WHITE MOSS A Panel Discussion

Join us for a discussion on our recent book of the month, White Moss, with Irina Sadovina (translator) Tamar Koplatadze and Oliver Ready

White Moss

Providing rare, direct insight into the beauties and struggles of the Indigenous reindeer-herding Nenets community of the Russian north, White Moss tells a piercingly moving coming-of-age story of the conflict between individual dreams and collective life.

On the eve of his wedding, young Alyoshka pines for an earlier love. Ilne chose to leave the nomadic Nenets community behind 7 years before, moving to the city and taking his heart with her. As the seasons have passed and his mother has grown older, Alyoshka has been under increasing pressure to marry and fully embrace the Nenets' age-old customs of home and family. Unwilling to give up his hope for another life, the young man struggles against everything he has been taught to accept, while other painful transitions shake the stability of the small camp and minor human tragedies play out against the cold expanse of the tundra.

With bursts of lyricism and a Chekhovian eye for human frailty, Anna Nerkagi crafts a multi-voiced drama of tradition and change within her Indigenous community.

Irina Sadovina

Irina Sadovina translates literature from Russian and Mari. Her translations and writing appeared in publications like Prototype, Meniscus, Calvert Journal, and ellipse. She received the 2021 Australasian Association of Writing Programs Translation Prize and was a 2021-2022 National Centre for Writing Emerging Translator Mentee.

Tamar Koplatadze

Dr Koplatadze is one of the first proponents and leading theorists of Post-Soviet Postcolonial Studies. Her specialism covers the literature and culture of Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia from the 19th century to the present day.

Dr Koplatadze's monograph Postcolonial Identities in Central Asian and Caucasian Literature (OUP) is the first book to examine post-Soviet literature from the Caucasus and Central Asia, and to employ postcolonial methodology for this enquiry. Her current book project, Post-Soviet Ecopoetics, is the first comparative study of post-Soviet ecocritical literature and film, including from Siberia, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Oliver Ready

Dr Oliver Ready is a Stipendiary Lecturer in Russian specialising in recent and nineteenth-century literature. He has worked for several years as a departmental lecturer for the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, teaching undergraduates and postgraduates across the University.