News

PRESS RELEASE

For immediate release, 04/02/2016

From: Eyes Open Media

eyesopenmedia@comcast.net

(415) 640-5013

PUNTA GORDA, Fla./NIKEL, Russia — The interspecies romance novel that shocked America is now available in Russia.

Thanks to a unique international collaboration, “Wet Goddess: Recollections of a Dolphin Lover,” which author Malcolm J. Brenner self-published to international publicity in 2010, has been published in a Russian language edition by its translator, Anton River.  He is distributing the book via social media and on Amazon with Brenner’s permission and encouragement.

“Wet Goddess” tells the story of Zachary Zimmerman, a young male college student who falls in love and has a sexual relationship with a female dolphin in an amusement park.  Brenner, a self-described zoophile, admits the story is largely based on his experiences while attending New College of Florida in 1970 and ’71.

River, 27, lives in Nikel, Murmansk Oblast region, an industrial town about 12,000 in Russia’s far northwest, near the border with Norway.  “Anton contacted me on Facebook in early August last year to let me know he had purchased a copy of ‘Wet Goddess’ and translated it into Russian so his family and friends could read it,” Brenner said.  “I was impressed by the amount of effort he put into it.  ‘Wet Goddess’ is filled with 1970’s American slang, puns, regional accents and out-of-this-world scenes. It took him about six months to translate all 341 pages of it, a mammoth piece of work.  So I suggested we form a partnership to publish the book in Russia.”

River further showed his multiple talents by laying out the book and re-doing the cover, which was designed by Brenner’s daughter Thea Boodhoo, in Cyrillic.

“We had difficulty finding a publishing company in Russia that would handle ‘Wet Goddess,’” Brenner said.  “The first one Anton tried was a ‘vanity press’ that wanted $6,000 to publish the book. The second said they couldn’t do it because the book was pornographic, even though there are exceptions in Russian law for works of literary and artistic merit.  We finally found a company, Editus, that would handle the manuscript as I had written it, and I’m very grateful to them for not exercising any censorship.”

Brenner’s book has sold about 1,350 copies in 18 countries.  “I hope ‘Wet Goddess’ sells well in Russia, as the country has an active industry capturing and selling dolphins and whales for entertainment,” Brenner said.  “If there is a message from my book, it is that dolphins are the non-human people of the sea, and they deserve to be treated like such and left in freedom.”

To obtain a copy of “Wet Goddess” in Russian, contact River at  asterite@icloud.com.

For more information, or to schedule an interview,  contact Brenner at (415) 640-5013 between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. on east coast DST.

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Attempts by American writer Malcolm J. Brenner and a young Russian translator to publish Brenner’s novel “Wet Goddess” in Russia have been blocked by that country’s inflexible anti-pornography law, the author said.

The law prohibits the publication of “pornography,” and defines any description of sexual contact between a human and a non-human animal as pornography, according to the translator, 27-year-old Anton R.  He lives in a large industrial city in western Russia.

Brenner’s novel describes an erotic, sensual and emotional relationship between a male college student and a captive female dolphin in the early 1970’s.  Since its first publication in 2010, it has sold about 1450 copies worldwide, including several to customers in Russia, Brenner said.  He acknowledges that the novel is autobiographical.

The saga of the book’s Russian translation began in Sept. 2015, when Brenner received an e-mail from Anton describing his appreciation for the book and his effort to translate it into Russian so his family and friends could read it.

“I was deeply touched that anyone would go to so much trouble,” Brenner said.  “Because mistreatment of captive dolphins is common in Russia and other former Soviet client states, I immediately suggested that Anton try to publish it, without being aware of what the law in that country was.”

Anton tried several Russian literary agencies and conventional publishers without success, in many cases hearing nothing back.  Finally he found a publisher willing to take the book, “but it turned out to be a Russian vanity press, and they wanted $6,000 to print and distribute it,” Brenner said.  “Neither I nor Anton have that kind of money.”

Anton made a second attempt with Ridero, a self-publishing company for writers.  Brenner supplied authentication that he was the author of the work, and stipulated a 60/40 split of the profits for himself and Anton.  For his part, Anton spent hours laying out the manuscript according to Ridero’s guidelines.

When Anton submitted the book for moderation, it was rejected because of several scenes depicting sexual activity between the book’s first-person human narrator and the dolphin character.  An attempt by Anton to get the publisher to reconsider the book’s artistic and literary merits was met with a stubborn refusal.  “We are guided by the law and, unfortunately, we can not accept to publish a book with similar content,” Ridero said.

In the United States, the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, even for pornography, provided the subjects are consenting adults.  A long series of Supreme Court hearings have upheld this tradition, but nothing like it exists in Russia.

This has left both Brenner and translator Anton R. in the uncomfortable position of holding a piece of samizdat, an underground literary document which cannot be published for political or legal reasons.

“Clearly, ‘Wet Goddess’ is not pornography,” Brenner said.  “My intention in writing the book was to document the remarkable intelligence and emotional sophistication that dolphins possess, and to make a strong statement about the dangers of holding them in captivity.  The sole purpose of pornography is to titillate and arouse sexual desire.”