Aetherial worlds : stories / Tatyana Tolstaya ; translated from the Russian by Anya Migdal.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tolstai︠a︡, Tatʹi︠a︡na, 1951 May 3- author.

Contributor:

Migdal, Anya, translator.

Standardized Title:

Short stories. Selections. English (Migdal)

Language:

English

Russian

Subjects (All):

Short stories, Russian--20th century--Translations into English.

Short stories, Russian.

Genre:

Short stories.

Translations.

Russian fiction.

Short stories, Russian.

Physical Description:

vii, 241 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2018.

Summary:

From one of modern Russia's finest writers, a spellbinding collection of eighteen stories, her first to be translated into English in more than twenty years. Ordinary realities and yearnings to transcend them lead to miraculous other worlds in this dazzling collection of stories. A woman's deceased father appears in her dreams with clues about the afterlife; a Russian professor in a small American town constructs elaborate fantasies during her cigarette break; a man falls in love with a marble statue as his marriage falls apart; a child glimpses heaven through a stained-glass window. With the emotional insight of Chekhov, the surreal satire of Gogol, and a unique blend of humor and poetry all her own, Tolstaya transmutes the quotidian into aetherial alternatives. These tales, about politics, identity, love, and loss, cut to the core of the Russian psyche, even as they lay bare human universals. Tolstaya's characters--seekers all--are daydreaming children, lonely adults, dislocated foreigners in unfamiliar lands. Whether contemplating the strategic complexities of delivering telegrams in Leningrad or the meditative melancholy of holiday aspic, vibrant inner lives and the grim elements of existence are registered in equally sharp detail in a starkly bleak but sympathetic vision of life on earth. A unique collection from one of the first women in years to rank among Russia's most important writers.

Contents:

20/20

Aspic

Smoke and shadows

Passing through

A young lady in bloom

Nowhere

Father

The invisible maiden

The square

Judith with the sword

Aetherial worlds

Doors and demons

Without

Faraway lands

Official nationality

Swedenborg

The window

See the reverse.

Notes:

"Borzoi book."

ISBN:

9781524732776

152473277X

OCLC:

992221742