Dr Bryan Karetnyk

Murray Edwards College
  • Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of Slavonic Studies
Dr Bryan Karetnyk

Contact

About

Dr Bryan Karetnyk is a scholar of twentieth-century Russian literature and culture. His research focuses on the writing of the Russian diaspora, with a particular emphasis on the intersection between literature and politics. He is currently preparing a monograph study on Vladimir Nabokov and totalitarianism.

Dr Karetnyk received his PhD in Russian Literature from University College London and his MA in Russian and Japanese from the University of Edinburgh. He has translated several major works by writers including Gaito Gazdanov, Boris Poplavsky and Yuri Felsen, and is the editor and principal translator of the landmark Penguin anthology Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky (2017). He writes regularly for the Times Literary Supplement, the Financial Times and the Spectator.

Teaching interests: 

Nineteenth and twentieth century Russian literature and culture; Russian to English translation

Research

Research interests: 

Twentieth-century Russian literature and music; exile and diaspora studies; the literature of the Russian emigration; the life and works of Vladimir Nabokov; the life and works of Yuri Felsen; totalitarianism; translation studies

Published works: 

Monographs:

  • Bryan Karetnyk, Nabokov and the Russian Diaspora: In the Margins of Totalitarianism (London: Palgrave, forthcoming)

Chapters and Articles:

  • B.P. Karetnikov, ‘Dva fel’etona Iuriia Fel’zena’, Novyi zhurnal 297, 2019, pp. 139–155
  • B.P. Karetnikov, ‘Neizvestnye proizvedeniia Iuriia Fel’zena’, Novyi zhurnal 295, 2019, pp. 199–215
  • Bryan Karetnyk, ‘Iurii Fel’zen’, The Literary Encyclopedia, [online], first published 29 September 2017.
  • Bryan Karetnyk, ‘Staging Lolita and “Saving” Humbert: Nabokov, Shchedrin and the Art of Adaptation’, Slavonic and East European Review xciv/4, 2016, pp. 601–33
  • Bryan Karetnyk, ‘Gaito Gazdanov’, The Literary Encyclopedia, [online], first published 16 December 2016.

Anthologies:

  • Bryan Karetnyk (ed.), Four Russian Short Stories (London: Penguin Modern Classics, 2018)
  • Bryan Karetnyk (ed.), Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky (London: Penguin Classics, 2017)

Translations:

  • Maxim Gorky, Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreev (London: Fitzcarraldo, forthcoming)
  • Yuri Felsen, Happiness, tr. Bryan Karetnyk (London: Prototype, forthcoming)
  • Anatoly Marienhof, Cynics, tr. Bryan Karetnyk (London: Penguin Modern Classics, forthcoming)
  • Yuri Felsen, Deceit, tr. and intro. Bryan Karetnyk (London: Prototype, 2022)
  • Boris Poplavsky, Homeward from Heaven, tr. and intro. Bryan Karetnyk (New York: Columbia University Press, 2022)
  • Gaito Gazdanov, An Evening with Claire, tr. and foreword Bryan Karetnyk (London: Pushkin Press, 2021)
  • Alexander Grin, Fandango and Other Stories, tr. Bryan Karetnyk (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020)
  • Irina Odoevtseva, Isolde, tr. Bryan Karetnyk and Irina Steinberg, intro. Bryan Karetnyk (London: Pushkin Press, 2019)
  • Gaito Gazanov, The Beggar and Other Stories, tr. and intro. Bryan Karetnyk (London: Pushkin Press, 2018)
  • Gaito Gazdanov, The Flight, tr. Bryan Karetnyk (London: Pushkin Press, 2016)
  • Gaito Gazdanov, The Buddha’s Return, tr. Bryan Karetnyk (London: Pushkin Press, 2015)
  • Gaito Gazdanov, The Spectre of Alexander Wolf, tr. Bryan Karetnyk (London: Pushkin Press, 2013)

Teaching and supervision

Course contact for: 

SLA2

SLC1