ELKOST International literary agency - Elena Kostioukovitch at the III International Congress of Literary Translators

Culture and Explosion by Yuri Lotman (NF)

Rights sold: Czech Republic - HOST, Spain - GEDISA

Originally published in Russian in 1992, a year before Lotman's death, Culture and Explosion puts forth a fundamental theory: the semiotics of culture. Proceeding from a model of communication, Lotman extends the work of the renowned Tartu-Moscow school that he founded, showing not only how culture can be observed and described, but also how it can be governed and guided. In fact, as Lotman demonstrates with copious examples, the modelling system of culture has an immeasurably strong influence on the way that humans experience "reality". As usual, Lotman's erudition is brought to bear on the theory of culture, and the book comprises a host of well-chosen illustrations from history, literature, art and right across the humanities.

Non-Memoirs by Yuri Lotman

Rights sold: World English - Dalkey Archive Press, Italy – INTERLINEA, Spain – GRANADA UNIVERSITY PRESS, Turkey - ALFA

One afternoon in December 1992, in Tartu, Estonia, Yuri Lotman reluctantly sat down to dictate his memoirs to Elena Pogosian, his assistant, over a pot of tea. Before his wife, Zara Mints, died in 1990, he had promised her that he would write the story of his life, and it was in memory of her that he embarked on a project he found disagreeable. This December afternoon was the first of twelve dictation sessions during which the initial draft of Non-Memoirs was created between them. The sessions were spread out over that winter and into the spring of 1993—the last spring of Lotman’s life. He could no longer write himself, due to a series of debilitating strokes and the weakness brought on by kidney cancer, and so had grown accustomed...

Elena Kostioukovitch at the III International Congress of Literary Translators

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Culture and Explosion by Yuri Lotman (NF)

Non-Memoirs by Yuri Lotman