Translating Dagestan in Alisa Ganieva’s “Munkar and Nakir”
, via Wikimedia Commons
Sabrina Jaszi s translation of Alisa Ganieva s Munkar and Nakir appears in the February 2021 issue of Words Without Borders
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Preparing to translate “Munkar and Nakir,” I reread the stories of Flannery O’Connor, whose darkly comic and grotesque portrayals of the American South are described as “Southern Gothic.” First published in the regional journal
Dagestan, Alisa Ganieva’s “Munkar and Nakir” could be said to represent another incarnation of the genre writing of the Russian South. And like the qualifier “American,” “Russian” is a complex category, which receives thorough treatment in the current issue of