A Voice for Russia

Max Hayward is something of a legendary figure in the field of Russian letters. He translated Pasternak, Sinyaysky, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Isaac Babel, and many others. Together with the editor of this volume, Patricia Blake, he attuned Western ears to the “dissonant” voices in the Russian chorus of post-Stalinist writing. An extraordinary linguist, he mastered—or, in the more literally accurate Russian word, usvoil (“made his own”)—upward of a dozen languag...