Egana Djabbarova – Punctured Lines

The publication of Egana Djabbarova’s My Dreadful Body by New Vessel Press earlier this year is an important contribution to feminist russophone literature available to readers in English translation. Following the excerpt from this novel we published recently from the opening of the seventh chapter, “Tongue,” we’re taking the opportunity to dive a little deeper into the context, structure, and language of this remarkable book in our interview with its translator, Lisa C. Hayden. We are deeply grateful to Hayden, who also brought to anglophone readers books by Guzel Yakhina, Margarita Khemlin, Narine Abgaryan, Marina Stepnova, and Katerina Gordeeva, among others, for insights into her translation work.

Olga Zilberbourg: What considerations went into your decision to translate My Dreadful Body?

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We’re celebrating today the arrival of an eagerly anticipated novel that portrays the life of a young woman from a traditional Azerbaijani community in Russia. A feminist poet, essayist, scholar, and educator, Egana Djabbarova is the author of five books in Russian. In English, her work has previously appeared in the anthology F Letter: New Russian Feminist Poetry, edited by Galina Rymbu, Eugene Ostashevsky, and Ainsley Morse (read our conversation with Ostashevsky and Morse). My Dreadful Body is Djabbarova’s first book in translation to English. The team behind this book includes Lisa C. Hayden, a beloved and celebrated translator from Russian, and New Vessel Press, an indie publisher specializing in literature in translation with a very strong list of titles from the countries of the former Soviet Union.

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