Vladimir Makanin

 

Because he depicts their struggles so believably and poignantly, even in the context of fantastic plots, Makanin will appeal to a wide variety of readers - Harvey Pekar 

 

Vladimir Makanin was born in 1937 in Orsk, a city which straddles the Ural River. Makanin himself recalls how every morning he would cross from the ‘European' side where he lived, into Asia, to go to school, before returning back to Europe in the evening. Makanin's love of chess led him to enter Moscow State University to study Mathematics - and for six years after that he was a mathematician working in a laboratory of the Dzherzhinsky Military Academy. He has lived in Moscow ever since.

 

After attending a film course in 1963, however, Makanin's interests took a more literary direction and he began to write. His short stories quickly made his name amongst Russian intelligentsia circles and his first novel, ‘Прямая линия' (The Straight Line), appeared in 1967. With the end of Khrushchev's ‘thaw' in the late 1960s, Makanin fell out of favour and was largely ignored by Soviet literary critics for the next twenty years. From the 1980s onwards, however, he was increasingly ‘re-discovered' by a new generation of critics and writers. In 1993 Makanin won the Russian Booker Prize for ‘Стол, покрытый сукном и с графином посередине' (‘Baize-covered Table with Decanter'), in 1998 the Pushkin Prize and, in 1999, the State Prize of the Russian Federation. His most recent work, ‘Асан' (Asan), won the Big Book Prize in 2008.

 

‘Asan' is an account of the life of a military manager who runs a warehouse in Chechnya. Its narrative, build as a stream of consciousness, reads as a psychological thriller and it is drawn by a need to understand and justify this war.

 

From official opprobrium to the highest state honour, Makanin has evolved a highly original type of narration characterized by a montage of plot fragments, dialogues, philosophical speculations, dreams and legends, often arranged with gaps in space and time.

 

 

Main published works

 

Priyamaya Liniya (‘The Straight Line’) 1965

 

Klyucharev i Alimushkin (‘Klyucharev and Alimushkin’) 1979

 

Reka s bystrym techeniem (‘River with a Fast Current’) 1979

 

Antilider (‘Anti-leader’) 1980

 

Goluboe i krasnoe (‘Blue and Red’) 1982

 

Goloca ('Voices’) 1982

 

      English: Voices, Harvill, 1991

 

Predtecha (‘Ancestor’) 1982

 

Chelovek svity (‘Retainer’) 1982

 

Gdye skhodilos’ nebo c kholmami (‘Where the sky met the hills’) 1984

 

Utrata (‘The Loss’) 1987

 

English: The Loss: A Novella and Two Short Stories (Writings from an Unbound Europe), Northwestern University Press, 1998

 

Odin i Odna (‘Two Solitudes’) 1987

 

      French: Deux Solitudes, Belfond, 1993


      Spanish: Solo y Sola, Alfaguara Ediciones, 1989 

 

Otstavshchii (‘Left Behind’)1987

 

Underground, ili Geroj nashego vremeni (‘Underground, or a hero of our time’) 1999

 

Stol, pokrytiy suknom i s grafinom v ceredine (‘Baize Covered Table with Decanter’) 1993

 

      Winner of the 1993 Russian Booker Prize


      English: Baize Covered Table with Decanter, Readers International, 1995

 

Kavkazsky Plenniy (‘Prisoner from the Caucasus’) 1998

 

Laz (‘Escape Hatch’) 1992

 

      English: Escape Hatch, Overlook TP, 2009

 

Dolog nash put’ (‘The Long Road Ahead’) 1992

 

Other prizes:

 

2001 Premio Penne (Italy), 1998 Pushkin Prize, 1999 State Prize of the Russian Federation