Featured titles
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The Prussian Bride, collected stories by Yuri Buida (1998)
Rights are handled on behalf of Editions Gallimard
Rights sold: Estonia - Loomingu Raamat, France – Gallimard, Hungary – Kalligram, Poland – Czytelnik, Russia - NLO, EKSMO, AST, Slovakia – Kalligram, Spain - AUTOMATICA, UK/US – Dedalus
Apollon Grigoriev Prize 1999
Rossica Translation Prize 2005 (translation by Oliver Ready)
The Prussian Bride, unfolds a strange hodge podge of blunt fiction and fantastical hallucination. The action in the thirty short stories of the collection takes place in the area of Kaliningrad, where the writer was born back in 1954. The writer depicts the daily life of forlorn, mortified, alcoholic or sick locals who are haunted by the fantasy of a lost paradise. Dark and tragic accounts sliding along from rational to imaginary.
Each of Yuri Buida’s short stories gathered here explore the territory between the Vistula and Niemen which once used to be eastern Prussia. The myth of a glorious past left its marks in the Kaliningrad area, he former Königsberg, but its inhabitants’ daily life is cold, dark and violent. Material and emotial misery is rampant, and violence is not only physical. The tone of this anthology, dedicated to the memory of a territory is absolutely tragic. Several recurring characters appear in this collection of thirty short stories, so that it can almost read like a novel. It definitely brings to mind the romanticism of E.T.A Hoffman, sprinkled with Russian excessiveness. “Chapters” in Buida’s novel display a wide variety of genres and styles, from fantasy and the grotesque to a stern (even cruel) realism. The author demonstrates plot ingenuity and a masterful use of shock effects.
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By Richter's Side. Dialogues with Sviatoslav Richter by Yuri Borisov (2003, 2011)
Rights sold: France – ACTES SUD, Japan – ONGAKU NO TOMO, Russia – RUTENA, AZBOOKA, Spain – ACANTILADO
Richter shared with his younger friend the stories of his childhood, and recollections of his meetings with other celebrities (Britten, Fischer-Dieskau, Gavrilov, Michelangeli, Picasso, Prokofiev, Serkin, Sofronitski, Vedernikov, Yudina, etc.). He explained his vision of music, comparing it with other arts: painting (Ernst, Renoir, Schiele, Vermeer, etc..), literature (Balzac, Block, Maeterlinck, Mann, Ostrovsky, Proust, Racine, Rostand, etc..), cinema (Alexandrov, Chaplin, Cocteau, Kurosawa, Pasolini, etc..). Notes taken during or after these extremely interesting conversations Borisov has later converted into a book, thanks to which we can look into the inner world of Sviatoslav Richter, one of the most exciting figures on 20th century musical horizon.
ABOUT SVIATOSLAV RICHTER (1915-1997)
- The Italian critic Piero Rattalino has asserted that the only pianists comparable to Richter in the history of piano performance were Franz Liszt and Ferruccio Busoni.
- Glenn Gould called Richter one of "the most powerful musical communicators of our time".
- Van Cliburn attended a Richter recital in 1958 in the Soviet Union. He reportedly cried during the recital and, upon returning to the United States, described Richter's playing as "the most powerful piano playing I have ever heard".
- Arthur Rubinstein described his first exposure to Richter as follows: "It really wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Then at some point I noticed my eyes growing moist: tears began rolling down my cheeks."
- Heinrich Neuhaus described Richter as follows: "His singular ability to grasp the whole and at the same time miss none of the smallest details of a composition suggests a comparison with an eagle who from his great height can see as far as the horizon and yet single out the tiniest detail of the landscape."
- Dmitri Shostakovich wrote of Richter: "Richter is an extraordinary phenomenon. The enormity of his talent staggers and enraptures. All the phenomena of musical art are accessible to him."
- Vladimir Horowitz said: "Of the Russian pianists, I like only one, Richter"
- Pierre Boulez wrote of Richter: "His personality was greater than the possibilities offered to him by the piano, broader than the very concept of complete mastery of the instrument."
- Gramophone critic Bryce Morrison described Richter as follows: "Idiosyncratic, plain-speaking, heroic, reserved, lyrical, virtuosic and perhaps above all, profoundly enigmatic, Sviatoslav Richter remains one of the greatest recreative artists of all time."
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