Saturday, April 17, 2004
BOOKS: VLADIMIR SOROKIN
I don't know why so little of Vladimir Sorokin's work is available in English. His postmodern fiction is critically successful, though controversially so, yet accessible, with generous helpings of bizarrerie and grotesque sex and violence. As such, it would seem a natural for translation. Yet as far as I know only one of his novels, The Queue has been translated into English, and this, though ingenious, is a minor work and quite uncharacteristic of the rest of his work that I've seen. Apart from this, there are only a handful of stories in anthologies and journals. If you can read French or German, you're in better shape, as at least some of his major novels have been translated into those languages (iirc).
While preparing to write this post, I discovered that one of his short stories, "Hiroshima", is available online from Grand Street magazine. The best example of Sorokin currently available in English is an excerpt from his novel "Four Stout Hearts" which appeared in the second issue of Glas, but it's all worth searching out (except for The Queue).
I don't know why so little of Vladimir Sorokin's work is available in English. His postmodern fiction is critically successful, though controversially so, yet accessible, with generous helpings of bizarrerie and grotesque sex and violence. As such, it would seem a natural for translation. Yet as far as I know only one of his novels, The Queue has been translated into English, and this, though ingenious, is a minor work and quite uncharacteristic of the rest of his work that I've seen. Apart from this, there are only a handful of stories in anthologies and journals. If you can read French or German, you're in better shape, as at least some of his major novels have been translated into those languages (iirc).
While preparing to write this post, I discovered that one of his short stories, "Hiroshima", is available online from Grand Street magazine. The best example of Sorokin currently available in English is an excerpt from his novel "Four Stout Hearts" which appeared in the second issue of Glas, but it's all worth searching out (except for The Queue).
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