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Glagoslav Publications have sent me a copy of the The Time of Women by Elena Chizhova, the winner of the Russian Booker Prize 2009. The novel, in its Russian-language version, has been widely reviewed by English language publications. Now it comes out in an English translation by Simon Patterson with Nina Chordas.  The plot revolves around the [...]

Engelbert Humperdink has been selected to represent Britain at Eurovision.  It is hoped that his experience will attract the audiences. ‘It has become an annual television ritual: the UK’s humiliation at Eurovision.’ writes the Telegraph. ‘Boy bands, pop flops, rappers and a former X Factor finalist have all bid for glory, only to end up [...]

OpenBooks sent me an advance blurb of the new book, a collection of essays edited by Wendy Rosslyn (Nottingham University) and Alessandra Tosi (Cambridge) ‘Women in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Lives and Culture’.  I look forward to reading it, not least because I am familiar with Rosslyn’s previous works on Anna Akhmatova and on women in Russian [...]

BBC’s Radio 4 is broadcasting a radio play based on Olga Grushin’s novel The Dream Life of Sukhanov. The novel is by a Russian writer in America who writes about the life in the late Soviet period. Yet, it is described by one critic as ‘breathing new life into American literary fiction’. Quite an accolade! [...]

Groundhog It’s Groundhog Day today, 2 February. Groundhog in Russian is сурок – surok.  The European species of marmots are widely spread throughout Russia, Belorussia, Poland and Ukraine and in folklore are associated with deep sleep. One of the well-known idioms is спать как сурок – to sleep like a groundhog, meaning to sleep deeply. When [...]

Knigochei I’d like to recommend to linguists and students of Russian a simple and fun resource  poiskslov.com  It does what is says – poisk slov – word search. It looks like it was originally developed for lovers of crossword puzzles and Scrabble. Yes, there is a Scrabble in Russian! Same grid, same rules, but the [...]

Russian version of this post is here. Auld Lang Syne is well known in Russia – and throughout Russophonia – both as a melody and in Samuil Marshak’s translation of Robert Burns’ poem, though not necessarily as a New Year celebratory song. The Russian version is called Zastolnaya – Drinking Song. Can’t limit this just [...]

Paul Robeson’s version is on Russian Tetradki. Silent Night was hardly known or ever performed until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union twenty years ago. Now it is as much a part of Christmas and New Year celebrations in Russia as it is everywhere. Tetradki

An old clipping from the Daily Telegraph letters: “Turn the oven off, leaving the door ajar, and leave the turkey to rest for at least 15 minutes before carving.” Simon Hopkinson, whom chefs and fellow food writers decided had written the most useful cookery book of all time, may know how to cook perfect roast [...]

Mensch, click on photo to go to clip. Four men with sharpest minds – or rather tongues – in England ganged up and tore to pieces a woman Conservative MP, Louise Mensch, who suggested in a popular satirical programme ‘Have I Got News for You’ that ‘occupy’ protesters at the City of London were not [...]