3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

Russia is back in the headlines, and its resurgence seems unlikely to waver anytime soon. But while many students are familiar with nineteenth-century novelists like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, more recent Russian writing is often a mystery. This course approaches contemporary Russia through the careers of its two major living novelists, Vladimir Sorokin and Ludmila Ulitskaya, both of whose work spans the late Soviet period (1980s and 90s) through today. In addition to questions of genre, translation, and contemporary Russian literary culture’s relation to Soviet models, we will consider how Sorokin and Ulitskaya have brokered Russia’s intellectual standing on a world stage. Works studied will include Ulitskaya’s Sonechka, The Funeral Party, and Daniel Stein, Interpreter, and Sorokin’s The Queue, Day of the Oprichnik, and The Blizzard.