Russian Journal

Informationen zum Autor Andrea Lee was born in Philadelphia and received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Harvard University. She is a former staff writer for  The New Yorker , and her fiction and nonfiction writing has also appeared in  The New York Times Magazine  and  The New York Times Book Review . She is the author of  Russian Journal , the novel Sarah Phillips , and the short story collection  Interesting Women . She lives with her husband and two children in Turin, Italy. Klappentext "A subtly crafted reflection of both the bleak and golden shadings of Russian life . . . Its tones belong more to the realm of poetry than journalism.” -The New York Times Book Review At age twenty-five, Andrea Lee joined her husband, a Harvard doctoral candidate in Russian history, for his eight months' study at Moscow State University and an additional two months in Leningrad. Published to enormous critical acclaim in 1981, Russian Journal is the award-winning author's penetrating, vivid account of her everyday life as an expatriate in Soviet culture, chronicling her fascinating exchanges with journalists, diplomats, and her Soviet contemporaries. The winner of the Jean Stein Award from the National Academy of Arts and Letters-and the book that launched Lee's career as a writer-Russian Journal is a beautiful and clear-eyed travel-writing classic. "[Lee] takes us wherever she is, conveying a feeling of place and atmosphere that is the mark of real talent.” -The Washington Post Book World "A book of very great charm . . . [Lee] records what she saw and heard with unassuming delicacy and exactness.” -NewsweekChapter 1 Arrival AUGUST 3 The tower in which we will live for most of the next ten months is one of the landmarks of Moscow, an absurd thirty-two-story wedding cake of gray and red granite, set above the city in the Lenin Hills. This titanic building, the main dormitory of Moscow State University, is a monument of the pompous and energetic style of architecture nicknamed “Stalin Gothic.” Seen from a distance, it suggests a Disney version of a ziggurat; its central spire, like the Kremlin towers, holds a blinking red star. Inside, as in a medieval fortress, there is everything necessary to sustain life in case of siege: bakeries, a dairy store, a fruit and vegetable store, a pharmacy, a post office, magazine kiosks, a watch-repair stand—all this in addition to classrooms, and student rooms, and cafeterias. On the outside, it bristles with a daft excess of decoration that is a strange twentieth-century mixture of Babylonian, Corinthian, and Slavic: there are outsized bronze flags and statues, faïence curlicues, wrought-iron sconces—even a vast reflecting pool decorated with metal water lilies the size of small cabbages. As I climb the endless stairs and negotiate the labyrinth of fusty-smelling hallways, I feel dwarfed and apprehensive, a human being lost in a palace scaled for giants. I came to this odd new home with my husband on a summer evening two days ago, when exhaustion from long-distance travel gave every new sight the mysterious simplicity and resonance of a dream. I had my first glimpse of the Soviet Union as we broke through a cloud barrier near Sheremetyevo Airport, and found ourselves flying low over a forest of birch and evergreen, dotted with countless small ponds. There was an almost magical lushness and secrecy about this flattish northern landscape that I found powerfully attractive; suddenly I remembered that my earliest visions of Russia were of an infinite forest, dark as any forest that stretches through a child’s imagination, and peopled by swan maidens, hunter princes, fabulous bears, and witches who lived in huts set on chicken legs. Tied to Russia by no claims of blood or tradition, I still felt, while very young, a...

Product details

• Authors: Andrea Lee
• Publisher: Random House USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 20.06.2006
• EAN: 9780812976656
• ISBN: 978-0-8129-7665-6
• No. of pages: 256
• Dimensions: 134 mm x 202 mm x 15 mm
• Subjects: Non-fiction book; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > General, dictionaries