The Slavic Literature Pod

Show Notes:This week, Cameron dives into Andrei Platonov’s Chevengur, covering chapters 1 through 25. Through the late Russian Empire into the early Soviet Union, Sasha Dvanov is finally orphaned when his fisherman father drowns in an attempt to understand his all-knowing, deathless fish. Growing up in the shuffling shadow of the new world, he joins the Bolshevik party and seeks to spread communism. This episode covers his adventures trying to find out if the peasants have, after the abdication of the Tsar, suddenly begun to embrace communist lives. From anarchist militias to a Bolshevik Fyodor Dostoevsky, he finds little to approve of in the countryside.Check out our old episode covering The Cow and the Third Son.A Companion to Andrei Platonov’s “The Foundation Pit” by Thomas Seyfrid.Time out of line: Sequence and plot in Andrei Platonov’s Chevengur by by Hallie A. WhiteThe music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at slaviclitpod@gmail.com.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Cameron returns to Vasily Grossman, covering his first novel of World War II, The People Immortal. I’ll write more later, but it’s almost 5 a.m. and I have to be at work in four hours. Womp womp. The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at slaviclitpod@gmail.com.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Cameron dives into Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic and Hai Fan’s Delicious Hunger, trying to probe the question plaguing recent episodes: “What is the value of art during wartime?”Deaf Republic tells an all-too-familiar parable of a town under occupation, subjected to abuse and murder, and how the people there chose their own forms of resistance to occupation. Delicious Hunger tackles the issue from another angle: Hai Fan is the pen name for Ang Tiam Huat, a guerilla who fought for the Malaysian Communist Party for over a decade. His book fictionalizes the stories and struggles of his comrades during their years in the rainforest. Hai Fan’s interview during Ethos Books’ launch party for Delicious Hunger.The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at slaviclitpod@gmail.com.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

We were supposed to talk about Ilya Kaminsky's Deaf Republic and Fan Hai's Delicious Hunger today, but the episode's audio is trapped on a dead computer. You can look forward to listening to (a probably re-recorded) episode on Monday.Since we have the time, I wanted to take a step back and discuss the ever-evolving reason for this podcast. It's hard to talk about "just" literature right now. But I think it's still worthwhile. We'll go over that and what's coming up next. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Cameron continues speaking about Yevgenia Belorusets’ work with War Diary and also explores the experience of women living through war in Merce Rodoreda’s The Time of Doves. War Diary catalogues the first 40 days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, capturing the turbulence and violence while never forgetting to focus on the human element. Belorusets’ writing is a powerful call against apathy and a reminder to not forget what is human in man. The Time of Doves follows Natalia, a Catalan woman in a new marriage in the years prior, during and after the Spanish Civil War. Rodoreda’s writing depicts the anxiety of being a woman — subject to an overly-expectant husband, keeping house and kids while earning rent money. The flow-of-consciousness style gives you an intimate look into Natalia’s experiences, sometimes blatantly and sometimes merely hinting at the things in her subconscious. Read the entries of War Diary at https://www.isolarii.com/kyivThe music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at slaviclitpod@gmail.com.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

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Show Notes:This week, Cameron talks about unreliable narrators in Yevgenia Belorusets’ Lucky Breaks and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, posing an unusual argument: what if lying to your reader was a good thing?Belorusets is a Ukrainian writer whose work focuses on the people marginalized by society and takes that eye toward the East, writing stories of women from the Donbas region after war broke out in 2014. Her work brings a light to stories often left untold — and even poses questions about the morality of doing so. Yevgenia Belorusets’ website“The Complaint Against Language” in Wartime Ukraine: A Conversation with Yevgenia Belorusets, interview by Eugene OstashevskyYevgenia Belorusets Focus On Ukraine, Creative Horizons (video, 2024)One Day More — Yevgenia Belorusets’ visit to BrusselsThe music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at slaviclitpod@gmail.com.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

This week, in For Your Consideration, Cameron dives into Belarusian writer Alhierd Bacharevič’s Alindarka’s Children and Laguna-Pueblo-American writer Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony. Both novels explore people native to a land that is now, in different ways, hostile to them. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Cameron dives into William T. Vollmann’s Europe Central and Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. The uniting theme this week: reflection and memory. Both novels cast a long shadow over his life, so it’s time to untangle exactly why that is. Can Europe Central be cleanly read as a series of parables? Is it appropriate to turn Hitler into a sort-of fairy tale? Is it a red flag that Cameron has read Norwegian Wood six times? Tune in to find your answers. “Shostakovich in Love: William T. Vollmann’s Europe Central” by Peter G. ChristiansenThe music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at slaviclitpod@gmail.com.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Cameron dives solo into two books: Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others, and Me by Teffi and In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien. He’ll pull apart their authors’ mutual love for taking a creative license to their own lives.Major themes: Emotional truth, social expectations, VietnamThe interview with Tim O’Brien I read from.The documentary on My Lai I mentioned.Seymour Hersh’s article on My Lai The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at slaviclitpod@gmail.com.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:Pick up a copy of The Story of Sonechka here.This week, Cameron dives into Marina Tsvetaeva’s The Story of Sonechka, a recollection of her relationship with the actress Sonia Holliday in Moscow, 1919. The story — one of the clearest examples of queer literature we’ve had on the podcast — reflects not only Marina and Sonia themselves, but also questions on relationships, memory and how we understand each other. Joining him to talk about the novel is Inessa Fishbeyn and C. D. C. Reeve, who translated The Story of Sonechka into English for the first time. Fishbeyn is an independent writer and translator of Russian literature, born and educated in Kazan, Russia. Reeve is DKE Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he specializes in ancient Greek philosophy and has translated many of the works of Plato and Aristotle and written books, commentaries, and essays on them. Major themes: Love Triangles, Queer literature, Knowing the otherThe music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at slaviclitpod@gmail.com.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

A quick look forward to our June episodes plus a little apology for the delayed episode this month. If you'd like to join our monthly book club, you can join our discord here. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Cameron dives into Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych’s The Moscoviad, a picaresque-cum-magical realist novel following the poet Otto von F. as he spends one day trying to accomplish a few chores around Moscow: a visit to a meeting, a reunion with a sort-of girlfriend, and a gift for his friend’s children. This journey takes him to beer halls, into the sewers, into the attention of the KGB and beyond. Set in the very late Soviet Union, Andrukhovych tackles the place of colonized subject in imperial core, the uneasy “friendship of peoples,” and life in a failing empire. Joining him to talk about the novel is Dr. Vitaly Chernetsky. A professor at the University of Kansas, Chernetsky is the author of the book Mapping Postcommunist Cultures: Russia and Ukraine in the Context of Globalization. In addition to The Moscoviad, he has translated into English Yuri Andrukovych’s Twelve Circles, Sophia Andrukovych’s Felix Austria, along with two poetry collections, scholarly articles and historical documents. He is the president of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, and has previously served as the director of the University of Kansas’ Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, the president of the American Association for Ukrainian Studies, and the president of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Major themes: Empire, beer vending machines, subverted machismoThe music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at slaviclitpod@gmail.com or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Cameron dives into the poetry of Vsevolod Nekrasov, joined by Bela Shayevich and Ainsley Morse who collected and translated works spanning much of his life in I Live I See: Selected Poems.Born in the USSR in 1934 and writing—mostly unofficially—through the end of his life in 2009 now in the Russian Federation, Vsevolod Nekrasov’s work is largely minimalist and deploys repetition like a musical motif. Some works span pages, while others are no more than a word reflecting itself. His work demands to be read aloud, to a crowd or even just one person. Ainsley Morse is an associate professor in UC San Diego’s department of literature. She’s a scholar of 20th and 21st century literature and culture of the post-war Soviet period, particularly unofficial or “underground” poetry, as well as the avant-garde, children's literature and contemporary poetry. She also translates from Russian, Ukrainian, and Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian. Bela Shayevich is a Soviet American writer and translator. She is best known for her translation of 2015 Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexi-ye-vich’s Secondhand Time, for which she was awarded the TA First Translation Prize. She has also translated Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We. Her writing has appeared in n+1, Jewish Currents, and Harper’s Magazine. She teaches in the Department of Translation at the University of Iowa. Major themes: Repetition, Making words mean something, visual poetry1:36:40 - Elena Kostyuchenko’s I Love Russia 1:37:10 - Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, The Art of Fiction No. 2671:39:40 - Goat Song by Konstantin VaginovThe music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at slaviclitpod@gmail.com or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Cameron ascends into the towering heights of imperial politics in Yaroslav Barsukov’s Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory by Yaroslav Barsukov. The novel follows Shea Ashcroft, an imperial minister whose refusal to gas protesting citizenry has earned him a reassignment to a border region to oversee a fantastical military project. With no one truly on his side and managing strange technologies, Ashcrofts finds himself increasingly out of his depth.Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory includes and expands on Barsukov’s earlier novella Tower of Mud and Straw. It’s been nominated for a Nebula Award and received a Kirkus Reviews star.Joining Cameron to talk about the novel is Yaroslav himself. Born and raised in Moscow and now living in Austria for quite some time, Yaroslav’s background is in physics and software engineering. His writing career stems from game design, in a manner of speaking. He took up his pen around 2014 after quite enjoying the work of translating a game’s mythology for a pitchMajor themes: Suspicions of war, alien technologies, memory10:18 - Barsukov’s interview with the podcast “From the Lighthouse”26:54 - First correction I’ve had to issue in a while — I misremembered the name of the film, which is actually Protozanov’s “Aelita,” not “Anta Odeli Uta,” which is a phrase in the film. The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at slaviclitpod@gmail.com.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Cameron dives back into the work of Leo Tolstoy to talk about one of his later works, Hadji Murat. He’s joined by podcast returnee Dr. Tatyana Gershkovich, whose book Art in Doubt analyzes Tolstoy and Vladimir Nakokov’s approaches to skepticism, to talk about the work, Tolstoy’s work What is Art?, and discuss how his approaches to “true” and “untrue” art affect the novel. Gershkovich is the William S. Dietrich II Associate Professor of Russian Studies at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the author of Art in Doubt: Tolstoy, Nabokov, and the Problem of Other Minds, published by Northwestern University Press. She’s also written essays published in PMLA, the Slavic and Eastern European Journal, the Journal of the History of Ideas, the Paris Review, and more.Major themes: True and untrue art, aesthetic responsiveness, Perceptions of warfare01:11 - Check out our episode on Leo Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata with Dr. Tatyana Gershkovich.01:25 - Art in Doubt: Tolstoy, Nabokov, and the Problem of Other Minds by Dr. Tatyana Gershkovich58:35 - Silhouettes of Russian Writers: Literary and Philosophical Essays by Yuli AikhenvaldThe music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at slaviclitpod@gmail.com or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Pick up a copy of To Hell with Poets from the Tilted Axis Press website. Show Notes:This week, Cameron revisits Baqytgul Sarmekova’s To Hell With Poets with the help of the collection’s translator, Mirgul Kali. Together, they’ll dive back into how Sarmekova explores both Kazakh society and more universal themes through violence, disappointment and hope. Plus, learn a little more about Sarmekova herself as well as some of the peculiarities of translating from Kazakh into English. Mirgul Kali is a literary translator working from Kazakh language. Her translations of short stories by classic and contemporary Kazakh writers have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Electric Literature, The Massachusetts Review, Gulf Coast, Words Without Borders, and other publications. A graduate of MFA program in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa, she received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant and a PEN Translates award for her translation of Baqytgul Sarmekova’s To Hell with Poets, a short story collection published by Tilted Axis Press in March 2024.01:03:49 - Sins of the Mother: Unsettling Matrilineal Inheritance in East Europe, Central Asia, and the CaucasusMajor themes: Kazakh cultural context, thematic universality, blonde dyed Lady HopeThe music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at slaviclitpod@gmail.com or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Buy a copy of I Burned at the Feast here.Show Notes:This week, Cameron dives into the collection I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky. You have almost certainly heard of virtuosic filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, but his father might be less familiar to you. Yet, you may still have heard his work — Tarkovsky the younger includes recordings of Arseny reading his own poetry in Mirror and Stalker. To get into the nitty-gritty of Arseny Tarkovsky’s ranging poetry about life, death, WWII, family, and his contemporaries, Cameron’s joined by Philip J. Metres and Dimitri Psurtsev, who collected and translated the poems within. Philip J. Metres is a poet, scholar, translator, essayist, and peacebuilder. He is the author of twelve books, including Fugitive/Refuge, Shrapnel Maps, The Sound of Listening, and Sand Opera. His work has garnered fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Watson Foundation. He has been awarded the Adrienne Rich Award, three Arab American Book Awards, the Cleveland Arts Prize, and the Hunt Prize. Philip has been called “one of the essential poets of our time,” whose work is “beautiful, powerful, magnetically original.” He is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University. He is also Core Faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts.  Dmitri Psurtsev is a Russian poet and translator of British and American prose-writers and poets. He has written five books of poetry — Ex Roma Tertia, Tengiz Notebook, Between, Tired Happiness, and Murka and Other Poems — and translated numerous books from English. Dimitri teaches translation at Moscow State Linguistic University.Major themes: Sort-of immortality, Evolving conceptions of death, Competitive poets01:31:53 - Check out Dimitri’s most recent work here (poetry in Russian) The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at slaviclitpod@gmail.com or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show Notes:This week, Cameron will dive into the novel Cecil the Lion Had to Die by Ukrainian historian, journalist, and novelist Olena Stiazhkina — a novel diving into the intricacies of family life and identity formation through the late Soviet Union, the chaotic years following, and into the early years of the war. He’s joined by Dominique Hoffman, who translated the novel, and has a great wealth of knowledge to share about the book, its characters, Olena herself and the context of its writing. Hoffman is a translator of Ukrainian fiction and non-fiction. Her work includes short stories, long form journalism, a full history of Ukraine in global context and novels. Her most recent publication is titled The Wild West of Eastern Europe: a Ukrainian Guide on Breaking Free from Empire by Pavlo Kazarin, winner of Ukraine's non-fiction book of the year. She has a particular interest in the intersections of literature and history.Major themes: Material culture, clashing languages, forming oneselfPick up a copy of the book yourself here!07:16 - Writing in a Time of War: A Conversation with Ukrainian Historian and Novelist Olena StizhkinaThe music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at slaviclitpod@gmail.com or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Cameron pops in at the end of the month to talk about episodes you can expect in the coming months.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands