The Curious Case of Professor Barabtarlo

Michael Idov is a contributing editor at New York Magazine and the author of the novel Ground Up. In his previous posts, Michael wrote about the reception of his work in Russia and the challenge of self-translation. He has been blogging all week for MyJewishLearning and the Jewish Book Council.
The plan was for me to write this post about The Original of Laura, Nabokov’s unfinished final work – on the logic that, as a first-time self-translator from English to Russian, I might have something original to say about it.  Continue reading here.

A Kind of Homecoming

Michael Idov is a contributing editor at New York Magazine and the author of the novel Ground Up. In his last post, Michael wrote about the challenge of self-translation. He’ll be blogging all week for MyJewishLearning and the Jewish Book Council.
Russia is incredibly small. Yes, I know it’s the world’s largest landmass. But the visible and audible Russia – the Russia emitting the light and noise we call culture – is tiny, comprised of a few thousand people in Moscow and St. Petersburg with occasional outposts in places like Perm and Krasnoyarsk.  Continue reading here.

The Act of Self-Translation

Michael Idov is a contributing editor at New York Magazine and the author of the novel Ground Up. He’ll be blogging all week for MyJewishLearning and the Jewish Book Council.
Any translation is a face transplant. In the best-case scenario, the patient will wake up with a nose, a mouth, two lips, etc. Continue reading here.