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 ]
‘Multigenerational American epic’ from the author of The Corrections and Freedom set for September 2015 publicationThe American contingent may have missed out on this year’s Man Booker prize, but next year could be a different story after it was announced that a new novel by Jonathan Franzen, a... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-11-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Harvill Secker has acquired rights to a thriller imagining a world where the Berlin Wall had... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-02-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Bookseller Staff Publication Date: Wed, 08/06/2011 - 15:12 HarperPress has bought an offbeat travel guide, charting a journey to the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, the dried out Aral Sea and the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the Soviet Union's answer to Cape Canaveral.... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-06-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The current crop of Russian publishers is collectively on the young side, many of them born shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Then, teething problems were many and the growth path rocky at times. But today these publishers produce nearly 120,000 new titles per year,... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2011-04-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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