Presentation of the short list of the Big Book Literary Prize

The short list of the Big Book Literary Prize included the maximum possible number of works according to the charter – fifteen. Moreover, the ceremony participants were asked to guess the finalists by description or quote. To the credit of those who selected, selected and guessed, all were identified. For those others and third worried Mikhail Prokov.

On the first floor of GUM, a kilometer-long line lined up for ice cream: in honor of International Children’s Day, the store reduced the price of its legendary delicacy to 50 rubles and invited it to distribute singers, actors and showmen. The presentation of the short list of the Big Book took place two floors above, but even there it was not boring. Chairman of the Literary Academy Dmitry Bak, who opened the ceremony, pleased the audience with the fact that the decisions of the council of experts will be announced in the genre of a quiz – the participants will have to try to guess the book and the author according to the description made by one of the members of the council. Gifts were supposed to guess, and in general it was tempting to be more perceptive and well-read than other active participants in the literary process.

The “guessing game” began cheerfully: according to the words “military pilot”, it was immediately identified “Red Sky” by Vasily Avchenkoaccording to a quote from the beginning of the book was identified “The Gift of Speech” by Yuri Buida; informing the public that the book he is presenting is “heavy, dark and very honest,” the writer Roman Senchin gave out with his head “Rose” by Oksana Vasyakina. Then hitches began: “a provincial town turning into a black hole” turned out to be a not so obvious clue for the guests of the ceremony, voices “Verkin!” were almost inaudible – apparently, the volume of the novel “snark snark” deprived writers and critics of confidence. The gift eventually went to the editor-in-chief of a competing publishing house, Tatyana Solovieva from Alpina. Prose”. “Creator” — biography of Anton Nosik, written Michael WieselAnd “Chagin” by Evgeny Vodolazkin few recognized. But it provoked a strong reaction “Committee for the protection of bridges” – As soon as the deputy editor-in-chief of Oktyabr, Alexei Andreev, mentioned the children who had landed on trial and their unfortunate parents, voices rang out from different parts of the hall, enthusiastically calling the name Dmitry Zakharov: the author of the “Natsbest” and many critics of the “Middle Edda” and “Cluster”, who fell in love with the deceased in the Bose, was for the first time on the shortlist of the “Big Book”.

Slightly shortening the enumeration, let’s say that from the second half of the longest short list, only “Occulttraeger” by Alexei Salnikov, “OTMA. Saving the Romanovs” by Alexei Kolmogorov And “Magic Choir” Evgeny Kremchukov. Names Alexandra Shalashova, Mikhail Turbin, Helena Pobyarzhina And Rodion Marinichev so far not known to all lovers of literature, but Sholokhov by Zakhar Prilepin to see in the shortlist, the majority, it seems, simply did not expect.

The results of the ceremony should be considered quite good on the whole: all 15 books were guessed one way or another, and the three dozen texts of the long list left behind the list include not so much that readers and critics will greatly regret (here you can call perhaps “Likho” by Kirill Ryabov and “Until February” by Shamil Idiatullin).

The only thing that can be blamed on the experts is the need to master by December not ten or twelve, but as many as fifteen works. But, firstly, who prevented critics from reading all this before – most of the books on the list have already been published for six months or a year. And secondly, the shortlists of the previous composition of the council of experts, the more accusations of insufficient representativeness rained down. Here, only the authors of biographies can complain about underrepresentation, but there were few of them in the long list.

So who will be lucky in December is still unknown, but on June 1, not only the children on the first floor of GUM were lucky. The shortlist, in general, is for every taste, there are many books with strong plots, there are young authors, there are venerable ones. There are and will be dissatisfied, the critics’ job is to criticize, but this time the readers will definitely not be left idle.