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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.
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 ar...
"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.
An "utterly brilliant" (Library Journal) new novel from the author of the award-winning The Dream Life of Sukhanov. The line begins to form on the whispered rumor that a famous exiled composer is returning to Russia to conduct his last symphony. Tickets will be limited. The concert date unknown. Nameless strangers join the line, jostling for preferred position. But as the seasons change and the kiosk remains shuttered, these anonymous souls evolve into a community. Bound together in their longing for something wonderful and miraculous, they allow themselves to dream. An utterly transformative work that speaks to the endurance of the human spirit, The Line confirms Grushin's place in the pantheon of today's most important new writers.
"The acclaimed author of Young Stalin and Jerusalem gives readers an accessible, lively account--based in part on new archival material--of the extraordinary men and women who ruled Russia for three centuries."--NoveList.
"Vladimir Sorokin’s first published novel, The Queue, is a sly comedy about the late Soviet “years of stagnation.” Thousands of citizens are in line for . . . nobody knows quite what, but the rumors are flying. Leather or suede? Jackets, jeans? Turkish, Swedish, maybe even American? It doesn’t matter–if anything is on sale, you better line up to buy it. Sorokin’s tour de force of ventriloquism and formal daring tells the whole story in snatches of unattributed dialogue, adding up to nothing less than the real voice of the people, overheard on the street as they joke and curse, fall in and out of love, slurp down ice cream or vodka, fill out crossword puzzles, even go to sleep and line up again in the morning as the queue drags on."--Amazon.com.
Winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction A New York Times Notable Book of 2015 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.
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.
The stunning new novel about silenced female voices, family secrets and dangerous truths from the author of The Accident Season. 'Exquisite . . . This is a book to hold tightly to your chest' Irish Times 'Lyrical . . . Compelling' Guardian 'Beautiful, visceral . . . A primal scream' Louise O'Neill 'Uncompromising, raw, devastating' Publishers Weekly 'I am in absolute awe of it' Melinda Salisbury On Deena's seventeenth birthday, the day she finally comes out to her family, her wild and mysterious sister Mandy is seen leaping from a cliff. The family is heartbroken, but not surprised. The women of the Rys family have always been troubled - 'bad apples', their father calls them - and Mandy is t...
Cinta. Rasa bersalah. Gairah. Kehilangan. Aib. Keterasingan. Perkara keseharian yang begitu dekat, tapi di tangan Munro, kehidupan paling sederhana sekalipun selalu berhasil diramu menjadi kisah yang memikat. Empat cerita penutup yang disebut Munro "terasa autobiografis" akan membawa kita menilik kilasan masa kecil Munro; sesuatu yang belum pernah diceritakan Munro sebelumnya. Dengan sentuhan khas Munro, cerita-cerita ini menarik kita masuk begitu dalam kekehidupan karakter-karakternya dan mengejutkan kita dengan perubahan yang tak terkira. Dipuji sebagai penulis dengan kejernihan visi dan kemampuan bercerita yang tak tertandingi, melaluiDear Life, Munro menunjukkan betapa sebuah kehidupan biasa bisa menjadi begitu aneh, berbahaya, dan tak terduga. [Mizan, Bentang Pustaka, Alice Munro, Nobel Sastra, Novel, Terjemahan, Indonesia]