Robert Chandler, in conversation with David Herman, discusses his recently published translation of Lev Ozerov’s stupendous Portraits without Frames, one of the most remarkable books of Russian poetry to have been published since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Robert Chandler is the main English translator of both Vasily Grossman and Andrey Platonov. He has also compiled three anthologies for Penguin Classics: of Russian short stories, of Russian magic tales and, with Boris Dralyuk and Irina Mashinski, The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry. He is a co-translator of three volumes of memoirs and stories by Teffi.  His short biography of Alexander Pushkin is published by Pushkin Press.  He runs a monthly translation workshop at Pushkin House (Bloomsbury).

David Herman was a TV producer for twenty years, working with Jeremy Isaacs and Melvyn Bragg among others, and has been a freelance writer for the past fifteen years writing 700 articles for a number of leading magazines and newspapers including The New Statesman, Prospect, The Guardian and The Independent. He is chief fiction reviewer of The Jewish Chronicle.