- Hardcover: 260 pages
- Publisher: OUP Oxford (29 April 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0198151810
- ISBN-13: 978-0198151814
- Product Dimensions: 22.4 x 14.5 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,386,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Review
"This splendid collection offers unusually engrossing interviews with a diverse selection of contemporary Russian prosaists....[Laird's] prose is crisp and lucid, her translations fully idiomatic...the interviews brim with unexpected and eloquent insights...thought-provoking reading...all of the interviews contain impressive riches...All general and academic collections."--Choice
"This series of conversations with writers, who are not yet as well known in the West as they might be, offers a fascinating insight into the beliefs and attitudes of the Russian generations after Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn."--Times Literary Supplement
Product Description
Voices of Russian Literature presents in-depth interviews with ten of the most interesting figures writing in Russian today. They range from established authors such as Fazil Iskander and Andrei Bitov, who began their careers in the post-Stalinist Thaw, to newcomers like Viktor Pelevin, hailed as one of the most original writers of the present era. It offers an insiders' account of the fate of Russian literature over the past four decades. Rather than cataloguing the opinions of 'dissidents' or 'defenders' of the former regime, it presents the views of artists who have sought, against the odds, to express their unique visions of a changing world. Each interview acquaints us with the author's distinctive voice and provides important insights into the genesis and interpretation of individual works. Sally Laird has prefaced the interviews with biographical and critical sketches of each writer, and her introductory essay sets the whole in historical context. Voices of Russian Literature will be fascinating reading for anyone interested in Russia's contemporary literary experience.
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Why do the rabbits connive in the boas' power? Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Extremely interesting and informative,
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This review is from: Voices of Russian Literature: Interviews with Ten Contemporary Writers (Hardcover)
I know no book that presents a more complete and nuanced picture of Soviet literary life in the post-Stalin years. As well as being an excellent reference book -- I would not dream of writing anything about any of these 10 writers without consulting it -- it is also extremely interesting and entertaining. Soviet culture, I now realize, was far more complicated and contradictory than I had imagined. The best Soviet literary journals were real centres of cultural life (far more than any Western equivalents); they nurtured good writers even when it was politically impossible to publish them. When Petrushevskaya first sent her stories to the journal NOVY MIR in 1969, the editor decreed: "Withold publication, but don't lose track of the author". For the next 20 years the journal did just that. In Petrushevskaya's own words, "NOVY MIR fed me, gave me work, all through the most difficult and hungry times they gave me reviews and book reports to do. They couldn't publish me but they fed me and read me and gave me their opinion -- always." Through NOVY MIR Petrushevskaya was also able to make contact with other banned writers.In a similar way, a story by Makanin made me rethink my understanding of the monolithic nature of the Stalinist legal system. In the forties, Makanin's father was arrested on a trumped-up charge. In the normal course of events he would have spent ten years in prison. "But it happened that I had an uncle who was a Civil War hero, a partisan, an old, lame man with a wooden leg. He had a pistol at home that he'd been allowed to keep, and he took this pistol and went straight to the procurator and said, 'Release him, otherwise I'll shoot you.' 'How can I?' 'That's your business.' (...) 'Go on, release him,' my uncle said. 'He's got chidren to feed, they need him. I've got nothing to lose,' he said. 'I'm a Civil War hero and they won't touch me, but I'll definitely shoot you if you don't do what I say.' The father's sentence was changed, and he was released!
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