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School of Languages, Linguistics and Film

Professor Donald Rayfield

Donald

Emeritus Professor of Russian

Email: d.rayfield@qmul.ac.uk

Research

Publications

RECENT PUBLICATIONS:

Monographs:

Anton Chekhov  A Life. London: HarperCollins, 1997; New York: Henry Holt, 1998. ISBN 1-85399-426-X. Revised expanded edition: Garnett Press, London, 2021 (translated and expanded in French, Spanish,Slovak, Chinese and four Russian editions)

The Dream of Lhasa: The Life of Nikolay Przhevalsky, Explorer of Central Asia, Elek London, Ohio U.P., 1976

Understanding Chekhov Bristol Classical Press. London; University of Wisconsin Press, 1999, pp. xvii + 295

Stalin and his Hangmen. London: Penguin, 2004, pp xxvi + 528. ISBN 0-670-910880; New York: Random House, 2004, pp xxviii + 543 (translated and expanded in German, Spanish, Czech, Italian, Hungarian,  Greek, Polish, Latvian and two Russian editions)

The Literature of Georgia: a History, 3rd, revised and expanded edition. 2010, pp 366. ISBN 978-0-9535878-8-9.

Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia London: Reaktion Books, 2012. revised and expanded 2018 (translated and expanded in Russian and Georgian editions).

 

Dictionaries:

Donald Rayfield (editor in chief), with Rusudan Amirejibi, Shukia Apridonidze, Laurence Broers, Ariane Chanturia, Levan Chkhaidze and Tina Margalitadze. Garnett Press, London 2006 (September). xl + 1729 pp.

 

Editions:

Revised and partly re-translated (on basis of Constance Garnett's versions), The Chekhov Omnibus: Selected Stories. Dent: Everyman, 1994, pp. 700

 (with O. E. Makarova) intr., ed., notes, Dnevnik A. S. Suvorina. London: The Garnett Press/ Moscow: Nezavisimaia gazeta, 2000, pp xl + 667. ISBN 0 953878 1 9; 5 86712 093 7

 (with J Hicks, O Makarova, A. Pilkington) with notes, The Garnett Book of Russian Verse An Anthology with English Prose Translation. London: The Garnett Press, 2000, pp. 748; revised edition 2013, pp xiv + 664

ed., intr., notes. Tatiana L'vovna Shchepkina-Kupernik. Izbrannye stikhotvoreniia i poèmy Moscow: OGI. January 2008. 359pp

 

Translations

from Russian

Nikolai Gogol, Marc Chagall Dead Souls (with 96 engravings by Marc Chagall) London: Garnett Press. 2008 pp 366

Leskov Stories (The Enchanted Wanderer, The Sealed Angel, The Unmercenary Engineers, The Innocent Prudentius) NYRB 2020

Varlam Shalamov Collected Stories (vol.1) NYRB 2018

Varlam Shalamov Sketches of the Criminal World (vol 2 of Collected Stories) NYRB 2020, pp. 576

 

from Georgian

Otar Chiladze A Man Was Going Down the Road, 2012  435 pp.

Otar Chiladze Avelum Garnett Press, 2013, pp. 350

Mikheil Javakhishvili Kvachi Dalkey Archive, 2015. pp 512

Rezo Gabriadze The Poet-Painter Of Georgia Sieveking, 2018, pp. 160

 

from Uzbek

Hamid Ismailov Dance of Devils London: Tilted Axis, 2017

Uvaysiy Four Poems Cardinal Points VI, Brown University, 2017, pp 208‒213

Hamid Ismailov Manaschi Tilted Axis 2021

 

from French Anon., The Confessions of Victor X, Caliban, London, 1984, Grove Press, New York, 1985, 143 pp

 

Selected Articles:

 

‘The death of Paolo Iashvili’, SEER, October 1990, LXVIII, 3, pp 631-664

'Mandel'shtam i zviozdy' in R. Aizlewood, D. Myers (ed.), Stoletie Mandel'shtama  London 1991 pp. 299-307.

'Kak nas lishili poslednei nevinnosti — 1968-i god', Inostrannaia literatura, Moscow 3 (1994), pp. 204-213

'Polnyi brozheniia i aromata sosud: gruzinskaia poèzia v perevodakh Mandel'shtama' in O.G.Lasunsky et al., Otdai menia, Voronezh Voronezh, 1995, pp. 287-97

'Medieval Migraine: Georgian Medicine and Folklore', in John A. C. Greppin, Emilie Savage-Smith and John Gueriguian (eds) The Diffusion of Greek Medicine in Middle East and the Caucasus Caravan Books New York: Delmar, 1999, pp. 251-267

'A Virgil to his Dante: Gide's Reception of Dostoevsky', Forum for Modern Languages, St Andrews: October 2000, pp. 1-17

'The Golden Age of Russian Poetry', in Neil Cornwell, ed., Routledge Introduction to Russian Literature. London: Routledge, 2001

A Forgotten Poetess — Shchepkina-Kupernik revalued', in Slavonic and East European Review, 79.4 (October 2001) pp. 601-637

'Galen, Avicenna and the mediaeval Georgian pharmacopoeia', in Philologie, Typologie und Sprachstruktur. Festschrift für Professor Winfried Boeder. Frankfurt-am-Main 2002, 101-110

'Zametki ob Anglii', in M. N. Filippova (ed.) Angliiskii natsional'nyi kharakter. Sbornik statei. Moscow, 2006. pp. 42-76

'Inventing Russia. English-Language Writers and Their Imagined Russia' PN Review vol. 38, N. 1, Sep./Oct. 2011, pp 16-21

'Time Bombs: the Posthumous and post-Soviet reinterpretation of two Georgian Novels (Mikeil

'Maiakovsky and Georgian', in Art, Intellect and Politics: A Diachronic Perspective edited by G.M.A. Margagliotta and A.A. Robiglio, Leiden (Brill), 2012, pp. 575-82

'Forgiving Forgery', Modern Language Review (Cambridge), vol.. 107, part 4 (October 2012), pp xxv-xli

‘Crimean Tatars’ Guardian, April 2015-06-16

‘Commemorating Niko Marr’ PN Review 224, July-August 2015, pp 44‒7

‘The Crimean Tragedy: Last Act?’ pp 145‒171, in Hans-Christian Günther (ed.) Ethnic and Religious Cohabitation and Conflict: East and West vol. 4 Nordhausen: Traugott Bautz, 2017 ‘“Literature is a Tribute”. Maxim Gorky and the Klavdia Gross Story’ Los Angeles Review of Books № 29, March 2021, pp 87‒109.

 

Current Research Projects:

A History of the Crimean Khanate

‘The Quest for Chekhov’s Daughter’

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