Vasily Aksyonov who received a $15,000 Booker award for his novel, The Voltairians, told reporters: "I have never received any literary awards. This time I was lucky: my old friend, Vladimir Voinovich, happened to chair the jury." Vladimir Voinovich, in turn, did not argue and said, "The decision of the jury is certainly biased, and, certainly, incorrect."
After the Booker ceremony, the literary community moved on to the Non/Fiction exhibition in the Central House of Artist. The writers who were short-listed for the Booker Prize but failed to win it (Marta Petrova and Oleg Zayonchkovsky) shared their impressions of the defeat in the local press center. A young writer, in literary terms, 39-year-old Andrei Gelasimov said, for example, that he would soon become a children's writer: his novel Rakhil won the Student Booker Prize this year. His new prize winning project has already received the approval of the British.
The jury of the Prize of Andrei Bely announced its winner here too. The winners will be awarded one ruble, an apple and a bottle of vodka. Critic Boris Ostanin, a member of the jury, explained to those present that his brainchild could be easily included in the Guinness World Record for its scarce budget.
Then the jury members raised glasses to the announced winners and said that they were ready to repeat the procedure in St. Petersburg later this month, with the winners attending. The winners in the main literary nominations were poetess Yelizaveta Mnatsakanova and prosaic Sergei Spirikhin. The former was honored for her book of poems Arcadia, and the latter for his novel Green Hills of Austria about a man who found himself in an alien language environment. Poet and prosaic Viktor Sosnora received a special prize for his particular literary merits. Meanwhile, Boris Akunin signed his autographs for fans of detective stories on his new book, Cemetery Stories.
The French scandalous writer known for his description of worldly parties, advertising strategies and orgies of young drug addicts, Frederic Beigbeder, has recently released his book The Windows on the World in Russia. This is the name of a restaurant on one of the collapsed Twin Towers in New York.
