ELKOST International literary agency - JUST PUBLISHED: Ludmila Ulitskaya's Medea and her Children in Finland

Ludmila Ulitskaya's epic novel Medea and her Children has just been released in Finland by Siltala Publishing as Medeia ja hänen lapsensa.

Medeia Mendez on kuin Goyan maalauksen henkilö lesken mustissaan. Hän on Krimille asettuneen kreikkalaissukunsa keskushenkilö, suvun, joka on hajaantunut vähitellen ympäri Neuvostoliittoa, mutta kokoontuu uskollisesti kesäisin Medeian talolle Mustanmeren rannalle. Elämää nähnyt ja sitä ymmärtävä lapsettomaksi jäänyt Medeia seuraa sisarustensa lasten, heidän vaihtuvien puolisoidensa, rakastajiensa ja lastensa elämää vuosikymmenestä toiseen, läpi sotien, poliittisten mullistusten, yksityisten kriisien ja yhteiskunnallisten murrosten. Järkkymättömänä ja iättömänä hän vastaanottaa keväisin ja kesäisin jatkuvan vieraiden virran ja tarkkailee sukulaistensa rakkauksia ja romanttisia kiemuroita, pettymyksiä, intohimoja ja riitoja. Viisaan Medeian muistot, perheen kohtalot ja 1900-luvun Venäjän historia peilautuvat komeasti Ulitskajan nyansoidussa, psykologisesti tarkkanäköisessä proosassa.

CASE OF ENGINEER TOWN, 2008

Rights sold: Russia – Chronicler

A nomad city of Karakorum, capital of the Mongol Empire (the map of which is just identical to a map of the Russian Empire), appears suddenly in the beginning of XVIII century in the area of Novocherkassk City in the Province of Don Cossack Voisko. The city does not fit into the picture of the real world; it moves every day a couple kilometers from the point it was seen before; Mongol Emperor Tughe, the ruler of the city, knows nothing about the existence of Russian Emperor Alexander (who in turn has never heard of Tughe).

Otroshenko creates a reality in which the relation between incidents, characters, and setting could not be based upon or justified by laws of nature or their normal acceptance by human mentality.

Only a Miracle Could Save Us: Life and Survival under Stalin's Terror, by Irina Sherbakova (NF)

Rights sold: Germany - CAMPUS

For many years, we knew next to nothing about the private lives of ordinary Soviet citizens during Stalin’s reign. Until very recently, the social history of the Soviet Union written by Soviet and Western historians alike was limited entirely to the public sphere – politics and ideology, and the collective experience of the ‘Soviet masses’. The individual (insofar as he or she appeared at all) featured mainly as a letter-writer to the Soviet authorities (that is, as a public actor rather than a private person or member of a family).

It was only from the end of the 1980s that the practice of oral history – politically impossible in the earlier Soviet period – began to develop in Russia. Public organizations like Memorial, established in the late 1980s to represent the victims of repression and record their history, took the lead, collecting testimonies from survivors...

JUST PUBLISHED: Ludmila Ulitskaya's Medea and her Children in Finland

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CASE OF ENGINEER TOWN, 2008

Only a Miracle Could Save Us: Life and Survival under Stalin's Terror, by Irina Sherbakova (NF)