"Exceptional. If there has been a more honest, calm, and profoundly moving memoir written in the last few years, then I've missed it."—Times Literary Supplement How would you make sense of your life if you thought it might end tomorrow? In this captivating and best-selling memoir, Vesna Goldsworthy tells the story of herself, her family, and her early life in her lost country. There follows marriage, a move to England, and a successful media and academic career, then a cancer diagnosis and its unresolved consequences. A profoundly moving, comic, and original account by a stunning literary talent.
"Exceptional. If there has been a more honest, calm, and profoundly moving memoir written in the last few years, then I've missed it."— Times Literary Supplement How would you make sense of your life if you thought it might end tomorrow? In this captivating and best-selling memoir, Vesna Goldsworthy tells the story of herself, her family, and her early life in her lost country. There follows marriage, a move to England, and a successful media and academic career, then a cancer diagnosis and its unresolved consequences. A profoundly moving, comic, and original account by a stunning literary talent.
This is the autobiography of one of Russia's most prominent scientists who has also been a political insider at the highest levels since the Gorbachev era. As a child he played in the fresh ruins of Stalingrad just weeks after that monumental battle had ended. Growing up in the Stalin and Kruschev eras, Evgeny Velikhov's persistence, intelligence and wit propelled him upward into the highest levels of the Soviet Union's scientific establishment. As an accomplished scientist and diplomat, he has negotiated with world leaders and been a trusted advisor and confidant to every Russian president since Gorbachev. This is a first-person account of one man's rise from the humblest of beginnings to the highest level of influence in one of the world's most powerful countries. At the same time it is a rare and fascinating glimpse into the political and social evolution of an enigmatic and often perilous nation. Evgeny Velikhov had to tread carefully and muster all his talent and cleverness to not only survive but thrive through successive regimes, first in the often tumultuous USSR, through the breakup of the Soviet Union, and on to the modern Russian state. As one of his nation's premier scientists, Velikhov was the person Gorbachev called when the news arrived about the nuclear accident at Chernobyl. He was gone for weeks supervising the recovery, only rarely being able to contact his wife, Natalia, who was obviously very worried as the news of the accident filtered out. Then one day... I came home from Chernobyl without any prior warning, and my wife was already desperate and suspected the worst. I had brought with me a large basket of strawberries. She said "You're crazy!" We measured the strawberries with a Geiger counter, and it gave a little ring. "Well, now," I said, "measure me." She measured, and there was continuous ringing! I asked her, "Are you going to sleep with me?" She responded, "Well, what else can I do?" "Then," I said, "let's eat the strawberries." This is a journey through the life of an extraordinary man of superlative intelligence and, at the same time, a light-heartedness and wit that makes this a most memorable reading experience. Strawberries From Chernobyl provides a window into the history of post-war Russia through the eyes of a true insider.
“An impressively accomplished retelling of the Gatsby story,” in which a Russian businessman engages an impoverished bookseller’s help pursuing a lover. (Los Angeles Review of Books) On a rainy afternoon in London’s old Chelsea, a charming multi-billionaire Russian oligarch, Gorsky, walks into an ailing bookshop and writes the first of several quarter-of-a-million pound checks. With that money, Gorsky has tasked Nikola, the store’s bored and brilliant clerk, with sourcing books for a massive personal library, which will be housed in the magnificent, palatial home Gorsky happens to be building immediately next to Nikola’s own modest dwelling. Gorsky needs a tasteful collection of Russian literature to woo a long-lost love―no matter that she happens to be married to an Englishman. His passion for her surpasses even his immeasurable wealth, and Nikola will be drawn into a world of opulence, greed, capitalism, sex, and beauty as he helps Gorsky pursue this doomed love. “An accomplished retelling of an American classic.” —Tablet “It’s a very clever idea: to update "The Great Gatsby” by making the bootlegger into a Russian arms-dealing billionaire and transplanting the action from Jazz Age New York to 21st-century London, a city increasingly shaped by global wealth.” —The New York Times Book Review “A tense, witty page-turner.” —The Spectator “Entertaining.” —New York Journal of Books “[A] kind of novel-length love letter to the written word.” —Jewish Book Council
Katya Cengel covers her time as a recent college graduate reporting from the former Soviet Union in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Riga, Latvia, shortly after the fall of Communism.
Bronze Medal winner in the Independent Book Publishers Awards In the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the late twentieth century was a time of unprecedented hope for democracy and freedom in Eastern Europe. The collapse of the Soviet Union left in its wake a number of independent countries where the Scorpions' 1990 pop ballad "Wind of Change" became a rallying cry. Communist propaganda was finally being displaced by Western ideals of a free press. Less than two decades ago, young writers, journalists, and adventurers such as Katya Cengel flocked from the West eastward to cities like Prague and Budapest, seeking out terra nova. Despite the region's appeal, neither Kyiv in the Ukraine nor Riga in Latvia was the type of place you would expect to find a twenty-two-year-old Californian just out of college. Kyiv was too close to Moscow. Riga was too small to matter--and too cold. But Cengel ended up living and working in both. This book is her remarkable story. Cengel first took a job at the Baltic Times just seven years after Latvia regained its independence. The idea of a free press in the Eastern Bloc was still so promising that she ultimately moved to the Ukraine. From there Cengel made several trips to Chernobyl, site of the world's worst nuclear disaster. It was at Chernobyl that she met her fiancé, but as she fell in love, the Ukraine collapsed into what would become the Orange Revolution, bringing it to the brink of political disintegration and civil war. Ultimately, this fall of idealism in the East underscores Cengel's own loss of innocence. From Chernobyl with Love is an indelible portrait of this historical epoch and a memoir of the highest order.
Over the last decade, migration flows from Central and Eastern Europe have become an issue in political debates about human rights, social integration, multiculturalism and citizenship in Great Britain. The increasing number of Eastern Europeans living in Britain has provoked ambivalent and diverse responses, including representations in film and literature that range from travel writing, humorous fiction, mockumentaries, musicals, drama and children's literature to the thriller. The present volume discusses a wide range of representations of Eastern and Central Europe and its people as reflected in British literature, film and culture. The book offers new readings of authors who have influenced the cultural imagination since the nineteenth century, such as Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, Joseph Conrad and Arthur Koestler. It also discusses the work of more contemporary writers and film directors including Sacha Baron Cohen, David Cronenberg, Vesna Goldsworthy, Kapka Kassabova, Marina Lewycka, Ken Loach, Mike Phillips, Joanne K. Rowling and Rose Tremain. With its focus on post-Wall Europe, Facing the East in the Westgoes beyond discussions of migration to Britain from an established postcolonial perspective and contributes to the current exploration of 'new' European identities.
This collection focuses on a variety of fictional and non-fictional East European women's migration narratives, multimodal narratives by migrant artists, and cyber narratives (blogs and personal stories posted on forums). The book negotiates the concept of narrative between conventional literary forms, digital discourses, and the social sciences. It brings together new perspectives on strategies of representation, trauma, dislocation, and gender roles. It also claims a place for Eastern Europe on the map of transnational feminism. (Series: Contributions to Transnational Feminism - Vol. 4) [Subject: Sociology, European Studies, Women's Studies, Feminist Studies, Gender Studies, Migration Studies]
'A beautiful haunting novel... looking at a familiar London through a frosty, snowy lens. Wonderful' Caryl Phillips The London winter of 1947 is as cold as St Petersburg during the Revolution. Albertine, the wife of a British army officer often abroad on covert government business, finds herself increasingly lonely. Eager to distract herself with work, she takes a job as companion to the mysterious 'Monsieur Ka', a Russian émigré. As she is drawn into Ka’s dramatic past, her own life is shaken to its foundations. For in this family of former princes, there are present temptations which could profoundly affect her future.
Considering children’s literature as a powerful repository for creating and proliferating cultural and national identities, this monograph is the first academic study of children’s literature in translation from the Western Balkans. Marija Todorova looks at a broad range of children’s literature, from fiction to creative non-fiction and picture books, across five different countries in the Western Balkans, with each chapter including detailed textual and visual analysis through the predominant lens of violence. These chapters raise questions around who initiates and effectuates the selection of children’s literature from the Western Balkans for translation into English, and interrogate the role of different stakeholders, such as translators, publishers and cultural institutions in the representation and construction of these countries in translated children’s literature, both in text and visually. Given the combination of this study’s interdisciplinary nature and Todorova’s detailed analysis, this book will prove to be an essential resource for professional translators, researchers and students in courses in translation studies, children’s literature or area studies, especially that of countries in the Western Balkans. .
