Featured titles
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Hanuman’s Travels, a novel by Andrei Ivanov (2009)
Rights sold: Estonia - VARRAK, France - Le Tripode, Germany - Kunstmann, World English - Vagabond Voices
Winner of the 2009 Yuri Dolgoruky Foundation Prize
Shortlisted for the 2010 Russian Booker Prize
Hanuman’s Travels, which was shortlisted for the Russian Booker in 2010, translated into English, German and French, and put on the German stage, is the picaresque tale of two asylum seekers, one a Russian Estonian man (the narrator) and the other an Indian (the protagonist), and their daily lives in a Danish refugee camp and on the road in the late 1990s. While they are waiting to go to the Danish island of Lolland, which is said to be a paradise, the two companions in misfortune survive in any way they can.
Among scams, big and small disgraces, humiliations and lies, a map is gradually drawn – a detailed map of itineraries where the hopes and the fears of thousands of marginal people flounder and intertwine. Their struggle at times engenders dismissiveness and even intolerance, but also humanity, courage and the wisdom born of experience and resignation. Andrei Ivanov was inspired to write this novel by his own vicissitudes as a stateless person living in Denmark.
The title clearly refers to Ramayana, an epic tale of a prince forced into exile and his years-long journey with his faithful companion, the monkey king. In Hindu mythology, Rāma is an “ideal person”, an avatar of the god Vishnu, who has adopted the shape of a mortal in order to demonstrate dharma, the right and virtuous life. The same question is faced daily by the heroes of all Ivanov’s books: how to remain human in the world out of joint, which is anything but humane – a world that denies his humanity.
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A Gipsy Fortune, a novel by Ilya Mitrofanov (1991)
Rights sold: Germany - Volk und Welt, France – Rocher, Italy - ISBN, Yugoslavia - Rad, Spain - Lumen
"A Gipsy Fortune" is the masterful first-person narrative of a poetic love story between a young half-Gipsy woman Sabina grown up in a Tzigane village Karagmeth adjacent to a small Moldavian town Achillea located on the bank of Danube, and a local talented artist Bogdan suffering a heavy form of maniacal-depressive psychosis in the Soviet Union of the post-WWII period.
Le Bonheur tsigane raconte une âme irréductible à l'embrigadement, la découverte par un regard naïf et perspicace de mondes inconnus: celui, exotique, de la Moldavie où se côtoient Roumains, Russes, Tsiganes, artisans et paysans dont les traditions et les aspirations restent infiniment étrangères au communisme imposé par le régime soviétique; celui, implacable, des tribus tsiganes; celui, hallucinant, de l'incarcération psychiatrique. Le Bonheur tsigane c'est, par antiphrase, la malchance collant au destin de Sabine, la jeune tsigane de Bessarabie qui fait le récit de sa vie. Nous sommes loin de l'image d'Épinal véhiculée par la littérature russe depuis Pouchkine, où les tsiganes évoquent le chant, la danse, l'alcool, les officiers de l'armée impériale rivalisant de folies pour l'amour d'une gitane. L'héroïne de Mitrofanov est une orpheline maltraitée. Cette belle voleuse, fière, sensible, s'éprend d'un peintre moldave qui noie ses démons dans la vodka et sombre peu à peu dans la démence.
Né aux confins de la Moldavie et de la Roumanie en 1946, Ilia Mitrofanov décrit la vie d'une région qu'il connaît intimement. Russe ethnique, il parle le roumain et le tsigane. Il était pêcheur, tonnelier puis soudeur avant de devenir écrivain. Sa prose populaire, transparente, recouvre en fait une profonde réflexion sur les réalités soviétiques. Publié dans la revue littéraire Znamia en 1991, Le Bonheur tsigane lui a valu une célébrité immédiate.
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