Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia, its émigrés, and to 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. Mikhail Lermontov was one of the most important poets and novelists. The first great Russian novelist was Nikolai Gogol. Then came Ivan Turgenev, who mastered both short stories and novels. Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy soon became internationally renowned. Other important figures of Russian realism were Ivan Goncharov, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and Nikolai Leskov. 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, Sergei Yesenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Marina Tsvetaeva. This era produced some first-rate novelists and short-story writers, such as Aleksandr Kuprin and Nobel Prize winners Ivan Bunin, Leonid Andreyev, Fyodor Sologub, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Alexander Belyaev, Andrei Bely and Maxim Gorky.
Andrei Platonovich Platonov was a Soviet Russian novelist, short story writer, philosopher, playwright, and poet. Although Platonov regarded himself as a communist, his principal works remained unpublished in his lifetime because of their skeptical attitude toward collectivization of agriculture (1929–1940) and other Stalinist policies, as well as for their experimental, avant-garde form infused with existentialism. His famous works include the novels Chevengur (1928) and The Foundation Pit (1930).
Nadezhda Alexandrovna Teffi was a Russian humorist writer. Together with Arkady Averchenko she was one of the prominent authors of the magazine Novyi Satirikon.
The Scott Moncrieff Prize, established in 1965, and named after the translator C. K. Scott Moncrieff, is an annual £2,000 literary prize for French to English translation, awarded to one or more translators every year for a full-length work deemed by the Translators Association to have "literary merit". The Prizes is currently sponsored by the Institut Français du Royaume Uni. Only translations first published in the United Kingdom are considered for the accolade.
Len Rix is a Zimbabwe-born translator of Hungarian literature into English, noted for his translations of Antal Szerb's Journey by Moonlight and The Pendragon Legend and of Magda Szabó's The Door and Katalin Street.
Elaine Feinstein FRSL was an English poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer and translator. She joined the Council of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007.
The following is a bibliography of the works of Mikhail Bulgakov in English and Russian.
Genrikh Sapgir was a Russian poet and fiction writer of Jewish descent.
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.
The Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize is an annual literary prize for any book-length translation into English from any other living European language. The first prize was awarded in 1999. The prize is funded by and named in honour of Lord Weidenfeld and by New College, The Queen's College and St Anne's College, Oxford.
Cardinal Points is a bilingual annual literary magazine published in English and Russian by Slavic studies department of Brown University. It was founded by Oleg Woolf in 2010 to focus on the work of great 20th century writers Andrei Platonov, Varlam Shalamov, and Vassily Grossman. Its editors include Irina Mashinski, Robert Chandler and Boris Dralyuk.
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 the short biography of Alexander Pushkin (Hesperus). He is also the editor of the literary magazine Cardinal Points.
Glas was a Russian publishing house. It was established by Natasha Perova in 1991, and was instrumental in translating the works of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Victor Pelevin, and Vladimir Sorokin and introducing them to the West.
Olga Alexandrovna Slavnikova is a Russian novelist and literary critic. She was awarded the 2006 Russian Booker Prize for her novel 2017.
The Premio Valle-Inclán is a literary translation prize. It is awarded by the Society of Authors (London) for the best English translation of a work of Spanish literature. It is named after Ramón del Valle-Inclán. The prize money is GBP £2,000.
The Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German Translation is a literary translation award given by the Society of Authors in London. Translations from the German original into English are considered for the prize. The value of the prize is £3,000, while the runner-up now receives £1,000. The prize is named for August Wilhelm Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck, who translated Shakespeare to German in the 19th century.
The Cow is a 1989 Soviet animated short film directed by Aleksandr Petrov.
Mikhail Yuryevich Elizarov – is a modern Russian writer and singer-songwriter, laureate of the Russian Booker Prize in 2008 for the novel The Librarian.
Anna Alfredovna Starobinets is a Russian writer and scriptwriter who has been called the "Russian Queen of Horror". She has published novels, short stories and children's books, and describes herself as writing "horror and supernatural fiction for adults, and also fairy and detective stories for children".
The Read Russia Prize awards are made every two years for outstanding translations of Russian literature into foreign languages.
