Voices of Russian Literature: Interviews with Ten Contemporary Writers [Hardcover]

"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

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.

Sally Laird is a freelance writer and translator who currently teaches at the European Film College in Denmark. Educated in Philosophy and Russian Literature at Oxford and Harvard, she formerly edited the magazine Index on Censorship and was Director of the Central and East European Publishing Project, Oxford. She has translated works by, among others, Lyudmila Petruchevskaya, Vladimir Sorokin and Igor Pomerantsev.