ELKOST International literary agency - Eisen by Yakhina awarded the Prix Transfuge 2026 in France

https://www.livreshebdo.fr/article/le-palmares-transfuge-de-la-rentree-litteraire-2026

Guzel Yakhina's novel EISEN about Sergey Ensenstein translated by Maud Mabillard and published by Noir sur Blanc got the 2026 Prix Transfuge in France.

Prix Transfuge du roman russe : Gouzel Iakhina, Eisen, traduit du russe par Maud Mabillard (Noir sur Blanc)

Connue en France notamment pour Zouleikha ouvre les yeux, l’écrivaine russe d’origine tatare Gouzel Iakhina consacre son nouveau roman à Sergueï Eisenstein. Entre documentation historique et fiction, elle retrace la trajectoire du réalisateur du Cuirassé Potemkine, prise entre révolution, création, propagande et censure stalinienne.

Featured titles

Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, 1966

Rights sold: Russia - Azbooka, Aleteia, Corpus

God of Rain, a novel by Maya Kucherskaya (2006)

Rights sold: Croatia - Zagrebacka naklada, Russia - AST

Student Booker Prize (2007)

God of Rain is a short novel, dynamically plotted and with none of the excesses we have come to associate with “youth” novels. Quite the opposite, it is the story of Anya, a nice, well-educated young woman, who graduates from college as promising young intellectual. She starts her philological studies in Moscow University, but falls into a deep depression, and converts to active Orthodoxy. Her conversion leaves her firmly determined to go to live in a monastery. But instead she falls in love with her spiritual father and ultimately emigrates to Canada. Throughout all of this, she remains a virgin and a profound spiritual seeker.

In this novel we have a fresh view on the involvement of the young people in the new Orthodox wave that seems to be overflowing in Russia these days; an important internal analysis of the dilemma of the believers and of the priest. In Anya—a nice, “clean thinking” young woman—we have a character long overdue in modern literature; and the plot is tightly woven and psychologically insightful.

The novel is meant to be read in one breath.

...Kucherskaya succeeded in being grateful. She writes about a happiness granted to her protagonist by an outcast, confused, bitter, but so genuine adolescence. (Andrew Nemzer)

Should we say the new novel by Kucherskaya is good? Of course, it is… (Evgeny Berzharsky, Itogi)

Maya Kucherskaya once again demonstrates her expertise in a literary rope walking … (Vladimir Zamirsky, Komsomolskaya Pravda)

I've always thought that a good humanities training is useful for an aspiring writer, and Kucherskaya's novel proves it: Her style is lucid and often gripping. Moreover, the subject matter is quite fresh. (Victor Sonkin, The Moscow Times)