ELKOST International literary agency - GRANTA magazine featuring Ulitskaya

The 131 (April 2015) issue of GRANTA magazine features Ludmila Ulitskaya´s LIFE AND BREASTS essay from the book Discarded Relics.

GRANTA editor Sigrid Rausing writes in the Introduction:

Ludmila Ulitskaya’s piece, ‘Life and Breasts’, is about cancer, but it is also a terse commentary on the present state of Russia. Like many people who lived through Communism, which made the distinction between image and reality a political art form, Ulitskaya’s writing is stubbornly dedicated to real life in all its surprising details:

"My breast is completely absent: there is even a dent. It has been interred in a special burial ground at the Givat Shaul Cemetery. Lesha Kandel buries all the amputated Jewish appendages from his orthopaedic department there. ‘For some reason, Muslims and Christians seem totally unconcerned where their removed organs or body parts lie,’ is what he said.

My left breast is at rest in the land of Israel. Perhaps only a first instalment!"

A Gloom Descends Upon the Ancient Steps, a novel by Alexander Chudakov (2000)

Rights sold: France - Christian Bourgois (2003), Macedonia - ANTOLOG, Poland - von Borowiecky, Spain - AUTOMATICA, Russia – Olma Press (2001), Vremya (2011), World English rights - Northwestern University Press

2001 RUSSIAN BOOKER Award nominee
2011 RUSSIAN BOOKER OF THE DECADE Awared winner

Set in Chebachinsk, a fictitious town in Northern Kazakhstan inhabited by political exiles, its panoramic narrative focuses on the relationship between Anton, a Moscow historian of the vital “1960s generation,” and his grandfather, a titan of physical and intellectual rigor from a hardy line of Vilnius clerics. The lucid and forthright prose style was described by critics as “clear, rich, glowing with good-natured humor, and free”. The novel’s overall effect is uplifting despite its unflinching presentation of the human toll of Stalinism. Chudakov told Radio Russia that his concern was to show that despite “all that,” Russia in this period actually continued...

13 Pipes, collected essays by Ilya Ehrenburg (1923)

Publishers: Italy - DALL'OGLIO (1965), Germany - SUHRKAMP (1978), BUCHCLUB 65 (1984)

Thirteen Pipes is a satirical book telling one by one the stories of each particular pipe out of thirteen in the possession of the author.

GRANTA magazine featuring Ulitskaya

Featured titles

A Gloom Descends Upon the Ancient Steps, a novel by Alexander Chudakov (2000)

13 Pipes, collected essays by Ilya Ehrenburg (1923)