Search results for ""Author Antonina W. Bouis""
Alma Books Ltd The Suitcase
Several years after emigrating from the USSR, the author discovers the battered suitcase he had brought with him gathering dust at the back of a wardrobe. As he opens the suitcase, the items he finds inside take on a riotously funny life of their own as Dovlatov inventories the circumstances under which he acquired them. A poplin shirt evokes a story of courtship and marriage, a pair of boots calls up the hilarious conclusion to an official banquet, two pea-green crêpe socks bring back memories of his attempt to become a black-market racketeer, while a double-breasted suit reminds him of when he was approached by the KGB to spy on a Swedish writer. Imbued with a comic nostalgia and overlaid with Dovlatov’s characteristically dark-edged humour and wry power of observation, The Suitcase is a profoundly human, delightfully ironic novel from one of the finest satirists of the twentieth century.
£9.04
Alma Books Ltd A Dog's Heart
"There is absolutely no necessity to learn how to read; meat smells a mile off, anyway. Nevertheless, if you live in Moscow and have a brain in your head, you'll pick up reading willy-nilly, and without attending any courses. Out of the forty thousand or so Moscow dogs, only a total idiot won't know how to read the word 'sausage'." When a stray dog dying on the streets of Moscow is taken in by a wealthy professor, he is subjected to medical experiments in which he receives various transplants of human organs. As he begins to transform into a rowdy, unkempt human by the name of Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov, his actions distress the professor and those surrounding him, although he finds himself accepted into the ranks of the Soviet state. A parodic reworking of the Frankenstein myth and a vicious satire of the Communist revolution and the concept of the New Soviet man, A Dog's Heart was banned by the censors in 1925 and circulated only in samizdat form. Nowadays this hugely entertaining tale has become very popular in Russia, and has inspired many adaptations across the world.
£8.42
Rizzoli International Publications My Hermitage: How the Hermitage Survived Tsars, Wars, and Revolutions to Become the Greatest Museum in the World
Holding one of the largest collections of Western art in the world, the Hermitage is also a product of Russia and its dramatic history. Founded by Empress Catherine the Great in 1764, the stunning Winter Palace was built to house her growing collection of Old Masters and to serve as a home for the imperial family. Tsars came and went over the years, artworks were acquired and sold, buildings were burned down in terrible fires, and still the collections grew. After the violent upheavals of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the palaces and collections were opened to the public. Now, in an unprecedented collection of illuminating essays, Piotrovsky explores the cultural history of a collection as rich in adventure as art. From fascinating intrigues to revelatory scholarship on the collection's incredible art and artifacts, My Hermitage is a profound and captivating story of art's timelessness and how it brings people together.
£27.00