In this episode we talk to Max Lawton — translator of Vladimir Sorokin, a cult Russian novelist whose cult status has only grown after the start of the Ukrainian war and Russia’s hard turn to a paranoid and closed-off society. Now there’s an effort to get Sorokin more widely read in America. We talk about Sorokin, his politics, his views on literature, and Max’s approach to translation.

—Yasha and Evgenia

PS: We reference an interview Max did with the Untranslated blog. Check it out here.

Want to know more? We recorded a few eps on Russian culture and lit…

* Eduard Limonov and Natalia Medvedeva w/Thierry Marignac

* All the Sad Soviet Immigrant Lit

* Anti-Soviet identities in the USSR

* Lenin's flesh (and no blood)

* Watching American movies in the USSR ft. Boris Levine

* …and the rest of the archive.

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