Robert Chandler is a British poet and literary translator. He is the editor of Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin) and the author of the short biography of Alexander Pushkin (Hesperus). He is also the editor of the literary magazine Cardinal Points.
His translations from Russian include Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad (For a Just Cause), Life and Fate, The People Immortal, Everything Flows and The Road, Leskov’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Aleksander Pushkin’s Dubrovsky and The Captain’s Daughter. His co-translation with Elizabeth Chandler of Andrey Platonov’s Soul was chosen in 2004 as ‘best translation of the year from a Slavonic language’ by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL). Their translation of Platonov’s The Foundation Pit (with Olga Meerson) was published in 2004 and of the same author’s Chevengur in 2025. His translation of Hamid Ismailov’s The Railway won the AATSEEL prize for Best Translation into English in 2007, and received a special commendation from the judges of the 2007 Rossica Translation Prize. In 2016 he published a translation of Teffi’s memoir of the first days after the Russian Revolution, Memories: from Moscow to the Black Sea (NYRB). Chandler’s translations of Sappho and Guillaume Apollinaire are published in the Everyman’s Poetry series. Robert Chandler teaches part-time at Queen Mary, University of London, and he has for many years been a committee member of the Pushkin Club (London).
