Thursday

21 Jan 2021

The art of the short story: what we can learn from the Russians

This is such a superb idea that it’s a wonder a book like this has not cropped up before. Here we have a critically acclaimed, best-selling novelist, who also happens to be a highly sought-after creative writing teacher, setting out the curriculum of his over-subscribed ‘How to Write’ class in a way that is accessible to anyone... and the book reproduces the texts under discussion. Wow. This has to be the best York Notes ever, flawlessly designed for the exam we all sit without realising: life. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain you get all Saunders’s commentary (which is both charming and addictive) and the original (translated) versions of seven short stories by four writers: Chekhov’s ‘In the Cart’, ‘The Darling’, and ‘Gooseberries’; Tolstoy’s ‘Master and Man’ and ‘Alyosha the Pot’; Gogol’s ‘The Nose’; and Turgenev’s ‘The Singers’.

The art of the short story: what we can learn from the Russians

Thursday

1 Aug 2019

A far cry from Chekhov

It would be hard to have better travel-writer credentials than Sara Wheeler. Here the author of The Magnetic North and Terra Incognita, a specialist in Arctic and Antarctic adventure, turns her attentions to the land mass that sprawls across eight time zones, where any traveller is guaranteed to receive an ostentatiously frosty reception — initially, at least. Wheeler’s task has been to capture Russia through a bifocal lens: first through the eyes of the classic Russian authors she loves, and second through the lives of contemporary Russians we rarely hear about, outside of the Moscow–St Petersburg axis. ‘I was searching for a Russia not in the news — a Russia of common humanity and daily struggles — and my guides were writers of the Golden Age.

A far cry from Chekhov

Thursday

12 Apr 2018

Amused and confused

Tibor Fischer has a track record with humour. His first novel, the Booker shortlisted Under the Frog, takes its title from a Hungarian saying that the worst possible place to be is ‘under a frog’s arse down a coal mine’. And he also has form with being a bit meta: his third novel, The Collector Collector, was narrated by an earthenware pot. Here he throws his weight behind a character who feels like he’s walked off the set of Brass Eye or Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror. It’s not entirely clear whether we are supposed to loathe him or sympathise with him. Baxter Stone is a filmmaker whose best days are behind him and who is struggling to stay relevant in an industry that is itself dying. Baxter is in debt and is plagued by many real and imaginary enemies.

Amused and confused

Thursday

13 Jul 2017

Beyond the pale

You can tell everything you need to know about what Victoria Lomasko thinks of her homeland by the titles of this book’s two sections: ‘Invisible’ and ‘Angry’. A graphic artist from Serpukhov, just south of Moscow, Lomasko spent eight years documenting people from all walks of life across Russia, producing drawing and commentary about the ‘Russia that is hardly ever seen’. Many of her fellow citizens feel invisible. Almost all of them are angry. The effect of seeing this in cartoon form is disturbing, impressive and fascinating. The subject matter she is dealing with is almost unbearable: juvenile prison wards, sex workers, protesters affected by Russia’s homophobic laws. Lomasko calls this ‘reportage’ and she has modelled her work on the albums produced by Russian soldiers and concentration camp inmates in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Beyond the pale

Thursday

23 Mar 2017

An epic for our times

Trailing rave US reviews, fan letters from Yann Martel and Khaled Hosseini and a reputation as ‘Doctor Zhivago for the 21st century’, comes this outstanding historical saga from debut novelist Sana Krasikov. It’s a dazzling and addictive piece of work from an author born in the Soviet Republic of Georgia whose family emigrated to New York when she was eight. Not only is this novel accomplished and packed with believable detail and entertaining dialogue, it also feels curiously relevant, tip-toeing around the complicated relationship between the United States and Russia during and after the Cold War. Raised in 1930s Brooklyn, Florence Fein escapes a stifling existence with a seemingly glamorous job entertaining Soviet dignitaries on business trips to the US.

An epic for our times

Thursday

4 Aug 2016

Brexit Britain needs a large dose of proper political satire

After Brexit, satire is well and truly dead. Now we have Boris Johnson answering questions at press conferences about how he’ll explain to Hillary’s face that he once said she looks like a nurse in a mental institution. We have an unelected prime minister who got the job largely because another woman baited her about not having children. We have Andrea Leadsom: a non-entity who is swiftly revealed to be exceedingly stupid and tactless and is then rewarded with a serious cabinet role. And we have no opposition, except Jeremy Corbyn with a leadership style entirely lacking in leadership or style. This stuff just writes itself. How can you be funny about an entire political set-up that is already a joke? And it’s a joke of epic proportions.

Brexit Britain needs a large dose of proper political satire

Thursday

18 Jun 2015

Broken dreams

As Masha Gessen herself admits — and as friends and journalist colleagues repeatedly told her — it was a strange choice to write this book. But you only have to get a few pages in to realise that Gessen, the author of a bestselling analysis of Putin, is ideally placed to take on the story behind the Boston marathon bombers. And she is the perfect person to situate it in the wider context of ‘the war on terror’ in a way that illuminates and inspires. This is quite simply a remarkable piece of old-school journalism. On 15 April 2013 two homemade bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston marathon, killing three people and wounding 264 others. Two brothers, immediately identified as ‘Chechens’ (not strictly speaking true: they were American citizens), were implicated.

Broken dreams

Thursday

16 Apr 2015

Thursday

5 Mar 2015

The Dear Leader’s passion for films — and the real-life horror movie it led to

Ahead of last year’s release of The Interview, the Seth Rogen film about two journalists instructed to assassinate Kim Jong-un, North Korea interpreted the film as ‘an act of war’. Sony Pictures were hacked by a group linked to North Korea and hundreds of humiliating titbits about spats between celebrities and Sony execs made public, most memorably the description of Angelina Jolie as ‘a minimally talented spoilt brat’. The film was first cancelled and then given a limited release. Kim Jong-un had the last laugh when the reviews came out, however. ‘About as funny as a communist food shortage, and just as protracted,’ said Variety. What got lost in the backdrop to The Interview, though, was the significance of North Korea’s attitude towards cinema.

The Dear Leader’s passion for films — and the real-life horror movie it led to

Thursday

11 Dec 2014

Transnistria: a breakaway republic of a breakaway republic

Transnistria is not an area well-served by travel literature or, really, literature of any kind. The insubstantial-seeming post-Soviet sandwich-filling between Moldova and Ukraine, it doesn’t have a bad reputation. It has no reputation. As Rory MacLean, the author of the ‘across-the-old-Iron-Curtain-in-a-Trabant’ bestseller Stalin’s Nose, explains: ‘Transnistria is a breakaway republic of a ba lot smaller than Devon. And it is recognised by no country in the world except itself. You could indeed be forgiven for thinking that Transnistria is a made-up place (and at times the author of this book almost treats it as if it is). In the wake of the dissolution of the USSR, Transnistria declared independence in 1990 but now finds itself described as a post-Soviet ‘frozen conflict’ zone.

Transnistria: a breakaway republic of a breakaway republic
Useful links
More from The Spectator
About us
Subscribe
Useful links
About us
More from The Spectator
Subscribe