Li͡udmila Ulit͡skai͡a

"In "Queen of Spades," Anna, a successful ophthalmologic surgeon in her sixties; her daughter, Katya; and Katya's teenage daughter and young son live in constant terror of Anna's mother, a domineering, autocratic, aging former beauty queen. In "Angel," a closeted middle-aged professor marries an uneducated charwoman for love of her young son, raising the child in his image. In "The Orlov Sokolovs," perfectly matched young lovers are pulled apart by the Soviet academic bureaucracy. And in the novella "Sonechka," the heroine, a bookworm turned muse turned mother, reveals a love and loyalty at once astounding in its generosity and grotesque in its pathos."--Jacket.

"Intended for Low Intermediate and Intermediate-level students of Russian (B1-B2). 'Bronka' is a powerful coming-of-age story about a schoolgirl growing up in a communal apartment in Moscow in the years following World War II, and how she copes with her cramped living quarters, boorish neighbors, and the surrounding dismal realities of 1940s urban life in Moscow. Drawing on her inner strength, Bronka manages to escape the oppressive circumstances of her teenage years, and ultimately finds love and fulfillment. But her unusual path to happiness remains the central mystery of this extraordinary tale. "Bronka" is an excellent literary text for students of Russian language, literature, and culture. The reader provides ample support for the learner, including marginal glosses, historical-cultural, and grammatical commentaries, as well as a range of exercises on word-formation, vocabulary building, and participles."--Provided by publisher.

The central character in Ludmila Ulitskaya's celebrated novel The Kukotsky Enigma is a gynecologist contending with Stalin's prohibition of abortions in 1936. But, in the tradition of Russia's great family novels, the story encompasses the history of two families and unfolds in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the ruins of ancient civilizations on the Black Sea. Their lives raise profound questions about family heritage and genetics, nurture and nature, and life and death. In his struggle to maintain his professional integrity and to keep his work from dividing his family, Kukotsky confronts the moral complexity of reproductive science.

Recueil de sept nouvelles dont le dominateur est surtout l'amour adolescent dans la Russie d'après-guerre. Observation aiguë dont l'humour est parfois cruel. [SDM].

"Medea Georgievna Sinoply Mendez is an iconic figure in her Crimean village, the last remaining pureblooded Greek in a family that has lived on that coast for centuries. Looking like "a portrait Goya had omitted to paint" in the widow's black she has worn since the death of her husband - a jolly jewish dentist - many years before, the childless Medea is the touchstone of a large family of nieces and nephews who, together with their spouses, children, and friends, gather each spring and summer at her home.". "Ageless and unflappable, Medea greets each successive wave of visitors with calm warmth and welcome, and observes with interest their romantic entanglements, disappointments, conflicts, and passions. There are her nieces (the seductive and light-hearted Nike and the shy yet passionate Masha); her nephew Georgii (who shares Medea's devotion to the Crimea); and their friends, including Valerii Butonov, a circus performer turned sports trainer who has been pursued by women since he put on his first trousers. Herself unfailingly loyal and faithful, Medea watches her nieces and nephews fall in and out of marriages and affairs. These shifting currents of erotic attraction and competition intertwine with the dramatic saga of a family surviving the upheavals that characterized Soviet life in the twentieth century, as viewed through Medea's memories of the Russian Revolution and the two world wars, her parents' early deaths, and her own late marriage. Ludmila Ultiskaya, one of contemporary Russia's greatest novelists weaves the stories of the sprawling Sinoply family into a brilliantly detailed and richly textured tapestry."--BOOK JACKET.

Ce roman s'inspire de la vie du père Daniel Stein. Juif, né en Pologne en 1922 de mère polonaise et de père allemand, il échappe à la déportation en se faisant passer pour un Allemand, se convertit au catholicisme avant de s'installer en Israël dans un monastère près d'Haïfa, jusqu'à sa mort en 1998. --[Memento].

An orphaned poet, a gifted pianist and a budding photographer meet in a mid-20th-century Moscow school and eventually embody the heroism, folly, compromise and hope of the Soviet dissident experience.

Ce roman s'inspire de la vie du père Daniel Stein. Juif, né en Pologne en 1922 de mère polonaise et de père allemand, il échappe à la déportation en se faisant passer pour un Allemand, se convertit au catholicisme avant de s'installer en Israël dans un monastère près d'Haïfa, jusqu'à sa mort en 1998. --[Memento].