Zuleikha

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I first heard about Zuleikha before the book was even published, thanks to Elkost International Literary Agency, who represent Guzel Yakhina. Yulia Dobrovolskaya and Alexander Klimin of Elkost thought I might be interested in the novel. Of course I was – I love reading contemporary fiction set during the Soviet era – and I ended up enjoying the novel so much that I was more than happy to translate excerpts and, later, agree to translate the entire book for Oneworld. Thank you to Yulia and Alexander for thinking of me.

Guzel Yakhina has been unfailingly helpful, extraordinarily patient, and very warm in answering my numerous questions about details of the novel, its language, and her preferences for the translation. It’s been a pleasure to meet with her and talk about the book, and I appreciate her flexibility when making suggestions and her trust in my work.

My colleague Liza Prudovskaya read through a draft of Zuleikha, checking for errors, answering hundreds of questions, and offering hundreds of additional suggestions. Liza’s help is always an important part of my translation process but her ideas felt particularly important with Zuleikha, given the difficulties of decisions for translating Tatar words, historical and political vocabulary, and Guzel’s beautiful descriptions of nature.

It’s been a pleasure to work on my fifth book for Juliet Mabey and her team at Oneworld. As always, Juliet’s edits and queries went a long, long way in transforming my manuscript into a consistent, logical, and readable English-language text and I’m especially thankful for her help on horse-related vocabulary, which always feels as mysterious to me in English as it does in Russian. I also thank Juliet (again!) for her strong interest in Russian contemporary fiction and willingness to bring books like Zuleikha to Anglophone readers. Assistant editor Alyson Coombes’s cheerful help with a myriad of small issues that nobody ever likes to think about – copyright matters, schedules, and miscellaneous administrative questions that inevitably pop up – is always a welcome antidote to deadlines and the difficult decisions that any translation entails. Focused queries and creative suggestions from copyeditor Helen Szirtes kept me busy for weeks, pushing and inspiring me to reconsider, rewrite, and sharpen chunks of many difficult passages. I can’t thank her enough for her many contributions to the text, as well as her sense of humor and dedication. I’m no versifier, so I’m very grateful for poet and translator George Szirtes’s quick, slick work on the songs in the novel. I also appreciate Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp’s help with vocabulary for prayers and holidays as well as proofreader Charlotte Norman’s fantastic eye for spotting inconsistencies and nonsensical phrasing. As always, I’m thankful to production head Paul Nash for his clear schedules and instructions.

Thank you to everyone involved in the translation process and thank you to Zuleikha’s readers. I hope you enjoy Guzel’s novel and Zuleikha’s story as much as I did.