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Unpredictable Mechanisms of Culture by Yuri Lotman (NF)
Rights sold: Brazil - Hucitec Editora, Estonia – TALLINN UNIVERSITY PRESS (in Russian and in English), Georgia – MTSIGNOBARI, Poland – WYDAWNICTWA AKADEMICKIEGO SEDNO
This book, dictated by the world-known cultural semiotician Yuri Lotman at the end of his life, is in fact the last volume of Lotman’s opus magnum (along with his other fundamental works ‘Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture’ and ‘Culture and Explosion’).
The author analyses the global rules of history, the meaning of explosion and unpredictability in culture as well as art as a workshop of unpredictability. The book features a vast variety of new culturological ideas explained with plain and simple language distinguishing for all other Lotman´s writings. First and foremost, Lotman´s interest lies in the ways of development of culture. Among processes of cultural evolution Lotman distinguishes the three general types: the cyclical processes, which regularly return to the same start point, the linear processes, and finally, the explosive processes, which only might be attributed as unpredictable and as such represent the most interest to the culturological science.
The legendary semiotician didn't see this work published. It was put together and edited by his disciples, and for a long time remained unknown to the reader.
The book also contains extensive commentaries authored by Yuri Lotman’s long-time friends and colleagues: a prominent Russian philologist and Indo-Europeanist Vyacheslav Ivanov, writer and semiotician Boris Egorov, and Boris Uspensky.
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Sonechka, a novella by Ludmila Ulitskaya (1995)
Prix Médicis (1996, France)
Literature Prize Giuseppe Acerbi (1998, Italy)
Rights sold: Bulgaria - COLIBRI, Chile - LOM, China - KUN LUN, Beijing Publishing Group, Czech Republic - HUMANITARIAN TECHNOLOGIES, Croatia - SYSPRINT, Egypt - AL KARMA BOOKS, Estonia - TANAPAEV, France - GALLIMARD, Finland - SILTALA, Germany - VOLK UND WELT (LUCHTENHAND LUEBBE), The Netherlands - DE GEUS, Hungary - MAGVETO, Iran - WHALE, Israel - AM OVED, Italy - E/O, Japan - SCHIN ZHO SHA, Korea - GIMM-YOUNG, Latvia - Zvaigzne ABC, Lithuania - KYTOS KNYGOS, Norway - BAZAR, Poland - PHILIP WILSON, Portugal - CAMPO DAS LETRAS, CAVALO DE FERRO, Romania - HUMANITAS, Russia - EKSMO, AST, Serbia - PAIDEIA, Slovakia - VYDAVATELSTVO SSS, Spain - ANAGRAMA, Sweden - NORSTEDTS, Taiwan - LOCUS, Turkey - AD KITAPCILIK, USA - SCHOCKEN, Vietnam - NHANAM
The heroine, Sonechka, reveals a love and loyalty at once astounding in its generosity and grotesque in its pathos. Sonechka so loves her husband and their life together, that she accepts what many would find unthinkable. In her novel Ulitskaya covers the tumultuous terrain of relationships and love in 20th-century Russia. While some details are time- and place-specific, the characters' motives and feelings rise to the universal.
"Ulitskaya brilliantly evokes resilient characters, showing us the Russian soul as transformed throughout its complicated history." (Kirkus Review)
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