Dzanc to Publish Zakhar Prilepin Through DISQUIET Imprint

September 19, 2012 - Ann Arbor, MI—The Dzanc Books DISQUIET imprint is proud to announce that it will publish San’kya, the award-winning novel by controversial Russian author Zakhar Prilepin.

San’kya is an examination of the elements of rebellion and protest. The novel, drawing on Prilepin’s own experiences, follows Sasha (whose grandmother calls him San’kya), a member of an extremist revolutionary group, as he tests the elemental force of the protest movement in Russia and in himself. San’kya faces a stark choice in the novel’s climax: whether to return to the villages (the unseen Russia) and accept the political fates or to engage the authorities in open rebellion.

Originally published in 2006, San’kya is even more relevant today as a prism through which to view the recent large-scale actions against Putin. It is Prilepin’s first novel and is widely considered his best. San’kya was shortlisted for the Russian Booker and the National Bestseller Prize and won the Yasnaya Polyana Award and the Best Foreign Novel of the Year Award in China.

Zakhar Prilepin, born near Ryazan in 1975, lives in Nizhny Novgorod where he is the regional editor of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Prilepin had a varied life before dedicating himself to writing, spending time as a student, as a laborer, as a journalist and as a soldier, serving with the Special Forces in Chechnya. More recently Prilepin has come to the public attention not only as one of the best writers of his generation, but as a committed, and often controversial, political activist on behalf of the 'Other Russia' coalition. His website is one of the most popular author's sites in Russia. Prilepin's combination of lucid prose and social consciousness has made him one of the most popular and acclaimed writers in Russia today and drawn comparisons with the Russian classics.

San’kya will be translated from the Russian by Jeff Parker and Alina Ryabovolova and will be published in English in North America in both print and eBook form in January 2014.

Jeff Parker, Editor for the DISQUIET imprint of Dzanc Books, said of the acquisition: "Prilepin is a rabble-rouser and one hell of a writer. San'kya is his masterpiece perfectly capturing a moment and a mood in Putin's russia like nothing else the English world has read."

This signing was made through Zakhar Prilepin's agent, B. Nibbe of Nibbe and Wiedling Literary Agency.

 

About Disquiet

The DISQUIET imprint of Dzanc Books will publish contemporary works from around the world in English translation. The imprint comes out of the annual DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal, and it’s first title will be the novel A True Actor by Jacinto Lucas Pires to be published in September 2013 translated by Jaime Braz and Dean Ellis. All titles in the DISQUIET imprint will include introductions by leading figures contextualizing the authors and their stories for American audiences.