Nothing’s Lost
Saltykov, the hero of Alexander Kabakov’s novel Nothing’s Lost, is a mature man thinking back over his long life – from his childhood under Stalin spent in a small town and his youth as a trend-setter in Moscow during the Thaw till the present day in a capital where sweet freedom went hand in hand with […]
The Women of Lazarus
Lazarjeve ženske so očarljiva zgodba o ljubezni, izgubi in človeški genialnosti. Prične se kmalu po oktobrski revoluciji, ko zelo nadarjen študent Lazar Lindt prispe v Moskvo, s seboj pa ima le uši in beležko. Roman pripoveduje Lazarjevo življenjsko zgodbo, pri čemer zasleduje usode treh zanj pomembnim žensk žene njegovega mentorja, njegove mlade žene in njune vnukinje. […]
The First Second Coming
The First Second Coming: In Polynsk, there is – just as there ought to be – the town’s very own madman, Ivan Zakharovich Nikhilov. He decided that his neighbour, Pyotr Salabonov, was Christ re-born. Pyotr made a joke of it at first, argued, lost his temper – but he was just an ordinary mortal, a […]
Flood Zone
The novel Flood Zone tells of the inhabitants of old Siberian villages who find themselves in a zone where the Boguchanskaya hydroelectric power plant is due to be built. Its construction was completed at the beginning of this decade. Senchin depicts the way of life of these people: how they earn their living, their small solid houses […]
The Slynx
The action of The Slynx, which the writer embarked upon shortly after the Chernobyl disaster, takes place in an unspecified future, 20 years after the Big Bang in the town of Fyodor-Kuzmichsk, which had in the distant past been Moscow. The survivors living in forests and swamps feed on mice and radio-active dates: their way of […]
The Treasure of the Rebellion
The Treasure of the Rebellion. 1778. The Land of Urals is smoking with their mining plants. They are smelting ironstone for the entire Empire. But how can one ship it to the capital? Because of the no-road conditions the horses and carts are out of the question. For the Ural plants there is only one road […]
The Kukotsky Enigma
The central character in Ludmila Ulitskaya’s celebrated novel The Kukotsky Enigma is a gynecologist contending with Stalin’s prohibition of abortions in 1936. But, in the tradition of Russia’s great family novels, the story encompasses the history of two families and unfolds in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and on the ruins of ancient civilizations on the Black Sea. Their […]
2017
The novel 2017 is set in the Ural Mountains, named Riphean Mountains in the book. Like a Christmas stocking stuffed with presents, the old crumbling mountain range is full of subterranean treasures – ores and gems. It is home to a regional subculture of the so-called “khitniks” – unlicensed precious stone miners, to whom their […]