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Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)
by Ludmila Ulitskaya
A new collection of stories by the acclaimed Ludmila Ulitskaya, masterfully translated into English
While we can feel, know, and study the body, the soul refuses definition. Where does it begin and end? What does the soul have to do with love? Does it exist at all, and if so, does it outlast the body? Or are the soul and body really one and the same?
These are questions posed by the characters who inhabit this book of stories by the award-winning Russian writer Ludmila Ulitskaya. A woman believes that the best way to control her life is to control her death. A landscape photographer wonders if the beauty he has witnessed can triumph over decay. A coroner dedicated to science is confronted by a startling physical anomaly, a lonely widow experiences an extraordinary transformation, a woman whose life is devoted to language finds words slipping away from her.
In these eleven stories, artfully rendered into English by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Ulitskaya maps the edges of our lives, tracing a delicate geography of the soul.
"Centrifugal, pensive, often elusive stories by one of the greatest living Russian writers (and leading anti-Putinist)... . The stories are marvels of economy and the unexpected twist, each a memorable tour de force... . A welcome introduction to the short fiction of an essential writer." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[A] magnificent collection ... [by] a writer of boundless tenderness." —Le Monde
"One of the most important living Russian writers." ―Gary Shteyngart
This information about The Body of the Soul was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ludmila Ulitskaya (b. 1943) is an internationally acclaimed Russian novelist and short story writer.
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are an award-winning team of literary translators who have translated over thirty works from the Russian.
Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.
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