Calligraphy Lesson: The Collected Stories

About the Author and the Translators

MIKHAIL PAVLOVICH SHISHKIN is one of the most acclaimed contemporary Russian literary figures, and the only author to win all three major Russian literary prizes (the Russian Booker Prize; the National Bestseller Prize; and the Big Book Award). Born in Moscow in 1961, Shishkin studied English and German at Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. After graduation he worked as a street sweeper, road worker, journalist, schoolteacher, and translator. He debuted as a writer in 1993, when his short story “Calligraphy Lesson” was published in Znamya magazine, which went on to win him the Debut Prize. Since then his works—both fiction and non-fiction—have been translated into 29 languages and have received a large number of prestigious national and international awards across the world. His prose is universally praised for its style, and his novels and stories deal with universal themes like death, resurrection, and love. Shishkin’s prose fuses the best of the Russian and European literary traditions: the richness and sophistication of the language, the unique rhythm and melody of a phrase, the endless play with words and the nuanced psychological undercurrent are reminiscent of Nabokov and Chekhov. The change of narration styles and narrators within a text yield a fragmented, mosaic structure of composition that focuses on the language itself, recalling James Joyce’s genius. Shishkin carries on the tradition of the greatest Russian writers, and admits to their influence in his work, “Bunin taught me not to compromise, and to go on believing in myself. Chekhov passed on his sense of humanity—that there can’t be any wholly negative characters in your text. And from Tolstoy I learned not to be afraid of being naïve.” Shishkin has lived mostly outside of Russia since 1994, and today lives between Germany and Switzerland.

• MARIAN SCHWARTZ began her career in literary translation in 1978, and in the three decades since then she has published over sixty volumes of fiction and nonfiction—biography, criticism, fine arts, and history. Schwartz studied Russian at Harvard University, Middlebury Russian School, and Leningrad State University and received a Master of Arts in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Texas at Austin in 1975. Schwartz is perhaps best known for her prize-winning translations of works by Russian émigré writer Nina Berberova, Edvard Radzinsky’s the bestseller, The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II, several novels by Andrei Gelasimov, and Mikhail Shishkin’s first novel to appear in English, Maidenhair (Open Letter 2012). She lives in Austin, Texas.

• LEO SHTUTIN studied French literature at the University of Oxford, completing his DPhil in 2014. He translates for The Calvert Journal and other online publications. His translation from the Russian of Victor Beilis’ novel Death of a Prototype (2005) is due to be published by Thames River Press, and a version of his DPhil thesis—an investigation of the notions of spatiality and subjectivity in the writings of Stéphane Mallarmé, Guillaume Apollinaire, Maurice Maeterlinck and Alfred Jarry—is currently being readied for publication by OUP.

• MARIYA BASHKATOVA is an alumna of Brown University, where she studied Comparative Literature and Cognitive Neuroscience. At Brown, she wrote for the school newspaper and was involved in the Aldus Journal of Translation. An avid reader, Bashkatova translates Russian and French literature.

• SYLVIA MAIZELL studied Russian Literature at the University of Chicago, in Moscow and in Saint Petersburg, and taught Russian for many years. For the last decade she worked as a translator from Russian, including stories by Vladimir Makanin, Andrei Gelasimov, Ludmila Petrushevskaya, and Dina Rubina. Her translations have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Best European Fiction 2011, Moscow Noir, Russian Love Stories (Middlebury Studies), Metamorphoses, Partisan Review, and Dance Chronicle: Studies in Dance and Related Arts.