Take a look at some of the best contemporary writing to come out of Russia. As a helpful guide, we set out biographies, extracts and synopses to make your discovery of today's Russian literary greats even easier.
Letter-Book by Mikhail Shishkin
I open yesterday’s Evening News, and it’s all about you and me. It’s going to be the word in the beginning again, they write. But meanwhile in the schools they rattle on in the same old way, saying first of all there was a big bang, and the whole of existence went flying apart. And what’s more, supposedly everything already existed before the bang – all the words that still hadn’t been said, all the galaxies we can see and the ones we can’t.
The White Dove of Cordoba by Dina Rubina
He decided to call his aunt before his departure, anyway. Typically, he was the first to make a conciliatory move. The important thing here was not to curry favor or pander, but to conduct himself as if there hadn’t been a real quarrel – a mere trifle, a light tiff. “So, tell me,” he asked, “what should I bring you – castañuelas?” “Go to hell!” she snapped. But her voice conveyed a certain satisfaction that he’d telephoned – that he’d called despite everything, hadn’t flown off, chirring his little wings.
Underground or a Hero of our Time by Vladimir Makanin
After all the years (decades!) we have been standing in queues, we still have not managed to get used to them. They wear us down, they wear us out, we can’t take any more breathing down each other’s necks while placidly shuffling from foot to foot. The idea seems inapplicable to us that in those tedious moments of queueing yesterday and today the most important thing in life is taking place within us: our soul is living.
Leo Tolstoy: Flight from Paradise by Pavel Basinsky
‘We all put on a brave face with each other, and forget that without love we’re the most wretched of the wretched. But we grow used to acting this way and become spiteful and proud, and mistake sick chickens for fierce lions.’ Letter from Tolstoy to his friend Vladimir Chertkov DEPARTURE OR ESCAPE?
Gagarin: Man and Myth by Lev Danilkin
Having once escaped from the Earth’s gravitational pull, on his return Gagarin naturally found himself back in its power and he felt it just like everyone else. But the unique status that in reality was his for only one and a half hours was miraculously prolonged: in the eyes of virtually the entire population of the planet he remained a body free of the influence of earthly gravity.
The Living One by Anna Starobinets
Greetings from “Renaissance” the Universal Historical Data Bank Attention! This unit contains only private letters and documents. This unit has been leased for 120 years with the option of subsequent extension. Access to this cell is limited exclusively to the leaseholder. Access to this cell is not available to the leaseholder if he has not yet reached the age of eight.
The List by Dmitry Bykov
At Vnukovo, the scriptwriter Sergei Spiridov, who was flying to the Crimea for a children’s film festival with the picture The Little Miracle, was detained at the border. Spiridov said hello to the genial blonde border official, proffered his overseas passport to her (he could have gone on his internal one, but Sviridov liked to think he was showing work abroad) and prepared to wait. The procedure usually took no more than a minute.
Soloviev and Larionov
He was born at a halt with the unexceptional name of Kilometre 715. For all its three digits, the halt was extremely small with neither a cinema, a post office, nor even a school. It consisted of six wooden huts strung along the railway track. On reaching the age of 16, he left, went to St Petersburg, entered the University, and began the study of history.
The Fount of Happiness by Polina Dashkova
“Clearly before he died the old man had been seeking the philosopher’s stone… the rogue! And he had managed to keep it a secret!” V.F. Odoevsky, “The Sylph” Chapter One: Moscow 1916 Professor Mikhail Vladimirovich Sveshnikov’s apartment occupied the fourth floor in a new building on Second Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street. The professor was a widower, although he was not old, and he had three children – malicious gossips claimed he had grown them all in test-tubes.
The Devil's Wheel by Mikhail Gigolashvili
Screw-ups and setups were commonplace in Koka’s life. He decided to put the matter on the back burner, telling himself, enough is enough! I’m going to Paris to escape from this savage barbarism. He was sitting in front of the TV, bored, when his neighbor Nukri, an avid reader of porn magazines, dropped by with a bit of weed from Asia. He promised to find out where he could get more and how much it would be.
Pet Monkey of the House of Tang by Master Chen
The Book of Necromancers The hero is caught in a fog, in the midst of a dreadful and a wondrous story, groping to find his way. He is surrounded by enigmas at every turn and can’t begin to fathom the direction from which deadly arrows are flying. Lo! He hears the heavy, cruel word war, which cuts through the fog like an icy wind and begins to disperse it.
A Prague Night by Pavel Pepperstein
On May 1, 200.., a certain individual arrived in Prague. I was that individual: Ilya Korolenko, attractively clean-featured and inconspicuous, with a dreamy look in my eyes and hair spiralling into a passionate, babyish twist over my forehead. In terms of intimate predilection, in terms of my mission, I am a poet, sometimes I put a few words together and revel in their magic, their incongruous voodoo
Matisse by Alexander Ilichevsky
Living as a tramp was hard, but fascinating. He kept trying to find a new angle on things, an interesting way to get his teeth into Moscow, which he now saw as the same kind of special setting for thrills and action as his childhood – a kingdom of scrap yards and rubbish dumps, basements
A Light Head by Olga Slavnikova
Maxim T. Yermakov, the happy owner of a three-year-old Toyota and brand manager for several appalling varieties of milk chocolate, drove up to his chocolate office with his customary feeling of having no head on his shoulders. Meanwhile, the head was smoking and it could see the wet car park with the inflatable snowman standing in the black January puddle. But even so – it wasn’t there.
Sin – A Novel in Short Stories
He was seventeen years old, and he held his body nervously. His body was made up of an Adam’s apple, strong bones, long arms, absent-minded eyes, and an overheated brain. In the evenings, when he lay down to sleep in his hut, he used to turn over the phrase ‘and he’s dead… he’s dead’ in his head, listening to it.
The City Rate by Alexandra Marinina
Hopelessly stuck in the traffic, Nastya cursed the laziness that had made her accept the offer of an official car from her new boss, Bolshakov. It would have been so much quicker by metro. Of course, if only she’d bothered to think for just a moment, she wouldn’t have taken the car, but everything happened so fast, she was caught on the hop.Stalin's Foreign Policy by Ernst Henry
In December 1952, three months before Stalin’s death, the French Communist Party abruptly expelled two of the most distinguished members of its Politburo, André Marty and Charles Tillon. These were exalted veterans of the revolutionary movement in France, having risen to prominence as far back as the 1920s. Both belonged to the party’s founding core but had enjoyed Lenin’s trust even during the Russian Civil War.