Name this book, difficulty level: German translated into Russian.
November 14, 2014 8:06 AM   Subscribe

For a coworker: I'm trying to track down a translated YA novel my co-worker remembered reading as a child in Russia.

She thinks it was written in German and translated. This was in the middle to late seventies, so it may have been before then, but definitely not after 1980. It was about a dog who dressed and acted like a man, and was seen as a man by others. She remembers a scene where the dog ordered a bone in a restaurant and everyone was confused as to why anyone would do that. She called it "as sort of adult novel but with very simple, sketchy illustrations."

She verified that it wasn't by Walter Moers because the illustration style was wrong.

Can anyone work with this jumble of ancient memories and find a candidate?
posted by 1f2frfbf to Media & Arts (7 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I tried googling книга, собака заказывает кость в ресторане [book, dog orders bone in restaurant] and got nothing. Interesting question; I hope someone can answer it!
posted by languagehat at 9:25 AM on November 14, 2014


Best answer: A polish book that fits this description is Ferdynand Wspanialy. The Wikipedia entry claims it has been translated into many languages. Here is the Russian entry for Ludwig Jerzy Kern with "Детская литература" mentioned.
posted by Dotty at 9:35 AM on November 14, 2014 [5 favorites]


Best answer: This blog post has some pictures from that book, including a scene with the dog eating a bone in a restaurant. Very simple, sketchy illustrations is pretty accurate.
posted by effbot at 11:29 AM on November 14, 2014 [3 favorites]


Best answer: And, to confirm what others have said about Ludwig Kern, here's a search for the memorable line "My name is Radio" in Russian, which includes a link to an .fb2 file.

Try "menYA zoVUT RAdee-oh" on your co-worker.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 11:37 AM on November 14, 2014 [1 favorite]




Response by poster: You guys are awesome, I'm gonna see if any of this rings a bell with her and report back.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 6:28 PM on November 14, 2014


Response by poster: Reporting back: We may have found it, the Google Books version isn't the one she remembered, but she's gonna see if she can track it down further, having a better command of the intricacies of searching in Cyrillic than I do.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 6:31 AM on November 20, 2014


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