The Seagull Spreads Its Wings
WiP member Natasha
Hull, who until eight years ago was a photographer in her native St Petersburg
and had never worked in publishing, has launched a new company, Seagull Publishing
House.
Even those of us who have been in the business for years would find starting
a publishing house a major challenge, but what has enabled Natasha to this by
herself (apart from limitless enthusiasm, commitment and sheer good sense) is
a little WiP training on the basics of publishing and using her WiP contacts
to source several of the specialist services she needed, such as design, publicity
and printing. She has also had generous support from friends among the Russian
community in London.
On 12 November all her efforts and determination culminated in a big launch
party in central London (at St Peter's Church, Vere Street, a stone's throw
from Selfridges) for her first title, "Maxim and Fyodor", by
the St Petersburg-based artist Vladimir Shinkarev.
The launch was attended by about 70 people, of whom about half were Russian,
and included people from the art world, the book trade and the press. After
Natasha's introduction, the author's wife Alina recounted the genesis of the
novel, nearly two decades ago, and how it came to be published initially in
German and then in other Eastern European languages. It was not published in
Russia until 1991. The translator, Andrew Bromfield, read aloud a few pages
from the beginning of the novel, and afterwards the author, a shy, ascetic-looking
man in his late 40s, signed copies of the book.
Vladimir Shinkarev, a geologist by training, wrote "Maxim and Fyodor"
while he was prospecting for minerals in Siberia. The conditions were fairly
hostile and there was little to occupy his spare time, so he began writing about
the lives of a group of young people in Leningrad (now St Petersburg), their
drinking habits, their artistic and literary pretensions, their boredom and,
subtly, the Soviet regime which forms the backdrop to the novel.
The need to be careful about talking to people you don't know (in case a careless remark is reported to the authorities), the need for travel permits for short trips outside the city, and the constant shortages of all sorts of everyday items - all these were all facts of life, but writing about some of these matters would have been regarded as subversive in those pre-glasnost times, and ensured that the novel could not be openly published. Instead, it was circulated as samizdat - illegal, underground literature - in carbon copies of the typed original. In this form it became an underground 'bestseller' that reached a vast market and has even given some words and phrases to the Russian language.
The story of Maxim and his friend Fyodor is told in a series of episodes, or snapshots, some of them written as conventional narrative, some as pastiches of other literary forms, such as a diary, letters, a film script - and a Japanese haiku. The characters are given to confused philosophical musings one moment, and a minute later bemoaning the fact that all their liquor seems to have been consumed. Their lives seem to lurch from scenes of boozy contemplation on the meaning of life to farcical bursts of activity.
Vladimir Shinkarev
is still best-known in Russia as an artist, leader of the "Mitki"
group of artists in St Petersburg, and the book includes several of his illustrations.
It also includes, in addition to explanatory notes for the novel, two original
fairy-tales, 'The King of the Beasts' and 'The Tame Hedgehog'.
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"Maxim and Fyodor" is published by Seagull Publishing House in hardback at £9.95. To order a copy contact distribution@bbr-online.com.