Join us in celebrating the US launch for Marian Schwartz’s translation of Nina Berberova’s The Last and the First, from Pushkin Press. Marian will be joined by Philip Boehm, who will be reading from his 2021 translation of Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz’s The Passenger.
AATIA’s Literary Special Interest Group (LitSIG), in coordination with Malvern Books, has planned this exciting program for this year’s celebration of International Translation Day.
On a crisp September morning, trouble comes to the Gorbatovs’ farm. Having fled revolution and civil war in Russia, the family has worked tirelessly to establish themselves as crop farmers in Provence, their hopes of returning home a distant dream. While young Ilya Stepanovich is committed to this new way of life, his step-brother Vasya looks only to the past. With the arrival of a letter from Paris, a plot to lure Vasya back to Russia begins in earnest, and Ilya must set out for the capital to try to preserve his family’s fragile stability.
The first novel by the celebrated Russian writer Nina Berberova, The Last and the First is an elegant and devastating portrayal of the internal struggles of a generation of émigrés. Appearing for the first time in English in a stunning translation by the prize-winning Marian Schwartz, it shows Berberova in full command of her gifts as a writer of masterful poise and psychological insight.
Marian Schwartz translates Russian classic and contemporary fiction and nonfiction. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including two NEA translation fellowships. Her latest published translation is Nina Berberova’s first novel, The Last and the First. Currently she is working on untranslated works by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Philip Boehm has translated more than thirty books and plays by German and Polish writers, including Herta Müller, Franz Kafka and Hanna Krall. For these translations he has received numerous awards including NEA and Guggenheim fellowships, and most recently the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translators Prize. He also works as a theater director and playwright: works for the stage include Alma en venta, Mixtitlan, and Return of the Bedbug. Mr. Boehm is the founding Artistic Director of the Upstream Theater in St. Louis, recipient of the 2021 Missouri Arts Award.
Zoom Info:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84460923645?pwd=eHp4L2x3ZW5ERHJoL0oxKzdheGU1dz09
Meeting ID: 844 6092 3645
Passcode: 384198
This event can also be viewed live on our YouTube channel.