On Thursday, December 8, the winners of the Big Book National Literary Prize were announced.
The awards ceremony of the 17th season was traditionally held at the Pashkov House.
Ten works by Pavel Basinsky, Guzel Yakhina, Alexei Varlamov, Oleg Ermakov, Anna Matveeva, Sergei Belyakov, Dmitry Danilov, Ruslan Kozlov, Sofia Sinitskaya and Afanasy Mamedov made it to the final.
The laureates of the award were determined by a representative jury, which included professional writers, scientists, cultural figures, entrepreneurs, public and government figures, as well as journalists, in total more than a hundred people.
The first place was taken by Pavel Basinsky with a literary study of the life of the heroine of Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina.
Basinsky presented "The True Story of Anna Karenina" - a deep analysis, as well as a rethinking of Tolstoy's novel, which, according to the author, is his favorite work.
As they say on the first pages of the work, the book was written "by itself", and the author in it acted more like a devoted reader who re-read Tolstoy's novel ten times over the course of several years.
For the first prize, the author will receive 3 million rubles.
This is not Basinsky's first success in the Big Book: in 2010, he won with the novel Leo Tolstoy: Escape from Paradise.
Second place was awarded to Alexei Varlamov for reflecting the life of the Russian religious philosopher and writer Vasily Rozanov in the book "The Name of Rozanov".
The author claims that in Russian literature there is no other author who "causes so much hostility and irritation in a variety of people" than the hero of his book.
However, Rozanov's talent was undeniable, which even his most ardent opponents did not deny.
Varlamov writes that without his hero there would be no Silver Age in literature.
The winner of the second prize will receive 1.5 million rubles.
In third place - Sergei Belyakov and the documentary novel "Paris Boys in Stalin's Moscow".
The heroes of the book are the writer Dmitry Seseman and the translator Georgy Efron (son of Marina Tsvetaeva).
They both grew up in France, and in the second half of the 1930s they came to the Soviet Union.
The heroes became friends and often remembered Paris.
Over time, they think about returning to France.
Stalin's Moscow is shown through their eyes in the book.
The prize for the third place is 1 million rubles.
In addition, the book won the "Generation Choice" nomination.
The special prize was established in 2022 in order to popularize modern prose among young people, as well as to draw attention to Russian literature.
In the popular vote held on the book recommendation portal LiveLib, Guzeli Yakhina's Echelon to Samarkand, Pavel Basinsky's The True Story of Anna Karenina and Anna Matveeva's Every Hundred Years were recognized as the best.
The Institute of Applied Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences was awarded a special prize "For Contribution to Literature" for its contribution to the perpetuation of Russian literary figures in the Solar System.
Many of its celestial bodies are named after Russian writers and cultural figures - from Alexander Pushkin to Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Receiving the award, scientist and writer Leonid Yelenin said that the Big Book asteroid could also appear in the solar system, TASS reports.
To do this, he previously filed a corresponding request.
A total of 303 authors from Russia, Belarus, Israel, China, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Georgia, Denmark, Germany, USA, Great Britain, Canada, Switzerland, Latvia, Lithuania, Belgium and the Netherlands competed for the award.
The "long list" included 49 works.
The 2021 winner was Leonid Yuzefovich for the philosophical and historical novel "Phihellene".
In addition, Yuzefovich received awards in 2016 for The Winter Road and in 2009 for the novel Cranes and Dwarfs.
Over the years, Guzel Yakhina for the novel Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes (2015), Zakhar Prilepin for The Abode (2014), Evgeny Vodolazkin for the book Lavr (2013), Vladimir Makanin for the work Asan » (2008).