Escape Hatch & the Long Road Ahead: Two Novellas - Hardcover

Makanin, Vladimir

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0875011101 ISBN 13: 9780875011103

Publisher: Ardis, 1996

Synopsis

Vladimir Makanin, the most acclaimed writer of post-Soviet Russia, examines the fates of ordinary people of the future--or is it present?--in these two brilliant novellas. These characters are caught in surreal situations which test their ability to retain their humanity. Makanin's world is one of deliberate ambiguity, where nothing, not even the story itself, is as it seems, and haunting imagery is used to appeal directly to a reader's subconscious.

"Vladimir Makanin's name belongs at the top of any list of socialist, or now post-socialist, surrealists...The power of Mr. Makanin's fiction lies precisely in its ambiguity."--New York Times Book Review

About this title

Review

The winner of the 1993 Russian Booker Prize for Baize-Covered Table with Decanter, Vladimir Makanin is nonetheless not well known in the West. The release of Escape Hatch & The Long Road Ahead should change that. This pair of novellas, both published in Russian in 1991, show Makanin to be a skillful and creative post-modernist whose work is rooted in both the tradition of the great masters of 19th-century Russian literature and the unique brand of Surrealism that grew out of the absurdities of life in the Soviet Union. While playing with the conventions of narrative and storytelling--as any good post-modernist must--Makanin grapples with moral choices and ethical dilemmas, as did all the great Russian writers who came before him.

About the Author

Vladimir Semyonovich Makanin is a Russian writer

About this edition

• Publisher: Ardis
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0875011101
• ISBN 13: 9780875011103
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 193