Carole Angier
The Soloist’s Story
Passport To Yesterday: A Novel In Eleven Stories
By Yuri Druzhnikov (Trans.Thomas Moore)
Peter Owen 204pp £15.95
WHY HAVE WE never heard of Yuri Druzhnikov? His brilliant earlier novel Angels on the Head of a Pin was named one of the ten best Russian novels of the twentieth century, and Passport to Yesterday was Book of the Year in Russia - both absolutely rightly: So rush out and buy them.
Angels on the Head of a Pin was a sprawling masterpiece, blacklisted for years like its author, and savagely satirical. Passport to Yesterday is very different: slender, delicate, and written in a voice that manages to combine plainness and poetry, horror and humour, in a quite extraordinary way.
The story begins
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Under its longest-serving editor, Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair was that rare thing – a New York society magazine that published serious journalism.
@PeterPeteryork looks at what Carter got right.
Peter York - Deluxe Editions
Peter York: Deluxe Editions - When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines by Graydon Carter
literaryreview.co.uk
Henry James returned to America in 1904 with three objectives: to see his brother William, to deliver a series of lectures on Balzac, and to gather material for a pair of books about modern America.
Peter Rose follows James out west.
Peter Rose - The Restless Analyst
Peter Rose: The Restless Analyst - Henry James Comes Home: Rediscovering America in the Gilded Age by Peter Brooks...
literaryreview.co.uk
Vladimir Putin served his apprenticeship in the KGB toward the end of the Cold War, a period during which Western societies were infiltrated by so-called 'illegals'.
Piers Brendon examines how the culture of Soviet spycraft shaped his thinking.
Piers Brendon - Tinker, Tailor, Sleeper, Troll
Piers Brendon: Tinker, Tailor, Sleeper, Troll - The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West by Shaun Walker
literaryreview.co.uk