TEHRAN –A Persian translation of Russian scholar and writer Eugene Vodolazkin’s book “Brisbane” has recently been published by Now Publications in Tehran.

Narges Sanai is the translator of the book first released in 2018.

The book follows the story of Gleb Yanovsky, a celebrated guitarist, who is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at age fifty. After that he permits a writer, Sergei Nesterov, to pen his biography. For years, they meet regularly as Gleb recounts the life he’s lived thus far: a difficult childhood in Kyiv, his formative musical studies in St. Petersburg, and his later years in Munich, where he lives with his wife and meets a thirteen-year-old virtuoso whom he embraces as his own daughter. In a mischievous and tender account, Gleb recalls a personal story of a lifetime quest for meaning, and how the burden of success changes with age.

Expanding the literary universe spun in his earlier novels, Vodolazkin explores music and fame, heritage and belonging, time and memory. In a dueling interplay between Gleb’s first-person recollections and Nesterov’s interpretation, the carefully knit stitches unravel into a puzzle: Whose story is it – the subject’s or the writer’s? Are art and love really no match for death? Is memory a reliable narrator? In Brisbane, the city of our dreams, as in music, Gleb hopes he’s found a path to eternity – and a way to stop the clock.

The book won the Gold Medal at 2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) for Literary Fiction and has been longlisted for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award. 

It is also the winner of the Ivo Andric Grand Prize for best novel of 2022. 

Eugene Vodolazkin was born in Kyiv, Ukraine. His second novel, “Laurus”, won both of Russia’s major literary awards, the National Big Book Award and the Yasnaya Polyana Book Award, and was shortlisted for the National Bestseller Prize and the Russian Booker Prize.

His debut novel, “Solovyov and Larionov”, was shortlisted for the Andrei Bely Prize and the Big Book Award. Three other critically acclaimed novels, “The Aviator”, “Brisbane”, and “A History of the Island”, have also been translated into English. Vodolazkin has worked in the department of Old Russian Literature at Pushkin House since 1990. He is an expert in medieval history and folklore and has numerous academic books and articles to his name. 

Photo: A combination photo shows Eugene Vodolazkin and the front cover of the Persian edition of his book “Brisbane”.

SAB/