Marina Palei

Marina Palei

Marina Palei in St-Petersburg
Born 1 February 1955 (1955-02)
St-Petersburg, Russia
Occupation Writer
Nationality Dutch
Notable works Evgesha and Annushka
Cabiria of the Obvodnyi Channel
The Lunch
Klemens
Raya & Aad
A Tribute to Salamander
Choir

Marina Anatolyevna Palei (née Spivak, in Russian: Мари́на Анато́льевна Пале́й; born 1 February 1955 in Leningrad) is a Russian scriptwriter, journalist, novelist and translator.

Life and work

Palei was born in Leningrad, where her Ukrainian Jewish parents were studying engineering.[1] She was still a child when her parents divorced, and she spent her teenage years with her maternal grandparents in Vsevolozhsk.[2] In 1972, Palei began studying epidemiology at the Leningrad Institute of Medicine. After graduating in 1978, she worked in several temporary jobs, among them as a medical technician, cleaning woman, and model,and she participated in an amateur theater group.[3] After suffering a nervous breakdown in 1983, Palei recovered and, starting in 1984, began to write poetry.[4] She also began work as a night watchman, a choice typical for writers and artists of her generation, symbolizing their desire to opt out of officially sanctioned cultural institutions while allowing them state-mandated employment with long stretches of time to write.

Irina Rodnyanskaya, a family friend and editor at the literary journal Novyi mir, encouraged Palei to apply to the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute (in Russian: Литературный институт им. А. М. Горького). She was accepted, one of only five women in her class of eighty, and began writing fiction while taking classes at the institute. She gave up her night watchman job in 1987 to concentrate on writing, and her first publications were primarily literary criticism and reviews. It was during this time that Palei also became involved in the dissident movement, joining the independent Democratic Union (in Russian: Демократический союз) party in 1988.

Palei's first published fiction was a short story, "Composition on Red and Blue"(later renamed "Virage"). The story was printed in "Sobesednik" (the weekly supplement to "Komsomolskaya Pravda") in 1989. However, it was the novella "Evgesha and Annushka" ("Znamya" 1990) that made her famous. In 1991, Palei's novella, "Cabiria from the Bypass Canal," was published in Novy Mir," bringing her instant critical acclaim and a nomination for the prestigious Russian Booker Prize. Despite harassment from the KGB for her political activities, Palei continued to publish. She graduated cum laude in 1991 and was invited to join the Writers' Union.[5] Although Palei emigrated to the Netherlands in 1995, she has continued to publish in Russia. Her first collection, Birthplace of the Wind (Russian: Месторождение ветра), which gathered together her best-known works and previously published story cycles, was published in 1998.[6] This collection was followed by "Long Distance, ili Slavyanskyi Akcent" ("Long Distance or the Slavic Accent") – 2000, Vagrius, "The Lunch" (2000, Inapress) and "Klemens" (2007, Vremya).

Palei's prose has been translated into many languages, including English, German, French, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Italian, Dutch, Slovakian, Slovenian, Estonian, Latvian, and Japanese.

Palei's many activities also include translations. She translated Italian, Dutch, Greek, English and Slovenian poetry and Flemish prose.

Membership in organizations

Literary awards

Shortlist

Winner

Bibliography

Publications in Russia

Books

Forthcoming

In 2013 EKSMO publishing house plans to release the following books Marina Paley:

Publications abroad

Books

Anthologies

References

  1. ↑ Prokhorov, Alexander (2004), "Marina Anatol'evna Palei", in Balina, Marina, Dictionary of Literary Biography, v. 285, Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, pp. 196–201, ISBN 0-7876-6822-2 Missing or empty |title= (help)
  2. ↑ Prokhorov, Alexander (2004), "Marina Anatol'evna Palei", in Balina, Marina, Dictionary of Literary Biography, v. 285, Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, pp. 196–201, ISBN 0-7876-6822-2 Missing or empty |title= (help)
  3. ↑ Tomei, C. (1999). Russian women writers. Taylor & Francis. p. 1405. ISBN 9780815317975.
  4. ↑ Tomei, C. (1999). Russian women writers. Taylor & Francis. p. 1405. ISBN 9780815317975.
  5. ↑ Tomei, C. (1999). Russian women writers. Taylor & Francis. p. 1405. ISBN 9780815317975.
  6. ↑ Prokhorov, Alexander (2004), "Marina Anatol'evna Palei", in Balina, Marina, Dictionary of Literary Biography, v. 285, Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, pp. 196–201, ISBN 0-7876-6822-2 Missing or empty |title= (help)
  7. ↑ "The Russian Booker Awards dinner". The Russia Journal. 9 December 2000. Retrieved 22 June 2010.

External links

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