Download or read book Tolstoy Rasputin Others and Me written by Teffi and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early in her literary career Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, born in St. Petersburg in 1872, adopted the pen-name of Teffi, and it is as Teffi that she is remembered. In prerevolutionary Russia she was a literary star, known for her humorous satirical pieces; in the 1920s and 30s, she wrote some of her finest stories in exile in Paris, recalling her unforgettable encounters with Rasputin, and her hopeful visit at age thirteen to Tolstoy after reading War and Peace. In this selection of her best autobiographical stories, she covers a wide range of subjects, from family life to revolution and emigration, writers and writing. Like Nabokov, Platonov, and other great Russian prose writers, Teffi was a poet who turned to prose but continued to write with a poet’s sensitivity to tone and rhythm. Like Chekhov, she fuses wit, tragedy, and a remarkable capacity for observation; there are few human weaknesses she did not relate to with compassion and understanding.

Download or read book Other Worlds written by Teffi and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories about the occult, folk religions, superstition, and spiritual customs in Russia by one of the most essential twentieth-century writers of short fiction and essays. Though best known for her comic and satirical sketches of pre-Revolutionary Russia, Teffi was a writer of great range and human sympathy. The stories on otherworldly themes in this collection are some of her finest and most profound, displaying the acute psychological sensitivity beneath her characteristic wit and surface brilliance. Other Worlds presents stories from across the whole of Teffi’s long career, from her early days as a literary celebrity in Moscow to her post-Revolutionary years as an émigré in Paris. In the early story “A Quiet Backwater,” a laundress gives a long disquisition on the name days of the flora and fauna and on the Feast of the Holy Ghost, a day on which “no one dairnst disturb the earth.” The story “Wild Evening” is about the fear of the unknown; “The Kind That Walk,” a penetrating study of antisemitism and of xenophobia; and “Baba Yaga,” about the archetypal Russian witch and her longing for wildness and freedom. Teffi traces the persistent influence of the ancient Slavic gods in superstitions and customs, and the deep connection of the supernatural to everyday life in the provinces. In “Volya,” the autobiographical final story, the power and pain of Baba Yaga is Teffi’s own.

Download or read book Memories written by Teffi and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE 2018 READ RUSSIA PRIZE AND THE PUSHKIN HOUSE BEST BOOK IN TRANSLATION IN 2017 Considered Teffi’s single greatest work, Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea is a deeply personal account of the author’s last months in Russia and Ukraine, suffused with her acute awareness of the political currents churning around her, many of which have now resurfaced. In 1918, in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Teffi, whose stories and journalism had made her a celebrity in Moscow, was invited to read from her work in Ukraine. She accepted the invitation eagerly, though she had every intention of returning home. As it happened, her trip ended four years later in Paris, where she would spend the rest of her life in exile. None of this was foreseeable when she arrived in German-occupied Kiev to discover a hotbed of artistic energy and experimentation. When Kiev fell several months later to Ukrainian nationalists, Teffi fled south to Odessa, then on to the port of Novorossiysk, from which she embarked at last for Constantinople. Danger and death threaten throughout Memories, even as the book displays the brilliant style, keen eye, comic gift, and deep feeling that have made Teffi one of the most beloved of twentieth-century Russian writers.

Download or read book Teffi written by Edythe Haber and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Teffi was one of twentieth century Russia's most celebrated authors. Born Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya in 1872, she came to be admired by an impressive range of people – from Tsar Nicholas II to Lenin – and her popularity was such that sweets and perfume were named after her. She visited Tolstoy when she was 13 to haggle with him about the ending of War and Peace and Rasputin tried (and utterly failed) to seduce her. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 she was exiled and lived out her days in the lively Russian émigré community of Paris, where she continued writing – and enjoying comparable fame – until her death in 1952. Teffi's best stories effortlessly shift from light humour and satire to pathos and even tragedy – ever more so when depicting the daunting hardships she and her fellow émigrés suffered in exile. While best known for her stories and feuilletons, she also moved over to other genres, from serious poetry to theatrical miniatures and even music, and inhabited an extraordinary range of spheres connected to both high and popular culture. In the first biography of her in any language, Edythe Haber here brings Teffi – who has recently been 'rediscovered' in the West to resounding acclaim – to life. Teffi's life and works afford a unique panoramic view of the cultural world of early twentieth century Russia, from the debauchery of the Silver Age to the terror and euphoria of revolution, and of interwar Russian emigration. But they also offer fresh insights into the seismic events – from the 1905 Russian Revolution and World War II to life as a refugee – that she experienced first-hand and recreated in her vivid, penetrating, moving and witty writing.

Download or read book In the Eye of the Wild written by Nastassja Martin and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After enduring a vicious bear attack in the Russian Far East's Kamchatka Peninsula, a French anthropologist undergoes a physical and spiritual transformation that forces her to confront the tenuous distinction between animal and human. In the Eye of the Wild begins with an account of the French anthropologist Nastassja Martin’s near fatal run-in with a Kamchatka bear in the mountains of Siberia. Martin’s professional interest is animism; she addresses philosophical questions about the relation of humankind to nature, and in her work she seeks to partake as fully as she can in the lives of the indigenous peoples she studies. Her violent encounter with the bear, however, brings her face-to-face with something entirely beyond her ken—the untamed, the nonhuman, the animal, the wild. In the course of that encounter something in the balance of her world shifts. A change takes place that she must somehow reckon with. Left severely mutilated, dazed with pain, Martin undergoes multiple operations in a provincial Russian hospital, while also being grilled by the secret police. Back in France, she finds herself back on the operating table, a source of new trauma. She realizes that the only thing for her to do is to return to Kamchatka. She must discover what it means to have become, as the Even people call it, medka, a person who is half human, half bear. In the Eye of the Wild is a fascinating, mind-altering book about terror, pain, endurance, and self-transformation, comparable in its intensity of perception and originality of style to J. A. Baker’s classic The Peregrine. Here Nastassja Martin takes us to the farthest limits of human being.

Download or read book Subtly Worded and Other Stories written by Teffi and published by Pushkin Press. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A selection of the finest stories by this female Chekhov, now available in a striking new Pushkin Blues format. Teffi's genius with the short form made her a literary star in pre-revolutionary Russia, beloved by Tsar Nicholas II and Vladimir Lenin alike. These stories, taken from the whole of her career, show the full range of her gifts. Extremely funny-a wry, scathing observer of society-she is also capable, as capable even as Chekhov, of miraculous subtlety and depth of character. There are stories here from her own life (as a child, going to meet Tolstoy to plead for the life of War and Peace's Prince Bolkonsky, or, much later, her strange, charged meetings with the already-legendary Rasputin). There are stories of émigré society, its members held together by mutual repulsion. There are stories of people misunderstanding each other or misrepresenting themselves. And throughout there is a sly, sardonic wit and a deep, compelling intelligence.

Download or read book Teffi written by Edythe Haber and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Teffi was one of twentieth century Russia's most celebrated authors. Born Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya in 1872, she came to be admired by an impressive range of people – from Tsar Nicholas II to Lenin – and her popularity was such that sweets and perfume were named after her. She visited Tolstoy when she was 13 to haggle with him about the ending of War and Peace and Rasputin tried (and utterly failed) to seduce her. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 she was exiled and lived out her days in the lively Russian émigré community of Paris, where she continued writing – and enjoying comparable fame – until her death in 1952. Teffi's best stories effortlessly shift from light humour and satire to pathos and even tragedy – ever more so when depicting the daunting hardships she and her fellow émigrés suffered in exile. While best known for her stories and feuilletons, she also moved over to other genres, from serious poetry to theatrical miniatures and even music, and inhabited an extraordinary range of spheres connected to both high and popular culture. In the first biography of her in any language, Edythe Haber here brings Teffi – who has recently been 'rediscovered' in the West to resounding acclaim – to life. Teffi's life and works afford a unique panoramic view of the cultural world of early twentieth century Russia, from the debauchery of the Silver Age to the terror and euphoria of revolution, and of interwar Russian emigration. But they also offer fresh insights into the seismic events – from the 1905 Russian Revolution and World War II to life as a refugee – that she experienced first-hand and recreated in her vivid, penetrating, moving and witty writing.

Download or read book A Very Russian Christmas written by Mikhail Zoshchenko and published by New Vessel Press. This book was released on 2016-09-26 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of short Christmas stories by some of Russia’s greatest nineteenth and twentieth century authors—several appearing in English for the first time. Running the gamut from sweet and reverent to twisted and uproarious, this collection offers a holiday feast of Russian fiction. Dostoevsky brings stories of poverty and tragedy; Tolstoy inspires with his fable-like tales; Chekhov’s unmatchable skills are on full display in his story of a female factory owner and her wretched workers; Klaudia Lukashevitch delights with a sweet and surprising tale of a childhood in White Russia; and Mikhail Zoshchenko recounts madcap anecdotes of Christmas trees and Christmas thieves in the Soviet Era—a time when it was illegal to celebrate the holiday in Russia. There is no shortage of imagination, wit, or vodka on display in this collection that proves, with its wonderful variety and remarkable human touch, that nobody does Christmas like the Russians.

Download or read book Rasputin and Other Ironies written by Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Tėffi and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new collection of Teffi's best autobiographical non-fiction writings

Download or read book All about Love written by Надежда Александровна Тэффи and published by Ann Arbor, Mich. : Ardis. This book was released on 1985 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book 1917 Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution written by and published by Pushkin Press. This book was released on 2016-12-13 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution is a collection of literary responses to one of the most cataclysmic events in modern world history, which exposes the immense conflictedness and doubt, conviction and hope, pessimism and optimism which political events provoked among contemporary writers - sometimes at the same time, even in the same person. This dazzling panorama of thought, language and form includes work by authors who are already well known to the English-speaking world (Bulgakov, Pasternak, Akhmatova, Mayakovsky), as well as others, whose work we have the pleasure of encountering here for the very first time in English. Edited by Boris Dralyuk, the acclaimed translator of Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry (also published by Pushkin Press), 1917 includes works by some of the best Russian writers - some already famous in the English-speaking world, some published here for the very first time. It is an anthology for everyone: those who are coming to Russian literature for the first time, those who are already experienced students of it, and those who simply want to know how it felt to live through this extreme period in history. POETRY: • Marina Tsvetaeva, 'You stepped from a stately cathedral ', 'Night. - Northeaster. - Roar of soldiers. - Roar of waves.' • Zinaida Gippius, 'Now', 'What have we done to it?', '14 December 1917' • Osip Mandelstam, 'In public and behind closed doors' • Osip Mandelstam, 'Let's praise, O brothers, liberty's dim light' • Anna Akhmatova, 'When the nation, suicidal' • Boris Pasternak, 'Spring Rain' • Mikhail Kuzmin, 'Russian Revolution' • Sergey Esenin, 'Wake me tomorrow at break of day' • Mikhail Gerasimov, 'I forged my iron flowers' • Vladimir Kirillov, 'We' • Aleksey Kraysky, 'Decrees' • Andrey Bely, 'Russia' • Alexander Blok, 'The Twelve' • Titsian Tabidze, 'Petersburg' • Pavlo Tychyna, 'Golden Humming' • Vladimir Mayakovsky, 'Revolution: A Poem-Chronicle', 'To Russia', 'Our March' PROSE: • Alexander Kuprin, 'Sashka and Yashka' • Valentin Kataev, 'The Drum' • Aleksandr Serafimovich, 'How He Died' • Dovid Bergelson, 'Pictures of the Revolution' • Teffi, 'A Few Words About Lenin', 'The Guillotine' • Vasily Rozanov, from 'Apocalypse of Our Time' • Aleksey Remizov, 'The Lay of the Ruin of Rus'' • Yefim Zozulya, 'The Dictator: A Story of Ak and Humanity' • Yevgeny Zamyatin, 'The Dragon' • Aleksandr Grin, 'Uprising' • Mikhail Prishvin, 'Blue Banner' • Mikhail Zoshchenko, 'A Wonderful Audacity' • Mikhail Bulgakov, 'Future Prospects'

Download or read book Iron Towns written by Anthony Cartwright and published by Serpent's Tail. This book was released on 2016-05-19 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty years ago, Liam Corwen and Dee Dee Ahmed were on the cusp of a better future, Liam as a promising footballer and Dee Dee as a singer in a girl band. Now they're both eking out an existence back in their home town. As the old steelworks rust and the local football club limps towards relegation and liquidation, Dee Dee recalls the tragic events that changed their lives. Liam thinks back to the great players of the past, and wonders: could redemption, greatness even, still wait for them, here among the abandoned cranes and docks and housing estates? Evoking the landscape and myth of old, forgotten England, Iron Towns is a story of our dreams of youth, football, and industrial progress - and what happens when those dreams recede into the past. New paperback edition featuring Cartwright's acclaimed essay on the EU referendum.

Download or read book Hindoo Holiday written by J. R. Ackerley and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1920s, the young J. R. Ackerley spent several months in India as the personal secretary to the maharajah of a small Indian principality. In his journals, Ackerley recorded the Maharajah’s fantastically eccentric habits and riddling conversations, and the odd shambling day-to-day life of his court. Hindoo Holiday is an intimate and very funny account of an exceedingly strange place, and one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century travel literature.

Download or read book Stalingrad written by Vasily Grossman and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 1089 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in English for the first time, the prequel to Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate, the War and Peace of the twentieth Century. In April 1942, Hitler and Mussolini meet in Salzburg where they agree on a renewed assault on the Soviet Union. Launched in the summer, the campaign soon picks up speed, as the routed Red Army is driven back to the industrial center of Stalingrad on the banks of the Volga. In the rubble of the bombed-out city, Soviet forces dig in for a last stand. The story told in Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad unfolds across the length and breadth of Russia and Europe, and its characters include mothers and daughters, husbands and brothers, generals, nurses, political activists, steelworkers, and peasants, along with Hitler and other historical figures. At the heart of the novel is the Shaposhnikov family. Even as the Germans advance, the matriarch, Alexandra Vladimirovna, refuses to leave Stalingrad. Far from the front, her eldest daughter, Ludmila, is unhappily married to the Jewish physicist Viktor Shtrum. Viktor’s research may be of crucial military importance, but he is distracted by thoughts of his mother in the Ukraine, lost behind German lines. In Stalingrad, published here for the first time in English translation, and in its celebrated sequel, Life and Fate, Grossman writes with extraordinary power and deep compassion about the disasters of war and the ruthlessness of totalitarianism, without, however, losing sight of the little things that are the daily currency of human existence or of humanity’s inextinguishable, saving attachment to nature and life. Grossman’s two-volume masterpiece can now be seen as one of the supreme accomplishments of twentieth-century literature, tender and fearless, intimate and epic.

Download or read book Amy Sillman written by Amy Sillman and published by Prestel Publishing. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book is published in conjunction with the exhibition Amy Sillman: one lump or two, The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, October 3, 2013-January 5, 2014, Aspen Art Museum, February 13-May 11, 2014, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard), June 28-September 21, 2014."

Download or read book Putin Country written by Anne Garrels and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Portrait of the mid-size city of Chelyabinsk and how it is faring in the new Russia"--

Download or read book A Double Life written by Karolina Pavlova and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unsung classic of nineteenth-century Russian literature, Karolina Pavlova’s A Double Life alternates prose and poetry to offer a wry picture of Russian aristocratic society and vivid dreams of escaping its strictures. Pavlova combines rich narrative prose that details balls, tea parties, and horseback rides with poetic interludes that depict her protagonist’s inner world—and biting irony that pervades a seemingly romantic description of a young woman who has everything. A Double Life tells the story of Cecily, who is being trapped into marriage by her well-meaning mother; her best friend, Olga; and Olga’s mother, who means to clear the way for a wealthier suitor for her own daughter by marrying off Cecily first. Cecily’s privileged upbringing makes her oblivious to the havoc that is being wreaked around her. Only in the seclusion of her bedroom is her imagination freed: each day of deception is followed by a night of dreams described in soaring verse. Pavlova subtly speaks against the limitations placed on women and especially women writers, which translator Barbara Heldt highlights in a critical introduction. Among the greatest works of literature by a Russian woman writer, A Double Life is worthy of a central place in the Russian canon.