Saturday 19 June, 7.30pm & 10.30pm, PizzaExpress Jazz Club
A long established leading figure in Russian jazz and an internationally acclaimed pianist, Daniel Kramer will visit London to perform two live concerts exclusively for the audience of the PizzaExpress Jazz Club. The innovator of Russia's jazz scene and artistic director of no less than four jazz festivals, he lectures at Moscow State Conservatory and Central Music School while also being the Chairman of the Jazz

We are as disappointed as you are that the ash cloud stopped our Russian authors from making it to the UK for our SLOVO festival. However, the festival has not been cancelled, merely postponed. We are working hard to bring the events to London at a later date, so keep a close eye on our website! In the meantime, Academia Rossica is delighted to support The East End Film Festival (22 April – Friday 30) in their focus on new Russian cinema.

A historian of medieval Russia by training, Vladimir Sharov (b. 1952) is the son of a geneticist who turned to writing prose, for children and adults, in the 1960s. Sharov himself began writing fiction in the late 1970s, but it was not until the 1990s that his highly unusual historiosophical novels came before the public gaze. In so doing, they caused genuine acrimony and controversy among influential editors of the literary journals (especially Novyi mir).

Maria Galina is one of the most interesting authors among those who made their names in the turbulent 1990s. She writes both literary and science fiction (with ten SF books to her credit). She is also a noted poet, a thoughtful critic, and translator of English and American science fiction, in all of which she excels. She is a winner of many important prizes for her prose and poetry and her critical essays.

A historian of medieval Russia by training, Vladimir Sharov (b. 1952) is the son of a geneticist who turned to writing prose, for children and adults, in the 1960s. Sharov himself began writing fiction in the late 1970s, but it was not until the 1990s that his highly unusual historiosophical novels came before the public gaze.

Maria Galina is one of the most interesting authors among those who made their names in the turbulent 1990s. She writes both literary and science fiction (with ten SF books to her credit). She is also a noted poet, a thoughtful critic, and translator of English and American science fiction, in all of which she excels. She is a winner of many important prizes for her prose and poetry and her critical essays.

In order to prepare Russia’s participation as Market Focus Country two steering committees have been set up - in London and in Moscow. The first London steering committee was held at the Russian Embassy in London on 9 November 2009. It was chaired by Mr Alistair Burtenshaw, Director of The London Book Fair.

SLOVO Russian Literature Festival 19 - 25 April 2010 London and other UK cities Russian Literature Week is back for the third time, held in the same week as the London Book Fair. The aim is to highlight Russian writers and publishers, both in London and on an international scale. This year's SLOVO will also showcase the new generation of writers, exciting new poets and the fascinating culture scene of today's Russia.

I was delighted and astonished when I received the invitation to be one of the judges of this year’s ‘Rossica’ Translation Prize. Delighted – because, by accepting, I would be able to indulge myself with a clear conscience in reading (or, as it often turned out, rereading) many works of Russian literature rather than doing what I all too often do – reading works about Russian literature (and various other things). Astonished – because I am not a prolific or high-profile translator of Russian literature, so I was unsure about why I had been chosen. However, not being known for false modesty, I did feel that I was reasonably well qualified for the work ahead.

Izbavi Bog i nas ot etakikh sudei

A few weeks ago something strange happened. Someone sent me, through the post, ten million printed words – I’ll repeat that, in case you weren’t concentrating: ten million words – nearly half of them in a difficult foreign language. I was told to get reading them.

Calvert 22
13 May - 16 June 2009
Calvert 22 presents its inaugural exhibition, curated by David Thorpe. The show will bring together five leading contemporary Russian artists: Alexander Brodsky, Pavel Pepperstein, Haim Sokol, Leonid Tishkov and Stanislav Volyazlovsky. Although the artists vary greatly in terms of the chosen media of their practice, they connect via their common desire to excavate the past, to explore both collective and personal mythologies, and through the realisation of their imaginings of the future. The majority of the works in Past Future Perfect will be on show in the UK for the first time.

I see Russia’s future in the brightest of hues. Admittedly, this sort of statement does not befit a dystopian writer like me, who is supposed to make dire predictions, though for some what I am going to tell you will sound as bad as an anti-utopia (while I see it as an almost ideal outcome).

Along with the 45 Indian authors arriving in London next week to take part in the book fair's India programme will be a smaller touring party of Russian writers. Like the Indian promotion, Russian Literature Week is based at the fair but also takes in central London - there are nightly discussions with authors at Waterstone's, Piccadilly, starting on Monday - and events around the country.

I see Russia’s future in the brightest of hues. Admittedly, this sort of statement does not befit a dystopian writer like me, who is supposed to make dire predictions, though for some what I am going to tell you will sound as bad as an anti-utopia (while I see it as an almost ideal outcome).

Along with the 45 Indian authors arriving in London next week to take part in the book fair's India programme will be a smaller touring party of Russian writers. Like the Indian promotion, Russian Literature Week is based at the fair but also takes in central London - there are nightly discussions with authors at Waterstone's, Piccadilly, starting on Monday - and events around the country.

The first day ended with an evening with Dmitry Bykov and Bridget Kendall at Waterstone’s, Piccadilly. Bykov entertained the large audience with, along with everything else, a joke. It went like this: “At birth you get a label put on your arm, after death, it’s put on your foot. If someone gets the same number both times, they win a prize – a pressure cooker.”

A hallmark of Shtypel's poetry is its lyrical playfulness matching a complex structure - demanding from the reader an active, if constrained, co-operation. Vladimir Gubailovsky of ‘Русский журнал' (‘Russian Journal') has said of Stypel that ‘he is, above all else, clear. This does not mean,' Gubailovsky continues, ‘that his verse is in any way basic - in fact quite the contrary. What really stays with you after reading Shtypel is a sense of poetic clarity'.

Maria Galina is one of the most interesting authors among those who made their names in the turbulent 1990s. She writes both literary and science fiction (with ten SF books to her credit). She is also a noted poet, a thoughtful critic, and translator of English and American science fiction, in all of which she excels. She is a winner of many important prizes for her prose and poetry and her critical essays.

Maria Galina is one of the most interesting authors among those who made their names in the turbulent 1990s. She writes both literary and science fiction (with ten SF books to her credit). She is also a noted poet, a thoughtful critic, and translator of English and American science fiction, in all of which she excels. She is a winner of many important prizes for her prose and poetry and her critical essays.

The Alive Book Publishers exclusively distribute books written by Evdokia Marchenko, a member of the Writers' Association. Since 1998, 320 books by Evdokia Marchenko have been published. The total circulation of the books is 5.5 million copies. The books are fascinating and unique in both content and style. During the publishing house’s existence they have taken part in 20 International Book Fairs in Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Frankfurt and many other cities in Russia and abroad.

The special documentary programme will include both feature length and short films of famous and emerging Russian filmmakers.

Maria Galina is one of the most interesting authors among those who made their names in the turbulent 1990s. She writes both literary and science fiction (with ten SF books to her credit). She is also a noted poet, a thoughtful critic, and translator of English and American science fiction, in all of which she excels. She is a winner of many important prizes for her prose and poetry and her critical essays.

A historian of medieval Russia by training, Vladimir Sharov (b. 1952) is the son of a geneticist who turned to writing prose, for children and adults, in the 1960s. Sharov himself began writing fiction in the late 1970s, but it was not until the 1990s that his highly unusual historiosophical novels came before the public gaze. In so doing, they caused genuine acrimony and controversy among influential editors of the literary journals (especially Novyi mir). Many were appalled both by Sharov's literary method and by his exploration through fiction of the mythological and religious substrata of Russian (and especially Revolutionary) history and thought - in particular, of its Utopian, eschatological, and messianic tendencies. Undeterred, Sharov has continued in his distinctive groove, writing, in the opinion of many critics (some of whom now consider him a ‘living classic') one and the same book: an ongoing commentary on philosophy, history, and the sacred texts. In these complex meditations, the views of the author himself remain elusive.

May 2008
Cannes, France
It seems that for Russian cinema, good things come in threes: the Russian film industry suitably showcased at the first ever Russian film pavilion; leading Russian production and distribution companies present their best creations at the International Marché du Film; and stunning triumphs for first-time feature film directors Sergei Dvortsevoy and Valeria Gai-Germanika!

Maria Galina is one of the most interesting authors among those who made their names in the turbulent 1990s. She writes both literary and science fiction (with ten SF books to her credit). She is also a noted poet, a thoughtful critic, and translator of English and American science fiction, in all of which she excels. She is a winner of many important prizes for her prose and poetry and her critical essays.

by Aleksandr Skidan
Genya Turovskaya with Eugene Ostashevsky, Evgeny Pavlov, Jacob Edmond & Natasha Randall
Ugly Duckling Presse, 2008, pp.143
Aleksandr Skidan is one of Russia's most important contemporary poets. With language that is at once literary, cinematic, philosophical, journalistic, his innovative writing calls into question the distinction between poetry and philosophy.

by Dmitry Golynko
Eugene Ostashevsky & Rebecca Bella with Simona Schneider
Ugly Duckling Presse, 2008, pp.143
Dmitry Golynko’s first English-language release, As It Turned Out, features both earlier and more current poetry, drawing on the author’s three books as well as internet and unpublished materials. The translators collaborated with the editor and the author to achieve the closest possible correspondence to the original Russian texts, all of which appear on facing pages.

by Marina Tsvetaeva
Translated by Belinda Cooke
Worple Press, 2008, pp.133
The title of this book is an attempt to show Tsvetaeva as just one of Stalin's many victims, as well as a woman driven by a single-minded pursuit of her poetic muse. The 'Beggar woman' draws attention both to her desperate poverty and literal need to beg at times and to the various hyperbolic female selves seen in the poetry.

by Various
Translated by Peter Oram
Arc Publications, 2008, pp.132
An anthology of poems by the major literary figures in Russia, writing to, about, or in memory of other poets, following a tradition which started in the early years of the twentieth century and continued through the subsequent decades, more or less until the millennium.

by Mikhail Bulgakov
Translated by Andrew Bromfield
Penguin, 2007, pp.113
Dystopian novelette by Mikhail Bulgakov, written in Russian in 1925 as Sobachye serdtse. It was published posthumously in the West in 1968, both in Russian and in translation, and in the Soviet Union in 1987. The book is a satirical examination of one of the goals of the October Revolution of 1917: to create a new breed of man, uncorrupted by the past and above petit bourgeois concerns.

by Victor Pelevin
Translated by Andrew Bromfield
Faber and Faber, 2008, pp.333
Described as "the Zen Buddhist Will Self of the former Evil Empire", Victor Pelevin is a star of contemporary Russian literature. The Sacred Book Of The Werewolf is an extraordinarily accomplished piece of contemporary writing that mashes up an assortment of genres: horror, humour, romance, fantasy, satire and post-modern self-reflexivity and sampling. The result is something that has to be classified as "high" literature, if only because of its entanglings in and borrowings from the work of Vladimir Nabokov and its deadly serious critique of contemporary Russian society under Putin.

by Andrey Platonov
Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler with Angela Livingstone, Olga Meerson and Eric Naiman
New York Review of Books; 2007; pp. 58
The Soviet writer Andrey Platonov saw much of his work suppressed or censored in his lifetime. In recent decades, however, these lost works have reemerged, and the eerie poetry and poignant humanity of Platonov's vision have become ever more clear. For Nadezhda Mandelstam and Joseph Brodsky, Platonov was the writer who most profoundly registered the spiritual shock of revolution.

by Tolstoy
Translated by Andrew Bromfield
HarperCollins; 2007; pp.885
War and Peace centers broadly on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the best-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves behind his family to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman, who intrigues both men.

by Tolstoy
Translated Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Vintage Classics; 2007; pp. 1215
War and Peace is one of the richest novels ever written. Tolstoy’s enthralling epic combines history and fiction in his depiction of Russia’s lengthy war with the French armies of Napoleon and its effects on the domestic lives of those caught up in the conflict.

by Alexandr Terekhov
Translated by Natalie Roy and B.T. Gall
Alma Books; 2008; pp. 347
Rats and human beings aren't that far apart from each other in "The Rat-Killer". As the political intrigue of phantasmagorical post-communist reality develops into nightmare, the greed, cunning and malice of the humans more and more resemble the behaviour of the large communities of destructive rodents, while the rats acquire more and more human features.

The special documentary programme will include both feature length and short films of famous and emerging Russian filmmakers.

Deputy director of the RAN Institute of Economics
This year, he was awarded a European prize for his ‘Contribution to Economics’. With R.S. Greenberg, he co-founded the concept ‘Economic socio-dynamism’, about which more than 10 studies have been published, both in Russia and abroad.

President of the International Institute of Global Development
Mr. Lebedev’s career commenced in 1977 at the Russian Academy of Sciences, after which he spent several years as a diplomat, being posted to Russia’s Embassy to the UK as both Third and subsequently Second Secretary.

The special documentary programme will include both feature length and short films of famous and emerging Russian filmmakers.

Deputy director of the RAN Institute of Economics
This year, he was awarded a European prize for his ‘Contribution to Economics’. With R.S. Greenberg, he co-founded the concept ‘Economic socio-dynamism’, about which more than 10 studies have been published, both in Russia and abroad.