Russia and its World
Russia in all its aspects has always exerted a pull on me. Its history, art, music, food, landscapes, dress in all varied ethnic glory, and, above all, its literature have a special access to my attention. A major challenge is Russia’s colossal size and diversity of geography. Another continual surprise is the number of its distinctive peoples, each with unique folkways and histories. Russia has had some epic totalitarian regimes over its long history — but it also has been the home of some of the world’s greatest, most creative, and most influential anarchist philosophers. Russia is big enough and complex enough to handle all sorts of contradictions and paradoxes — and to claim them all proudly (and fatalistically, a classic Russian trait).
Over the years I have noticed that my store has become home to a great range of literature, fiction and nonfiction, of the Russian soul and mind and heart. I share it here and may update it as often as possible.
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Stifled by her marriage of convenience to a man twice her age, the young Katerina Lvovna goes yawning about the house, missing the barefoot freedom of her childhood, until she meets the feckless steward Sergei Filipych. Sergei proceeds to seduce Katerina, as he has done half the women in the town, not realising that her passions, once awoken, will attach to him so fiercely that Katerina will stop at nothing to keep hold of him.
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is an unsettling tale of a woman’s struggle for happiness and control in the midst of a society that watches, constrains and judges her. The simple and dramatic plot inspired Shostakovich’s acclaimed opera of the same name, whilst in Katerina herself, whose unselfconscious passion and calculating brutality is narrated in startlingly detached detail, Leskov has created an anti-heroine of almost superhuman stature and compelling intensity who now stands as one of the archetypes of European literature.