Alla Sokolova presents the night-time world of a poet, where the dividing line between ordinary existence and an alternative mysterious reality has broken down.
In Leonid Kudriashov’s farce, as one would expect, deception is at the forefront. The characters’ attempts to get hold of a large sum of money don’t always turn out as they expect, and not all of them prove capable of living up to their claims to be a hero.
An unending fairy-tale about the sinister connections between power and slavery acts as a kind of commentary to the political and personal dramas in Aleksandr Obraztsov’s play.
Igor Shprits transplants Joseph Stalin beyond the bounds of world history into purgatory. There he is scrutinised from the perspective of eternity.
Liudmilar Petrushevskaia’s play repeatedly puts into question the reality of the events it portrays, in turn creating and destroying the world of the playwright heroine.
Andrei Zinchuk’s characters move between the real world and the world of virtual reality. Crossing the borders between the two realities is fraught with serious consequences, yet it can also lead to new insights.
None of the authors offer an easy way out of the web of deception and self-deception in which their characters are entwined, not to mention, on occasion, their readers. But that is not what really matters — by arousing their readers’ doubts and pushing them towards further reflection, the authors declare their affiliation to the finest traditions of Petersburg literature.
Joseph Brodsky wrote in an essay that St Petersburg, which seemed to many of its first writers rather like an un-Russian city, gave them the opportunity to see their surrounding world with an alienated and critical gaze. I feel that the authors of this collection are continuing to view their city with the same gaze — one directed from within and, simultaneously, from the outside.
Katharine Hodgson
Cambridge University Ph.D in Russian Literature
Specialist in Russian literary history