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The Dream Life Of Sukhanov
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Book Synopsis The Dream Life of Sukhanov by : Olga Grushin
Download or read book The Dream Life of Sukhanov written by Olga Grushin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-01-30 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Olga Grushin’s astonishing literary debut has won her comparisons with everyone from Gogol to Nabokov. A virtuoso study in betrayal and its consequences, it explores—really, colonizes—the consciousness of Anatoly Sukhanov, who many years before abandoned the precarious existence of an underground artist for the perks of a Soviet apparatchik. But, at the age of 56, his perfect life is suddenly disintegrating. Buried dreams return to haunt him. New political alignments threaten to undo him. Vaulting effortlessly from the real to the surreal and from privilege to paranoia, The Dream Life of Sukhanov is a darkly funny, demonically entertaining novel.
Download or read book Forty Rooms written by Olga Grushin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The internationally acclaimed author of The Dream Life of Sukhanov now returns to gift us with Forty Rooms, which outshines even that prizewinning novel. Totally original in conception and magnificently executed, Forty Rooms is mysterious, withholding, and ultimately emotionally devastating. Olga Grushin is dealing with issues of women’s identity, of women’s choices, that no modern novel has explored so deeply. “Forty rooms” is a conceit: it proposes that a modern woman will inhabit forty rooms in her lifetime. They form her biography, from childhood to death. For our protagonist, the much-loved child of a late marriage, the first rooms she is aware of as she nears the age of five are those that make up her family’s Moscow apartment. We follow this child as she reaches adolescence, leaves home to study in America, and slowly discovers sexual happiness and love. But her hunger for adventure and her longing to be a great poet conspire to kill the affair. She seems to have made her choice. But one day she runs into a college classmate. He is sure of his path through life, and he is protective of her. (He is also a great cook.) They drift into an affair and marriage. What follows are the decades of births and deaths, the celebrations, material accumulations, and home comforts—until one day, her children grown and gone, her husband absent, she finds herself alone except for the ghosts of her youth, who have come back to haunt and even taunt her. Compelling and complex, Forty Rooms is also profoundly affecting, its ending shattering but true. We know that Mrs. Caldwell (for that is the only name by which we know her) has died. Was it a life well lived? Quite likely. Was it a life complete? Does such a life ever really exist? Life is, after all, full of trade-offs and choices. Who is to say her path was not well taken? It is this ambiguity that is at the heart of this provocative novel.
Download or read book The Charmed Wife written by Olga Grushin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Genre-bending and darkly comic, Grushin's fourth novel is a weird and wonderful triumph." –O, the Oprah Magazine Cinderella wants her Prince Charming dead in this sophisticated fairy-tale for the twenty-first century. Cinderella married the man of her dreams--the perfect ending she deserved after diligently following all the fairy-tale rules. Yet now, thirteen and a half years later, things have gone badly wrong and her life is far from perfect. One night, fed up and exhausted, she sneaks out of the palace to get help from the Witch who, for a price, offers love potions to disgruntled housewives. But as the old hag flings the last ingredients into the cauldron, Cinderella doesn't ask for a love spell to win back her Prince Charming. Instead, she wants him dead. Endlessly surprising, wildly inventive, and decidedly modern, The Charmed Wife weaves together time and place, fantasy and reality, to conjure a world unlike any other. Nothing in it is quite what it seems--the twists and turns of its magical, dark, and swiftly shifting paths take us deep into the heart of what makes us unique, of romance and marriage, and of the very nature of storytelling.
Download or read book The Line written by Olga Grushin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grushin's stunning debut drew praise that placed her in the top rank of young literary voices. Now she returns with that rarity: a second novel even more dazzling than her first. The line: the universal symbol of scarcity and bureaucracy that exists wherever petty officials are let loose to abuse their powers. The line begins to form on the whispered rumor that a famous exiled composer is returning to Moscow to conduct his last symphony. Tickets will be limited. Nameless faces join the line, jostling for preferred position. But as time passes and the seasons change and the ticket kiosk remains shuttered, these anonymous souls take on individual shape. Unlikely friendships are forged, long-buried memories spring to life, and a year-long wait is rewarded with unexpected acts of kindness that ease the bleakness of harshly lived lives. A disparate gaggle of strangers evolves into a community of friends united in their desire to experience music they have never been allowed to hear. The Line is a transformative novel that speaks to the endurance of the human spirit even as it explores the ways in which we love-and what we do for love.
Book Synopsis The Concert Ticket by : Olga Grushin
Download or read book The Concert Ticket written by Olga Grushin and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2010-03-25 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On any given morning, on the street corners of a Russian city, little kiosks suddenly appear. As soon as their shutters open, a queue forms, men and women lining up in the hope of a little bit of luxury: a pair of silk stockings or a box of chocolates. One morning news spreads that the exiled composer, Selinsky, will be returning to the city for one concert only, and there is one kiosk, somewhere, selling tickets to this most magical event of the year. So begins the story of a family, in which a ticket to Selinsky's concert means everything: for Sergei, the father, it holds the promise of an affair with another woman; for his wife, Anna, it offers the hope of winning back her faithless husband; for their son, Alexander, it means the possibility of escaping to the West. The Concert Ticket is a fabulously told story of love, longing and escape, of beauty in a world of repression, and of a family at the mercy of each other and the times in which they live.
Book Synopsis The Russian Revolution 1917 by : Nikolai Nikolaevich Sukhanov
Download or read book The Russian Revolution 1917 written by Nikolai Nikolaevich Sukhanov and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 745 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author of the only full-length eyewitness account of the 1917 Revolution, Sukhanov was a key figure in the first revolutionary Government. His seven-volume book, first published in 1922, was suppressed under Stalin. This reissue of the abridged version is, as the editor's preface points out, one of the few things written about this most dramatic and momentous event, which actually has the smell of life, and gives us a feeling for the personalities, the emotions, and the play of ideas of the whole revolutionary period." Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Junglist written by Two Fingas and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2021-08-10 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Back in print after more than twenty years, this cult classic of underground British fiction tells the story of young Black men coming of age among the raves and jungle music of London in the 1990s. Layered with poetic verse, prose and humour, this cult classic of underground British fiction documents the rollercoaster ride of a weekend spent raving during Jungle’s cultural takeover in the summer of 1994. Jungle, with its booming basslines and Jamaican patois, burst from the pirate radio stations and mixtapes into cavernous clubs, pulling a generation of Black British ravers with it. Originally written as a way to document street culture as it became a feature of London, charting a time when working-class kids, both Black and white, merged to dance as "one family", Junglist is both a testament to Black British sound system culture and a rawthentic account of inner-city life.
Download or read book Khan al-Khalili written by Naguib Mahfouz and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-09-20 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Khan al-Khalili, by Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz, portrays the clash of old and new in an historic Cairo neighborhood as German bombs fall on the city. The time is 1942, World War II is at its height, and the Africa Campaign is raging along the northern coast of Egypt. Against this backdrop, Mahfouz’s novel tells the story of the Akifs, a middle-class family that has taken refuge in Cairo’s colorful and bustling Khan al-Khalili neighborhood. Believing that the German forces will never bomb such a famously religious part of the city, they leave their more elegant neighborhood and seek safety among the crowded alleyways, busy cafés, and ancient mosques of the Khan. Through the eyes of Ahmad, the eldest Akif son, Mahfouz presents a richly textured vision of the Khan, and of a crisis that pits history against modernity and faith against secularism. Fans of Midaq Alley and The Cairo Trilogy will not want to miss this engaging and sensitive portrayal of a family at the crossroads of the old world and the new. Translated from the Arabic by Roger Allen
Book Synopsis There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself by : Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
Download or read book There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself written by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love stories, with a twist, by Russia’s preeminent contemporary fiction writer—the author of the prizewinning memoir about growing up in Stalinist Russia, The Girl from the Metropol Hotel By turns sly and sweet, burlesque and heartbreaking, these realist fables of women looking for love are the stories that Ludmilla Petrushevskaya—who has been compared to Chekhov, Tolstoy, Beckett, Poe, Angela Carter, and even Stephen King—is best known for in Russia. Here are attempts at human connection, both depraved and sublime, by people across the life span: one-night stands in communal apartments, poignantly awkward couplings, office trysts, schoolgirl crushes, elopements, tentative courtships, and rampant infidelity, shot through with lurid violence, romantic illusion, and surprising tenderness. With the satirical eye of Cindy Sherman, Petrushevskaya blends macabre spectacle with transformative moments of grace and shows just why she is Russia’s preeminent contemporary fiction writer.
Download or read book Deaf Sentence written by David Lodge and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-09-29 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The subject of enthusiastic and widespread reviews, David Lodge's fourteenth work of fiction displays the humor and shrewd observations that have made him a much-loved icon. Deaf Sentence tells the story of Desmond Bates, a recently retired linguistics professor in his mid-sixties. Vexed by his encroaching deafness and at loose ends in his personal life, Desmond inadvertently gets involved with a seemingly personable young American female student who seeks his support in matters academic and not so academic, who finally threatens to destabilize his life completely with her unpredictable-and wayward-behavior. What emerges is a funny, moving account of one man's effort to come to terms with aging and mortality-a classic meditation on modern middle age that fans of David Lodge will love.
Book Synopsis Stalin's Daughter by : Rosemary Sullivan
Download or read book Stalin's Daughter written by Rosemary Sullivan and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist PEN Literary Award Finalist New York Times Notable Book Washington Post Notable Book Boston Globe Best Book of the Year The award-winning author of Villa Air-Bel returns with a painstakingly researched, revelatory biography of Svetlana Stalin, a woman fated to live her life in the shadow of one of history’s most monstrous dictators—her father, Josef Stalin. Born in the early years of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin spent her youth inside the walls of the Kremlin. Communist Party privilege protected her from the mass starvation and purges that haunted Russia, but she did not escape tragedy—the loss of everyone she loved, including her mother, two brothers, aunts and uncles, and a lover twice her age, deliberately exiled to Siberia by her father. As she gradually learned about the extent of her father’s brutality after his death, Svetlana could no longer keep quiet and in 1967 shocked the world by defecting to the United States—leaving her two children behind. But although she was never a part of her father’s regime, she could not escape his legacy. Her life in America was fractured; she moved frequently, married disastrously, shunned other Russian exiles, and ultimately died in poverty in Wisconsin. With access to KGB, CIA, and Soviet government archives, as well as the close cooperation of Svetlana’s daughter, Rosemary Sullivan pieces together Svetlana’s incredible life in a masterful account of unprecedented intimacy. Epic in scope, it’s a revolutionary biography of a woman doomed to be a political prisoner of her father’s name. Sullivan explores a complicated character in her broader context without ever losing sight of her powerfully human story, in the process opening a closed, brutal world that continues to fascinate us. Illustrated with photographs.
Book Synopsis Dressed for a Dance in the Snow by : Monika Zgustova
Download or read book Dressed for a Dance in the Snow written by Monika Zgustova and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Notable Translated Book of the Year by World Literature Today A poignant and unexpectedly inspirational account of women’s suffering and resilience in Stalin’s forced labor camps, diligently transcribed in the kitchens and living rooms of nine survivors. The pain inflicted by the gulags has cast a long and dark shadow over Soviet-era history. Zgustová’s collection of interviews with former female prisoners not only chronicles the hardships of the camps, but also serves as testament to the power of beauty in face of adversity. Where one would expect to find stories of hopelessness and despair, Zgustová has unearthed tales of the love, art, and friendship that persisted in times of tragedy. Across the Soviet Union, prisoners are said to have composed and memorized thousands of verses. Galya Sanova, born in a Siberian gulag, remembers reading from a hand-stitched copy of Little Red Riding Hood. Irina Emelyanova passed poems to the male prisoner she had grown to love. In this way, the arts lent an air of humanity to the women’s brutal realities. These stories, collected in the vein of Svetlana Alexievich’s Nobel Prize-winning oral histories, turn one of the darkest periods of the Soviet era into a song of human perseverance, in a way that reads as an intimate family history.
Book Synopsis Ripley Under Ground by : Patricia Highsmith
Download or read book Ripley Under Ground written by Patricia Highsmith and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1970 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tom Ripley has a lovely house in the French countryside, a beautiful and very rich wife, and an art collection worthy of a connoisseur. But this gracious life has not come easily; it is based on murder, forgery, and smuggling, and could topple at any moment.
Book Synopsis The New Adventures of Helen by : Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
Download or read book The New Adventures of Helen written by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya and published by Deep Vellum Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11-23 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of Russia’s best living writers . . . Her tales inhabit a borderline between this world and the next.” —The New York Times At first glance, the stories in The New Adventures of Helen seems simple, even child-like, but a deep reading reveals satire and darkness manifested through classic fairy tale tropes characteristically upended by Petrushevskaya. These “adult fairy tales” ask deep questions about gender, love, history, memory, and the future, taking place in times between history and the now. These stories, quirky but yet inspired by a confident hopefulness, will inspire and provoke English-speaking readers across the globe.
Book Synopsis Tuesday Nights in 1980 by : Molly Prentiss
Download or read book Tuesday Nights in 1980 written by Molly Prentiss and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome to SoHo at the onset of the eighties: a gritty, not-yet-gentrified playground for artists and writers looking to make it in the big city. Among them: James Bennett, a synaesthetic art critic for The New York Times whose unlikely condition enables him to describe art in profound, magical ways, and Raul Engales, an exiled Argentinian painter running from his past and the Dirty War that has enveloped his country. As the two men ascend in the downtown arts scene, dual tragedies strike, and each is faced with a loss that acutely affects his relationship to life and to art. It is not until they are inadvertently brought together by Lucy Olliason?a small town beauty and Raul's muse?and a young orphan boy sent mysteriously from Buenos Aires, that James and Raul are able to rediscover some semblance of what they've lost.
Book Synopsis The Girl from the Metropol Hotel by : Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
Download or read book The Girl from the Metropol Hotel written by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography The prizewinning memoir of one of the world’s great writers, about coming of age as an enemy of the people and finding her voice in Stalinist Russia Born across the street from the Kremlin in the opulent Metropol Hotel—the setting of the New York Times bestselling novel A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles—Ludmilla Petrushevskaya grew up in a family of Bolshevik intellectuals who were reduced in the wake of the Russian Revolution to waiting in bread lines. In The Girl from the Metropol Hotel, her prizewinning memoir, she recounts her childhood of extreme deprivation—of wandering the streets like a young Edith Piaf, singing for alms, and living by her wits like Oliver Twist, a diminutive figure far removed from the heights she would attain as an internationally celebrated writer. As she unravels the threads of her itinerant upbringing—of feigned orphandom, of sleeping in freight cars and beneath the dining tables of communal apartments, of the fugitive pleasures of scraps of food—we see, both in her remarkable lack of self-pity and in the two dozen photographs throughout the text, her feral instinct and the crucible in which her gift for giving voice to a nation of survivors was forged. “From heartrending facts Petrushevskaya concocts a humorous and lyrical account of the toughest childhood and youth imaginable. . . . It [belongs] alongside the classic stories of humanity’s beloved plucky child heroes: Edith Piaf, Charlie Chaplin, the Artful Dodger, Gavroche, David Copperfield. . . . The child is irresistible and so is the adult narrator who creates a poignant portrait from the rags and riches of her memory.” —Anna Summers, from the Introduction
