ELKOST International literary agency - Ludmila Ulitskaya named a winner of the 2022 Formentor Prize

"For her powerful narrative voice that registers the subtlest movements of a human soul, for sensitivity with which she retells epic stories of people thrown into the labyrinth of the world, for a delicacy with which she restores a dignity of men and women who fell victim of the despotic fate, for the superb personal qualities of her protagonists and for her undulating, sharp and dazzling narrative style... the jury has decided to grant the 2022 Premio Formentor de las Letras to the Russian novelist Ludmila Ulitskaya".

About the prize, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prix_Formentor

First reactions of the international mass media:

https://elpais.com/cultura/2022-04-28/la-escritora-rusa-ludmila-ulitskaya-gana-el-premio-formentor-2022.html

https://www.elmundo.es/cultura/literatura/2022/04/28/626a486121efa02e6c8b45ff.html

https://www.abc.es/cultura/abci-escritora-rusa-liudmila-ulitskaya-refugiada-berlin-gana-formentor-2022-202204280914_noticia.html

https://www.europapress.es/cultura/libros-00132/noticia-premio-formentor-letras-2022-recae-liudmila-ulitskaya-exponente-literatura-rusa-contemporanea-20220428104318.html

https://www.efe.com/efe/america/cultura/escritora-rusa-liudmila-ulitskaya-premio-formentor-de-las-letras-en-espana/20000009-4793637

https://www.elespanol.com/el-cultural/letras/20220428/liudmila-ulitskaya-premio-formentor-letras/668433254_0.html

https://www.larazon.es/cultura/20220428/d7wt36jca5bsxa7r2tneq3c6ti.html

https://www.cope.es/actualidad/cultura/noticias/escritora-rusa-liudmila-ulitskaya-premio-formentor-las-letras-2022-20220428_2051856

https://www.lavanguardia.com/cultura/20220428/8228241/escritora-rusa-liudmila-ulitskaya-premio-formentor-letras-2022.html

https://www.diariodemallorca.es/cultura/2022/04/28/escritora-rusa-liudmila-ulitskaya-premio-65480441.html

https://llegim.ara.cat/actualitat/gran-veu-literatura-russa-liudmila-ulitskaia-guanya-premi-formentor_1_4353689.html

https://www.ultimahora.es/noticias/cultura/2022/04/28/1727147/premio-formentor-letras-2022-recae-escritora-rusa-liudmila-ulitskaya.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=redaccion

https://www.diariodecanarias.es/noticia/la-rusa-liudmila-ul%C3%ADtskaya-gana-el-premio-formentor-fallado-en-lanzarote

https://www.elconfidencial.com/cultura/2022-04-28/liudmila-ulitskaya-formentor_3415762/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=BotoneraWeb

https://theobjective.com/cultura/2022-04-28/liudmila-ulitskaya-gana-premio-formentor-2022/

https://rtvc.es/la-escritora-rusa-liudmila-ulitskaya-premio-formentor-de-las-letras-2022/

https://www.lasprovincias.es/culturas/disidente-rusa-ludmila-20220428113447-ntrc.html

Featured titles

Don Domino (The Zero Train), a novel by Yuri Buida (1994)

Rights are handled on behalf of Editions Gallimard

Rights sold: China - Thinkingdom Media Group, France – Gallimard, Germany - AUFBAU, Italy - ATMOSPHERE LIBRI, Norway – Aschehoug, Russia - EKSMO, Spain – Automatica, Turkey – Dogan, UK/US – Dedalus (as The Zero Train)

Russian Booker prize nominee

The action in this novel takes place in a remote train station in the far reaches of Russia. It relates the life of the inhabitants who watch each night the passing of a train bound for some mysterious destination... A lot of comparisons have been made to try to capture the essence of this short novel – Kafkaesque, Beckett with trains, you get the picture. And whilst these may be true to a degree, it is only a small degree. Buida has his own voice and his own approach. Indeed, like all good writers he has subverted everything without once straying from a path which anyone can follow. Most importantly, he has taken what many term Socialist Realism and used it to cast a blisteringly clear light on Stalinist Russia. That this would call to mind both Kafka and Beckett (and many more beside) is inevitable.

If that is his style, his subject is both simple and infinitely expressive, with a life beyond the episodic tale. A railway line is built along which travels the Zero Train. At intervals along the track there are stations and sidings, workshops, and all the life that is lived by those who maintain all these facilities. We are given glimpses into the long, bleak, and brutal life of one such place. It encapsulates the Stalinist era, but it also lays wide open the human condition. Those who arrive at the beginning, young, with hope, are ground down through the years. Those that survive are little more than that. Survivors. Their lives have been devoted to the Zero Train, the purpose of which is a mystery. When the train goes, they must go as well. The whole book is a surreal tour de force. It sounds grim, and the realism spares no sensibilities, but at the same time it is a poetic work, and a paean to those whose whole lives were lived with the heel of the boot on their faces.

"The Zero Train is an imaginative exploration of Soviet history that stands on its own literary achievements. Oliver Ready's translation conveys with a sure hand the power and grace of Buida's supple prose. His style is at once lyrical and shocking. The norms of Socialist Realism -- prominent in the cultural hinterland that such translations expose to our view -- are manipulated with an angry bravado in this violent elegy for Ivan Ardabyev." - Times Literary Supplement

"The Zero Train by Yuri Buida is the most remarkable book I've read this year." - Helen Dunmore, The Observer (25/11/2001)

Yakov's Ladder, a novel by Ludmila Ulitskaya (2015)

2016 Big Book Award (3rd place) and Reader’s Choice Award

German rights are handled by Christina Links: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Rights sold: Azerbaijan - TEAS, Brazil - Editora Estação Liberdade, China - People's Literature, Croatia - FRAKTURA, Czech Republic - PASEKA, France - GALLIMARD, Georgia - Palitra L, Italy - LA NAVE DI TESEO, Germany - HANSER, Hungary - MAGVETO, Poland - WYDAWNICTWO LITERACKIE, Romania - HUMANITAS FICTION, Russia - AST, Serbia - ARHIPELAG, Slovakia - SLOVART, Sweden - ERSATZ, Ukraine - BookChef, World English - FSG

At first glance, Yacov’s Ladder perfectly embodies the generic definition of a “family saga.” The story of several generations of Osetskys, who were originally from Kiev and then transplanted to Moscow, spans an entire century, from 1911 to 2011. The family saga is, however, no more than a shell, a shapely vessel chosen by the author in her search for answers to the questions posed inexorably and unrelentingly by literature and philosophy since the beginning of human existence: to what degree is the human individual free or unfree? How do circumstances, DNA, or history combine to determine or condition the individual personality?

The novel revolves around two axes, Nora and her grandfather, Yakov Osetsky. Nora and Yakov have seen each other only once, in the mid-1950s, when Nora was just a child, and Yakov’s life was already nearing its end. The encounter was no more than a fleeting episode for both of them. A true meeting of minds and souls occurred only much later, in 2011, when Nora had already emerged from the commotion and tumult of everyday existence and the course of her life was winding down, and she read the diaries of her grandfather, as well as his family correspondence (which covered many decades), and the dossier of Yakov Osetsky from the KGB archives.

From the first page, the reader is thrust headlong into the masterfully depicted world of the main character, Nora Osetsky. Nearly all the people who play an important role in her life appear in the narrative in quick succession: her son Yorik, theater director Tengiz Kuziani, her mother Amalia, her father Henrik, her grandmother Marusya, and an “occasional” husband Victor. The people are enmeshed in themes and objects: theater, the career of a set designer, books, sugar tongs, an old blouse trimmed with an ancient Egyptian motif, and an osier chest holding the family archives.