Book City Institute is organizing a meeting in Tehran on January 17 to review and debate ‘King, Queen, Knave,’ a tragicomic story by Russian novelist Vladimir Nabakov (1899-1977).
Saless Publication in Tehran has recently released the Persian translation of the book by Reza Rezaee, 60, who will participate in the meeting, says the website of the institute bookcity.org.
Written in 1928 and published in the same year in Russian, the source for Rezaee’s translation was the English version of the novel by the author’s son Dmitri Nabakov (1934-2012), who was an opera singer and translator.
The senior Nabakov made significant changes to the novel when his son was translating the work in 1968 into English, 40 years after its Russian debut.
It is worthy of mention that the Persian translator has a passion for chess like the Russian writer. Nabakov composed chess puzzles among which were a formation of the king, queen, and knave. The novel is actually a figurative game of chess.
Before starting his career as a translator, Rezaee was both a player and coach at Iran’s Chess National Team. He is expected to unfold interesting facts and analyses about the novel at the upcoming debate.
In addition to Rezaee, the meeting will be attended by two other acclaimed experts namely writer, theoretician, literary critic and translator Amir Ali Nojoumian, 52 and writer, essayist and translator Narges Entekhabi, 56.
The meeting will start at 4:30 pm at the Cultural Center of Book City Institute, located on Ahmad Qassir Street, north of Beheshti Street.
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