Avdotya Panaeva was born in 1820 and first began publishing her work in one of Russia’s premier literary magazines, Sovremennik, in 1846. The author of numerous short stories, novels, memoirs, as well as collaborative projects, she has only recently begun to achieve the recognition that she deserves in the English-speaking world.
On October 8, 2024, Columbia University Press published Fiona Bell’s translation of Panaeva’s first novel, The Talnikov Family. This became the second full-length translation of Panaeva’s work to English. In my review of the book in On the Seawall, I mention several social and historical factors that have kept this delightful novel from English-language readers for so long. In writing about this book, I have relied, in part, on Bell’s introduction to the novel and on the research by Margarita Vaysman, whose book Self-Conscious Realism: Metafiction and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel devotes a section to Panaeva’s work, including an excerpt that ran in Punctured Lines.
Today, it is my pleasure to discuss this novel and Panaeva’s work more broadly with her translator Fiona Bell and scholar Margarita Vaysman.
Continue reading “Narrating a Violent Childhood: A Q&A with Fiona Bell and Margarita Vaysman about Avdotya Panaeva’s The Talnikov Family”
Punctured Lines 