Is Tolstoy Alive? Vladimir Tolstoy in conversation with James Meek Monday 19 April, 6.30pm at Waterstones Piccadilly* Vladimir Tolstoy is the great great grandson of one of the biggest Russian writers – Leo Tolstoy. Since 1994 he has been the director of the Leo Tolstoy museum in Yasnaya Polyana. Vladimir is often seen as the official representative of Leo Tolstoy’s cultural heritage. In 2001 he made a famous appeal to the Russian Orthodox Church, petitioning the repeal of the excommunication of his famous ancestor – a historical event that in Vladimir Tolstoy’s view turned out to have a fatal effect on the whole of Russian society. Under Vladimir Tolstoy’s guidance Yasnaya Polyana has been set up not only as a museum documenting Leo Tolstoy’s life and literary work, but also as a place to keep the spirit of the great writer alive. Writers and intellectuals are regularly invited to take part in seminars and discuss the fundamental questions of life that for the great Russian writer were of such high importance. The museum also runs its own publishing house and offers translation grants to support new translations of Leo Tolstoy’s books. James Meek is a writer, critic and reporter living in London. He is the author of four novels and two collections of short stories. Between 1991 and 1999 he lived in Ukraine and Russia, where his 2005 novel The People's Act of Love was set. In 1994 he visited Vladimir Tolstoy at the ancestral Tolstoy estate in Yasnaya Polyana. His most recent book, We Are Now Beginning Our Descent, was awarded the Prince Maurice Prize. * Tickets to this event are £3, redeemable against purchase of any book. Call Waterstones Piccadilly on 020 7851 2400 to book tickets in advance

When Academia Rossica approached me to serve on the jury for their translation prize, I was excited and intrigued. What would the field be like, how many entries would there be, were there still publishers around in the West willing to produce translations of serious Russian works? The classics apart, was there more to Russian literature for English-speaking people than penguins and historical detectives? My caricature of the average Western reader's view of Russian literature today can perhaps be excused in part by my own education.

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.

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.

One of the most versatile of post-Soviet writers, Aleksei Slapovsky (b. 1957) has flourished in the new cultural habitat described by his narrator, A.N. Anisimov. As a novelist, Slapovsky occupies a seemingly permanent slot on the shortlists for all literary prizes; as a screenplaywriter and dramatist, he has reached millions of viewers in Russia and abroad, through his script for the sequel to Eldar Ryazanov's classic comedy, Irony of Fate (1975). All Slapovsky's creative work is of a piece, displaying a fertile tendency towards cross-‘adaptation', but the author himself attaches particular significance to his novels (the complete absence of which in English translation is as remarkable as it is distressing). They include: The First Second Coming (Pervoe vtoroe prishestvie, 1993), which adapts the Gospel narrative to the life of a provincial Russian and has been singled out by many critics for particular praise; The Day of Money: A Picaresque Novel (Den' deneg. Plutovskoi roman, 1999), set in the author's native town of Saratov, like many of Slapovsky's works; and two novels that focus on the glamourous and less than glamourous aspects of contemporary (and often criminal) Muscovite society: Quality of Life (Kachestvo zhizni, 2004, 220pp) and They (Oni, 2005). His most recent novel is The Phoenix Syndrome (Sindrom feniksa, 2007).

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.

by Anton Chekhov
Translated by Rosamund Barlett
Hesperus Press, 2008, pp. 99
A civil servant stands accused of not understanding the rules of punctuation. He begins to go through the correct use of commas and semicolons before arriving at the exclamation mark, which, he realizes, in 40 years of writing, he has never used. From here he develops a bizarre and paranoid fantasy in which everyday objects transform into malevolent exclamation marks.

by Alexander Pushkin
Translated by Stanley Mitchell
Penguin, 2008, pp.214
Eugene Onegin is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature. Set in 1820s Russia, Pushkin's verse novel follows the fates of three men and three women.

by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Translated by Robert Maguire
Penguin, 2008, pp.787
Pyotr and Stavrogin are the leaders of a Russian revolutionary cell. Their aim is to overthrow the Tsar, destroy society and seize power for themselves. Together they train terrorists who are willing to go to any lengths to achieve their goals – even if the mission means suicide. But when it seems the group is about to be discovered, will their recruits be willing to kill one of their own circle in order to cover their tracks?

by Elena Shvarts
Translated by Sasha Dugdale
Bloodaxe Books; 2008; pp. 167
This new bilingual Russian-English selection also includes some poems not yet been published in Russia. Elena Shvarts stands outside all schools and movements in contemporary Russian poetry. She once famously described poetry as a 'dance without legs'. Her own poetry fits this description perfectly, a combination of deeply rhythmic and lyrical dance with the eccentric, perpetual movement of flight.

Bridget Kendall, the much-admired BBC diplomatic correspondent, never fails to delight and impress audiences by the clarity of her delivery and the perceptiveness of her insights into many societies and cultures from around the world, and especially on Russia. She has spent several extended periods of study in Russia as a British Council Exchange Student at Voronezh State University in 1976-77 and again in 1981-82 at Moscow State University, while reading modern languages at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She subsequently undertook postgraduate research in Soviet Studies at St Antony’s College Oxford and Harvard (USA).

St Petersburg – 300
This special issue, with a foreword by Her Majesty The Queen, celebrates the Tercentenary of Russia’s imperial capital, known as the Venice of the North and one of the world’s most enigmatic cities – St Petersburg.

Moscow – The Third Rome,
Stalin’s Capital, Global City
This issue focuses on Russia’s capital city as myth, as physical history, and as the future.

Moscow – The Third Rome,
Stalin’s Capital, Global City
This issue focuses on Russia’s capital city as myth, as physical history, and as the future.

St Petersburg – 300
This special issue, with a foreword by Her Majesty The Queen, celebrates the Tercentenary of Russia’s imperial capital, known as the Venice of the North and one of the world’s most enigmatic cities – St Petersburg.