Russia’s book business is valued at between $2-3bn annually, but shockingly little is known about it in the West.
Russia’s Literary Monster: The Wild, Unpredictable World of Vladimir Sorokin
A “living classic,” Sorokin pushes boundaries by writing about a Russia rife with violence, coprophilia, violence, rape, violence, aliens, violence, clones and more violence. He makes his American debut in New York this weekend at the PEN World Voices Festival. By Daniel Kalder At the London Book Fair earlier this month, Russia was featured as Guest of Honor. Nearly every Russian …
Does Literature Still Have the Power to Irritate Powers-that-be?
By Edward Nawotka In today’s lead story Daniel Kalder writes about Russia’s Ad Marginem Press, a “underground” publisher of controversial and politically provocative works of fiction and nonfiction. Ad Marginem publisher Alexander Ivanov says the press may have something of an advantage in attracting an audience, in so far as “literature [in Russia] may still -– as it did in …
Notes from the Underground: Indie Publishing in Putin’s Russia
By Daniel Kalder MOSCOW: Back in 1993 a group of philosophers from the Russian Academy of Sciences formed Ad Marginem Press in Moscow. Their plan was simple: to publish translations of late 20th century Western philosophy that had been unavailable in the USSR, alongside works of contemporary Russian fiction. After 70 years of totalitarianism Russians were hungry for new ideas …