For Enlightener and Enlightener.Translation, the jury selected eight best titles, either written in or translated into Russian. The books that have made it into the finals are traditionally very diverse in topics, from cancer and the myths around it to Gagarin and the history of the space race, from comets to Soviet hippies, from the origins of encrypting to life in North Korea.

The Enlightener Award

“Every president of a jury board knows that it’s a painstaking job, and in this very fruitful year, it was extra hard.
In the Humanities nomination we have a very useful book, The Halo and the Cross: How to Read Russian Icons; then we have a magnificent work that brings together knowledge and practice, Berdichevsky and Pipersky’s The Mysteries of Linguistics; studies by Ivan Kurilla and Andrey Lankov. Unfortunately, we had to leave behind wonderful books by Lebina, Basinsky, books about architecture and Jerusalem…
The same goes for the sciences shortlist: all of the featured books are very strong, but we had to forgo certain books that also deserved to reach the finals. Every year we expect someone to write about astronomy, and this time, we have a new author, Leonid Yelenin, with his book on comets. There’s a great book on a very sad, yet important, topic: Maria Kondratova on cancer. We have Timofey Chernov with A Weather Forecast For 100 Years, which continues the topic of last year’s winner, and we have Asya Kazantseva’s Where Do Children Come From? (we’re excited to finally find out).
But we see that the shortlist is missing outstanding works by Semikhatov, Drobyshevsky, and a number of other authors who make up the backbone of science popularization today. Our feelings are very mixed, but I guess we’re happy more than we’re sad,” said Alexander Arkhangelsky, head of the jury board, as he commented on the selection process.

In the Sciences nomination of the Enlightener award the finalists are as follows:

Leonid Yelenin. Comets. Wanderers of the Solar System. — Moscow: Bombora, 2024.
Asya Kazantseva. Where Do Children Come From? A Brief Guide To Trading a Childfree Lifestyle for Quiet Family Joys. — Moscow: CORPUS, 2023.
Maria Kondratova. The Crooked Mirror of Life. The Main Myths About Cancer and What Today’s Science Makes of Them. — Moscow: Alpina Nonfiction, 2019.
Timofey Chernov. A Weather Forecast For 100 Years. How the Earth’s Climate Is Changing and What to Do About It. — Moscow: Fiton XXI, 2024.

In the Humanities nomination, the following books are to compete for the prize:

Dmitry Antonov. The Halo and the Cross: How to Read Russian Icons. — Moscow: AST, OGIZ, 2023.
Alexander Berdichevsky, Alexander Pipersky. The Mysteries of Linguistics. — Moscow: Alpina Nonfiction, 2022.
Ivan Kurilla. The Americans and All the Rest: The Origins and Meaning of the Foreign Policy of the USA. — Moscow: Alpina Publisher, 2024.
Andrey Lankov. North of the 38th Parallel: How People Live in North Korea). — Moscow: Alpina Nonfiction, 2024, 2020.

The finalists of the Enlightener 2024 award were selected by the jury board presided over by writer, science communicator, and documentalist Alexander Arkhangelsky:

Andrey Konyaev, PhD in Physics and Mathematics, publisher at N+1.
Sergey Popov — astrophysicist, professor at the Russian Academy of Sciences, winner of the award “For Loyalty to Sciences”.
Oleg Khlevnyuk — Doctor of Historical Sciences, professor of HSE, winner of the Enlightener Award 2023 for Imposter Corporation. Shadow Economy and Corruption in the Stalinist USSR.
Ramiz Aliyev — PhD in Chemistry, docent at the Department of Geography and Geoinformational Technologies at HSE, winner of the Enlightener Award 2023 for What Happened to the Climate.
Natalya Konradova — anthropologist and media historian, author of Archaeology of the Russian Internet, a book from the shortlist of the Enlightener 2022.

Enlightener.Translation Award (Prosvetitel.Perevod)

The shortlist of the Enlightener.Translation also features eight books in two nominations.

In the Sciences nomination the finalists are:

Ed Yong. An Immense World / transl. from English by Maria Desyatova; sc. ed. Mikhail Nikitin; ed. Petr Favorov. — Moscow: Alpina Nonfiction, 2024.
Stuart Ritchie. Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth / transl. from English by Alena Yakimenko; ed. Ekaterina Vladimirskaya. — Moscow: CORPUS, 2024.
Guido Tonelli. Genesis: The Story of How Everything Began / transl. from Italian by Dmitry Bayuk; sc. ed. Mikhail Shevchenko; ed. Irina Gachechiladze. — Moscow: CORPUS, 2022.
Jordan Ellenberg. Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else / transl. from English by Evgeny Ponikarov; sc. ed. Mikhail Gelfand; ch. ed. Yulia Konstantinova. — Moscow: Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2023.

In the Humanities nomination the finalists are:

Carlo Ginzburg. History, Rhetorics, and Proof / transl. from Italian by Mikhail Velizhnev, sc. ed. Vsevolod Zelchenko. — Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2024.
Sinclair McKay. The Hidden History of Code Breaking / transl. from English by Ivan Bogdanov; sc. ed. Maxim Suravegin; lit. ed. Olga Barash. — Moscow: Alpina Publisher, 2023.
Stephen Walker. Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space / transl. from English by Natalia Lisova; sc. ed. Igor Lisov; ed. Vyacheslav Ionov. — Moscow: Alpina Nonfiction, 2024.
Juliane Furst. Flowers Through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland / transl. from English by Irina Kosals; sc. ed. Sofia Timofeeva. — Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2023.

“It was very hard work, as usual. But we followed our traditional procedure by looking for three things in each book: the quality of translation, the originality and boldness of the author’s idea, and its relevance for the Russian-language reader. All of the books in the shortlist have each of these qualities to a certain extent. Only the perfect combination of all of them in one book, however, distinguishes the winner, and we have until November to figure who that is,” said Oleg Voskoboinikov, head of the jury board of the Enlightener.Translation.

The finalists of the Enlightener.Translation were selected by a jury board presided over by Oleg Voskoboinikov, a medievalist, co-founder of Stradarium, Doctor of Historical Sciences, doctor at EHESS, Paris, professor ordinary at HSE, and translator:

Ekaterina Aksenova — writer and blogger at prometa.pro, book clubs host.
Victor Sonkin — philologist, journalist, translator, PhD, winner of the Enlightener 2013 award for Here Was Rome.
Dmitry Prokofiev — translator, winner of the Enlightener.Translation 2021 for translating Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

PolitProsvet (PolitProsvet)

The shortlist of the special award of the Enlightener, PolitProsvet, has also been announced. The jury board presided over by Ekaterina Shulman* has once again selected five books on social and political issues that are relevant for discussion in Russia.

“The jury board of PolitProsvet, of which I am proud to be a part, has selected a shortlist of books aspiring to claim the award. It is a good, in a way harmonious, list, full of books that help us look at what’s going on in today’s Russia from different angles — through the history of Russian institutes of authority and the dissident movement, through analysis of the mechanics of modern dictatorships, culture, and regional management,” said Nikolay Epple, member of the jury board, winner of the Enlightener 2021 award for his book An Inconvenient Past.

This year the finalists of PolitProsvet are the following books:

Sergey Guriev, Daniel Treisman. Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century. — Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom, 2023.
Various authors, edited by Alexander Daniel. The Encyclopaedia of Dissidence: the USSR, 1956–1989. — Moscow: Memorial Research, Information and Public Education Center; New Literary Observer, 2024.
Anton Dolin. The Bad Russians. The Birth of Putinism From Commercial Cinema. — Riga: Meduza, 2024.
Alexander Kynev. Who Governs Russian Regions and How. The System of Governance and Administrative Stability of Authority in the Russian Regions. — Moscow: Rutenia, 2024.
Dmitry Travin. The Russian Trap. — St. Petersburg: European University Publishing House in St. Petersburg, 2023.

The short list has been selected by the jury board:

Ekaterina Shulman — head of the jury board, PhD in Political Sciences, expert of the Berlin Carnegie Center, teacher at Freie Universitat, Berlin.
Anna Narinskaya — journalist, documentalist, curator.
Maxim Trudolubov — head counselor at the Kennan Institute, chief editor at the Russia File, editor at Re: Russia.
Nikolay Epple — philologist, translator, researcher of historical memory, winner of the Enlightener 2021 award for his book An Inconvenient Past.

Winners of the Dmitry Zimin Enlightener Awards will be announced at the official ceremony on November 21.