Read Julia Lukshina's "Dead Fox" in issue 17 of Lunch Ticket!

Very grateful to Lunch Ticket’s Editor in Chief, Loumarie I Rodriguez, for including Julia’s story “Dead Fox” in my translation in the Summer/Fall 2020 issue of Lunch Ticket! (And also for the sensitive editing!) Interestingly there is another story about foxes in the same issue, Kelly Gray’s “How To Skin a Fox,” which I found mesmerizing and incantatory.

Translating this story was surprisingly challenging: the narrative and dialogue seem straightforward, but the temporal and POV shifts + the stylistic precision and laconism were very demanding. I am not sure everyone will know to scroll past the Russian original to see my translator’s statement, so here it is again:

Julia’s precise, spare style is a joy for the translator. Due to her art and screenwriting background, she knows just how to wield the compact phrase and the expressive image. In “Dead Fox,” a story about family relationships, the wild fox’s impassive observations are matched by the human narrator’s dry commentary. Much is telegraphed by small details of behavior or the absence of those affectionate diminutive nicknames and word forms so characteristic of Russian. Conveying emotional overtones in prose as spare as Julia’s was a delightful challenge: on top of the fact that Russian to English prose translation tends to expand by at least 15%-20%, there is also the temptation to “get there the easy way” via explicitation instead of relying on detail and gesture. In cases like this, it’s very helpful to be close enough to the author, as I am to Julia, to be able to suggest words in a collaborative fashion; in this case, I was so delighted by the description of the little Maltese being sick in the car, so reminded of my own small dog’s unfortunately similar behavior, that I suggested adding the word “loaf” to make the image even more concrete. Julia and I also had long conversations about how much a fox would know about human words, objects, and relationships. I hope you enjoy reading Julia’s work as much as I enjoy translating it.