5 new Russian books translated into English in 2024

1/ Alexei Ivanov – The Food Block

Translated by Richard Coombes, Glagoslav Publications

This bestselling novel has already been adapted into a sci-fi TV show in Russia. The action takes place in a Soviet pioneer camp on the Volga River in 1980. But, it turns out that instead of kids, there are vampires in the camp. 

The genre can be defined as mystical horror. Author Alexei Ivanov is already famous for brilliant works in different genres, from historical epic novels to the Soviet nostalgic ones and sci-fi. As the writer said about this novel, it's both about his own cozy Soviet childhood and about the Soviet ideological machine that suppressed individual freedom.

2/ Ivan Goncharov – A Serendipitous Error and An Evil Malady

Translated by Stephen Pearl, Alma Classics

Goncharov is most famous for writing his timeless 'Oblomov' novel, an anthem of laziness and living the quiet life. His earlier works, 'A Serendipitous Error' and 'An Evil Malady', are not very well known, even in Russia, and were lost in translation for a long time. This year, the first ever English translations of these books saw the light of day. 

In 'A Serendipitous Error', Goncharov tried his hand on the, at that time, fashionable genre, the ‘secular novella’. The plot revolves around a young nobelman's life in St. Petersburg. While 'An Evil Malady' is a kind of 'domestic novella', where the author ponders about epilepsy. Goncharov didn't mean these novellas to have a huge success, but, rather, he considered them his literary exercises. However, a character in the second novel has some traits of the future Oblomov, as literary scholars note. 

3/ Andrey Platonov – Chevengur

Translated by Elizabeth Chandler and Robert Chandler, New York Review Books

Joseph Brodsky once put Platonov on a par with Proust, Kafka and Beckett. 'Chevengur' is a behind-the-scenes look at Soviet life during the ‘NEP’ (New Economic Policy) period. Chevengur is a utopian city, where communism is being built at a record pace. The result is an impending catastrophe.

The novel was actually scheduled for publication, but banned by the censors at the last minute for ideological reasons, stating that Platonov was "rocking the boat" by endangering the very notion of ​​building socialism. The novel was not published in full until 1988.

4/ Vladimir Sorokin – Blue Lard

Translated by Max Lawton, New York Review Books

Contemporary author Vladimir Sorokin is famous for postmodern, masterful stylization and putting the action of his books into the fictional Future Middle Ages, where people live as they lived centuries ago, but have all the technical progress that the modern world has and more. 

The blue lard is a mystical substance that clones of classical Russian authors produce when they write. This 1999 Sorokin novel made a splash in Russian intellectual society, though it caused a big scandal. Three years after the book was published in Russia, a youth activist movement held a protest in front of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. They threw copies of the book in an artificial toilet that 'acted' as a monument to Sorokin. 

‘New York Review Books’ has also issued another Sorokin book, a selection of short stories, titled ‘Red Pyramid’.

5/ Alexander Pushkin – Letters

Translated by Professor J. Thomas Shaw, Alma Classics

When you ask a Russian who their favorite poet is, they would most likely say it’s Alexander Pushkin. “Pushkin is our everything,” Russians used to say. The author, who died in a duel aged 37, however, managed to succeed in all the possible genres and create hundreds of timeless poems, novels, plays and short stories. 

At the same time, Pushkin is also famous for his brilliant sense of humor. And his letters are an incredible source of witty notes and of sincere descriptions of Russian life. The letters were translated and compiled by J. Thomas Shaw, an internationally renowned Pushkin scholar and translator.