Featured titles
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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).
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A TRACE IN THE FOOTPRINT, a novel by Vladimir Sharov
Rights sold: Russia - OLMA, ARSIS BOOKS, World Arabic - DREAMBOOK
A Trace in the Footprint is a family saga set in twentieth century Russia. The plot follows a character named Fyodor who begins to research the genealogy of his adoptive father, Golosov. This leads to the unraveling of a whole century of family history beginning with his great-grandfather. Fyodor soon discovers that his family’s history is inextricably linked to that of the Socialist Revolutionaries, the political party that would eventually split into the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The novel depicts the changes in Fyodor’s family after being forced to adapt to the political and social changes that took place after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Critically, the novel was praised for its classical narration reminiscent of Tolstoy’s realism.
Once published in hard copy in 1992, the book sold over 25,000 copies in Russia.
Sharov’s A Trace in the Footprint has been compared by critics to the 1967 novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Marquez. Where Sharov’s story follows a Russian family, Marquez’s novel tells a multigenerational story of the Buendia family from Colombia. Similarly to Sharov, Marquez’s story plunges into the true events that occurred but places a fictional family at the forefront. The result of the novels is the same, although fictional, the novels recreate the emotions felt in times of historical turmoil. Both stories accurately depict a family struggling to keep up with the socio-political changes that happen around them.
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