So Farewell, Then, Harlequin Historicals - When Men Were Steeds and Women Were Hair On learning that genre fiction is a craft, not a formula

open.substack.com/pub/ilonayaz...

I have a Substack: much like early-career Jesus - a few things to say not many followers yet… #translation #culture #reading

Big thanks to Jacqueline Nyathi @hararereview.com for the fab review. I really love it when people enjoy reading the book almost as much as I enjoy translating it.

Dostoyevsky didn’t have to, ffs. (why it’s taken me 25 years to finish a work of fiction - my own, for a change - actually two in three months - ruthless avoidance of my family) #writing #novel

To Pushkin House this week for a two-hander talk about translating indigenous literature from the far north. Still very charmed and not a little weirded out by the idea that kind, interested people would pay to hear me talk about anything. #translation #translator #russian #rustrans

You saw it here.

I did too 😊

It’s a mad mix of snark, creep, post-Soviet trauma and folklore - another review called the translation “a performance” and I absolutely love that. translating genre is so much creative fun, no? Funny things have to be funny, scary things have to be scary.

Delirious is exactly how it often felt to be translating it - in the best possible way.

Thank you so much for your review! Delirious is sometimes how it felt to translate it. And I adored The Children’s Hospital.

cream cheese, at ours

Huge thanks to @locusmag.bsky.social and Paul Di Filippo for the thoughtful review - and yes, “Courtyard…” really ought to make it over to English readers! Paging @angryrobotbooks.bsky.social

so good I have to post them twice

I was moved and disturbed by Egana Djabbarova’s writing - can’t wait to see the book again in @lizoksbooks.bsky.social translation

ie sardonic humour 💚

OMG - not shark - SNARK

I’m so glad you are seeing the allegory behind the shark! 💚

Christmas day with my dear, now elderly in-laws. This probably isn’t the saddest cup of coffee in England - dregs of the Nescafe jar, semi-skimmed milk - but pity me all the same. There is a metric ton of cheese in the fridge. I shall be drinking all the port in the house, by and by.

Thank you, Lawrence! I wasn’t sure what the tags were 😊 I thought yours was a wonderful, awful, original book.

Chilling Lit: Six Novels in Translation That Blend Folktales and Horror Togetherness that’s on the side of suffocating, history that won’t stay put or past, and nature that doesn’t just exist, benignly, but watches and waits….Folk horror deals in dissonance, drea…

Translating genre is creative: funny things have to be funny, scary things scary. Genre can be ambitious and talk about what people are really preoccupied with - what they desire and dread - doesn’t have to be “austere and unflinching,” etc. @crimereads.bsky.social

lithub.com/chilling-lit...

Including her own, natch. You’ll love it, I promise! 😂

I do! I do recommend them, and I recommend my translation of The Village at the Edge of Noon, too. Go buy a book or two! And #dontgointhewoods

@iammilliam.bsky.social what a year - in better news, shitbag puppy all grown up

Publication day! #dontgointhewoods #booksky #translator

Omg, one of my favourite books is Air by Geoff Ryman. And I love parallel novels. Must find this!

A promotional panel. It shows the cover of the 2025 Angry Robot edition of The Village at the Edge of Noon by Darya Bobyleva, translated by Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse. The next reads: Everything you were afraid to find out about the heat of noon and grandma's old tales comes together... Out now!

"Valerych roared, and he struck out for the other riverbank - away from the incinerating flame and the village and his dead goddamned wife - toward the other world, the other shore."

Published today!

Is it terror in the woods? Or the truth?

Translated by @missadadoom.bsky.social.

@iammilliam.bsky.social you’ll love - or not hate - my incipient book musings blog (whence future media empire) “The Thrill of the Chaise”.

doing an episode with you guys was a pleasure and a hoot - longtime listener, overexcited guest

and a delightful and surprising amount of tenderness 💚 given the level of, ahem..

Buyer’s premorse- I haven’t bought it yet, but I fully intend to regret this purchase

A winning combination of ridiculous, hilarious, and adorable.