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Translating Umberto Eco as Revolutions Erupt, by Elena Kostioukovitch (2026, NF)
Rights sold: Italy - LA NAVE DI TESEO
Translating Umberto Eco as Revolutions Erupt is at once a collective autobiography, an essay on translation, a journey into the creative heart of Umberto Eco, and a window into the cultural and political transformations of recent decades.
Elena Kostioukovitch weaves her own experiences as a translator with those of the colleagues who brought the works of the author of The Name of the Rose into various foreign languages. It begins with the gripping story behind that extraordinary debut novel: though published worldwide, it was opposed by the Soviet Communist Party for its "relativist" ideas, translated in secret, and only published in Russia in 1988 following Gorbachev’s reforms.
Through untold anecdotes, photographs, reflections on translation choices, and a careful reconstruction of the technological evolution that changed publishing forever, this volume rebuilds the dialogue between Eco and his translators—showing an author who was witty, occasionally obsessive about his texts, but always deeply human. Yet, it is also the story of a clash between cultures, of a censorship that spares no one, and of a changing Russia—from Soviet rigidity to fragile freedom, right up to present-day tensions—all observed through the lens of those translating a staunch pro-European.
This book is both a tribute and a firsthand testament to the creative workshop of a great author, serving as a companion piece to the reflections gathered by Eco himself in Experiences in Translation (Dire quasi la stessa cosa). It is an exploration of translation told firsthand by those tasked with the mission of recreating an entire literary universe.
Technical details: Original language - Italian, characters, words
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Post-Soviet Mausoleum of the Past. History in times of Putin. Collected essays by Kirill Kobrin, 2017
Rights sold: Russia – NLO
"I am convinced that the period of history known as “post-Soviet” in Russia is over. This is why the personalities and processes of the previous period are no longer relevant. They are still in the news, and they still act, sometimes dangerously, but discussing them is as relevant as discussing laws passed by pre-revolutionary premier Pyotr Stolypin in 1919. Today’s changes aren’t as quick and catastrophic as they were then, but then history doesn’t repeat itself, not even as farce.
The old post-Soviet project, once relevant back in 1991, is over. It has achieved its aims
What has changed? The public agenda. The hierarchy of what’s important and what’s not for Russian society. What is appropriate and desirable. And, most importantly, the project of the present and the past. The old post-Soviet project, once relevant back in 1991, is over. It has achieved its aims. It’s just that nobody’s rushing to pronounce what has happened as the “natural, logical results” of this process.
Maybe now it’s time to sum up (tentatively, of course,) the results of Russia’s post-Soviet project — this is what this series of essays is devoted to. The post-Soviet project began with a public gesture of rejection of Soviet ideology. It ended when it drowned in the pseudo-ideological swamp of conservatism. Ideology, culture, public life in general, these are the things we must concentrate on to understand what happened in 1991-2016.
In this book, I look at the history of Soviet ideology, which was allegedly spurned by the freedom-loving Soviet peoples in the late 1980s, and which supposedly formed the foundation of the “Soviet empire.” I also discuss what happened to this ideology, discuss the possibility of new ideologies, and draw some conclusions about the state of the public mind in modern Russian society".
See excerpts from Kirill Kobrin´s History in times of Putin in English at openDemocracy project:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/death-of-post-soviet-project-in-russia/
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/welcome-to-post-post-soviet-era/
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