- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd (13 May 2010)
- ISBN-10: 1847677770
- ISBN-13: 978-1847677778
- Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.8 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 58,972 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Siberian Education
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Product Description
Review
"Terrifying, fascinating, horrific and violent - Lilin's memoir is an eye-opening and gripping account of a childhood spent in the brutal Siberian underworld." -- Simon Sebag-Montifiore, author of Young Stalin
"Force yourself to forget about categories of good and evil, you have to just be there and read ... produces a thrill of pleasure that is hard to forget." --Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorrah
"Portrays an extreme kind of childhood where quarrels between children and settled with knives." --Rolling Stone
"Lilin is the last heir in a dynasty of criminals."
--GQ
"Force yourself to forget about categories of good and evil, you have to just be there and read ... produces a thrill of pleasure that is hard to forget." --Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorrah
"Portrays an extreme kind of childhood where quarrels between children and settled with knives." --Rolling Stone
"Lilin is the last heir in a dynasty of criminals."
--GQ
Product Description
Set in a small and tight-knit community of 'honest criminals' in a remote part of the former Soviet Union, this is a tale of an extreme childhood - exotic, violent and completely unique. Nicolai Lilin gained his 'education' as a member of the Siberian Urkas - a self-contained criminal fraternity - in a forgotten corner of Eastern Europe. It was a remarkable upbringing, defined by an elaborate set of riuals and strict codes of honour. The community had a deep distrust of outsiders - especially the police and state authorities - and split itself into 'honest' and 'dishonest' criminals. Even their youngest children were taught to understand violence and when it was appropriate to use it. By the age of six, Nicolai Lilin is given his first 'pike knife' by an uncle and by the age of twelve he has been convicted of attempted murder. A huge bestseller in Lilin's current home country, Italy, Siberian Education is an extraordinary snapshot of a violent world.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
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Be careful about acquiring this effort on the basis of short synopses or seeming recommendations that you may read. You might get an unduly favourable impression, as I did myself, of what is in store for you. It is neither one thing nor the other, as Churchill said when he saw the name Bossom in a list of members of parliament. It is neither fact nor fiction, and to call it autobiography or depiction of a culture would involve a huge strain of either term. It is not really even a book in my own opinion.
What it resembles is a serial appearing every 7 days in some weekly magazine. When I was a boy there used to be several such magazines for my age-group, although the stories and events that they serialised were of course a lot more wholesome and edifying than this is. They were also shorter, and if you are determined to grit your teeth and finish this one you have 440 or so pages to cope with. Fortunately the quality of the writing is not a problem, it being competent enough. There are enough real difficulties, one being the corny narration of the supposedly quaint and purportedly interesting values and rites of this alleged community of Siberian criminals with their own codes of honour and conduct. When I was young the weekly mags that I have just mentioned used to fascinate us with tales of elite schools whose interns went through equally pointless pantomimes. We were intended to gawp at this exclusive nonsense like children with our noses pressed against the window of a shop whose wares were out of our price-range, and the whole atmosphere of it all came back to me forcibly when I read `The umbilical cord of newborn babies is cut with a pike , which must first have been left overnight in a place where cats sleep.' That gem is on p 31, but believe me, I really did struggle through to the bitter end, overcoming a powerful momentary sense that this was as much as I could endure.
It is all about the life and times (or deaths and times) of a Siberian community uprooted to the region of Transnistria. Transnistria is a strip of riverbank between the Ukraine and Moldova, and I believe that it declared independence in 1990, although this has been recognised only by Abharzia and South Ossetia, which in their turn have yet to achieve widespread recognition. The level of violence would have made the Kray twins quail, but, oddly, I experienced no sense of disgust because I believed very little of what I was reading. I don't doubt that it is all based on the author's background and experience, but it is blatant romancing. There is surprisingly little sex in the story, but if that is what you are looking for start at p 286, which inaugurates 20 or so pages of detailed descriptions of male rapes in a prison.
I can see no point in fretting over accuracy or verisimilitude, as these are manifestly not what this is all about. On p 79, for instance, I read that `in present-day Russia hardly anyone knows about the deportation of the Siberians to Transnistria. That might be, I reflected, because it never happened, as a reliable source informs me. Even my own minimal grasp of the epoch is enough to let me correct the text on p 204, where the author seemingly commits himself to the belief that Yugoslavia was part of the Soviet bloc.
I hope and believe that that's a fair summary. If you wish to claim otherwise, you must at least read the lot from start to finish, as I genuinely did. It can be done, but it's a challenge.
What it resembles is a serial appearing every 7 days in some weekly magazine. When I was a boy there used to be several such magazines for my age-group, although the stories and events that they serialised were of course a lot more wholesome and edifying than this is. They were also shorter, and if you are determined to grit your teeth and finish this one you have 440 or so pages to cope with. Fortunately the quality of the writing is not a problem, it being competent enough. There are enough real difficulties, one being the corny narration of the supposedly quaint and purportedly interesting values and rites of this alleged community of Siberian criminals with their own codes of honour and conduct. When I was young the weekly mags that I have just mentioned used to fascinate us with tales of elite schools whose interns went through equally pointless pantomimes. We were intended to gawp at this exclusive nonsense like children with our noses pressed against the window of a shop whose wares were out of our price-range, and the whole atmosphere of it all came back to me forcibly when I read `The umbilical cord of newborn babies is cut with a pike , which must first have been left overnight in a place where cats sleep.' That gem is on p 31, but believe me, I really did struggle through to the bitter end, overcoming a powerful momentary sense that this was as much as I could endure.
It is all about the life and times (or deaths and times) of a Siberian community uprooted to the region of Transnistria. Transnistria is a strip of riverbank between the Ukraine and Moldova, and I believe that it declared independence in 1990, although this has been recognised only by Abharzia and South Ossetia, which in their turn have yet to achieve widespread recognition. The level of violence would have made the Kray twins quail, but, oddly, I experienced no sense of disgust because I believed very little of what I was reading. I don't doubt that it is all based on the author's background and experience, but it is blatant romancing. There is surprisingly little sex in the story, but if that is what you are looking for start at p 286, which inaugurates 20 or so pages of detailed descriptions of male rapes in a prison.
I can see no point in fretting over accuracy or verisimilitude, as these are manifestly not what this is all about. On p 79, for instance, I read that `in present-day Russia hardly anyone knows about the deportation of the Siberians to Transnistria. That might be, I reflected, because it never happened, as a reliable source informs me. Even my own minimal grasp of the epoch is enough to let me correct the text on p 204, where the author seemingly commits himself to the belief that Yugoslavia was part of the Soviet bloc.
I hope and believe that that's a fair summary. If you wish to claim otherwise, you must at least read the lot from start to finish, as I genuinely did. It can be done, but it's a challenge.
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Just one thing about Lilin's 'Siberian Education' is true: he was a juvenile delinquent (apparently, Kolia Verzhbitsky), brought up by his grandfather (Boris, not Kuzia) in Transnistria.
The rest is demonstrably made up to create a publishing sensation. Consider, if you are reading this book:
1)There never was such a thing as a Siberian urka community. Urka is just Russian for a convict serving a fixed term of hard labour: they were in Siberia as part of their punishment;
2) Stalin never deported any criminals from Siberia to Transnistria: all deportations were from Europe to the Far North or Siberia. Criminals who were particularly obnoxious were shot, or sent a thousand miles nearer the North Pole;
3) He could certainly not have sent them to Bendery in Transnistria, because at the time this town was in Romania;
4) Lilin never explains how he, as a Transnistrian citizien, was eventually called up into the Russian army, nor how, as a convicted criminal, he was given a residence permit in Italy;
5) His grandfather Kuzya is said to have survived 8 bullets from a firing squad and then been allowed to go: something utterly unique in the history of the USSR, if not mankind;
6) There is no danger, as the 'novel' implies, in Lilin revealing secrets of Russian criminal tattoos or slang - whole books and internet sites are devoted to them already
If you like an orgy of senseless violence, then stick with Tarantino, whose work is at least witty and ingeniously plotted. This farrago seems to be no more than a fantasist's ravings. As for the morality, Lilin has mixed up the code of Russian 'thieves-in-the-law' (a sort of Kray brothers' union) with the rituals of the Orthodox Old Believers. It's no wonder that this novel is being translated into 28 languages, but not into Russian, Ukrainian or Moldavian, which would immediately lead to Lilin's exposure as an impostor.
The rest is demonstrably made up to create a publishing sensation. Consider, if you are reading this book:
1)There never was such a thing as a Siberian urka community. Urka is just Russian for a convict serving a fixed term of hard labour: they were in Siberia as part of their punishment;
2) Stalin never deported any criminals from Siberia to Transnistria: all deportations were from Europe to the Far North or Siberia. Criminals who were particularly obnoxious were shot, or sent a thousand miles nearer the North Pole;
3) He could certainly not have sent them to Bendery in Transnistria, because at the time this town was in Romania;
4) Lilin never explains how he, as a Transnistrian citizien, was eventually called up into the Russian army, nor how, as a convicted criminal, he was given a residence permit in Italy;
5) His grandfather Kuzya is said to have survived 8 bullets from a firing squad and then been allowed to go: something utterly unique in the history of the USSR, if not mankind;
6) There is no danger, as the 'novel' implies, in Lilin revealing secrets of Russian criminal tattoos or slang - whole books and internet sites are devoted to them already
If you like an orgy of senseless violence, then stick with Tarantino, whose work is at least witty and ingeniously plotted. This farrago seems to be no more than a fantasist's ravings. As for the morality, Lilin has mixed up the code of Russian 'thieves-in-the-law' (a sort of Kray brothers' union) with the rituals of the Orthodox Old Believers. It's no wonder that this novel is being translated into 28 languages, but not into Russian, Ukrainian or Moldavian, which would immediately lead to Lilin's exposure as an impostor.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I bought this book mainly based on the recommendation of Irvine Welsh(cited on the cover), and those readers who are familiar with his books will not fail to see the similarities in style and humour. I was also reminded of Roddy Doyle's "Paddy Clarke, haha", with a hint of the darker "a star called Henry" also by Doyle.
All of these authors grew up in environments that would probably constitute most parent's worst nightmare. They use their own experience to spin a yarn of imaginary protagonists surviving their childhood, in a spirited and upbeat manner. The narrative does not really follow a linear pattern, and therefore may irritate readers that are used to novels in movie style with clear and to the point plots. Instead we are taken on a journey with numerous detours, that really do not contribute anything to the "plot" but help to describe the way this society works and how people inside think.
I enjoyed looking at the "normal" society of laws, morals and institutions from the other side of the mirror, where to be "a criminal" is an honest profession, and laws and morals exist that try to ensure the community can function. Characters in this book follow a law and code of behavior that is taught only in the oral tradition from old to young. This code, like the Japanese Bushido, compells people to take certain actions because they are "right" irrespective of the personal consequences, such as getting stabbed, shot or beaten with iron sticks.
I am not sure whether it is relevant of whether this story is true or not, I was certainly not aware of such a claim when I bought the book. I found it nevertheless a great read and enjoyed every page of it.
All of these authors grew up in environments that would probably constitute most parent's worst nightmare. They use their own experience to spin a yarn of imaginary protagonists surviving their childhood, in a spirited and upbeat manner. The narrative does not really follow a linear pattern, and therefore may irritate readers that are used to novels in movie style with clear and to the point plots. Instead we are taken on a journey with numerous detours, that really do not contribute anything to the "plot" but help to describe the way this society works and how people inside think.
I enjoyed looking at the "normal" society of laws, morals and institutions from the other side of the mirror, where to be "a criminal" is an honest profession, and laws and morals exist that try to ensure the community can function. Characters in this book follow a law and code of behavior that is taught only in the oral tradition from old to young. This code, like the Japanese Bushido, compells people to take certain actions because they are "right" irrespective of the personal consequences, such as getting stabbed, shot or beaten with iron sticks.
I am not sure whether it is relevant of whether this story is true or not, I was certainly not aware of such a claim when I bought the book. I found it nevertheless a great read and enjoyed every page of it.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
50/50
I am not sure about this book i mean its quite boring in some places. But the chapter where the author tells us about hus time in juvenille prison is an absolutly dreadful tale... Read more
Published 4 months ago by THE REVIEWER
Siberian Education
A dreadful book with no redeeming features at all, total fantasy island stuff .
And the writing ,oh my! Read more
And the writing ,oh my! Read more
Published 4 months ago by fill
Amazing read!!
I bought this book for my boyfriend having had it recommended and ended up reading it myself. It is an amazing read, completely enthralling but hard hitting at the same time. Read more
Published 9 months ago by DM
Fantastic book, couldn't put it down!
I thought this book was incredible, everyone saying he exaggerated in parts, please tell me an auto-biography that doesn't. Read more
Published 10 months ago by adjey
Grime, Crime and Grit.
This book took me a while to read.
It is a grim read but somehow you keep going. It is not a book for the faint hearted but does paint a stereotypical image of
the... Read more
It is a grim read but somehow you keep going. It is not a book for the faint hearted but does paint a stereotypical image of
the... Read more
Published 10 months ago by S. Broadbent
Waste of time
This book was a complete waste of time. It's a poorly written, extremely tiresome, violent fantasy. I can't understand how it became a bestseller in Italy or why it has gotten some... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Pen Name
Thrilling, disturbing...... a great read
I ignored this book for some time. When it arrived from Amazon,I just didn't feel like reading it, and so when I picked it up months later, having ru out of books to read, I wasn't... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Laura Smith
siberian education no no no
boring boring book expecting story on organised russian crime family not lots of boring stories from little boys in siberia- avoid
Published 15 months ago by D. J. Ryan
Swimming against the tide -- I liked it
I've read the other reviews of Lilin's book which slate it for being historically inaccurate and, instead of a romanticized autobiography, an autobiographical fantasy. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Dr. K. E. Patrick
Avoid at all costs
I wish I had read some of the reviews before purchasing this book - usually subject matter is enough to coax me into buying a book and it has been a long time since I struggled to... Read more
Published 15 months ago by M. Burton
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