Zavodnoi Apel'sin. Ispoved' khuligana [A Clockwork Orange. The confession of a hooligan].

Two rival Russian translations of A Clockwork Orange published in 1991, one being the incredibly scarce Sinel'shchnikov translation published in Kyrgyzstan.

First published in 1962, and of course achieving even greater notoriety thanks to Stanley Kubrick's film in 1971, Burgess's novel did not appear in Russian until 1991. In fact, that year saw two translations, one by Vladimir Boshniak (b.1949), published in Leningrad, the other by Yevgeny Sinelshchikov (1947–2013), published in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (just as the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse). Boshniak's appeared first: an extract in Liternaturnaia gazeta in 1990, then the complete book in May 1991. An extract from Sinelshchikov's version was published in the magazine Iunost' in 1991, the complete book in July 1991.

Burgess famously invented a slang for his teenage characters, called Nadtsat (from the Russian suffix -nadtsat', '-teen'): 'horrorshow' (from khorosho), 'good'; 'droog', 'friend', etc. Naturally, Nadtsat presents a difficulty for a Russian translator: how do you render Burgess's Russianised slang in Russian? It is interesting that Boshniak and Sinelshchikov opted for different means of giving a Russian reader that element of strangeness presented to an Anglophone reader of the novel. Boshniak decided to transliterate the Nadtsat words using roman characters within the Cyrillic text, whereas Sinelshchikov transliterated English words using Cyrillic characters, even providing a glossary at the start of the book: thus aizy for 'eyes'; blad for 'blood'; mani for 'money'; taun for 'town', etc.

First editions, 8vo (19.9 x 12.8 cm); with illustrated title and seven full-page illustrations by A. Zlatkin and E. Guzairov; original illustrated stiff-paper wrappers, short nicks to extremities of spine, a very good copy [sold with] Zavodnoi apel'sin. Roman. Perevod s angliiskogo V. Boshniaka [A Clockwork Orange. A novel. Translated from the English by Vladimir Boshniak]. Leningrad 'Khudozhestvennaia literatura' leningradskoe otdelenie. Sotsial'no-kommercheskaia firma 'Chelovek' 1991.