Featured titles
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Unpredictable Mechanisms of Culture by Yuri Lotman (NF)
Rights sold: Brazil - Hucitec Editora, Estonia – TALLINN UNIVERSITY PRESS (in Russian and in English), Georgia – MTSIGNOBARI, Poland – WYDAWNICTWA AKADEMICKIEGO SEDNO
This book, dictated by the world-known cultural semiotician Yuri Lotman at the end of his life, is in fact the last volume of Lotman’s opus magnum (along with his other fundamental works ‘Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture’ and ‘Culture and Explosion’).
The author analyses the global rules of history, the meaning of explosion and unpredictability in culture as well as art as a workshop of unpredictability. The book features a vast variety of new culturological ideas explained with plain and simple language distinguishing for all other Lotman´s writings. First and foremost, Lotman´s interest lies in the ways of development of culture. Among processes of cultural evolution Lotman distinguishes the three general types: the cyclical processes, which regularly return to the same start point, the linear processes, and finally, the explosive processes, which only might be attributed as unpredictable and as such represent the most interest to the culturological science.
The legendary semiotician didn't see this work published. It was put together and edited by his disciples, and for a long time remained unknown to the reader.
The book also contains extensive commentaries authored by Yuri Lotman’s long-time friends and colleagues: a prominent Russian philologist and Indo-Europeanist Vyacheslav Ivanov, writer and semiotician Boris Egorov, and Boris Uspensky.
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Translating Umberto Eco as Revolutions Erupt, by Elena Kostioukovitch (2026, NF)
Rights sold: Italy - LA NAVE DI TESEO
Translating Umberto Eco as Revolutions Erupt is at once a collective autobiography, an essay on translation, a journey into the creative heart of Umberto Eco, and a window into the cultural and political transformations of recent decades.
Elena Kostioukovitch weaves her own experiences as a translator with those of the colleagues who brought the works of the author of The Name of the Rose into various foreign languages. It begins with the gripping story behind that extraordinary debut novel: though published worldwide, it was opposed by the Soviet Communist Party for its "relativist" ideas, translated in secret, and only published in Russia in 1988 following Gorbachev’s reforms.
Through untold anecdotes, photographs, reflections on translation choices, and a careful reconstruction of the technological evolution that changed publishing forever, this volume rebuilds the dialogue between Eco and his translators—showing an author who was witty, occasionally obsessive about his texts, but always deeply human. Yet, it is also the story of a clash between cultures, of a censorship that spares no one, and of a changing Russia—from Soviet rigidity to fragile freedom, right up to present-day tensions—all observed through the lens of those translating a staunch pro-European.
This book is both a tribute and a firsthand testament to the creative workshop of a great author, serving as a companion piece to the reflections gathered by Eco himself in Experiences in Translation (Dire quasi la stessa cosa). It is an exploration of translation told firsthand by those tasked with the mission of recreating an entire literary universe.
Technical details: Original language - Italian, characters, words
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