The latest addition to my website is Eugenia Kononenko‘s Російський сюжет (A Russian Story). This is the last in my Ukrainian marathon and, despite the title, certainly one that deals best with the issue of Ukrainianness (the word is used in the book). We follow the story of Eugene (Zhenia) Samarsky. He is named Eugene … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Zinaida Tulub‘s В степу безкраїм за Уралом (The Exile). This is novelised biography of the first exile of Ukraine’s national poet Taras Shevchenko. Shevchenko had written a poem which was fairly flattering about the Tsar but far less so about his wife. The Tsar was furious and Shevchenko … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yuri Andrukhovych‘s Московіада (The Moscoviad. Our hero is a Ukrainian poet called Otto Wilhelmovych von F. He has a two-year stipend to write poetry in Moscow, where he is housed with writers from all over the Soviet Union (though,as the year is 1991, the Soviet Union has not … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Oleg Shynkarenko‘s Кагарлик (Kaharlyk). the book was originally on Facebook before being published as a book. It tells of the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (written before the recent illegal invasion) and is set sometime (possibly seventy years) in the future. Ukraine is now substantially depopulated … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Alla Gorbunova‘s Конец света, моя любовь It’s the End of the World, My Love). Gorbunova is primarily a poet and this is to a great extent a poet’s novel. We start with the unnamed female narrator telling various stories about life and her life in a post-Soviet small … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Boris Poplavsky‘s Домой с небес (Homeward from Heaven). This is a follow-up to his earlier Аполлон Безобразов (Apollon Bezobrazov) and, indeed, features the devilish character Apollon Bezobrazov, who appears to assist our hero, Oleg, when things are not going well. Oleg is a Russian exile living in Paris … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sergei Lebedev‘s Год кометы (The Year of the Comet). Our unnamed hero is born in the later days of the Soviet Union and the book is essentially about what it was like during that period. The first part looks more backwards, particularly as his grandmothers dote on him … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Vassily Aksyonov‘s Апельсины из Марокко [Oranges from Morocco]. This book, Aksyonov’s second novel ,was something of a cult book in the Soviet Union, not least because it mildly (but only mildly) criticised the Soviet Union. It is interesting as it is set in Kamchatka. Not many Russian novels … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Vasily Grossman‘s Народ бессмертен (The People Immortal; No Beautiful Nights) . The book had been translated into English in 1945 but this version uses the original manuscript, some of which was censored, often by Grossman himself. It is an account of the relatively early period of the Nazi … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Vladimir Sorokin‘s Теллурия (Telluria). This novel is set in a future where Russia and Europe have splintered into smaller states and seem to have been recently fighting a Christianity-Islam war which the Christians have won. The story is told in fifty vignettes, recounting the current siltation and the … Read more