Natalia Kamovnikova – författare

During the Cold War, determined translators and publishers based in the Soviet Union worked together to increase the number of foreign literary texts available in Russian, despite fluctuating government restrictions. Based on extensive interviews with literary translators, Made Under Pressure offers an insider's look at Soviet censorship and the role translators played in promoting foreign authors - including figures like John Fowles, George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, Gabriel García Márquez, and William Faulkner.Natalia Kamovnikova chronicles the literary translation process from the selection of foreign literary works to their translation, censorship, final approval, and publication. Interviews with Soviet translators of this era provide insight into how the creative work of translating and the practical work of publishing were undertaken within a politically restricted environment, and recall the bonds of community and collaboration that they developed.

Examining how a single book inspired devotion, dread, and lasting superstition in Russian lettersWhen James Joyce first published Ulysses in 1922, the book enjoyed a hearty welcome in the Soviet Union. In fact, Russian was the second language into which excerpts were translated. However, the early enthusiasm soon gave way to apprehension, and then to public condemnation. The Russian literary community found itself at the epicenter of the political repression of the 1930s, suffering enormous losses among writers and translators, who died en masse through executions and exile. In the context of Ulysses, the numerous violent deaths of its Soviet translators and editors gave rise to rumors, which then developed into superstitious beliefs that managed to outlive their own time. Russian translation scholar Natalia Kamovnikova examines the struggles faced by those who attempted early translations, including death and imprisonment, and how both this translation work and the text itself became sources of fear.Alongside important background on these early translation attempts, including information on the translators themselves, The Fearful Steelpen unpacks the literary approaches to rendering Joyce's aesthetics in Russian and traces the socio-political beliefs behind translation and publishing decisions. Kamovnikova goes further, to examine why Ulysses in particular aroused fears in both in its contemporaries and in subsequent generations of Russian writers, as if the text held a dangerous power that could harm those working on it. This fascinating publishing case study reveals the complicated cultural and political dynamics at work behind a seemingly simple translation from one language to another that still resonates in the contemporary moment.