Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature.
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia and its émigrés and to the Russian-language literature. The roots of Russian literature can be traced to the Middle Ages, when epics and chronicles in Old East Slavic were composed. By the Age of Enlightenment, literature had grown in importance, and from the early 1830s, Russian literature underwent an astounding golden age in poetry, prose and drama. Romanticism permitted a flowering of poetic talent: Vasily Zhukovsky and later his protégé Alexander Pushkin came to the fore. Prose was flourishing as well. The first great Russian novelist was Nikolai Gogol. Then came Ivan Turgenev, who mastered both short stories and novels. Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky soon became internationally renowned. In the second half of the century Anton Chekhov excelled in short stories and became a leading dramatist. The beginning of the 20th century ranks as the Silver Age of Russian poetry. The poets most often associated with the "Silver Age" are Konstantin Balmont, Valery Bryusov, Alexander Blok, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolay Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam, Sergei Yesenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Marina Tsvetaeva and Boris Pasternak. This era produced some first-rate novelists and short-story writers, such as Aleksandr Kuprin, Nobel Prize winner Ivan Bunin, Leonid Andreyev, Fyodor Sologub, Aleksey Remizov, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Andrei Bely.
Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel was a Russian writer, journalist, playwright, and literary translator. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry, Story of My Dovecote and The Odessa Tales—stories from the life of Jewish gangsters from Odessa led by Benya Krik. He has been acclaimed as "the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry". Babel was arrested by the NKVD on 15 May 1939 on fabricated charges of terrorism and espionage and executed on 27 January 1940. In 1954 he was rehabilitated.
Vera Mikhailovna Inber, born Shpenzer, Russian: Ве́ра Миха́йловна И́нбер was a Russian-Soviet poet and writer.
Teffi was a Russian humorist writer. Teffi was the pseudonym of Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya, and after her marriage Nadezhda Alexandrovna Buchinskaya (Бучи́нская). Together with Arkady Averchenko she was one of the prominent authors of the magazine Satiricon. Her year of birth is variously reported in the range 1871–1876, with the most recent findings suggesting May 1872. Teffi's sister Mirra Lokhvitskaya (1869–1905) was a notable Russian poet.
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are a couple who are best known for their collaborative translations. Most of their translations are of works in Russian, but also French, Italian, and Greek. Their translations have been nominated three times and twice won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize. Their translation of Dostoevsky's The Idiot also won the first Efim Etkind Translation Prize.
Sigizmund Dominikovich Krzhizhanovsky was a Russian and Soviet short-story writer who described himself as being "known for being unknown"; the bulk of his writings were published posthumously.
Viktor Vladimirovich Yerofeyev is a Russian writer. As son of a high-ranking Soviet diplomat Vladimir Yerofeyev, he spent some of his childhood in Paris, which accounts for why much of his work has been translated from Russian into French, while comparatively little has been translated into English. His father, who was the interpreter for Molotov in the 1940s, wrote a book of memories; his brother is a curator at the Tretyakov Gallery.
Lyudmila Stefanovna Petrushevskaya is a Russian writer, novelist and playwright. She began her career writing and putting on plays, which were often censored by the Soviet government, and following perestroika, published a number of well-respected works of prose.
James E. Falen is a professor emeritus of Russian at the University of Tennessee. He published a translation of Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin in 1990 which was also influenced by Nabokov's translation, but preserved the Onegin stanzas (ISBN 0809316307). This translation is considered to be the most faithful one to Pushkin's spirit according to Russian critics and translators.
The Rossica Translation Prize is a biennial award given to an exceptional published translation of a literary work from Russian into English. It is the only prize in the world for Russian to English literary translations.
Yury Vasilyevich Buida is a Russian author. In 1994 his novel The Zero Train was shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize. His short story collection The Prussian Bride won the Apollon Grigoriev Prize in 1999, and its translation by Oliver Ready won the Rossica Translation Prize in 2005.
Rosemary Edmonds, born Rosemary Lilian Dickie, was a British translator of Russian literature whose versions of the novels of Leo Tolstoy have been in print for 50 years.
"Death of the Poet" is an 1837 poem by Mikhail Lermontov, written in reaction to the death of Alexander Pushkin.
Abdulla Qahhor was an Uzbek novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, and literary translator. He is best remembered as the author of the 1951 novel Qoʻshchinor chiroqlari and the 1958 story Sinchalak. In addition to writing numerous short stories and novels, Qahhor translated the works of many famous Russian writers, such as Alexander Pushkin, Anton Chekhov, and Nikolai Gogol into the Uzbek language. In particular, he translated The Captain's Daughter of Pushkin, Marriage and The Government Inspector of Gogol, and, together with his wife Kibriyo Qahhorova, War and Peace of Leo Tolstoy.
Boris Viktorovich Tomashevsky was a Russian Formalist literary critic, theorist of poetry,textual analyst, historian of Russian literature, Pushkin scholar, translator, and writer. He was a member of the Moscow linguistic circle the OPOJAZ and the Union of Soviet Writers.
Robert Chandler is a British poet and literary translator. He is the editor of Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin) and the author of Alexander Pushkin (Hesperus). He is also the editor of the literary magazine Cardinal Points.
The Tragedy of Mister Morn is a verse drama by Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The play is one of his first major works.
Madan Lal Madhu (1925–2014) was an Indian poet and translator, known for his translations of Russian classics in Hindi language. He was one of the founders of Hindustani Samaj, an Indian community in Moscow and a recipient of the Medal of Pushkin and the Order of Friendship of the former Soviet Union. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian award of Padma Shri in 1991.
Oliver Ready is a research fellow in Russian Society and culture at St Antony's College, Oxford. He had completed his Phd at Wolfson College, Oxford.
