Russian Booker is a non-state prize that has been awarded annually to the author of the best novel in Russian for the last twenty years. In addition to financial incentives for the author, it serves to popularize serious prose and contributes to its commercial advancement to the general reader.
Each year, the Booker Committee forms a jury of five highly respected writers and cultural figures in Russia, who are responsible for determining the winner of the competition. Each of the jury members also has the right to add to the list of nominee works. This jury meets three times a year - first to form a general list ("long list"), then to keep only six works ("short list") and, finally, to choose the winner. This year, the first meeting has already taken place, and as a result, a list of 24 works that have been created over the past two years has been published.
Most of the nominees this year were presented by the Astrel publishing house - these are the 2011 “Diary of a female suicide bomber. Khadizha "by Marina Akhmedova," Adaptation "by Valery Bylinsky," Spree "by Oleg Zayonchkovsky," Black Monkey "by Zakhar Prilepin," Big Book of Changes "by Alexei Slapovsky and" Women of Lazarus "by Maria Stepnova. Four novels from the list were published by the publishing house already this year - "Anarchists" by Alexander Ilichevsky, "Françoise, or the Path to the Glacier" by Sergei Nosov, "The Germans" by Alexander Terekhov and "Arbeit, or Wide Canvas" by Evgeny Popov.
The Znamya magazine published three works included in the “long list” of the Russian Booker. These are "Blue Blood" by Yuri Buida, "Pied Piper" by Georgy Davydov and "Light Head" by Olga Slavnikova. Two more novels are presented by the editors of magazines - "October" nominated for the prize "Dance to Death" by Valery Popov, and "New World" - "And there is no retribution for them" by Alexander Melikhov.
Published this year, Eduard Limonov's work "In Cheese" is also included in the list. There is also a work by Dmitry Bykov "Ostromov, or the Sorcerer's Apprentice: A Manual on Levitation" published almost two years ago.
Three fresh novels from the list were published by the Vremya publishing house - these are The Peasant and the Teenager by Andrey Dmitriev, Your Life Is No Longer Beautiful by Nikolai Kryshchuk and The Flight of the Bumblebee by Anatoly Kurchatkin.
The novels The Traitor by Andrey Volos, The Soldier and His Empire by Yakov Gordin, Before Europe by Alexei Chepelov and The First Brick Project by Viktor Yagofarov will also compete for the Russian Booker Prize.
