Articles tagged "Russia"
Petroleum Venus
“Vanya, why are you sitting in the dark?” “I’m looking at the picture,” came the imperturbable reply. “What picture?” What new fantasy had come into his mind?…...
Just Gone to Bed
Just gone to bed Oh well, not turning the light on Barefoot Jerking the shin back from the cold rim And nothing Something gripes inside and However I strain doesn’t come Remembered in horror M.P.…...
From “The Geographer Drank His Globe Away”
"Hey young fellow, it's your stop . . ." Sluzhkin was being prodded by the old guy on the opposite bench. He unglued his eyes, sprang onto his knees still in his sleeping bag, and shot a look through…...
Soviet Mammoth: Vasily Aksyonov, 1932–2009
Even in his late seventies, the Russian writer Vasily Aksyonov played tennis, jogged, smoked like a chimney, listened to jazz, dressed with a certain bohemian flavor, flirted with women, divided his life…...
Weekly News Update
The PEN World Voices Festival schedule has been announced. Events begin on April 29th. ---------- The bicentennial mark of Gogol's birth has sparked hundreds of events throughout Russia, according to Moscow…...
An Invisible Cabal in the Sky
On August 7th, Russia responded to a Georgian attack on the capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, with a massive deployment of troops across the border and attacks on the Georgian cities of Gori and Poti.…...
On the Use and Abuse of Letherburg for Life
You will have had no difficulty recognizing the German crib tacked onto Daniil Kharms's neologism in the title of my remarks. It is Nietzsche's essay "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life,"…...
The Beginning
I wake up at eight a.m. On the sixteenth floor every day at eight a.m. Sorokin sneezes. After that, on the fifteenth floor, Aunt Masha falls out of bed. I wake up because I live on the fourteenth floor…...
Pears from Gudauty
We could hear the dry coughing of our landlord, Khuta Kursua, through the partition wall, and Mother's eyes were wide with fear. I was ten, my own lesions had barely healed, and now we were neighbors…...
New Fiction from Daniil Kharms
Look out for never-before-translated short fiction by Russian absurdist and Words without Borders author Daniil Kharms in this week's issue of the New Yorker. Kharms' work, suppressed by the Soviet government…...
Unity of Form
I've always received kingly presents. I got worn-out pans and rusted teapots, patched up bedsheets and unstitched shirts, books, missing pages ripped out for rollies and a piano with knocked-out teeth…...
Calligraphy Lesson
Translator's Note: Like much of Mikhail Shishkin's writing, "Calligraphy Lesson" is highly allusive and attentive to the formal qualities of a story both inventively told and steeped in Russian…...
The Man Who Couldn’t Die
It had been Marina's idea. Keep Alexei Afanasievich from finding out about the changes in the outside world. Keep him in the same sunlit but frozen time when the unexpected stroke had cut him down.…...
Crimean Sojourns to the Movies
susan sarandon from the family felidae doesn't like to cry and never cries we aren't let into the movies but they write, that it'll be fun in the same green chairs like it was 40 years ago…...
well hell then what
well hell then what what hell what then wax with one hand leaning with the cheek rubbing with a leg she's a dyed in the wool pioneer perfect pallor, not a drop of tan not a gram of conscience in a…...
The Silent Steppe by Mukhamet Shayakhmetov
The Silent Steppe: The Story of a Kazakh Nomad under Stalin is a vivid, personal story of courage and hope in the face of persecution and terror. It breathes new life into a neglected chapter of European…...
Courage Does Not Reign
I was kicked out of the Conservatory. When called to the office of the elderly director where I was handed my dismissal papers, I said: "Sir, believe me Sir, I am not concerned for my sake regarding this…...
The Wondrous Deer of the Eternal Hunt
If he hadn't been who he was, I never would have married again. I had everything: a child, a job, my freedom. And suddenly there he was . . . clumsy, practically blind, wheezing. Letting someone into…...
“To kiss a forehead is to erase worry.”
To kiss a forehead is to erase worry. I kiss your forehead. To kiss the eyes is to lift sleeplessness. I kiss your eyes. To kiss the lips is to drink water. I kiss your lips. To kiss a forehead is to erase…...
from Songs of Friendship and Love
Snoopy Goes to Kasimov I used to torture myself over the question, I was baffled by it: to what could I attribute the incontrovertible fact of my total lack of literary talent? A fluke of nature? Blind…...
The Bride from Odessa
One spring evening in 1890, from his vantage point up on the Primorsky Boulevard, a young man was watching the movement of ships in the port of Odessa. Decked out in his Sunday finest, he contrasted as…...
Me and Perestroika
Now I will tell you how perestroika collapsed. To be more precise, it hasn't collapsed yet, but it definitely will due to the archaic institutions of the family and marriage, which dominate in times…...
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