Translation from a Crib

Evgeny Chizhov is a prose writer, twice a finalist of “The Big Book,” and a laureate of the “Yasnaya Polyana” award for the novel “The Collector of Paradise.” In “Translation from the Undertext,” the Moscow poet Oleg Pechigin is sent to Central Asia at the invitation of his former fellow student—now a prominent figure in the government of Koshtyrbastan—in order to translate into Russian the poems of President Gulimov, the prophet in his own country. In the novel, the East appears both as a storybook from “One Thousand and One Nights” and as a harsh, terrifying reality. A stranger, an outsider from another world, is doomed. The attempt to become “one of us,” to interfere in the course of events, ends in tragedy… Can a poet be in power? And can a state be led by a poet? What kind of state will it be, with a poet at its head? “Translation from the Undertext” is not only about a journey to the East, but about plunging into a different way of feeling the world—opposed to European rationality. About the “cursed poet” at the top of a pyramid of power; about a prophet commanding tank divisions. And finally, about the search for a miracle and inspiration—whose meeting brings ruin.