Featured titles
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Stalen, a novel by Yuri Buida (2017)
Rights sold: France - GALLIMARD, Russia - EKSMO
Longlisted for the 2018 National Bestseller literary award
Yuri Buida's new novel is set in 1990s and early 2000s, and gives an account of the post-Soviet life in Moscow. It's written as an imitation of a "B-movie" script: the style is impeccable, form exact, characters solid, and it's abundantly stuffed with eroticism on verge of porn, with bloody murders, and incredible adventures of the protagonist.
The author calls his novel "the picaresque adventure story." Indeed, according to the laws of genre, its narrative is written in first person as autobiographical account of its main character Stalen Igruyev (the name is, of course, a provocation, a game, as it has nothing to do with Stalin and Lenin); the protagonist is of low social class, he gets by with wit and rarely deigns to hold a job; the story is told in a series of loosely connected adventures or episodes, and there is little if any character development: his circumstances change, but they rarely result in a change of heart. Also, the story is told with a plainness of narrative language and extreme realism of detail: the protagonist recounts episodes of his biography, explaining his often unseemly deeds by a necessity to survive in a cruel world.
The plot starts off with Stalen's arrival in the post-Soviet Moscow of the early 1990s, the most stormy and cruel period of New Russian history, the first post-perestroika decade. He carries only a small amount of money, and a recommendation letter from his grandfather addressed to an influential Moscow lady of high standing. His dream is to become a famous writer. In the background is his childhood and adolescence spent in a provincial town, and several deaths that Stalen believes to be his fault. The lady turns out to be a hostess of a literary salon, an elite hetaera endowed with an amazing gift - as a result of some rare genetic mutation, her body remains young despite her age. At this point, begins a series of erotic experiences entwined with teaching of writing skills, and gradual improvement of Stalen's living conditions. A talented young man writes what he is told to, sleeps with whom he is commanded, and survives to the best of his abilities.
Buida masterfully merges real facts with invented circumstances. His narrative constantly balances on verge of decency, it shocks, captivates, and to certain extent is reminiscent of Beigbeder's 9.99. The novel is a multi-layered game exploring a psychological (and sometimes psychiatric) jungle of human nature. It deals with a multitude of philosophical issues, including that of existence, through the medium of adventure story, crime, erotica, thriller, suspense, and bloody trash.
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DADDY WASSUP, a flow novel by Andrei Gelasimov
Rights sold: France - SYRTES, Germany - AUFBAU, Russia - GORODETZ, World Arabic - AL MADA
Winner of the 2021 Moscow Art Prize (Russia)
One day in 2016, a rap group from Russia and its leader Booster, aka Pistoletto, aka Tolya, got in troubles during a tour in Germany. First their rehearsal was interrupted by a police raid in search for drugs, then at their night concert one the crowd got killed in a fight, and one of the musicians got arrested and put in jail. Tolya-Booster meets with frau Steinbach who owns the venue of their show, only to find out that she is in fact his once-girlfriend Maya who immigrated to Germany a decade ago. Back in 1990s then 17-years-old Tolya and Maya both lived in Rostov, a city with a well-deserved reputation of Russia's criminal capital: armed gangs all around, corrupt government and police agents, sweeping poverty, drugs, and beyond that a real war in the nearby Chechnya.
Novel's plot develops during about twenty years, from the late 90s to the present. There's no political declarations in the novel: Tolya-Booster is strictly and deliberately apolitical. There is no social pathos in it as well: none of the protagonists give a damn about problems of the society they live in. However, Gelasimov's fictional characters mirror the reality of what's happening with Russians for last two decades: carelessness, fatalism, disregard of any existing rules and laws, pure logic of survival, amazing neglect of death, endless insecurity, and firm belief that there's nobody around to help. Gelasimov's heroes has been through terrible times; and realize what they've lost.
In his main hit song Samsara, Booster formulates the main belief of his generation: one day the world will inevitably be a better place, though they are destined to see it only through the eyes of their children. Gelasimov defines his new book as a flow-novel. In rap terminology, flow is a term referring to rhythms and rhymes of song's lyrics and how they interact, i.e. it is the correct speed of reading, an impeccable technique of writing and playing text under the swinging bit.
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