Russian Emigre Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky
Bryan Karetnyk
SHORTLISTED FOR THE READ RUSSIA PRIZE 2018
LONGLISTED FOR THE GLOBAL READ RUSSIA PRIZE 2018
Fleeing Russia amid the chaos of the 1917 revolution and subsequent Civil War, many writers went on to settle in Paris, Berlin and elsewhere. In exile, they worked as taxi drivers, labourers and film extras, and wrote some of the most brilliant and imaginative works of Russian literature.
This new collection includes stories by the most famous émigré writers, Vladimir Nabokov and Ivan Bunin, and introduces powerful lesser known voices, some of whom have never been available in English before.
Here is Yuri Felsen's evocative, impressionistic account of a night of debauchery in Paris; Teffi's witty and timely reflections on refugee experience; and Mark Aldanov's sparkling story of an elderly astrologer who unexpectedly finds himself in Hitler's bunker in Berlin. Exploring displacement, loss and new beginnings, their short stories vividly evoke the experience of life in exile and also return obsessively to the Russia that has been left behind - whether as a beautiful dream or terrifying nightmare. By turns experimental, funny, exciting, poignant and haunting, these works reveal the full range of émigré writing and are presented here in masterly translations by Bryan Karetnyk and others.
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About Bryan Karetnyk
Reviews for Russian Emigre Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky
Alexis Levitin
Los Angeles Review of Books
A rich anthology ... Editor and lead translator Bryan Karetnyk has done a marvellous job ... The translations maintain a high standard of literary quality and precision. Admirably equipped with biographical and explanatory notes, this anthology presents to the Anglophone reader, for the first time, a unified representation of the authors and disparate, yet interlinked cultural contexts of first-wave Russian emigration
Judges, Read Russia Prize 2018 Compelling ... Karetnyk's anthology transports the reader into the motley lives and imaginations of Russian émigrés in Paris, Berlin and beyond. Highly recommended reading for anyone fascinated by prerevolutionary Russian culture as preserved among the ranks of the two million-odd Whites that formed the first wave of emigration from Bolshevik Russia.
Anna Gunin
The Riveter
Ably translated ... Bryan Karetnyk has produced that most welcome artefact in this age of the floating text: an 'enhanced' paperback whose fictive stories are fully equipped with their histories. Writers' biographies, historical chronology, a list of Russian émigré venues, and well-researched footnotes serve to anchor each narrative in its own peripatetic time and space
Caryl Emerson
Times Literary Supplement
A powerful reminder of the trauma of civil war and hardships of displacement ... The stories evoke a lost world with attendant nostalgia, sorrow, fear and anger ... Rarely has the term 'unjustly neglected' rung more true
Country Life
Brilliantly translated by Bryan Karetnyk ... A truly wonderful selection
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