Olga Grušina Livres

At the age of fifty-six, Anatoly Sukhanov has everything a man could want: a glittering career, a beautiful wife and two children, a grand apartment in the smartest part of Moscow. He thinks he has achieved his dream - to carve from the world around him a small, secure happiness, all his own . Then perestroika dawns and the rigid structures of the world in which Sukhanov has thrived begin to crumble. He is beset by heartbreaking visions from his past, when, many years ago, as a brilliant young artist in Moscow, and fearing the stifling hand of the state, he made a decision to abandon his dreams in favour of a life of comfort and, most of all, safety. Now, as the shadows of his past bring him to a terrifying state of uncertainty, he begins to realise that perhaps when he compromised his dreams to live a better life, he ended up hardly living at all. Brilliantly imagined, moving and with a driving plot, The Dream Life of Sukhanov is an utterly original tale of hope and fear and of youth and old age, by a remarkable new talent in contemporary fiction.

Cinderella meets Marriage Story in this beautifully written, powerful reimagining that picks up thirteen years after she and Prince Charming said 'I do'.

On any given morning, on the street corners of a Russian city, little kiosks suddenly appear. As soon as their shutters open, a queue forms, men and women lining up in the hope of a little bit of luxury: a pair of silk stockings or a box of chocolates. One morning news spreads that the exiled composer, Selinsky, will be returning to the city for one concert only, and there is one kiosk, somewhere, selling tickets to this most magical event of the year. So begins the story of a family, in which a ticket to Selinsky’s concert means everything: for Sergei, the father, it holds the promise of an affair with another woman; for his wife, Anna, it offers the hope of winning back her faithless husband; for their son, Alexander, it means the possibility of escaping to the West. The Concert Ticket is a fabulously told story of love, longing and escape, of beauty in a world of repression, and of a family at the mercy of each other and the times in which they live.

Podmanivá kniha ruské autorky (1971), žijící ve Washingtonu, byla na Západě přijata s velkým nadšením (2005) a je hodnocena jako mimořádné dílo navazující na nejlepší literární tradice Ruska. Hlavní postava románu, v mládí avantgardní malíř a později umělecký kritik, si v sovětském Rusku postupně vybudoval skvělou kariéru. Přichází však doba ,perestrojky\' a nejen vnitřní, ale i vnější tlaky nutí talentovaného, ale už rezignovaného muže, aby promýšlel a revidoval svá životní rozhodnutí i postoje. Autorka k tomu zvolila velmi působivou formu: snové obrazy minulosti se střídají s přítomností a snovou budoucností. Její kniha je tak nejen plastickým obrazem vnitřního přerodu ruských intelektuálů po dlouhých letech totality, ale zároveň nadčasovým podobenstvím o zápasu člověka o vlastní lidství. Vyniká zároveň důvěrnou znalostí ruského i světového malířství, od ikonografie přes Rubleva až po novodobé umění, zejména surrealismus (Malevič, Filonov, Chagall, Salvador Dalí a další).