In this week’s session, Oliver Ready discusses his translations of Vladimir Sharov’s work, particularly his recent translation of Be as Children (2021). The talk will cover Ready’s relationship to Sharov in the years leading up to his death, and the freedoms and difficulties he encountered in translating his novels. Ready will also be happy to field more general questions about his work on Dostoevsky and Gogol in the Q&A.

Ready’s tribute to Sharov was published in The Moscow Times shortly after his death and may serve as a useful introduction. His article, ‘How Sharov’s Novels are Made: The Rehearsals and Before and During’ was published in The Slavic and East European Journal in 2020: SEEJ, Vol. 64, No. 1 (2020): p. 42–p. 61. Ready is also currently working on a book of Sharov’s essays, memoirs and poems for Columbia University Press.

Oliver Ready is Research Fellow in Russian Literature and Culture at St Antony’s, and has taught undergraduates for a number of years at various colleges and as a departmental lecturer. His translations include Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (Penguin; shortlisted for the Pen Translation Prize in 2016), stories by Nikolai Gogol under the title And the Earth Will Sit on the Moon (Pushkin Press) and, from more recent Russian fiction, books by Yuri Buida and Vladimir Sharov for Dedalus, three of which have received translation prizes (the Rossica prize and two Read Russia awards). He is the author of Persisting in Folly: Russian Writers in Search of Wisdom, 1963-2013 (Peter Lang, 2017). He is currently at work on a study of Nikolai Gogol for the Critical Lives series published by Reaktion Press, and on further translations of Sharov as well as Irina Polyanskaya’s novel The Passing of the Shadow (1997).

For more information, please see the events page (www.occt.ox.ac.uk/discussion-group-translating-sharov) or email Erin Nickalls (erin.nickalls@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk).