The Last Summer is a novella by the Russian writer Boris Pasternak. Originally published in 1934 under the Russian title Povest (A Story), the book relates the reminiscences of Serezha, a young Muscovite spending the winter of 1915-16 with his sister's family in the foothills of the Ural Mountains. Serezha's flashbacks to the summer of 1914, when he worked as a tutor in the house of a wealthy Moscow merchant and associated with various women, form the bulk of the novella. The book was translated into English by George Reavey and was first published in English in Cecil Hemley's magazine in book form Noonday in its first, 1958 issue, then by Peter Owen Publishers in 1959, before being reprinted in the Penguin Modern Classics series in 1960. [1] The introduction was written by Pasternak's sister Lydia Slater. [2] [3] [4]
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pasternak's first book of poems, My Sister, Life, was published in Berlin in 1922 and soon became an important collection in the Russian language. Pasternak's translations of stage plays by Goethe, Schiller, Calderón de la Barca and Shakespeare remain very popular with Russian audiences.
Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva was a Russian poet. Her work is considered among some of the greatest in twentieth century Russian literature. She lived through and wrote of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Moscow famine that followed it. In an attempt to save her daughter Irina from starvation, she placed her in a state orphanage in 1919, where she died of hunger. Tsvetaeva left Russia in 1922 and lived with her family in increasing poverty in Paris, Berlin and Prague before returning to Moscow in 1939. Her husband Sergei Efron and her daughter Ariadna Èfron (Alya) were arrested on espionage charges in 1941; her husband was executed. Tsvetaeva committed suicide in 1941. As a lyrical poet, her passion and daring linguistic experimentation mark her as a striking chronicler of her times and the depths of the human condition.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was a Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist, and actor.
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.
Boris Akunin is the pen name of Grigori Chkhartishvili, a Russian writer. He is best known as writer of detective and historical fiction. He is also an essayist and literary translator. Grigory Chkhartishvili has also written under pen names Anatoly Brusnikin, Anna Borisova, and Akunin-Chkhartishvili.
Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov, baptized as Varlaam, was a Russian writer, journalist, poet and Gulag survivor. He spent much of the period from 1937 to 1951 imprisoned in forced-labor camps in the arctic region of Kolyma, due in part to his having supported Leon Trotsky and praised the anti-Soviet writer Ivan Bunin. In 1946, near death, he became a medical assistant while still a prisoner. He remained in that role for the duration of his sentence, then for another two years after being released, until 1953. From 1954 to 1978, he wrote a set of short stories about his experiences in the labor camps, which were collected and published in six volumes, collectively known as Kolyma Tales. These books were initially published in the West, in English translation, starting in the 1960s; they were eventually published in the original Russian, but only became officially available in the Soviet Union in 1987, in the post-glasnost era. The Kolyma Tales are considered Shalamov's masterpiece, and "the definitive chronicle" of life in the labor camps.
George Reavey was a Russian-born Irish surrealist poet, publisher, translator and art collector. He was also Samuel Beckett's first literary agent. In addition to his own poetry, Reavey's translations and critical prose helped introduce 20th century Russian poetry to an English-speaking audience. He was also the first publisher to bring out a collection of English translations of the French surrealist poet Paul Éluard.
Yuri Timofeyevich Galanskov was a Russian poet, historian, human rights activist and dissident. For his political activities, such as founding and editing samizdat almanac Phoenix, he was incarcerated in prisons, camps and forced treatment psychiatric hospitals (Psikhushkas). He died in a labor camp.
J. M. Cohen was a prolific translator of European literature into English.
"The Way to Amalthea" is a science fiction novella by Soviet writers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, published in 1960 and written in 1959. An English translation, titled "Destination: Amaltheia", was published in a collection of the same name of Russian science fiction writers in 1963 by Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow.
Noonday may refer to:
Óndra Łysohorsky was the pseudonym of Ervín Goj, a Czech poet of Silesian origin and awareness. He is known for his works written in Lach language which was systematized and practically created as a literary language by him. He also wrote in German.
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are literary translators best known for their collaborative English translations of classic Russian literature. Individually, Pevear has also translated into English works from French, Italian, and Greek. The couple's collaborative 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.
Doctor Zhivago is a novel by Boris Pasternak, first published in 1957 in Italy. The novel is named after its protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, a physician and poet, and takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and World War II.
Andrei Navrozov, poet and writer, was born in Moscow in 1956, grandson of the playwright Andrei Navrozov (1899–1941) and son of the essayist and translator Lev Navrozov (1928–2017).
Dr Ann Pasternak Slater is a literary scholar and translator who was formerly a Fellow and Tutor at St Anne's College, Oxford.
Keter Publishing House is one of the largest publishers in Israel. Keter has a large book marketing and distribution network, as well print services and book production for the Israeli domestic and export market. Keter is the most prominent publisher of contemporary Hebrew literature in Israel. Keter also published the first edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica and is a co-publisher of the Junior Britannica.
Olga Vsevolodovna Ivinskaya was a Russian poet and writer. She was friend and lover of Nobel Prize-winning writer Boris Pasternak during the last 13 years of his life and the inspiration for the character of Lara in his novel Doctor Zhivago (1957).
Lydia Leonidovna Pasternak, married name Lydia Pasternak Slater, was a Russian research chemist, poet and translator.
Rita Yakovlevna Rait-Kovaleva, born Chernomordik was a Soviet literary translator and writer, particularly known for her translations of J. D. Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut into Russian. Rait-Kovaleva's translation of The Catcher in the Rye achieved initial popularity amid novel's success among Soviet readers during Khrushchev Thaw.