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

latvian book fair 2013

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

Publicitātes foto
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

  • Confessions of a Young Novelist, 2011

    Rights sold:  Russia - Corpus, Estonia - Tanapaev,

     

    Umberto Eco published his first novel, The Name of the Rose, in 1980, when he was nearly fifty. In these “confessions,” the author, now in his late seventies, looks back on his long career as a theorist and his more recent work as a novelist, and explores their fruitful conjunction.

    He begins by exploring the boundary between fiction and nonfiction—playfully, seriously, brilliantly roaming across this frontier. Good nonfiction, he believes, is crafted like a whodunnit, and a skilled novelist builds precisely detailed worlds through observation and research. Taking us on a tour of his own creative method, Eco recalls how he designed his fictional realms. He began with specific images, made choices of period, location, and voice, composed stories that would appeal to both sophisticated and popular readers. The blending of the real and the fictive extends to the inhabitants of such invented worlds. Why are we moved to tears by a character’s plight? In what sense do Anna Karenina, Gregor Samsa, and Leopold Bloom “exist”?

    At once a medievalist, philosopher, and scholar of modern literature, Eco astonishes above all when he considers the pleasures of enumeration. He shows that the humble list, the potentially endless series, enables us to glimpse the infinite and approach the ineffable. This “young novelist” is a master who has wise things to impart about the art of fiction and the power of words.

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  • Inhabitants of the Funny Cemetery, a novel by Andrei Ivanov (2019)

    Rights sold:  Estonia - VARRAK, Russia - EKSMO

    Winner of the 2019 Estonian Cultural Endowment’s Russian Author Award

    Inhabitants of the Funny Cemetery is a panoramic novel which vividly brings to life the worlds of three generations of Russian émigrés in Paris. To recap, the Russian emigration began with the October Revolution and continued apace for two decades, meaning that by the start of the Second World War almost 80,000 Russians had established themselves in France. Paris quickly became the capital of the Russian emigration, not to be replaced by New York until the middle of the century.

    The novel contains multiple voices, including three first-person protagonists, whose voices start to overlap, to intertwine, and set off unexpected echoes. The novel’s main narrator is the Soviet émigré Viktor Lipatov (not necessarily his real name), a former dissident who spent several years in psychiatric detention, fled to America, and then arrived in Paris at the beginning of 1968, where he found work in the editorial offices of a Russian émigré newspaper.

    The second first-person narrator is Alexandr Krushchevsky, a doctor who was born to first generation Russian émigrés in Belgium, served as a volunteer in the Belgian army during the Second World War, was captured by the Germans, fled, and then lived in Saint-Ouen in France, where he mixed in French avantgarde art circles, before turning up again in Paris in 1968.

    The main protagonist of the novel, who brings the diverging stories together, is the multitalented Alfred Morgenstern, also a first-generation Russian émigré who was born in Moscow in 1896 before leaving with his family for Paris in 1906. A doctor by profession, he is also a pianist, an actor, a model, and an obsessive writer. Morgenstern and Krushchevsky are good friends, they are united by several shared experiences, and they share a secret which adds a subtle element of crime-fiction to the novel.      

    The colourful lives of the Russian émigrés are portrayed from the perspectives of these three characters. We learn about the difficulties they have acclimatising, the traumas inflicted on them by war, their struggle against Communism, and their homesickness. In this world, real-life and fictional characters mingle freely; at the risk of oversimplification one can argue that there are three types of characters in the novel: fictional characters, characters inspired by real-life people, and real-life historical figures.

    The three main protagonists are examples of the first type, embodying certain general features of the Russian émigrés, but lacking any specific historical counterparts. There are several ancillary characters who serve as examples of the second type: Ilja Gvozdevich, who is based on the émigré artist Ilja Zhdanevich (1894-1975), Sergei Shershnyov, a character inspired by the émigré writer and artist Sergei Sarshun (1888-1975) and Anatoly Igumnov, whose real-life counterpart was the Russian émigré historian, publicist and politician Sergey Melgunov (1879-1956). A whole gallery of historical figures feature in the novel, including Nikolay Berdyaev, André Breton, Paul Éluard, Théodore Fraenkel, Charles de Gaulle, Pavel Milyukov and Boris Poplavsky.

    It could be said that the city of Paris is the fourth character in the novel. Ivanov makes Paris almost physically tangible, and does so for all three of the historical periods which the novel covers. At the start of the novel, the author gives a captivating description of Paris life, through the words of the character Morgenstern. To provide a flavour this, I quote at length: ‘Paris whips you on, kicks you up the backside, sprinkles you with rain, splashes you in puddles, plays pranks on you, spits swearwords at you, whispers gossip in your ear, grabs at coat hems and shopfronts, pulls you close, kisses you on both cheeks, fishes cash out of your pocket, waves its hat at you, looks you longingly in the eye, and then embraces you in its dark, satin night.’ (pg. 44).

    Ivanov has gone to great lengths to ensure that all of the historical details are correct, including the physical environment (it’s clear that he has visited all of the novel’s locations), and the historical events. He has taken inspiration from a range of Russian émigré memoires and diaries, including those of Boris Poplavsky, Ivan Bunin, Felix Yusupov, Teffi (Nadezhda Lohvitskaya) and Anna Kashina-Yevreinova.

    In addition to the richness of historical detail, The Inhabitants of the Funny Cemetery is a homage to the art of the novel. Ivanov has found space for the majority of his literary influences here. There are multiple references to Dickens, in particular the Pickwick Papers, to Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, while Celine and Joyce interact in intriguing ways, as do Bunin and Nabokov. One can detect the stylistic influence of Mikhail Bulgakov, traces of Cormac McCarthy’s approach to form, as well as the influence of Goncharov’s Oblomov.

    But the greatest appeal of ‘The Inhabitants of the Funny Cemetery’ lies in Ivanov’s command of language. No one else writes quite like Ivanov. Literary scholars Eneken Laanes and Daniele Monticelli have fittingly described his style as ‘hysterical realism interspersed with epiphanic revelations (Keel ja Kirjandus, 2017, nr. 1)’. Ivanov’s writing grabs the reader and pulls her into its embrace, wraps her in multiple narrative strands, leads her through labyrinths, providing intermittent flashes of light and relief, before dragging her back into its depths.

    Irina Belobrovtseva and Aurika Maimre have compared Ivanov’s style to rock music (Ivanov is a devoted fan): ‘It has a discernible rock rhythm, with all its crazy energy and drive, it grabs hold of you and pulls you along, releasing you from your physical surroundings.’ (Language and Literature 2015, nr. 1).

    Ivanov creates entrancing literary worlds, he gets under the reader’s skin, conjuring up colours, smells, emotions; he dictates the pace, providing a cathartic experience which is almost physically tangible.

    Inhabitants of the Funny Cemetery is Ivanov’s first full-length symphony, a work in which he demonstrates his talents in every literary form, and on every instrument. It is one of the most brilliant achievements in Estonian literature of the last few decades.

    (from a review by Marek Tamm)

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