The University of Notre Dame Press is delighted to announce that Nobel prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 2, translated by Marian Schwartz, was one of twenty titles longlisted for the 2020 READ RUSSIA PRIZE.
The Red Wheel is Solzhenitsyn’s multivolume epic work about the Russian Revolution. He spent decades writing about just four of the most important periods, or “nodes.” This is the first time that the monumental March 1917—the third node—has been translated into English. It tells the story of the Russian Revolution itself, during which the imperial government melts in the face of the mob and the giants of the opposition prove incapable of controlling the course of events. The action of Book 2 of March 1917 is set during March 13–15, 1917, the Russian Revolution’s turbulent second week. The book has been widely reviewed in The American Scholar, Law and Liberty, and The New Criterion, among other publications, and it was named the 2019 Foreword INDIES Silver Winner for History.
The nominations received for this year’s READ RUSSIA PRIZE honored the breadth and diversity of work by Russian authors and their English-language translators across a wide range of genres and from classic to contemporary writing. A longlist of 20 titles has been selected by the READ RUSSIA PRIZE jurors for their quality, excellence, and contribution to Russian literature in the Anglophone world. The shortlist will be decided and announced in August. The READ RUSSIA PRIZE is awarded every two years for works of Russian literature published in new English translations. The winner(s) will receive an award of up to $10,000, divided at the discretion of the Prize jury between the translator(s) of the work and the English-language publishing house(s).
March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 2 is part of The Center for Ethics and Culture Solzhenitsyn Series. Under the sponsorship of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame, this series showcases the contributions and continuing inspiration of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), the novelist and historian. The series makes available works of Solzhenitsyn, including previously untranslated works, and aims to provide the leading platform for exploring the many facets of his enduring legacy.