Featured titles
-
The Witness, a novel by Ilya Mitrofanov (1993)
Rights sold: Germany - Volk und Welt, Italy - Isbn Edizioni, Spain - Lumen, Poland - Claroscuro
"This novel is intensely passionate, and rich in fresh images and patterns..." (Silvia Bambino, The Wanity Fair)
"The Witness" is the first-person narrative of the life story of a simple human being, a barber Fedor Petrovich, whose life's most intense and dramatic period was the incorporation of his native Bessarabia into the Soviet Union in 1940, accompanied by coercion from the new command structure, which affected social relationships and caused enormous suffering due to famine brought on both by prolonged drought and by mistakes in official planning and preparation.
Read more...
In the speck on the map called Kotlovina, the entire historical drama, starting with the so-called Soviet liberation from Romanian rule, was played out to its horrible end with very few survivors to live and tell about it.
The novel's success is based on the vivid and laconic presentation of its characters. "The Witness" projects the speech pattern of a simple, uneducated man. This style makes use of down-to-earth expressions, is unafraid of repetitions, takes notice of the simple things in life (of a person's outward appearance, of smells and fragrances, all very appropriate to a barber's profession), is not averse to rudeness in language and behavior, and above all is a stranger to all dissembling and pretense. The events told are viewed through the prism of recollection, which softens their horrible contours somewhat and which allows the theme of brotherhood to emerge and feelings of hatred to dissolve. Honesty and lack of pretense are the author's hallmark, and it is these features which characterize his artistic expression. -
Eternal Life of Liza K., a novel by Marina Vishneventskaya
Rights sold: Russia - AST
Winner of the 2017 Znamya literary magazine prize
The title of Vishneventskaya's novel indeed resembles that of the "scandalous" biography of Angela Merkel The First Life of Angela M., but in fact its ideological and informative parameters are much closer to French political novels of the mid-19th century, with political views of the author intertwined within the story itself.
The plot of the novel is set in Moscow and Berlin in 2012 to 2015. The protagonist, Liza Karmannikova, after a series of events in her private life, comes to the realization of her involvement into a socio-political life of her country, and this awareness becomes the important attribute of her world view. But, unlike the old French novels, there is no conflict, especially insoluble, in “Eternal Life ...”, but there is an expressive story about the “unpretentious” young woman narrated in a figurative, rhythmic language.
Liza K. is a single mother, she is 28 years old, and works for a travel agency where she is engaged in “creating a corporate image, doing public relations tasks, advertising, and other completely indecent bullshit like commenting on hotel websites”. Liza lives in the moment and she's completely uninhibited. That's how the exposed side of her life looks like. However, her inner world is far more complex and interesting: Liza is a sophisticated intellectual, she's well-read, versatile and educated, she has a sharp and swift mind, and she's prone to ironic analysis and self-analysis. Brought up with the ideals of dignity and personal freedom, Liza gets along with these ideas in a very peculiar way. Quite expectedly, her inner (eternal) life is more important, more meaningful for her than her social one; but Liza has long outgrown the "romantic worldview" (which asserts the intrinsic value of individual's spiritual life), and is quite adequate to our time when material well-being has also became an essential value.
According to the author, the novel is about a young woman “whose simple life was smashed and torn to pieces by a stern reality. She just wanted to be happy, but found herself in a situation when she needs to change everything, and emigrate to Germany. Suddenly she realized that her brother was killed in battle, and she should do something, should draw some conclusions. In most general terms, my novel is about thirty-year-olds in Russia today, about their thirst for truth and justice in the time of everyday lies, fake news, total propaganda, hybrid and real wars. It's about their willingness to resist, to fight against forces that separate the nations. Still, my novel is also about love, at least about a passionate search for love.”
Our beloved author Marina Vishnevetskaya wrote a very modern novel Eternal Life of Liza K. which is so fresh in its intonations, language, and narrative attitude. Her book is about a power of life capable of overcoming a thick darkness and utter hoplessness surrounding us today in politics, in personal and family relations, and even at work. In our poor literary garden full of weeping and wailing over the unfulfilled hopes, a lilac bush has suddenly appeared. And burst in blossom! -- Maya Kucherskaya, a literary critic
Read more...