into russian as / pig crawling up / a blond graceful creature
Translated from Russian by Peter Golub
Soul, you are a street
By Aleksey Porvin
Soul, you are a street, leading into rain / from the outskirts full of dry leaves
Translated from Russian by Peter Golub
Learn
Fragments from the Dollmaker’s Life
By Danila Davydov
1A woman tells the Dollmaker.—What happens in your shopWhy do you spend all night and day in thereIt can’t be for the sake of moneyYou wouldn’t have time to spend it anywaySo why the work…
Translated from Russian by Peter Golub
Learn
Milgrom
By Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
A girl is sewing herself a dress for the first time. She bought three meters of cheap fabric (just over a ruble a meter), but the fabric turns out to be surprisingly pretty, black with bright bursts of…
Translated from Russian by Keith Gessen & Anna Summers
Learn
Pears from Gudauty
By Ludmila Ulitskaya
We could hear the dry coughing of our landlord, Khuta Kursua, through the partition wall, and Mother’s eyes were wide with fear. I was ten, my own lesions had barely healed, and now we were neighbors…
Translated from Russian by Arch Tait
Learn
The Golem in the Mirror
By Nadezhda Gorlova
I dreamed of Prague at night. It looked the way each of us to whom the words “Old City” speak at least a little would imagine. I knew the Golem had returned, and I ran through the streets…
Translated from Russian by Deborah Hoffman
Learn
February 2007 Graphic Lit The Only True Guide To Russia Ilia Kitup Feature
The Only True Guide to Russia
By Ilia Kitup
“Sometimes I think I can reach the skies…and no sea would cover my bare knees!”
Translated from Russian by the author
LearnMultimedia
from A Dream in Polar Fog
By Yuri Rytkheu
She moved quickly and purposefully, as though she were handling walrus flippers or deer legs, not human hands.
Translated from Russian by Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse
Learn
The Wondrous Deer of the Eternal Hunt
By Svetlana Alexievich
He was a wildly lonely person. I loved him.
Translated from Russian by Marian Schwartz
Learn
“To kiss a forehead is to erase worry.”
By Marina Tsvetaeva
To kiss the lips is to drink water. / I kiss your lips.
Translated from Russian by Ilya Kaminsky
Learn
Arm Wrestling in Chebachinsk
By Aleksandr Chudakov
Grandfather was very strong. When he was working in the kitchen garden or whittling spade handles (for relaxation, he would always whittle handles-there were enough of them piled in a corner of the barn…
Translated from Russian by Timothy D. Sergay
Learn
Paris Lost
By Wladimir Kaminer
Our government was very generous with its citizens; it couldn't be compared to an imperialist regime.
Translated from German by Liesl Schillinger
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