Memories

Memories PDF

Author: Teffi

Publisher: New York Review of Books

Published: 2016-05-03

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 159017951X

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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.

Other Worlds

Other Worlds PDF

Author: Teffi

Publisher: New York Review of Books

Published: 2021-04-20

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1681375397

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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.

Teffi

Teffi PDF

Author: Edythe Haber

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 503

ISBN-13: 1786724391

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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.

In the Eye of the Wild

In the Eye of the Wild PDF

Author: Nastassja Martin

Publisher: New York Review of Books

Published: 2021-11-16

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 1681375869

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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.

Teffi

Teffi PDF

Author: Edythe Haber

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1786734397

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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.

Subtly Worded and Other Stories

Subtly Worded and Other Stories PDF

Author: Teffi

Publisher: Pushkin Press

Published: 2014-12-02

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1782270833

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A selection of the finest short stories from “one of the most popular writers in Russia,” praised by many as the female Chekhov (The New York Times) 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. Pushkin Collection editions feature a spare, elegant series style and superior, durable components. The collection is typeset in Monotype Baskerville, litho-printed on Munken Premium White Paper and notch-bound by the independently owned printer TJ International in Padstow. The covers, with French flaps, are printed on Colorplan Pristine White Paper. Both paper and cover board are acid-free and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified.

A Very Russian Christmas

A Very Russian Christmas PDF

Author: Mikhail Zoshchenko

Publisher: New Vessel Press

Published: 2016-09-26

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1939931444

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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.

Rasputin and Other Ironies

Rasputin and Other Ironies PDF

Author: Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Tėffi

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781782272175

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A new collection of Teffi's best autobiographical non-fiction writings

Hindoo Holiday

Hindoo Holiday PDF

Author: J. R. Ackerley

Publisher: New York Review of Books

Published: 2012-10-31

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1590175247

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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.

All about Love

All about Love PDF

Author: Надежда Александровна Тэффи

Publisher: Ann Arbor, Mich. : Ardis

Published: 1985

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13:

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