The Hall of the Singing Caryatids
The first I’d heard of Victor Pelevin was while interning at Words Without Borders. We published his story “Akiko” which struck me as the funniest, strangest thing I’d seen in ages. I decided to seek out his other work, and while his book A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia offered some good tales, I was left with a ...
>
"Penguin Lost" by Andrey Kurkov [Read This Next]
Prelude Apology: Sorry for being a bit behind—I’m home sick with a nasty cold . . . More posting and podcasting next week. This week’s featured Read This Next title is Penguin Lost, the second book in Andrey Kurkov’s detective series that, yes, includes a penguin (and is translated from the Russian ...
>
Latest Review: "Daniel Stein, Interpreter" by Ludmila Ulitskaya
The latest addition to our Reviews Section is a piece by Julianna Romanazzi on Ludmila Ulitskaya’s Daniel Stein, Interpreter, translated from the Russian by Arch Tait and available from Overlook Press. Ludmila Ulitskaya is one of a handful of contemporary Russian writers to have a number of their works translated ...
>
Daniel Stein, Interpreter
To some in the realm of journalism and literary representation the notions of “poetic license” and “poetic truth” stand as two very dubious cornerstones on which to build factual novels. The shaky foundations leave all kinds of room for interpretation, embellishment and, perhaps in the wrong hands, the glorification ...
>
Cool Death and the Penguin Promo [Imaginary Places]
Just got an email about this awesome offer from Melville House that I wanted to share for a few reasons.: From the As-If-The-Cover-Didn’t-Tip-You-Off-Already department: Death and the Penguin by Andrei Kurkov is the perfect example of why the Melville House International Crime series is like no other: It’s political, ...
>
Latest Review: "Ice Trilogy" by Vladimir Sorokin
The latest addition to our Reviews Section is an insane piece that I wrote about Vladimir Sorokin’s Ice Trilogy, which is translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell and available from New York Review Books. I am aware of how crazily self-indulgent and odd this review is, but after writing about Sorokin so many ...
>
Ice Trilogy
Back a few years ago, New York Review Books released Ice, one of the first books by Russian literati bad boy Vladimir Sorokin to make its way into America. After all the hype surrounding Sorokin—for being the star of post-Glasnost Russian literature, for being well hated by the Putin Youth, for writing fairly offensive ...
>