The Regulator welcomes Duke Professor and translator Carol Apollonio in conversation with Mustafa Tuna, Professor of Russian and Central Eurasian History and Culture, for a reading, and signing of Apollonio’s new translation of Bride and Groom (by Alisa Ganieva). Bride and Groom is the tumultuous love story of two young city-dwellers who meet when they return home to their families in rural Dagestan. Runner-up for 2015 Russian Booker Prize.
Dr. Carol Apollonio is Professor of the Practice of Russian at Duke University. Her most recent literary translations include German Sadulaev's The Maya Pill (Dalkey Archive, 2014) and Alisa Ganieva's debut novel, The Mountain and the Wall (Deep Vellum, 2015). In addition to being an accomplished translator, Dr. Apollonio is also a scholar specializing in the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Chekhov and on problems of translation. She is the author of the monographDostoevsky's Secrets (2009), and she has edited volumes and numerous articles on nineteenth century Russian literature. She was awarded the Russian Ministry of Culture’s Chekhov Medal in 2010, and she currently serves as President of the North American Dostoevsky Society.
Dr. Mustafa Tuna is Associate Professor of Russian and Central Eurasian History and Culture in the Departments of Slavic and Eurasian Studies & History at Duke University and is affiliated with the Duke Islamic Studies Center and the Duke Middle East Studies Center. His research focuses on social and cultural change among the Muslim communities of Central Eurasia, especially Russia's Volga-Ural region, Central Asia, and modern Turkey, since the early-nineteenth century. Dr. Tuna is married and has two sons.
Alisa Ganieva, born in 1985, grew up in Makhachkala, the capital of the southern Russian republic of Dagestan. Her literary debut, the novella Salaam, Dalgat!, published under a male pseudonym, provoked contradictory reactions in Russia and won the prestigious Debut Prize in 2009. Ganieva revealed her true identity only at the award ceremony. Bride and Groom was published in Russia in 2015 and was the runner-up for Russia's most prestigious literary award, the Russian Booker Prize. Ganieva's novels have been translated into a dozen languages. She lives in Moscow, where she works as a cultural journalist and literary critic. (Alisa Ganieva will not be in attendance.)