The intersection of geopolitical displacement, somatic identity, and the intricate art of literary translation forms the beating heart of My Dreadful Body, a piercing new work by author Egana Djabbarova, rendered into English by acclaimed translator Lisa Hayden, and published by New Vessel Press. In this extensive dialogue detailing the genesis and translingual evolution of the book, author and translator unpack the labyrinthine processes that brought a deeply personal, post-Soviet meditation on marginalization, illness, and the politics of the body into the Anglophone literary landscape.
Written between 2022 and 2023 while Djabbarova was residing in Taipei, Taiwan—where she was teaching Russian as a foreign language—My Dreadful Body emerged from a unique crucible of temporal and geographical distance. This dual displacement allowed the author to look back at her life as a cohesive narrative, reshaping a history of trauma, intersectional oppression, and bodily crisis into a powerful work of fiction.
For Hayden, who was approached by New Vessel Press publisher and editor Michael Wise, stepping into the project meant engaging with a masterclass in modern prose that defies simple categorization. Navigating the dense, poetic register of Djabbarova’s original Russian—which seamlessly weaves in Azerbaijani, Turkish, and post-Soviet socio-cultural codes—required a meticulous, deeply collaborative partnership. Together, author and translator grappled with the weight of xenophobic slurs, the politics of linguistic transfer, and the transmission of what Hayden vividly describes as "elastic potential energy"—a coiled spring of compressed imagery that defines the book’s singular voice.
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Detailed Chronology: From Lived Crisis to Translingual Creation
The biography of My Dreadful Body is inextricably linked to the personal chronology of its author, whose life has been shaped by the realities of diaspora, systemic discrimination, and forced displacement.
1. Formative Years and the Crisis of Belonging
Long before pen touched paper, the foundational concepts of the novel were forged in Djabbarova’s teenage years. Growing up as an ethnic minority of Azerbaijani descent in Yekaterinburg, Russia, she confronted early encounters with racism and xenophobia. These lived experiences cultivated an acute, persistent internal crisis of identity and belonging—a troubling realization that she did not neatly fit into, or feel organically accepted by, any of the cultural frameworks surrounding her.
As she matured, these systemic pressures compounded with new vulnerabilities. Patriarchal expectations and severe personal illness introduced a profound turning point. According to Djabbarova, it was her medical diagnosis that ultimately catalyzed an acute sense of embodiment—a visceral, intellectual realization of how deeply interconnected human subjecthood and the physical body truly are.
2. The Taipei Crucible (2022–2023)
The physical writing of the manuscript took place away from the immediate epicenters of Djabbarova’s struggles. Between 2022 and 2023, while living and teaching in Taipei, the author experienced a dual distance: both geographical and temporal. This separation from the immediate pressures of her past environment provided the psychological clarity needed to transform raw, painful life experiences into a structured narrative work of fiction.
3. Editorial Acquisition and Translation Process
Upon the manuscript’s completion in Russian, the project caught the attention of New Vessel Press publisher Michael Wise. Recognizing the profound literary and cultural value of the text, Wise brought the manuscript to literary translator Lisa Hayden. Having earned an MA in Russian Literature from the University of Pennsylvania and spent formative years living in Moscow, Hayden recognized the exceptional quality of the work and agreed to undertake the translation.
What followed was a continuous, highly collaborative dialogue between author and translator across international time zones. Utilizing email and messaging platforms, Hayden and Djabbarova maintained an unbroken line of communication, meticulously unravelling polysemous verbs, culturally specific terms, and poetic rhythms to ensure the English text preserved the dense, metaphoric weight of the original.
Supporting Context & Metrics: Navigating Post-Soviet Identity and Translation Dynamics
To fully understand the linguistic and political hurdles overcome during the translation of My Dreadful Body, one must examine the socio-cultural frameworks that inform Djabbarova’s prose.
The Coloniality of Being and Bodily Agency
In constructing her narrative, Djabbarova drew conceptual inspiration from decolonial thinker Nelson Maldonado-Torres and his framework of the "coloniality of being." Maldonado-Torres explores how the agency and subjecthood of marginalized or colonized individuals are systematically questioned, effectively denying them inherent humanity.
Djabbarova notes that the societal position of ethnic minorities, diaspora communities, and non-conformist figures within Russia mirrors this dynamic. To combat this systematic denial of humanity, the author deliberately anchored her narrative within the physical body. By doing so, she rendered the marginalized experience visible, inescapable, and an undeniable testament to her own narrative agency.
The Translatability of Trauma: Cultural Specificities and Slurs
One of the most formidable hurdles in bringing the text into English involved Chapter VII, titled "TONGUE." In this section, the protagonist catalogs the abuse hurled at her: "I’m black, blackie, black-ass, alien, monster, foreigner, foreign-born . . ."
In Russian, terms such as chernaya or chernozhopaya operate as specific xenophobic slurs designed to dehumanize and degrade people from the Caucasus, Muslim-majority countries of the former Soviet Union, and individuals with darker skin tones. However, when translated literally into the American linguistic and cultural context, these expressions carry a primary, historically distinct weight tied directly to anti-Black racism.
Managing this discrepancy required immense delicacy. Hayden and Djabbarova had to convey the precise, localized weight of post-Soviet ethnic discrimination and colorism without completely flattening or misrepresenting it through an exclusively American racial lens.
Furthermore, formal linguistic constraints posed secondary challenges. The original Russian passage featured a long, rhythmic string of insults beginning with the Cyrillic letter corresponding to "ch"—a sonic pattern impossible to replicate directly in English.
Flora, Fauna, and Paratextual Balance
Beyond socio-political slurs, the text is rich with regional specificities, including indigenous flora—such as the plant Peganum harmala, transliterated as uzerlik—and numerous culinary references. To avoid weighing down the narrative pace with cumbersome in-text explanations, Hayden and Djabbarova opted for a strategic deployment of footnotes, carefully balancing accessibility for the Western reader with the preservation of textual flow.
Official Statements & Direct Perspectives
On the Creative Genesis and Poetic Architecture
Egana Djabbarova:
"This book was written under very unusual circumstances… It is very likely that this dual distance—both temporal and geographical—helped me look at my own life as a cohesive narrative and reshape it into a work of fiction. A central challenge of this process was the fact that the novel is written in a deeply poetic register. It was a conscious aesthetic choice on my part to approach prose through the lens of poetry, utilizing its inherent metaphoric weight, emotional intensity, and linguistic density."
On the Collaborative Translation Journey
Lisa Hayden:
"I didn’t realize at the time that My Dreadful Body would become such an important book for me. I love first readings, but it’s subsequent readings (and drafts of translations) that open up a book’s depths and dimensions… My Dreadful Body is an extraordinarily wise book, a book that taught me a lot… What she writes feels unexpectedly personal in many ways since I identify so very closely with how she writes about feminism, cultures, and women’s bodies."
Hayden also underscored the constant presence of the author throughout the translation process:
"Since the translator’s job involves both reading and somehow hearing the voice(s) in a text, I’ve always felt that the author is involved in my entire translation process… Egana was often with me over email!"
Metaphors of the Text: Carpets, Roots, and Coiled Springs
Asked to encapsulate the essence of the book through metaphor, both creators offered striking imagery:
- Egana Djabbarova: Proposed the metaphor of a woven carpet or tangled roots in a garden, viewing traditional textiles as natural extensions of organic, intertwined growth.
- Lisa Hayden: Expanded upon this by introducing the image of a coiled spring:
"Like a spring, Egana’s text is very compact, but it stores lots of power, tremendous energy… I realized the kind of spring that contains water makes sense, too. Like Egana’s text, that spring is fluid, sparkly, and tremendously fresh, rising out of a deep source."
Future Outlook & Critical Significance
As My Dreadful Body makes its debut in the Anglophone literary market via New Vessel Press, its release marks a vital milestone in contemporary translated literature. It arrives at a time when voices from the post-Soviet diaspora, particularly those operating under the immense pressures of political exile, are increasingly vital to global literary discourse.
Egana Djabbarova, who was forced to flee Russia in 2024 due to her LGBTQ+ activism and vocal opposition to the war in Ukraine, now resides and continues her creative work in Hamburg, Germany. Her trajectory reflects the urgent, precarious reality facing dissident writers globally. Yet, through works like My Dreadful Body, translingual collaboration proves capable of bridging vast geopolitical divides, carrying the complex weight of somatic trauma, resistance, and artistic survival across languages.
For translator Lisa Hayden and publisher New Vessel Press, the successful navigation of the novel’s poetic density and socio-political nuances establishes a high benchmark for future cross-cultural literary projects. As readers engage with Djabbarova’s uncompromising text, My Dreadful Body stands poised to provoke vital conversations surrounding feminism, bodily autonomy, and the enduring power of narrative agency in an increasingly fractured world.
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