The selection of works submitted for the "Big Book" national literary award in Russia continues.
Medianews.az reports that on June 3, the jury of the competition announced the names of the works that made it to the short list.
The inclusion of the Kremlin's fiery propagandist, the chief editor of Russia's RT channel Margarita Simonyan's anti-utopian novel titled "In the beginning was the Word – in the end will be the Number" on the list has caused further dissatisfaction in the literary community.
The issue is that many consider the previous inclusion of the work in the long list to have been a forgery. Now the appearance of Simonyan's novel on the short list has raised suspicions that the forgery will continue to the end and that preparations are underway to award her the prize.
Recall that on April 22, the jury announced that 29 works had passed to the next selection stage in the fiction category. The long list was announced by the jury chairman, writer Andrey Astvatsaturov, at an event held at the press center of the TASS agency. At the same time, the list was published on TASS's website and in the "Kommersant" newspaper.
However, later, the official site of the competition and its Telegram channel posted a list of 30 nominees in the fiction category. In the Telegram post, it was explicitly stated that the list had been edited.
In the updated list, Margarita Simonyan's novel was included instead of the work by writer Andrey Stolyarov, and she was shown in the 25th position.
On April 23, a statement released on behalf of the head of the competition, Tatyana Voskovskaya, described the incident as an "extremely unpleasant mistake." It was stated that Simonyan's book was actually on the list beforehand but had not been included due to a technical error during preparation for the press conference.
But the question remains why the organizers did not tell journalists about this error when the list was published in the media and later quietly changed the list on the competition's official website? Organizers have so far not given a reasonable answer to this question, which has rapidly circulated especially on social networks in Russia.
A number of Russian writers are unhappy about Simonyan's name being added to the long list later and now being included in the 10-person short list as well.
The "Big Book" award was established in 2005 with the aim of rewarding authors of the best fiction and non-fiction works written in the Russian language.