With the opening of Russian and communist-bloc archives dating from the Soviet-era, there has been a significant increase of scholarly writings pertaining to Joseph Stalin. Widely considered to be among the most influential historical figures of the twentieth century, Stalin continues to be a source of intense study. In the absence of a comprehensive compilation of periodical literature, the need for Joseph Stalin: An Annotated Bibliography of English Language Periodical Literature to ...

Discovering happiness in reading the work of an extraordinary writer.The protagonist of Vladimir Nabokov's The Gift playfully dreamed of writing "A Practical Handbook: How to Be Happy." Now, Nabokov's own creative reader Lila Azam Zanganeh lends life to this vision with sly sophistication and ebullient charm, as she shares the delirious joy to be found in reading the masterpieces of "the great writer of happiness."Plunging into the enchanted and lu...

To illuminate the mysterious greatness of Anton Chekhov’s writings, Janet Malcolm takes on three roles: literary critic, biographer, and journalist. Her close readings of the stories and plays are interwoven with episodes from Chekhov’s life and framed by an account of Malcolm’s journey to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Yalta. She writes of Chekhov’s childhood, his relationships, his travels, his early success, and his self-imposed “exile”—always with an eye to connecting them to themes and c...

The Modern Language Association (MLA) awarded the Lois Roth Award to John Woodsworth and Arkadi Klioutchanski of the University of Ottawa’s Slavic Research Group for their translation of Sofia Andreevna Tolstaya’s My Life memoirs.My Life was selected among the top 100 non-fiction works of 2010 by The Globe and Mail.It has also won an honourable mention in the Biography and Autobiography category of the 2010 American Publishers Awards for the Professional an...

"God only knows how many diverse, captivating impressions and thoughts evoked by these impressions... pass in a single day. If it were only possible to render them in such a way that I could easily read myself and that others could read me as I do." Such was the desire of the young Tolstoy. Although he knew that this narrative utopia—turning the totality of his life into a book—would remain unfulfilled, Tolstoy would spend the rest of his life attempting to achieve it. "Who, What A...

The collapse of the Soviet Union brought about radical changes in the Russian literary world. With the state's relinquishment of control over literary production, writers acquired freedom of expression and publication. State publishing houses, now self-supporting enterprises, stopped printing money-losing books and turned to foreign detective novels and erotic literature, effecting a considerable shift in popular taste. The writer, no longer a producer of ideology, has been recast as a str...

This volume addresses a problem of high controversy: Relating the Holocaust to poetic and aesthetic phenomena has often been seen as a taboo, as only authentic testimonies, documents, or at least ‘unliterary’, prosaic approaches were considered appropriate for dealing with the topic. However, from the very beginning of Holocaust literature and culture, there were tendencies towards literarization, poetization, and ornamentalization. Nowadays, aesthetic approaches—also in provocative, taboo...

Archetypes from Underground: Notes on the Dostoevskian Self uncovers archetypal imagery in Dostoevsky’s stories and novels and argues that archetypes bring a new dimension to our understanding and appreciation of his works. In this interdisciplinary study, Harrison analyzes selected texts in light of fresh research in Dostoevsky studies, cultural history, comparative mythology, and depth psychology. He argues that one of Dostoevsky's chief concerns is the crisis of modernity, and ...

Written between 1916 and 1931 and available in English for the first time, Yakubinsky's seminal essays afford us an unprecedented view of the history of modern literary and cultural theory. Addressing central questions of poetics and (socio)linguistics – such as what distinguishes poetry and literature from ordinary language?, where do poems come from?, what is our role in and contribution to the evolution of language?, how are language and politics intertwined? – their insights and critic...

Borges gained his first lessons in philosophy from his father while still a young boy – an intimate home schooling that grew into a long-term obsession. Its ubiquitous presence in his thought and writing has made him one of the most distinctive literary philosophers in the West, expressing itself in a wide-ranging array of fictional essays, metaphysical parables, philosophical poetry, and multifaceted literary artifacts. In contrast to the prevailing perception of Borges as a «dogmatic sce...