ELKOST International literary agency - National Prize in China 2006

Featured titles

THE REHEARSALS, a novel by Vladimir Sharov

Rights sold: France - Solin-Actes Sud, World English - DEDALUS, Russia - ARSIS BOOKS, AST, Serbia - UTOPIA, Slovenia - DRUŽINA

In this novel, Sharov’s main character is an up-and-coming medieval historian, who is given old manuscripts by a mysterious figure. In these manuscripts, he uncovers the diaries of a seventeenth century Frenchman, Jacques de Sertan, who is writing a play about the life of Christ. The novel then follows a small Russian community that acts out Sertan’s work. The community is followed from the Old Believer schism of 1666 to the beginning of the Soviet period and the horrors of the Gulag, where the small community, once blooming with life, turns into a labor camp. In Russia the novel was praised for its in-depth look at the repercussions of communism on a rural community.

The novel was also well received by readers and has sold over 30,000 copies in Russia alone.

A stunning reflection on art, history, religion and national identity, The Rehearsals is the seminal work in the unique oeuvre of Vladimir Sharov

The Goatibex Constellation, a novel by Fazil Iskander (1966)

Published by: Czech Republic - Svet sovetu (1968), Estonia - Perioodika (1967), France - Les Editeurs Francais Reunis (1972), Germany - Volk und Welt (1968), Piper (1973), Verlag der Nation (1984), Hungary - Magveto (1968), Poland - Iskry (1971), Japan - Gunzosha (1985), Italy - Sellerio di Giorgianni (1988), Latvia - Liesma (1968), The Netherlands - Van Oorschot (1980), Slovakia - Obzor (1967), Sweden - AWE/Geber (1977), Romania - Colectia Meridiane (1968), Turkey - Hurriyet (1974), USA - ARDIS (1975), Overlook Press (2015)

Sozvezdie kozlotura (variously translated as "The Goatibex Constellation," "The Constellation of the Goat-Buffalo," and "Constellation of Capritaurus") is written from the point of view of a young newspaperman who returns to his native Abkhazia, joins the staff of a local newspaper, and is caught up in the publicity campaign for a newly produced farm animal, a cross between a goat and a West Caucasian tur (Capra caucasica).

Iskander's "remarkable satire of Lysenko's genetics and Khrushchev's agricultural campaigns, it was harshly criticized for showing the Soviet Union in a bad light." (Karen L. Ryan-Hayes, Contemporary Russian Satire: A Genre Study, Cambridge University Press, 2006).