Featured titles
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Churov and Churbanov, a novel by Ksenia Buksha
Rights sold: Russia - AST
Shortlisted for the 2020 Big Book Award
Churov and Churbanov is a classic Petersburg tale in the tradition of Dostoevsky and Gogol, and the city’s atmosphere is palpable in every scene. The book is also a family drama; a riff on the Gothic theme of the double; a laugh-out-loud adventure novel; a sly triumph of speculative fiction; an elegy on growing up (and old); and a portrait of two familiar types: the awkward, hard-working nice guy (Churov, a pediatric cardiologist) and the life-of-the-party woman magnet (Churbanov, a two-bit wheeler-dealer). Their dissimilar lives begin to entwine after they discover their hearts beat in unison. This seemingly pointless synchrony has a side effect: a pair like them can sync other people’s heartbeats to their own, thus saving the lives of patients with serious heart conditions. But there’s a downside: when one of the original pair dies, all those whose heartbeats the pair synchronized die, too. Churov and Churbanov must follow their hearts, so to speak, in deciding what role their arbitrary gift will play for those around them. Buksha proves we depend on each other more than we realize, and we can save (or destroy) lives even if our hearts don’t beat as one.
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Please check Anne O. Fisher's page for a sample translation and media reviews dedicated to Churov and Churbanov in English: https://www.anneofisher.com/ksenia-buksha
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RETURN TO EGYPT, a novel by Vladimir Sharov
Winner of the 2014 Big Book Award
Winner of the 2014 The Crown award
Winner of the 2014 Russian Booker and Student Booker awardsRights sold: Macedonia - DRUZHINA, Russia - AST, Serbia - ROSSIKA
The novel depicts a Soviet agronomist by the name of Nikolai Gogol, who is a descendent of the great Russia writer by the same name. Throughout the novel, Nikolai attempts to write a sequel to the classic novel Dead Souls. The book, however, is not about Gogol; it instead follows the journey of Soviet generations whose lives are inextricably linked to the Bible’s Book of Exodus, hence the novel’s title. The novel has sold over 45,000 copies of books in Russian alone. In 2014, Sharov was awarded the Russian Booker and the Big Book award for the novel. Critically, the novel was a huge success as Sharov was praised for his unique and poetic plot. For example, according to the literary critic Natalia Kurchatova: “the author works at the junction of histography and religious-mystical perception of reality” to create a deeply complex and reflexive novel.
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