Cranes in the flight

A short list of the Literary Prize “National Bestseller” was announced to the 9th season of the National Bestseller, the most influential of alternative literary awards, joined the climax. On Thursday, a short list of 2009 was announced, consisting, as always, of six books. The results of the jury, as is often the case in National Best, turned out to be somewhat unexpected.

The so -called large jury, consisting of writers and professional critics, held a traditional individual vote, during which each referee had the right to evaluate any two books, while placing three points of one of them and one point - the other. As a result, books that took place in a short one were selected from a long list. Among the defendants in the Long List, who did not reach the passing score - Veronika Kungurtseva with fairy tales about Vanya Zhitni, Maria Galina with the Soviet fantastic cage “Malaya Glush” and Andrei Turgenev (aka Vyacheslav Kuritsyn) with a bohemian phantasmagoria “so that God tore you from the inside into pieces!”. Each of these works, like a number of others, already has its own support groups, nevertheless they have no chance of National Best -2009.

At the same time, it cannot be said that the short list has become a sensation: given the latest layouts in the corresponding sector of the literary space, each of the six lines of the list is an explanation. By the sum of the points scored, Herman Sadulaev leads with the novel “Pill”, which went to the final of last year’s “Boker”, but to lose the “librarian” of Mikhail Elizarov.

Sarcastic pseudo -economic epic of Sadulaev, referring to the ancient Khazar myth and at the same time - to the method of Victor Pelevin, scored 10 points.

Following with a margin of four points, Andrei Gelasimov is going on with the historical novel “Steppe Gods”. In the current short list, he presents, relatively speaking, the traditionalist faction along with Sergey Samsonov, the author of the “Anomalies of Camlaev” - postnabokov’s narrative about a fictional brilliant composer, which has already managed to captivate some influential critics. In turn, Alexander Snegirev divides the niche of rising stars with Samsonov, obliged to be in the list of a very strange, but partly autobiographical history “Oil Venus”. Non-fiction is represented by Sergey Nosov’s work “The Secret Life of St. Petersburg Monuments”. The Laureate of National Besting-2007 Ilya Blessashov closes the list with a phantasmagoric military novel “Tanker, or“ White Tiger ”, who managed to visit last year’s short list of the Big Book Prize.

The small jury, which will appreciate the books of Short List and determine the winner, included the Moscow restaurateur Dmitry Borisov, director Mikhail Kalatosishvili, president of the Center for Political Philosophy, journalist Andrei Kolesnikov, National Best Laureate -2008 Zakhar Prilepin, St. Petersburg Astronin Koloshevnikov and TV presenter Olga Shchest. The place of honorary chairman of the jury was taken by the General Director of Kommersant Holding LLC Andrei Galiev.

Talking with the correspondent of Gazeta, the founder of National Best, critic Viktor Toporov commented on the new short list as follows: “I am amazed and outraged that Leonid Yuzefovich with the novel“ Cranes and Karlika ”did not receive a single point. As for the intrigue, this time it is this: in the short list there is not a single woman, not a single note patriot, not a single emigrant and not a single Jew. Has this ever happened? "

04/16/2009 / Kirill Reshetnikov, the material was published in the "newspaper" No. 68 of 04/17/2009.