A welcome revival of a 1980s comedy prophesying the collapse of the Soviet UnionHere is a revival of a 1983 film from the Georgian director Eldar Shengelaia (still alive at 90) and it is revealed as an intriguing, and perhaps even remarkable creation: a dapper, droll satire on Soviet bureaucracy, a shaggy dog story of absurd humour that creeps up on you, culminating in a truly bizarre apocalypse. The satire was arguably lenient enough to get the film made and lenient enough to win it the USSR State prize, but we can see from our 2023 vantage point that it is a deadpan prophecy of the Soviet Union’s imminent collapse. If we could go back in time to this film’s first release and tell Shengelaia that just six years later the Berlin Wall would come down and with it the entire Soviet system, would he have been surprised? Perhaps only about the fact that it was going to take so long.The scene is a state publishing company that also supervises printing and takes delivery of noisome chemicals in its basement courtyard. A would-be writer called Soso (Ramaz Giorgobiani) is scurrying about the building, desperately trying to interest its harassed or indolent functionaries in his novel, entitled Tian Shan, or The Blue Mountains – and therefore, we must assume, literally or metaphorically about the central Asian mountain ranges, although no one ever asks him about it or discusses literary matters in any way. No one definitively rejects him or accepts him. He is always referred to... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2023-02-06 13:00:00 UTC ]
Lev Rubinstein: Ordinary Life through the Lens of Russian Conceptualism, by Daria Shchukina On Translation [email protected] Tue, 04/16/2024 - 15:38 Photos by Natalia SenatorovaIn the following appreciation, the author compares the poetry of... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2024-04-16 20:38:33 UTC ]
More news stories like this
No, the origins of Tetris didn't involve a high-speed car chase, but the true story behind the game still reads like a spy novel. There's corporate intrigue, nefarious government agencies and an envious amount of globe-trotting. But the reality wasn't enough for the creative minds behind Apple's... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2023-03-30 12:30:20 UTC ]
More news stories like this
A welcome revival of a 1980s comedy prophesying the collapse of the Soviet UnionHere is a revival of a 1983 film from the Georgian director Eldar Shengelaia (still alive at 90) and it is revealed as an intriguing, and perhaps even remarkable creation: a dapper, droll satire on Soviet... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-02-06 13:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Natasha Pulley grounds her latest novel in a 20th-century event: a 1957 nuclear explosion in the Soviet Union. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-07-24 12:00:32 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Helena Merriman tells how a passage to freedom was dug under the Berlin Wall in 1962. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-09-24 12:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Viking has snared a “definitive” history of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's plan for the invasion of the Soviet Union, from broadcaster and author Jonathan Dimbleby. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-02-17 07:17:20 UTC ]
More news stories like this
In “The Lenin Plot” Barnes Carr tells the mostly unknown story of America’s intervention in the earliest days of the Soviet Union. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-10-06 09:00:10 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Hay Festival Digital will feature performances, discussions, and interactive Q&As with over 100 of the world’s greatest writers and thinkers. It will stream online from 22 – 31 May 2020.The opening gala, produced by Hay Festivals in association with the British Council, and AHRC, celebrates... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2020-05-06 14:45:31 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The Soviet Union’s fall shapes the Russian leader’s espionage aims, Gordon Corera writes. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-04-10 12:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
“Young Heroes of the Soviet Union,” by Alex Halberstadt, is a moving and often funny memoir about the author’s family and their history. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-03-11 16:29:22 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Hodder & Stoughton has acquired a book based on Tunnel 29, a podcast about a student who escaped Communist East Germany only to tunnel back in under the Berlin Wall to help other refugees. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-01-14 00:30:17 UTC ]
More news stories like this
WHEN I WAS a student in Perm, Russia, my university friend told me that her grandparents were kulaks. The term dates back to the era of collectivization, a harsh agrarian reform that took place in the Soviet Union between the late 1920s and the early ’30s. Hitherto privately owned land and... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-12-14 18:00:21 UTC ]
More news stories like this
On the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, seven acclaimed books about and from East Germany. | Lit Hub What does “NSFW” mean in the age of social media? On the protean, problematic humor of the internet. | Lit Hub Remembering Stephen Dixon, two-time National Book Award finalist,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-11-08 11:30:40 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Aleen Kuperman is co-founder and CEO at Betches Media. The company has grown from a blog created in a dorm room at Cornell in 2011 to a sprawling media network including nine podcasts, New York Times-bestselling books and millions of Instagram followers. In this episode of the “Ad Block”... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2019-10-18 09:01:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Robert L. Bernstein, a publishing executive and human rights activist who presided over a generation of dynamic growth at Random House and advocated for dissidents around the world, from the Soviet Union to Argentina, has died after a brief illness. He was 96. The tall, sandy-haired... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2019-05-29 20:40:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The shortlist for the 2019 International Prize for Arabic Fiction was announced today at the El-Hakawati Palestinian National Theatre in East Jerusalem. The IPAF - often referred to as the ‘Arabic Booker’ - is an annual literary prize for prose fiction, which encourages the readership of... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2019-02-05 16:33:45 UTC ]
More news stories like this
This week: a biography of Betty Ford, plus punk rock and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-09-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
This week: the Man Booker—shortlisted novel "His Bloody Project," plus an escape under the Berlin Wall. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2016-10-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Among the book attracting international publishers this week are a British novel found in the slush pile and a Swedish thriller set in 2037, in an alternate history where the Berlin Wall never fell. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2016-09-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
In preparation for Russia's Victory Day celebration, to be held May 9 to commemorate the Soviet Union's defeat of Nazi Germany, the country is cracking down on anything displaying the Nazi swastika – including the cover of Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel 'Maus.' Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2015-04-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this