On Wednesday, June 16, the finalists of the 16th season of the Big Book national literary award were announced.
They were determined by a council of experts, which includes writers Mikhail Butov, Elena Kholmogorova, Olga Novikova and Alexey Andreev.
The short list includes 13 works by Russian writers.
Winner of the "Big Book" prize for the novels "Laurel" and "Aviator" Evgeny Vodolazkin this time presents the work "Justification of the Island".
The action of the book takes place on an area of land that is not represented on maps and is not mentioned in textbooks, and time becomes the main character.
The plot spans over three centuries.
During this period, many historical events, natural disasters and personal dramas take place on the island.
In his book, the author reflects on the essence of time, trying to trace the impact it has on people.
“This is a deep reflection on the essence of time and the meaning of history.
About whether the written word always has weight and power.
How time affects people.
That empires can be born and decay, but pure, selfless love lasts and lasts.
And the relationship between people has remained exactly the same as it was centuries ago, ”- says the description of the novel on the website of the publisher.
The protagonist of the philosophical and historical novel "Filelene" by Leonid Yuzefovich ("Cranes and Dwarfs", "Winter Road") is retired staff captain Grigory Mossepanov.
He considers himself a philhellene - this is what they used to call people who sided with the Greek rebels in the fight against the Ottoman Empire.
As Yuzefovich notes in an interview for Izvestia, in a broad sense, a philhellene “can be considered anyone who carries Greece in his heart as a dream of a magical land where harmony and happiness live and where almost every household item is supplied with the epithet“ God ” ...
The heroes of the book, along with fictional characters, are Alexander I, the Egyptian commander Ibrahim Pasha and other real personalities.
The author emphasizes that "Philelline" is a work of fiction, the plot of which intersects with some historical events.
View this post on Instagram
Publication from Books of the AST publishing house (@izdatelstvoast)
Yuri Buida also talks about different times and countries in his novel "Wyvern Gardens".
The work consists of three short stories, the action of which takes place in medieval Italy, France during the revolution and Russia of the XX century.
The stories are united by the Greek God Eros, who controls all the events described in the book.
Marina Stepnova, who took third place in 2012 for the novel The Women of Lazarus, will again compete for the award with her book The Garden.
It tells about a princely family of the 19th century, where a child is born.
Nobody expected the girl, and her birth brings discord into the happy life of her parents.
As the writer herself notes, her book is about parenting, "about how it used to be and how it works now."
Mikhail Gigolashvili's novel Koka transports readers to Russia, Europe and Georgia in the early 1990s.
The life of the protagonist, 27-year-old Nikoloz Gamrekeli, goes on a daily quest for a dose of drugs until he ends up in prison.
The hero plunges into a new environment and realizes that there is a life there too, and people are not as scary as he thought.
The Schultz Archive is a partly autobiographical novel by the cultural scientist and architectural historian, author of the dissertation Culture Two, Vladimir Paperny.
The author began to work on the new book in parallel with the writing of a scientific work, but he managed to finish it only after about 40 years.
The protagonist of the novel is an emigrant architect Alexander Schultz, who lives in Los Angeles.
One day he receives a package in which he finds a lot of archival materials from his family.
Schultz begins to disassemble the box, and with each document the story of the hero's life unfolds in front of the reader.
View this post on Instagram
Publication from Books of the AST publishing house (@izdatelstvoast)
Personal experience is also reflected in the book by Oksana Vasyakina "Rana".
According to the plot, the main character takes her mother's ashes from the Volgograd region to Siberia.
On the pages of the novel, numerous bureaucratic procedures are presented that a girl faces, her memories of her mother, as well as reflections on femininity and sexuality.
Viktor Remizov's novel "Permafrost" is based on real events that unfolded in Siberia in 1949-1953, when the Great Stalin Highway was under construction.
The book tells the stories of several families who were forced to make huge sacrifices for a large-scale project that was eventually abandoned.
Alexey Polyarinov, in his book The Reef, explores the nature of good and evil through the stories of a wide variety of characters, from an anthropologist to an aspiring documentary filmmaker.
“The Reef is a novel about the eternal war of generations, the author's study of religious cults, where ancient rituals are mixed with modernity, and mythological and mystical dimensions are hidden behind topical plots.
Each of us can bump into the Reef, the more important is how you survive the crash, ”says the book's annotation on the publisher's website.
The action of Andrey Dmitriev's novel "This Shore" takes place on the territory of modern Ukraine.
An elderly school teacher is sent there from Russia, forced by an absurd coincidence of circumstances in his years to start a new life.
Maya Kucherskaya with her book “Leskov.
Missed Genius ", combining real facts from the life of the writer with fiction, Narine Abgaryan, who presented the novel" Simon "about the love affairs of an Armenian mason, and Dmitry Bavilsky.
His work "Desire to be a city" may well serve as a guide to Italy - in it the author talks about more than 30 settlements in which he had a chance to visit.
View this post on Instagram
Publication from Labyrinth (@labirintru)
In total, 41 authors from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, Kazan and other cities applied for the prize this year.
Among them were both famous writers and beginners.
The names of the winners of the 16th season of the Big Book national literary award will be announced in December 2021.
The winners will be determined by a jury consisting of more than a hundred writers, journalists, public and state figures and other members of the Literary Academy.
Among them are Konstantin Ernst, Sergei Selyanov, Alexander Rodnyansky, Mikhail Epshtein, Vladimir Tolstoy, Alyona Doletskaya.
The winner will receive a cash prize of 3 million rubles.
The writers who took second and third places will be awarded 1.5 million rubles and 1 million rubles, respectively.