Gold Medal, 2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) for Literary Fiction
Longlisted for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award
Winner of the Ivo Andric Grand Prize for best novel of 2022
From the INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR Eugene Vodolazkin - winner of the BIG BOOK AWARD, the LEO TOLSTOY YASNAYA POLYANA AWARD, and the READ RUSSIA AWARD
For fans of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Umberto Eco
Vodolazkin's new novel Brisbane is "a sophisticated and frequently moving study in dissonance, dedicated to pointing out contrasts between art and life, beauty and decay, intention and outcome. And, yes, between Ukraine and Russia" (Booklist).
Brisbane is a richly layered, universal coming-of-age story of a musical prodigy robbed of his talent by an incurable disease who attempts to overcome his mortality. After Gleb Yanovsky, a celebrated guitarist, is diagnosed with Parkinson's disease at age fifty, he permits a writer, Sergei Nesterov, to pen his biography. For years, they meet regularly as Gleb recounts the life he's lived thus far: a difficult childhood in Kyiv, his formative musical studies in St. Petersburg, and his later years in Munich, where he lives with his wife and meets a thirteen-year-old virtuoso whom he embraces as his own daughter. In a mischievous and tender account, Gleb recalls a personal story of a lifetime quest for meaning, and how the burden of success changes with age.
Expanding the literary universe spun in his earlier novels, Vodolazkin explores music and fame, heritage and belonging, time and memory in this beautifully-wrought and relevant tale that carefully unravel into a puzzle: Whose story is it - the subject's or the writer's? Are art and love really no match for death? Is memory a reliable narrator? In Brisbane, the city of our dreams, as in music, Gleb hopes he's found a path to eternity - and a way to stop the clock.
Schwartz, Marian: - Marian Schwartz translates Russian classic and contemporary fiction, history, biography, criticism, and fine art. She is the principal English translator of the works of Nina Berberova and translated the New York Times bestseller The Last Tsar, by Edvard Radzinsky, as well as classics by Mikhail Bulgakov, Ivan Goncharov, Yuri Olesha, Mikhail Lermontov, and Leo Tolstoy. Her most recent publications are Polina Dashkova's Madness Treads Lightly, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 1, and Leonid Yuzefovich's Horsemen of the Sands. She is a past president of the American Literary Translators Association and the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts translation fellowships and numerous prizes, including the 2014 Read Russia Prize for Contemporary Russian Literature, the 2016 Soeurette Diehl Frasier Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, and the 2018 Linda Gaboriau Award for Translation from the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
Vodolazkin, Eugene: - Eugene Vodolazkin was born in Kyiv, Ukraine. His second novel, Laurus, won both of Russia's major literary awards, the National Big Book Award and the Yasnaya Polyana Book Award, and was shortlisted for the National Bestseller Prize and the Russian Booker Prize. His debut novel, Solovyov and Larionov, was shortlisted for the Andrei Bely Prize and the Big Book Award. A third critically acclaimed novel, The Aviator, has also been translated into English. Vodolazkin was the 2019 winner of the Solzhenitsyn Prize. He was born in Kiev in 1964 and has worked in the department of Old Russian Literature at Pushkin House since 1990. He is an expert in medieval history and folklore and has numerous academic books and articles to his name. The author lives with his family in St. Petersburg, Russia.
