Five

Best translated novels of 2010

Jonathan Coe. The incredible private life of Maxwell Sim. Per. from English E. Poletskaya. - M.: Phantom Press, 2010. In the novel “The Incredible Private Life of Maxwell Sim,” the number one British writer brings to the fore a hero of the post-crisis time, a whiner devoid of energy, whose lot is a boring job, a sluggish existence and several dozen virtual friends in FB. The contrast is the story of the English yachtsman Donald Crowhurst, who in 1968 took part in a round-the-world race, but never achieved his goal, but tried to deceive the public with the help of a fake logbook. Comparing the two characters, Coe makes a disappointing diagnosis for the hero of our time: total loneliness and global grinding.

Johan Theorin. Night storm. Translation from Swedish by E. Khokhlova. - M.: RIPOL Classic, 2010. Last year, Russia was covered by a wave of Larssonomania that had long matured in the depths of Europe. And after it, the current brought fashion for the Swedish detective story, which, as it turned out, became a trend comparable to Swedish children's literature. Finding out which of Stieg Larsson's "Girls" is more beautiful - the one who "played with fire" or the one who "blew up castles in the air" - is a thankless task. Experience shows that the reader either extols Larsson or cannot stand it, depending on taste and temperament. But the mystical thriller “Night Storm” is an indisputable achievement. The plot takes place on the island of Öland in the house of a lighthouse keeper. This is already the second “island” detective story brought to us by the Scandinavian movement: the first was “Kunzelmann-Kunzelmann” by Karl Johann Wallgren, where neighboring Gotland was played. But in “Night Storm” the island becomes a full-fledged hero, because the main advantage of Theorin’s novel is the dense concentration of horror, which in itself is almost more important than the solution. However, the story itself is well constructed - with an arithmetic progression of deaths, skillful flashbacks and a crowd of exotic characters.

Christos Tsiolkas. Slap in the face. Per. from English I. Novoseletskaya. - M.: RIPOL Classic, 2010. Another trend of the year is the belated discovery of current Australian literature. Following the novel Plus One by Australian Toni Jordan about a woman obsessed with numbers, The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas has been published. The novel was longlisted for the British Booker, which is akin to a victory for the Australian author. The hook for the plot is the story of a slap in the face given by an adult man to someone else's child. The sound waves from this slap reverberate throughout the novel, which is a fairly accurate and detailed sociological scan of modern society. While the adult heroes, victims of globalism and political correctness, unravel their complex relationships, teenagers enter into forbidden relationships, eat drugs, hang out, but do it without any drive, rather following the unspoken rules of adolescence. Observing the lives of their parents and peering into the future, they do not see suitable prospects for themselves in this renewed multicultural world, where tolerance has become synonymous with hypocrisy.

Zadie Smith. About beauty. Per. from English O. Kachanova and A. Vlasova. - M.: Olga Morozova Publishing House, 2010. The most stylish writer of modern Britain, Zadie Smith, talks about the dangers of political correctness, liberal utopia and eternal values. The main characters of her novel “On Beauty” are two Rembrandt specialists, the American professor Howard Belsey and the English scientist Monty Kips. Competitors and sworn enemies, both are supporters of extreme political views. Belsey is on the far left, Kips is on the far right. One believes in equality and brotherhood, the other considers political correctness a kind of modern mythology and proposes to cast out the word liberal like a demon. One proves that Rembrandt was an ordinary artisan, the other is only interested in the material basis of any creativity. These virtual opponents are provoked into open conflict by Belsey’s son, who has gone to London and settled in the house of his enemy. It doesn't matter to Briton Smith what drives modern intellectuals crazy - liberalism or neo-fascism. It is much more interesting to convey the informational hum and senseless ideological hustle and bustle in the heads of the characters on a physiological level. Her characters are genetic mutants, Chinese Jews, Protestant blacks, American Buddhists; Behind everyone's shoulders is a genealogical and geopolitical windfall, through which they are vainly trying to wade through in search of traces of saving self-identification. Rembrandt in Smith's novel is, if not a real cure for madness, then at least a placebo.

Venice is a fish . Translation from Italian by Gennady Kiselev. - M.: Kolibri, 2010. Travel books are the main trend in Russian book publishing. It is difficult to pull out truly big fish from the flood of travelogues that has fallen on the consumer. It is not for nothing that the work of the hereditary citizen of the Venetian Republic Tiziano Scarpa was placed on a par with fiction bestsellers. The Italian writer wrote an unusual text, the genre of which he recklessly defined as “guidebook”. If this is a guidebook, then it is the most illogical guidebook in the world, the main route of which is laid out “at random”. You need to submit to the logic of the city, and not subordinate it to your logic - this is the “Scarpa rule” that every visitor must observe. You can use this text, but only if you constantly keep in mind that Scarpa is a science fiction writer. His Venice is a mighty prehistoric fish that roamed the oceans and slumbered for centuries in secluded bays until it finally got tired of wandering and allowed itself to be caught in a net. Scarpa's metaphors do not blur or sink. They are firmly etched in the memory because they are based on facts. Venice is not a speculative Moby Dick. She's real. The cunning Venetian rechecks each image, making it weighty and tangible. Even the very personal chapter “The Heart,” which deals with the peculiarities and quirks of Venetian love, relies on the testimony of two learned men, each of whom logically proved that a long stay in Venice “leads to the paradoxical effect of weakening the sexual impulse.” Scarpa's "Fish" is a wittily conceived and brilliantly constructed novel in the truest sense of the word. Romance with my hometown. An exhibition piece of literary engineering. And the best text about conquering space.

Natalia BABINTSEVA