The Russian translation of my debut novel Sea Above, Sun Below is at the Все свободны bookstore in St. Petersburg.
Also, thank you to the people at Афиши Daily who named my novel as one of the 9 books worth buying at the Black Market Fair in St. Petersburg.
Last but not least, here are some Google-translated excerpts of the first Russian review by Stas Kin, from Kongress W. He’s one of those rare readers who understands the novel on a deep level:
“When George Salis’s [wrote his] debut novel, he was barely in his twenties, and the novel represents a truly young literature – but, paradoxically, a literature of experience. Salis writes fragmentarily and writes diversely, and knows how to assemble from fragments a stable structure where all elements are important and all are in their proper places. But the book is good not only for its form (not flawless in the beginning, but masterfully calibrated further on and all the way to the finale) – the content is too. Attentive inquisitive mind, vivid imagination, developed aesthetic sense are inherent in him to a degree that you would not expect from a young talent.
Salis’s manner of weaving mythological imagery into the narrative might pass for a postmodernist device, but it’s neither post- nor meta-. There is no irony, no mockery, no rebellion in Salis’s prose, and there is no sign of a new sincerity with the exposure of the soul, seriousness and longing. To repeat the words of one of the first critics, this is indeed the magical realism of modern times. The reality of his texts is constructed of animated metaphors and ringing phrases of true poetic beauty.
Salis’s chosen method of storytelling deliberately avoids any coherence, incorporating meanings and implications from all levels of the narrative in a way that immerses the reader in linguistic synesthesia.”
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Some more perspicacious reviews of the Russian translation of my debut novel have come out.
Here are some Google-translated excerpts of Nikita Goryanov’s review, published on his Telegram Channel, Gorsbook: “[Sea Above, Sun Below], at times reminiscent of Joyce’s Ulysses and Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, is hardly understandable with a superficial or even moderate immersion into the text. […] Even Nabokov, whom Salis mentions among his favorite writers, wrote his first novel at a later age, and it turned out to be the quite weak, Mashenka, which doesn’t even come close to the novel of the young American. […] Like in Homer’s works, gods for Salis are not objects of worship but functions, figures of speech, tropes – puzzle pieces we must decipher. […] …diving into Salis’s novel is a risk worth taking, as it’s one of those books that you’ll want to reread immediately after the first reading, and then spend a long time digesting what you’ve read, hoping that Salis’s next novel will also be translated into Russian.”
You can read two interviews with me translated into Russian here.
Included in this post are artworks of me commissioned by my Russian publisher, Kongress W, and created by Bloom. The portrait accompanied a double interview translation featured on the site and the rendition of my eye accompanied the first review of the Russian translation, written by Stas Kin.
George Salis 