Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics
by Nina L. Khrushcheva
List Price:
Our Price: $14.38
You Save: $13.62 (49%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $10.35 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Nina L. KhrushchevaEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-01-09
ISBN: 0300108869
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Yale University Press
Book Reviews of Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics
Book Review: Too much Russianness is Russia's Handicap
Summary: 5 Stars
The political argument is at the center of Nina Khrushcheva's book: Russia does not need to become American, but to combine its Russianness with some practical applications borrowed from other countries, i.e. Russians don't need to give up their Russianness, they need to give up the totality of their Russianness. If the philosophical idea at the center of this work is not strikingly original, the approach to it through Nabokov certainly is, and the text is refreshing in its avoidance of the didacticism and dryness of a political or philosophical tract. And its publication is certainly timely, as Russians continue to search for a way to reconcile their own history with the possibilities of democracy.
"Finally, sixteen years ago, when we became ready to exchange our communist collectivism for democratic individualism," Khrushcheva writes, "it was time to turn to new authors and new role models, renouncing the typical Russian worldview of communal values, mysticism, and the suffering of a the human soul, best defined by Fyodor Dostoevsky in his novels such as The Idiot, The Devils, and The Brothers Karamazov, etc. These qualities, he promised, would guarantee Russia's moral victory over the rest of the world.
For those tired of waiting for the nineteenth-century writer's unfulfilled prophesies, twentieth-century Nabokov never looked better: Russian and Western, an aristocrat and an orphan (an exile), traditional (in the sense that he's he was heir to the Russian literary and cultural traditions) and modern, national (Russian, American, European--something for everyone), and international.
Himself rejecting Dostoevsky, Nabokov offered a more constructive, more aesthetic, and more practical variant of the search for self-conception. Nabokov showed others how to live now--in a world with open borders, among different people, different countries, and different cultures. He showed us how to live in the new solitude of multiple worlds."
History Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Audiobooks on Cassette
- Audiobooks on CD
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- e-Books
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Russian Cultural History
Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politicsby Nina L. Khrushcheva
Yale University Press; Published: 2008-01-09; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.98
Price in other shops:
Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring; The Firebird Suite (1919)Release date: 2004-02-24; Music CD
Best price: $6.24
Price in other shops:
Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No1, Op107; Violin Concerto No1 (revised), Op99Release date: 1998-06-16; Music CD
Best price: $7.30
Price in other shops:
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Novelby Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2005-03-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.98
Price in other shops:
Peter the Greatby Robert K. Massie
Ballantine Books; Published: 1986-01-12; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
Eugene Onegin and Other Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)by Alexander Pushkin
Everyman's Library; Published: 1999-05-18; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.70
Price in other shops:
Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracyby Anna Politkovskaya
Holt Paperbacks; Published: 2007-01-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.99
Price in other shops:
The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2002-02-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $16.69
Price in other shops:
The Portable Chekhov (Viking Portable Library)by Anton Chekhov
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1977-08-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.16
Price in other shops:
The Portable Nineteenth-Century Russian Reader (Viking Portable Library)Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1993-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.75
Price in other shops:
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
War and Peace (Vintage Classics)by Leo Tolstoy
Vintage; Published: 2008-12-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.86
Price in other shops:
Indignationby Philip Roth
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 2008-09-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.95
Price in other shops:
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the Worldby Niall Ferguson
Penguin Press HC, The; Published: 2008-11-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.11
Price in other shops:
The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (American Empire Project)by Andrew Bacevich
Metropolitan Books; Published: 2008-08-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.95
Price in other shops:
How Fiction Worksby James Wood
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2008-07-22; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $16.02
Price in other shops:
2666: A Novelby Roberto Bolano
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2008-11-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $19.76
Price in other shops:
The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russiaby Orlando Figes
Picador; Published: 2008-11-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.80
Price in other shops:
Lectures on Literatureby Vladimir Nabokov
Harvest Books; Published: 2002-12-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.17
Price in other shops:
Style Is Matter: The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokovby Leland De La Durantaye
Cornell University Press; Published: 2007-07; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.88
Price in other shops:
Verses and Versions: Three Centuries of Russian Poetry Selected and Translated byby Vladimir Nabokov
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 2008-11-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.98
Price in other shops: