This is a great thrill for me. The russian language edition of my St Petersburg-set novel - Благородный топор. It was one foreign rights sale I really wanted, and hardly dared hope for.
The idea of my Dostoevsky-inspired mystery being translated into the language of Dostoevsky is just mind-blowing. In many ways, I imagined the book as a translation of a lost Russian novel. It's almost as if the original has now turned up.
7 comments:
поздравления Rog!
Nik
Thanks Nik! I didn't realise you were a Russophone!
я также! (Though my formal lessons start in November, as long as there are enough people applying for the course.)
Top drawer, sir. Well done. This definitely the one you should make into a poster and put above your computer :-)
Um, you want to know a secret? I'm not; just have translation wossnames on Word. ;)
Doesn't detract from my congrats of course.
Nik
Now THAT is spectacular.
One of the cool things about Russian (I had two years of it way back when) is that it is so heavily case-ridden that word order is largely a matter of preference. Gives their poets a lot more latitiude than ours have--and also explains why two translations of a Russian novel often appear to be two very different books.
So see if you can get someone to translate a bit of this back into English for you and see how it reads after its been through two style filters!
That's a great cover. Must be a thrill to have a Russian version.
I don't normally like tags but I've gone and started one with the idea of spreading the word about books we think worthy of more attention (inspired by the spread the word initiative). I thought it is something that blogs should be good at! I don't know if you'd like to join in but the post about it is here if you do:
http://rosyb.wordpress.com/2008/10/26/spreading-the-word-tag/
And just to let you know that I've changed site from mockduck to the above blog...I'm moving all my links across bit by bit. :)
Thanks Ian, David and Rosy (and Nik again!).
Ian - you're going to have lessons?! That's cheating! No, I really want to, and nearly signed up. But when would I write the bloody books? I might do it when I've put the current one to bed. I would like to learn Russian so that I can read my own book in Russian!
David - that's interesting about the word order thing. That's a good idea about getting it back translated. I was going to send a copy to my Russian friend, when I get them.
Hi Rosy, thanks for looking in. I will try to add a comment to your blog but things are a bit frantic at the moment. I'm about to go off to Italy for a few days for the Trevi Noir Festival. I still can't quite believe it.
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