Description
Book SynopsisOriginally written as a series of viral Facebook posts, then released as a cult hit in St. Petersburg, Meshchaninova’s serialized memoir-novel tackles gender politics and abuse with honest, cutting language. Stories of A Life depicts the life of Natasha, a young woman who suffers abuse first at the hands of her stepfather Sasha and then by young men in the village nearby. This powerful, postmodern novel witnesses the Dickensian struggles of provincial life and reckons with the complicity of fellow women. Starkly down-to-earth yet funny and informal, Stories of A Life demands that we bear witness to the bleakness of a young womanhood in post-Soviet Russia. Meshchaninova is held in high regard as part of a new wave of women filmmakers in Russia, and with this collection cements her position as a woman willing to stare down the viewer and demand complicity.
Trade Review“Tearing herself free with screams, taunts, and something very much like poetry, Meshchaninova has given us an obscenely private text as frightening as the novels of Stephen King and as sharply formed as the tragedies of Racine... it’s not every year that a voice so pure and powerful emerges in Russian literature.” ––Galina Yuzefovich, Meduza “Meshchaninova’s scenarios are skin torn to blood, pink glasses discarded as unnecessary, truth uncomfortable for the inhabitants of parallel reality.” ––Elena Tanakova, Gallerix “It is not often that people are ready to open up, and only the willingness to open up distinguishes real literature.” ––Aglaya Kurnosenko “The author, in general, is not trying to shock, she is simply not afraid to say. But this simultaneous openness and ruthlessness strikes with unexpected force and long action. Leads the reader out of their comfort zone. Makes him an involuntary and seemingly guilty observer." ––Elena Makeenko, Gorky Media “This story is not about disaster, but about what happens to the survivors… This is the new Russian prose.”–– Vladimir Pankratov Winner of a 2020 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant 2018 NatsBest nominee Longlisted for the NOS(E) Award
