Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Featuring some of Russia's most prestigious post-Soviet writers, Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia portrays the range of aesthetics and subject matter faced by a generation that never knew Communism.
Few countries have undergone more radical transformations than Russia has since the fall of the Soviet Union. The stories in Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia present twenty-two depictions of the new Russia from its most talented young writers. Selected from the pages of the top Russian literary magazines and written by winners of the most prestigious literary awards, most of these stories appear here in English for the first time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An anthology and a collection take on the Bear, then and nowRasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia Edited by Mikhail Iossel and Jeff Parker. Tin House (PGW, dist.), paper (400p) The current state of Russian identity artistic, political, social and beyond is vigorously examined in this anthology, offering readers a multifaceted portrait of the complex nation, from short, poetic pieces like Oleg Zobern's "Bregovich's Sixth Journey," to nearly journalistic narratives like Arkady Babchenko's powerful and harrowing remembrance of the Chechen war ("The Diesel Stop"). The dreams and fears of young and old are included Roman Senchin's "History" follows a retired and politically indifferent professor who gets caught up in a mass arrest of protesters and subsequently must wake up to the oppressive realities of his country, and Anna Starobinet's "Rules" is a whimsical and poignant sketch of a frighteningly perceptive boy. The editors point out that the stories "fall broadly into the category of what can be referred to as New Russian Realism." This realism, though, leaves plenty of room for surreal and dryly humorous perspectives (such as Kirill Ryabov's "Spit" and Vadim Kalinin's "The Unbelievable and Tragic Story of Misha Shtrikov and His Cruel Wife"). This is a truly diverse series of revelations.
