33 Moments of Happiness - St. Petersburg Stories

Zusatztext "Fantastic and fantastical."? Los Angeles Times Informationen zum Autor Ingo Schulze, born in Dresden in 1962, studied classical philology at the University of Jena. He worked as the dramaturg at the Altenburg Theater until 1990, and then became a newspaper editor, a job that took him to St. Petersburg for six months in 1993. Since then he has lived in Berlin. His first book, 33 Moments of Happiness has won both the prestigious Döblin Prize and the Willner Prize for Literature. Three of the stories in this collection have recently appeared in The New Yorker. Klappentext An intriguing, fabulously bizarre debut collection of short stories by prize-winning German writer Ingo Schulze, author of Simple Stories. These thirty-three macabre, often comical short pieces revolve around moments of odd bliss-moments seized by characters who have found ways to conquer the bleakness of everyday life in the chaotic world of post-communist Russia. Peopled by Mafia gunmen, desperate young prostitutes, bewildered foreign businessmen, and even a trio of hungry devils, the stories are by turns tragic and bleakly funny. From a sly retelling of the legend of St. Nicholas featuring a rich American named Nick, to a lavish gourmet feast in which the young female cook ends up as the main dish, these stories are above all playful and even surreal-and many of them are masterful tributes to Russian writers from Gogol to Nabokov. Translated by John E. Woods.1 You run across women like Maria only in magazines and commercials. Each evening in the lobby of the Hotel St. Petersburg, where I stayed early on, she would shift from one arrangement of white armchairs to another as if she were moving about in a furniture store. Sometimes she would disappear for five minutes, but she always came back, and she was always alone. On my way to the hotel bar I spoke to her, and so we entered as a couple. Maria grew livelier and even more beautiful. She had in fact been waiting for me. The bartender ignored other guests to serve me, and within Maria's line of sight, I returned to our table full of success and without sloshing a drop from the glasses. Her fingers got absentmindedly tangled in the silver chain above her décolletage, and her long nails drew streaks across that incredible skin, which reemerged no less pure from under her red dress just above the knee. I lit her cigarette for her with her lighter so that she would not be distracted from what she was saying about Margarita and Lolita, about the difference between Zoshchenko's and Platonov's use of language, and my palms lay flat on the table while she recited Pushkin and Brodsky as if she were planning a menu according to the vintage of the wines. She had time for me, as if there were no soccer heroes or singers, no members of parliament or captains waiting for her, and I knew: Petersburg, that is her dark eyes. They would stand like stars for me above the city, no matter what else might yet await me. "Tell me about yourself," Maria said, pressing her hand against my arm and cautiously kissing my fingers. I had appeared in order to rescue Maria. She did not know who her father was. "An Italian perhaps," she said, pushing her black hair up at me with the back of her hand. Maria would look for an apartment for us, we could live together and awaken every morning in each other's arms. I would fulfill her greatest wish and buy her a car. Together we would drive through the city and to the sea, go dancing, shop for shoes, visit her mother and travel, first to Amsterdam to celebrate our wedding with her girlfriend and then on to Italy. We sat together for two hours, the bartender gave us his blessing, and I would have loved to ask him for two golden rings. Why had Maria picked me of all people? She let her hand rest on my knee, then took my forefinger and let it trace up and down her collarbone, and I ...

Product details

• Authors: Ingo Schulze
• Assisted by: John E. Woods (Translation)
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 05.06.2001
• EAN: 9780375700040
• ISBN: 978-0-375-70004-0
• No. of pages: 320
• Dimensions: 133 mm x 203 mm x 19 mm
• Series: Vintage International; Vintage International
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature