Mikhail Shishkin - Calligraphy Lesson

• MARIAN SCHWARTZ began her career in literary translation in 1978, and in the three decades since then she has published over sixty volumes of fiction and nonfiction—biography, criticism, fine arts, and history. Schwartz studied Russian at Harvard University, Middlebury Russian School, and Leningrad State University and received a Master of Arts in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Texas at Austin in 1975. Schwartz is perhaps best known for her prize-winning translations of works by Russian émigré writer Nina Berberova, Edvard Radzinsky’s the bestseller, The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II , several novels by Andrei Gelasimov, and Mikhail Shishkin’s first novel to appear in English, Maidenhair (Open Letter 2012). She lives in Austin, Texas.

• LEO SHTUTIN studied French literature at the University of Oxford, completing his DPhil in 2014. He translates for The Calvert Journal and other online publications. His translation from the Russian of Victor Beilis’ novel Death of a Prototype (2005) is due to be published by Thames River Press, and a version of his DPhil thesis—an investigation of the notions of spatiality and subjectivity in the writings of Stéphane Mallarmé, Guillaume Apollinaire, Maurice Maeterlinck and Alfred Jarry—is currently being readied for publication by OUP.

• MARIYA BASHKATOVA is an alumna of Brown University, where she studied Comparative Literature and Cognitive Neuroscience. At Brown, she wrote for the school newspaper and was involved in the Aldus Journal of Translation. An avid reader, Bashkatova translates Russian and French literature.

• SYLVIA MAIZELL studied Russian Literature at the University of Chicago, in Moscow and in Saint Petersburg, and taught Russian for many years. For the last decade she worked as a translator from Russian, including stories by Vladimir Makanin, Andrei Gelasimov, Ludmila Petrushevskaya, and Dina Rubina. Her translations have appeared in The Kenyon Review , Best European Fiction 2011 , Moscow Noir , Russian Love Stories (Middlebury Studies), Metamorphoses , Partisan Review , and Dance Chronicle: Studies in Dance and Related Arts.

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Maidenhair

(translated by Marian Schwartz)

The Light and the Dark

(translated by Andrew Bromfield)

“Often sings with powerfully estranged, original observations… minutiae and grand philosophy collide on every page.”

“Shishkin is interested in what is most precious and singular in classic Russian fiction: the passionate inquiry into what, in Maidenhair , is called the ‘soul, quintessence, pollen.’”