The Abzats antiprizes, which "honor" the worst books of the year, were given out last week in a ceremony at the Books of Russia fair. With a name that literally translates as "paragraph," but has a slang meaning of fiasco or screw-up, the Abzats has been around for six years now; this is pretty long-standing for a literary award in today's Russia, and it vividly proves that publishers continue to release a lot of unprofessional or just plain silly books.

Among the nominees was the "... in Life" series of biographies, which boasts such books as "Stalin in Life" and "Christ in Life," both ostensibly "based on contemporaries' accounts" (the second is presumably just a reprint of the New Testament, then). Some well-established masters were also nominated: Chingiz Aitmatov, the doyen of Soviet literature and the author of several decent novels and novellas, was nominated for his schematic new book "How the Mountains Fall, or the Eternal Bride," while repeat nominee Yulia Latynina -- the outspoken journalist, Moscow Times columnist and prolific thriller author -- was a contender for her "Land of War."

One good sign is that the prize for worst proofreading, once a very tight competition, was called off this year due to a lack of suitable entries. But other categories were still very much full. The prize for worst editing went to "How Spartak Was Murdered," a rather repetitive collection of essays and articles about the famed soccer team by sports journalist Igor Rabiner. The prize for worst translation went to Yelena Samarskaya, who translated Jean Baudrillard's "The Consumer Society" in a way that made the late philosopher's musings, which make little sense in the first place, even more incomprehensible.

The grand prix of the ceremony, the so-called Complete Abzats, was awarded to Sergei Minayev for his novels "Dukhless" and "Media Sapiens" -- among the biggest hits of the past year. It was apparently the contrast between the lamentable quality of the texts and their huge commercial success that earned Minayev his well-deserved prize.

Finally, the Abzats organizers (the newspaper Knizhnoye Obozreniye and the directors of the book fair) handed out a special prize that has become a fixture of the ceremony in recent years: the Certificate of Dishonor, intended for an "especially cynical crime against Russian literature." The winner was Konstantin Ernst, a one-time biologist who is now the almost omnipotent general director of Channel One. The choice of Ernst was meant to emphasize the stultifying influence of television, which lures people away from books and other forms of cultural and intellectual endeavor.