At the 2013 Latvian Book Fair Elena Kostioukovitch will present the Latvian edition of her award-winning WHY ITALIANS LOVE TO TALK ABOUT FOOD released in Latvia as Kāpēc itāļiem patīk runāt par ēdienu by SIA "Jānis Roze" on March 2nd, 2013, at 13.00 in the Kipsala International Centre of Riga (Hall BT1).

Elena´s other public appearances include:

- on Thursday, February 28, at 18:15 - Faculty of Modern Languages of Latvian University (Visvalza 4 a) - Meeting with students of translation studies

- on Friday, March 1, at 12:30 - Faculty of Modern Languages of Latvian University (Visvalza 4 a) -Meeting with students of English Language and Literature and others

- on Friday, March 1, at 18:00 - Birojnīca Berga Bazārs - Meeting with readers

- on Saturday, March 2, at 18:30 - Literary cafe Polaris, Shopping mall Domina - Meeting with readers

http://showtime.delfi.lv/news/culturepark/local/v-rigu-priedet-pisatelnica-elena-kostyukovich.d?id=43061036

В Ригу приедет писательница Елена Костюкович

Foto: Publicitātes foto

Для участия в "Латвийской книжной выставке 2013", встречи с читателями и презентации вышедшей на латышском языке книги "Почему итальянцам нравится говорить о еде", с 28 февраля до 2 марта в Риге будет гостить популярная писательница, переводчик и литературный агент Елена Костюкович.

Встреча с Костюкович пройдет 2 марта в 13.00 в Международном выставочном центре на Кипсале на стенде Латвийской гильдии книжников.

Родившая в Киеве писательница, постоянно живущая в Италии, широко известна русской читательской аудитории великолепными переводами произведений Умберто Эко. Ее книга "Почему итальянцам нравится говорить о еде" (на русском языке книга вышла под названием "Еда. Итальянское счастье" и переведена на итальянский, английский, польский и эстонский языки) приглашает читателя в увлекательное гастрономическое путешествие по Апеннинскому полуострову в обществе классиков итальянской литературы, великих художников и поваров. В конце 2012 года в переводе Даце Мейере книга издана на латышском языке издательством Jāņa Rozes apgāds.

Елена Костюкович преподает в Италии русскую литературу, редактирует переводы российских писателей на итальянский язык, читает лекции на широкий круг тем: русская и итальянская культура, теория и практика перевода, творчество Умберто Эко и др.

Среди ее друзей Умберто Эко, Борис Акунин, Людмила Улицкая и другие известные итальянские и русские литераторы. Е.Костюкович много путешествует, активно публикуется в российских журналах, выступает с лекциями, ведет мастер-классы перевода. В 2009 году она организовала визит Умберто Эко в Тартуский университет.

Featured titles

Soviet Education, a novel by Olga Medvedkova

Rights sold: France - Alain Baudry & Cie Editeur, Spain - Acantilado

Prix Révélation de la Société des gens de lettres (2014, France)

Summer 1980: Moscow prepares for the Olympics at great risk, in the midst of the war in Afghanistan. The city is closed to non-residents, who in any case are abandoning it. Liza is one of them. An adolescent in search of her
identity, she has gone with her mother to a village she has never been to, but where her mother is very well known. And for good reason: the village bears her name. The mansion, an imposing but dilapidated Italianate building,
belonged to her ancestors, Russian princes close to the tsar. As for Liza, she bears the name of her father: Klein. A father who lives in America and the mere mention of whom is all but forbidden. Liza understands only that she has
a German name, and that she is the descendant, on her father’s side, of Joseph Klein, the Russian translator of Goethe.

Here, suddenly, are too many identities, whose accumulating questions go unanswered. Jewish, aristocratic, Soviet, intellectual – her family is a tissue of contradictions. To crown it all, she is troubled by David, her mother’s friend,
whose house they are living in, and who as she quickly realizes is of Jewish origin, a pillager of memories in the ancestral mansion, an accomplice of the village folk, a disillusioned artist declared a “social parasite” by the
authorities, who collaborates with a film crew that finances its perfectly official films by trafficking in icons...

Medvedkova's novel ideally combines a number of themes and elements which are quite typical for any novel where action is set in Russia, but their mixture produces an unexpected effect. Its protagonist a 15-year-old anorexic girl, a wonder-kid passing throughout a difficult stage of growing up and maturing, confronting the outside world and - especially - her authoritarian mother who herself has many skeletons in her closet.

The novel features the "ordinary family of Soviet intellectuals". Its narrative gains momentum gradually, and that subtly reflects the state of the soul and consciousness of the main character, its internal development: from slow and sleepy, to feverishly sharp, dizzy fast. Up to the very end of the book, Lisa (and the reader) doesn't see the full picture.

The novel is beautifully written, very dynamic and elegant. It's a concentrate of all Russian and Soviet just in the form that Western readership is interested to get. Aristocratic roots of Liza's family, dissidents, Soviet cultural elite, intelligentsia, etc. - in fact, the book provides a descriptive account of formation, way of thinking and self-perception of the modern Russian intellectuals, all these people who now got to play an important role in world science, culture,
politics, and economy.

The book is originally written in French and has around 220 pages.

Sergei Prokofiev, a biography, by Igor Vishnevetsky (2009, NF)

Rights sold: Russia - Molodaya Gvardia, World English - GLAGOSLAV

“A classical composer is a mad person composing music, which is not clear to his own generation”, the brilliant Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, whose 120^th birth anniversary will be marked on April 23rd, used to say. However, the date itself is Prokofiev’s imagination, as the author of his biography that was published in 2009 in the Life of Remarkable People series, Igor Vishnevetsky, who is a poet, a prose-writer and a culturologist, says.

"Officially, we celebrate Prokofiev’s birthday, which is the product of his imagination, on April 23rd, while according to the official documents, it should be celebrated on April 27^th. Igor Vishnevetsky said in an interview with the Voice of Russia."

One of the old myths was that Sergei Prokofiev was a person, who was seriously interested in nothing at all in his life, except music and his literary work. Let’s add chess to that list too. Meanwhile, Prokofiev kept well abreast of politics. And, which you might find surprising enough, though he was a representative of the avant-garde trend in music and a composer who was committed to radical left views regarding the art, as a politician, he was not a left-winger. Shortly after the 1917 revolution in Russia, Prokofiev left it and settled at first in the USA and then in France. Altogether, he spent 18 years abroad. True, parallel with his performances in America, Japan and Europe, he visited Russia with concerts 3 times. Saying that avangardism implies left-wing politics, Igor Vishnevetsky presents the following proofs.

"Prokofiev’s position on the 1917 to 18 events in Russia was clear-cut. He strongly disapproved of what occurred in Russia and regarded the revolutionary events in the country as a catastrophe of cosmic proportions. In an interview with an American newspaper he said that he was strongly positive about the intervention in the Russian Civil War. The knowledge of the above-mentioned destroys the customary image of Prokofiev and at the same time throws light on the circumstances he was guided by when he returned to Russia. Besides, what he said in the interview provides us food to understand why he wrote such music - that very music he wrote after his return to Russia."

The terms for the return of Sergei Prokofiev to Russia were, firstly, his expressing official regret for the interview to the foreign press during the Civil War and of course , his promise not to do anything of the kind in the future. Prokofiev was sure that he would be more in place and more popular at home. And he proved to be right. The great pianist and the brilliant performer of Prokofiev’s works, Svyatoslav Richter, describing Sergei Prokofiev who returned to Russia in 1936 to begin a new life there, says: “Once I saw him walking on the Arbat Street, and there was a challenging force in him.”

The “new life” of Sergei Prokofiev, the laureate of several Stalin prizes, was not cloudless in Russia. There’re still some blank spots in his biography. Of course, his 8 operas, including “War and Peace”, based on Leo Tolstoy’s novel, are well known. His 8 ballets, including “Romeo and Juliet” that was staged many times are well known as well. All his 7 symphonies and all his 9 instrumental concerts, and also his cantatas and numerous chamber pieces are often performed today. “And still, there’s something in Prokofiev’s biography we know nothing about”, Igor Vishnevetsky says.

(с) text: VOR

Table of contents

Part I. FACING THE EAST. 1891-1927
1. Childhood in Ukraine: the Scythian Wakes Up (1891-1905)
2. The 'enfant terrible' in St.Petersburg Conservatory of Music and After It (1905-1917)
3. Beginning of Odissey, or Road Towards the Sun (1918-1921)
4. Years of Wanderings. Art as Magic (1922-1927)

Part II. BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. 1927-1945
1. Between the Land of Bolsheviks and Eurasia (1927-1930)
2. Russian Parisian at Home and Abroad (1931-1935)
3. Experimenting within Limits: Prokofiev and Soviet Music (1936-1940)
4. The War (1941-1945)

Part III. IN CAPTIVITY. (1946-1953)
1. After-War Euphoria (1946-1947)
2. Catastrophe: 1948
3. Years of Isolation (1949-1953)
4. Epilogue: After Prokofiev

Appendix I. Chronological table of Sergei Prokofiev's life and art.
Appendix II. Bibliography.

Elena Kostioukovitch at the Latvian Book Fair, February 28 - March 2, 2013

В Ригу приедет писательница Елена Костюкович

Featured titles

Soviet Education, a novel by Olga Medvedkova

Sergei Prokofiev, a biography, by Igor Vishnevetsky (2009, NF)