Mikhail Shishkin’s Maidenhair
Hotel Rex | 562 Sutter Street | San Francisco, CA
Awarded numerous prizes in Russia and acclaimed as a masterpiece, Mikhail Shishkin’s Maidenhair has been compared to Ulysses for its intricate plot and exuberant prose. Ostensibly set on the Swiss border, where asylum-seekers attempt to gain entry against implacable guards, the book encompasses numerous narratives, ranging across literature, philosophy, wild jokes, and the history of the 20th century. The Dallas Morning News called it “true literature, a phenomenon we encounter too rarely in any language.”
In this event we welcome the acclaimed, multi-award-winning Russian author and his remarkable wordsmith of a translator, Marian Schwartz, who has translated Russian literature for over 20 years, including classic works, like Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov and Mikhail Bulgakov’s White Guard, and contemporary greats, like Andrei Gelasimov and Olga Slavnikova.
They’ll be in conversation with the Center’s Scott Esposito for a delightful exploration of Russian literature, from Tolstoy and Chekhov up to the latest, amazing work.
Mikhail Shishkin is one of the most prominent writers in contemporary Russian literature, and the only writer to have received all three of Russia’s most prestigious literary awards: the Russian Booker Prize (2000), the National Bestseller Prize (2006), and the Big Book Prize (2006, 2011). His novels—all of which have been adapted for stage production in Russia—have been translated into twenty-eight languages.
Marian Schwartz is a prize-winning translator of Russian literature. She is the principal translator of the works of Nina Berberova and translated The Last Tsar, by Edvard Radzinsky, as well as classics by Mikhail Bulgakov, Ivan Goncharov, Yuri Olesha, and Mikhail Lermontov. She is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts translation fellowships and is a past president of the American Literary Translators Association.