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Featured titles
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Sandro of Chegem, collected novellas by Fazil Iskander (1973, 1977)
Published by: Bosnia - Buybook (2007), Bulgaria - Народна култура (1967), Czech Republic - Vysehrad (1986), Estonia - Eesti raamat (1976), Loomingu (1987), France - Ledrappier (1987), Germany - Volk und Welt (1983), S. Fischer (1978, 1987, 1988, 1989), Italy - Einaudi (1998), Japan - KOKUSHO (1985, 2002), The Netherlands - deGeus (2000), Poland - Czytelnik (1976), Spain - AUTOMATICA, Sweden - AWE/Gebers (1983), Turkey - Milliyet Yayinlari (1997), UK - Cape (1983), USA - ARDIS (1981), Vintage Books (1983, 1984), NLS (1983, Braille edition), Penguin Books (1985)
This book had something of a chequered history. It is basically a collection of stories about the title character. It was first published in Novy Mir magazine in 1973. Other stories were published separately. Then it was published in book form (but with a large amount cut) in the Soviet Union in 1977. Ardis, the US publishers, published a fuller version in 1979. It was translated into English in 1983. The complete version was finally published in Russia in 1989.
The book tells a series of stories - not in chronological order - about Sandro of Chegem. It is narrated by someone who refers to him as Uncle Sandro, though not necessarily a nephew or niece. Sandro is now eighty years old and has therefore lived through both Czarist and Soviet systems. He has been a good Bolshevik, as we will see, but, like many of his fellow Abkhazians, he remains fiercely independent and Iskander/Sandro is not averse to criticising the Soviet system where he finds it wanting. More importantly for us readers, he is a lovable rogue, larger than life, always ready to stand up for himself and for his fellow Abkhazians, fiercely loyal but also always on the lookout for the main chance. The stories that Iskander tells about Sandro are generally very funny and mock his fellow men, the high and mighty and the authorities, whether Czarist or Soviet, and show the inevitable superiority of the Abkhaz people and their way of life.
Sandro has, of course, had numerous adventures and we follow many of these. Indeed, the book opens by telling us that many people have tried to kill him, all, obviously, unsuccessfully. The stories we are initially told about his brushes with death concern his love life. However, we soon see that he has had brushes with death fighting the Mensheviks for the Bolsheviks. He is not afraid of the Mensheviks nor, indeed, of anyone, and is happy to stand up to them and anyone else opposed to him. We see this even in the pre-Soviet period when the local prince has him hauled in for beating up a security guard who had the temerity to blow a raspberry (or, perhaps, fart) at him. Sandro's clever way with words and trickery not only gets him off the charge but he even manages to get himself a pair of very fine binoculars as a reward, which he will use to spy on the Mensheviks in a later story.
Sandro is often in trouble and, on one occasion, he gets off when he is sent to join a dance troupe, as he is a fine dancer. He does so well in the troupe that they entertain Stalin himself. We get to meet Stalin and Beria and, course, Sandro tries a risky dance manoeuvre which he has practised on his own but never before his fellow dancers, which very nearly gets him into trouble but, once again, his charm gets him out of trouble. This sense of invention and imagination helps his gambling friend, who is losing all his money to a rich merchant. Sandro decides to frighten the merchant by riding his horse around the room where the two are gambling and even jumps his horse over the table. The merchant is so put out that he starts to lose and his friend, an Armenian tobacco dealer, wins. It does not help as the Mensheviks will drive him out. Iskander has apparently said that he does not like Latin American magic realism but he is not averse to using a touch of it in this book. He resorts frequently to Abkhazian lore and legend and this naturally includes an element of magic. We see this in a story about a prayer tree, which seems to tell Sandro's father to join the local collective, which he does. When the tree is partially burned (at the orders of the local Soviet authorities) some human bones and a kettle mysteriously appear and disappear. We eventually get a prosaic explanation for these events.
Iskander clearly has a great gift for story telling as he keeps us amused and entertained throughout these stories. Sandro is such a wilful but lovable character that we cannot help but sympathise with all his travails and share in his triumphs. He is also a survivor, still unafraid at the age of eighty of those more powerful than him and still respected and feared by all and sundry. Iskander wrote most of his stories in Russian, so they are all readily accessible and, fortunately, quite a few are available in English and well worth reading.
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Eisen, a novel by Guzel Yakhina (2025)
Rights sold: Azerbaijan - QANUN, Croatia - HENA, Czech Republic - PROSTOR, Estonia – TANAPAEV, France - NOIR SUR BLANC, Germany - KANON VERLAG, Hungary - HELICON, Italy - E/O, Netherlands - QUERIDO, Poland - NOIR SUR BLANC, Romania - HUMANITAS, Russia - AST, Serbia - LAGUNA, Spain - ACANTILADO, Turkey - ALFA, World English - EUROPA EDITIONS UK/USA, World Arabic - RASHM
Sergei Eisenstein remains among the most famous and revered figures in the history of world cinema. His masterpieces Battleship Potemkin, October, ¡Que viva México!, Ivan the Terrible, and the destroyed Bezhin Meadow, have been vigorously studied and became – along with most of Eisenstein’s theoretical writings – an integral part of the programs of all film schools. Naturally, anyone who pretends being a cinema connoisseur has at least once seen one or two of Eisenstein’s movies.
Eisenstein, who was a famous movie director and theorist, wrote a lot about the art of cinema, about himself and his contemporaries, and left after himself a huge archive of drawings and diaries, thus reliably fixing his place in history. However, Sergei Eisenstein has never been a main hero of any work of literary fiction. Guzel Yakhina's novel is the first literary biography of the legendary director whom his closest friends nicknamed Eisen.
Yakhina tells Eisenstein's personal story through the process of making films, from the first to the last; the movements of his artistic soul, the conflicts and other circumstances that shaped Eisen's personality are examined through the prism of the his main passion, and masterfully woven into a vivid fabric of artistic text.
Eisenstein's creative process is the nerve of her narrative covering his entire life against the backdrop of wars and revolutions that shook the world in the first half of the 20 century. The people surrounding Eisen – his family, colleagues, women, bosses, actors, – are all involved in his mono-performance. Yakhina’s protagonist seeks and finds ways to always remain in the center of attention, to evoke strong feelings he so desperately needs; he manipulates the emotions of both his loved ones, and of the audience.
A literary biography created by Yakhina not only explores the nature of Eisenstein’s personality and genius. By bravely expanding the boundaries of her narrative, she analyzes the nature of art in a totalitarian state. Eisenstein reaches the pinnacle of self-expression by subjugating History, which is exactly what the young Soviet state demanded: to give the masses a new History that would replace the old, outdated one. Having once discovered the main secret of cinema and other visual arts, – “people believe what we show on the screen, so what we show eventually converts into the truth”, – Eisen develops and perfections his own artistic method consisting in triggering a strong emotional response in his viewers, and ingeniously realizes the concept of art under totalitarianism, replacing critical perception of reality by an invented, cinematic reality. According to Yakhina, the price paid by Sergei Eisenstein for this secret knowledge, for the power he gained over the audience, and for resulting world fame is quite similar to that of Dr. Faustus's.
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