The Tsar of Love and Techno

Zusatztext 48798882 Informationen zum Autor ANTHONY MARRA  is the author of  A Constellation of Vital Phenomena  (2013), which won the National Book Critics Circle’s inaugural John Leonard Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in fiction, the Barnes and Noble Discover Award, and appeared on over twenty year-end lists. Marra’s novel was a National Book Award long list selection as well as a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and France’s Prix Medicis. He received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, where he teaches as the Jones Lecturer in Fiction. He has lived and studied in Eastern Europe, and now resides in Oakland, California. Visit http://anthonymarra.net/ Klappentext From the New York Times bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena-dazzling, poignant, and lyrical interwoven stories about family, sacrifice, the legacy of war, and the redemptive power of art. This stunning, exquisitely written collection introduces a cast of remarkable characters whose lives intersect in ways both life-affirming and heartbreaking. A 1930s Soviet censor painstakingly corrects offending photographs, deep underneath Leningrad, bewitched by the image of a disgraced prima ballerina. A chorus of women recount their stories and those of their grandmothers, former gulag prisoners who settled their Siberian mining town. Two pairs of brothers share a fierce, protective love. Young men across the former USSR face violence at home and in the military. And great sacrifices are made in the name of an oil landscape unremarkable except for the almost incomprehensibly peaceful past it depicts. In stunning prose, with rich character portraits and a sense of history reverberating into the present, The Tsar of Love and Techno is a captivating work from one of our greatest new talents.The Leopard Leningrad, 1937 I am an artist first, a censor second. I had to remind myself of this two years ago, when I trudged to the third-floor flat of a communal apartment block, where my widowed sister-in-law and her four-year-old son lived. She answered the door with a thin frown of surprise. She wasn't expecting me. We had never met. "My name is Roman Osipovich Markin," I said. "The brother of your husband." She nodded and ran her hand along the worn pleat of a gray skirt as she stood aside to allow me in. If the mention of Vaska startled her, she hid it well. She wore a blond blouse with auburn buttons. The comb lines grooving her damp dark hair looked drawn on by charcoal pencil. A boy was slumped into the divan's mid-cushion sag. My nephew, I supposed. For his sake, I hoped he took after his mother. "I don't know what my brother has told you," I began, "but I work in the Department of Party Propaganda and Agitation. Are you familiar with the job?" "No," the boy said. The poor child had inherited his father's forehead. His future lay under a hat. To his mother: "Your husband really didn't talk about me?" "He did mention a brother who was something of the village idiot in Pavlovsk," she said, a bit more cheer to her tone. "He didn't mention you were balding." "It's not as bad as it looks," I said. "Perhaps you could get to the purpose of your visit?" "Every day I see photographs of traitors, wreckers, saboteurs, counterrevolutionaries, enemies of the people. Over the last ten years, only so many per day. Over the last few months, the usual numbers have grown. I used to receive a slim file each month. Now I receive one every morning. Soon it will be a box. Then boxes." "Surely you haven't come only to describe the state of your office?" "I am here to do my brother a final service," I said. "And that is?" she asked. My vertebrae cinched together. My hands felt much too large for my pockets. It's a terrible thing, really...

Produktdetails

• Autoren: Anthony Marra
• Verlag: Hogarth US
• Sprache: Englisch
• Produktform: Fester Einband
• Erschienen: 06.10.2015
• EAN: 9780770436438
• ISBN: 978-0-7704-3643-8
• Seiten: 352
• Abmessung: 155 mm x 218 mm x 30 mm
• Serie: Hogarth
• Thema: Belletristik > Erzählende Literatur