What should a summer reading book be like - exciting, witty, light? AiF.ru introduces you to new book releases that are pleasant not only to take with you on vacation, but also to tell your friends about them.
Modern Russian prose
Vacation is a good time to catch up and read what you haven't read. If you agree with this statement, then pay attention to current books by modern Russian authors.
"Aviator" Evgeniy Vodolazkin
Quote from the book: “Nothing is impossible during a person’s life—impossibility comes only with death. And even then it’s not necessary.”
The novel “The Aviator” by the winner of the “Big Book” and “Yasnaya Polyana” awards, Evgeniy Vodolazkin, today ranks first in the ranking of the most popular books genre "fiction". And if you are not yet familiar with the current book of this season or the author who is already called “Russian” Umberto Eco", it's time to start reading The Aviator.
The hero of Vodolazkin’s new novel is a man who one day woke up in a hospital bed and realized that he didn’t remember anything. Now he has to rebuild his own life bit by bit. The strangest thing is that the calendar says 1999, and his memories are limited to St. Petersburg at the beginning of the twentieth century.
“Vera” Alexander Snegirev
Quote from the book: “Having made a choice, you recognize the path, and every path leads in one direction.”
This winter, Alexander Snegirev received the most prestigious Russian literary award “Russian Booker” for his book “Vera”. His novel is a story about a simple woman named Vera and her unsuccessful search for a real man in modern Russia.
Despite the fact that the choice of the Russian Booker laureate came as a surprise to many, Snegirev’s novel itself was definitely one of the most notable books of 2015. And those who have not yet had time to get acquainted with “Vera,” which reflects Russian reality, should hurry up and form their own opinion about it.
Detectives
If you like solving riddles, the detective genre is what you need. But keep in mind, psychologists say that detective stories, like scientific books, are taken up by those who find it difficult to relax even on vacation and need to maintain the usual level of tension.
"In the Service of Evil" Robert Galbraith
Quote from the book: “If you stop and look closely, beauty can be found almost everywhere, but when each new day is fought, you somehow forget about this free luxury.”
Under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith is none other than the author of the cult saga about Harry Potter. Joanne Rowling. In the Service of Evil is her third book and the final installment in the series about private detective Cormoran Strike. The “Harry Potter Mom” herself admits that “In the Service of Evil” is the only work that gives her the worst nightmares (while working on the manuscript, Rowling had to re-read a bunch of police reports and stories about serial killers).
The adventures in “Service of Evil” begin with Strike’s assistant Robin receiving a package containing a severed female leg. Now detectives have to unravel the name of the terrible criminal.
"Lontano" Jean-Christophe Grange
Quote from the book: “It’s only in the movies that a billionaire’s wife sleeps with a heroic and underpaid policeman. IN real life she prefers to stay by her pool.”
The book of the French journalist and writer Jean-Christophe Grange “Lontano” is one of the most popular on the Russian market today. And the secret is not even in the name of the famous writer and journalist or in his regalia, but in the fact that the author, as usual, came up with a first-class thriller with a complex and exciting intrigue.
This time in the center of the detective story is the family of the French police chief, who are subject to daring attacks. What kind of criminal is operating in France and why the blows fall on the family of policeman number one is not so easy to guess, because Grange is famous for being able to keep readers in suspense until the very last page.
Memoirs and biographies
It has long been proven that reading memoirs and biographies satisfies not only people’s interest in peeping through the keyhole, but also secret narcissism (we all involuntarily look for ideal images of ourselves or our loved ones in great people).
"Jackie Chan. I'm happy" Jackie Chan, Mo Zhu
Quote from the book: “I am an ordinary person who has the courage to do something extraordinary.”
This sincere book will be of interest not only to fans of Chan's talent, but also to everyone who likes works about brave people who are not afraid to make and correct their own mistakes.
« Chicken bouillon for the soul: 101 best stories" Canfield Jack, Hansen Mark Victor, Newmark Amy
Quote from the book: “If you need to cut down a tree with an ax, and you hit it with five strong blows every day, over time even the most a big tree will fall to the ground."
Sales of the most anticipated summer series, “Chicken Soup,” are starting in Russian bookstores. It’s interesting that in 1993 no one wanted to publish this collection of small real life stories, but by 2016 the book, which was rejected by 144 publishing houses, became one of the most successful projects in the history of book publishing.
The collection “Chicken Soup for the Soul: 101 Best Stories” is called so for a reason - it contains hundreds of poignant stories that can heal emotional wounds and strengthen the spirit. The authors introduce readers to the most unexpected characters, among them a failed actress who finds true happiness after learning that she has cancer; the most beautiful girl in town who falls in love with a hunchback after just two sentences and a 13-year-old girl who sold 45,526 boxes of cookies to make her mother's dream come true.
Romance novels
The fashion for novels in the “Fifty Shades of Gray” format has finally passed, and it’s time to look for new books and discover the names of authors not yet familiar to you.
"After you" Jojo Moyes
Quote from the book: “I doubt that happiness is a thing that can be earned.”
At the end of 2015, a continuation of the global bestseller “Me Before You” was published in Russia, which still remains the best-selling book in the country’s bookstores. Jojo Moyes's new book After You tells what happened to the main character of the saga, Lou Clarke, after the death of her lover.
As Moyes herself admitted, she did not intend to write a sequel, but work on the script for the film adaptation and an endless number of letters asking how Lou’s future life turned out did not allow her to forget the characters of the popular novel.
“Sorry...” Janusz Wisniewski
Quote from the book: “Some things remain in memory and evoke appropriate associations only when they are correctly named.”
One of the most popular writers of modern Poland and the author of one of the most republished romance novels“Loneliness on the Internet” wrote a new poignant story. “Forgive me...” by Janusz Wisniewski is told from the perspective of a man who suddenly discovered his wife’s infidelity. The man cannot forgive the betrayal and becomes obsessed with revenge.
It seems that this fantastic story is just a fiction of the author, but in fact the book is based on real events that occurred in the early 1990s in Krakow: the popular jazz singer Andrzej Zauha and his companion Zuzanna Leśniak were shot dead by a jealous husband. Vishnevsky does not just retell this tragic story, he carefully examines the feelings of the heroes.
Today we will talk about best books ah, which came out in 2015. Our favorite authors never cease to delight us and create new masterpieces, and in addition to this, books that were previously not in demand or were simply not understood are being republished. So, we present to you, our dear readers, the 15 best books of 2015. We hope these books will add to your 2015 reading list.
"Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years" - Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami, one of the most famous authors of our time, presented a new book, which immediately became popular among readers.
The main character finds himself in a metropolis. He is still young and amazed by the greatness of Tokyo. He is scared and delighted, and most importantly, he has a home where he can return at any time. He had support in life, until one fine summer day he learns that his familiar world has collapsed. His stronghold of friendship and harmony disappeared. He was simply wiped off the face of the Earth. This news completely changes Tsukuru’s life and a difficult future and many trials await him.
"Marina" - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
This book is published in the “Cemetery of Forgotten Books” series. The detective novel "Marina" was written in 1997. For almost a decade, the author struggled to publish the book, as many counterfeit editions were published, sometimes even with completely different text. But, nevertheless, the book found its readers of all ages.
The novel takes place in the 70s of the last century in Barcelona. It's spring outside. The main character, Oscar, disappeared for a whole week. All this time, his family, friends, acquaintances, teachers and police were looking for him. Where has he been all that time? To this question, Oscar simply answers that every person has his own secret. Then he starts talking amazing story about meeting the mysterious girl Marina.
"To the very ends" - Chuck Palahniuk
Chuck Palahniuk once again delights his fans with an incredible story. The apocalyptic novel by the king of the counterculture will tell, and most importantly, clearly demonstrate hundreds of new possibilities for achieving female pleasure. This book, however, like all other books by the author, bears the age mark 18+.
Penny Harigan is an ordinary secretary who, by chance, attracted the attention of mega-billionaire Linus Maxwell.
Linus is known in very narrow circles under the nickname “The Menopause Boy” and he is very fond of rich, sophisticated ladies. But he invites Penny to dinner and after dinner drags her into a hotel room, where for several days in a row he gives her pleasures that she had never dreamed of before. Everything would be fine if Penny hadn’t accidentally found out that she had become part of an experiment to develop a new line of sex toys for ladies. These toys will be sold all over the world, and women will satisfy their base sexual needs every free minute. Penny decides to stop Linus and prevent him from gaining global erotic domination over all women.
"Una and Salinger" - Frederic Beigbeder
And again a book with an age limit of 18+. The author himself defined the genre of this book as “faction”: from the English “fact” (“fact”) plus “fiction” (“fiction”). In 1940 New York, young author Jerry Salinger meets Una O'Neill, the daughter of a famous playwright. He is 21 and she is only 15 years old. Love, passion and an idyll that lasted only a few days until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, after which the United States entered World War II. Jerry goes to war, and Oona auditions for a Charlie Chaplin film.
Una becomes the wife of a famous comedian.
Salinger went through the war. He made his way through his publications into the big world of literature and wrote the main novel of his life, “The Catcher in the Rye.”
But the most interesting thing is that the book is not about that. The author tells a wonderful story about the meeting of Una and Jerry, which turned into a lifelong separation. About the meeting that determined the lives of these people.
"The third humanity. Voice of the Earth" - Bernard Werber
Bernard Werber continues his socio-fiction series “The Third Humanity” with a new book “The Voice of the Earth”.
The book takes place against the backdrop of an imminent apocalypse. While all of humanity is preparing for the third World War, Gaia - Mother Earth is going to destroy people. But humans and microhumans do not pay attention to her warnings.
Environmentalists are unable to speak on behalf of the Earth. They can only see the near future. To understand what is happening to the planet, human rights activists environment they decide to ask the Mother herself what she thinks about people and everything that happens.
The answer from Mother Earth will help people evolve again, make a huge leap in development. After all, the desire to survive, and most importantly to live, is the best motivation for evolution.
“Planet Water” - Boris Akunin
Boris Akunin's collection has been republished again and contains a large number of illustrations. The collection contains three detective stories.
"Planet Water" was written in 1903 and has the subtitle "technocratic detective story."
Erast Fandorin gives up the search for a sunken galleon with gold to help catch a maniac who is hiding on one of the islands of the Atlantic Ocean.
The nostalgic detective story “Lonely Sail” was published back in 1906. Erast Petrovich is investigating the murder of his former lover.
The last detective story in this collection is called “Where Should We Go?” and is idiotic. Fandorin is investigating a train robbery. A trail that reaches back to the revolutionaries themselves.
"Castle of Glass" - Jeannette Walls
This is an autobiographical novel where the writer talks about her past.
Jeannette talks about her difficult childhood in a large family, where very, very shocking and cruel methods of raising children were practiced. For many years the author hid her past until she realized that if she only freed herself from the burden of the past and terrible secrets, shame and hatred, she would be able to move on and live in peace.
“The sea is my brother. The Lonely Wanderer - Jack Kerouac
This year a collection of Jack Kerouac was published, which contains two novels, “The Sea is My Brother” and “The Lonely Wanderer.”
“The Sea is My Brother” is the writer’s first novel, which was considered lost for half a century. It was only published in 2011. “The Lonely Wanderer” gained popularity during the writer’s lifetime. "The Lonely Wanderer" is a travelogue. And “The Sea is My Brother” is based on the writer’s experience when he worked on a merchant ship. These two works reflect the writer’s style and, most importantly, convey the amazing atmosphere of life of past years. This year, the writer’s work is increasingly in demand among readers.
"Half Code" - Sally Green
This book became the most anticipated in 2015. In some ways it is reminiscent of the story of Harry Potter, and in some ways this book is new and unique. One fact cannot be argued with - this book opens up a fantastic world of adventure and magic.
In England these days, magicians live alongside the Fain and ordinary people. The latter do not even imagine the existence of magic. In the world of magicians, power is controlled by the Council of White Witches, which hates half-breeds and monitors the purity of magical blood.
The main character is the half-breed Nathan. Mother is a White Witch, and father is a Black Sorcerer. A real hunt begins for Nathan and he has no choice but to run. He wants to find his father and receive three gifts that should help him find his Gift. But can Nathan hide his plans from the Council when he is constantly being watched and his entire family is in mortal danger?
"The Goldfinch" - Donna Tartt
Surely, you have already seen this novel on bookstore shelves. This novel won the Pulitzer Prize, and the online store Amazon named this work “Book of the Year.”
Donna Tartt worked on this book for over 10 years.
A book about art and how it affects our lives. At the center of the events is 13-year-old Theo Decker. He was the only one left alive after the terrible explosion that claimed the lives of his relatives. Theo ends up in the system and is now destined to bounce around in foster homes and shelters. His only consolation and meaning in life was the masterpiece of a Dutch old master, which he stole from a museum. This work of art could lead to the death of a lonely child.
"All the Light We Cannot See" - Anthony Doerr
The novel “All the Light We Cannot See” was published quite recently and only a couple of weeks ago appeared on the shelves of bookstores in Russian. The author did an incredible job of creating the book, which took ten years to complete.
The novel is about two children who, without knowing it, are going down different paths, but are moving towards each other. A blind French girl and a timid German boy. They are trying to survive in a world where World War II is raging. They try to survive and not lose their human face, feelings and emotions, they try to preserve their soul. A book about death and love. The book is about war and what it does to ordinary people, how it cripples not only physically and mentally. The book is about how invisible light can conquer even darkness.
"The Luminaries" - Eleanor Catton
The 2013 Man Booker Prize-winning novel was published in Russian for the first time. This book broke two records for this award. “The Luminaries” is not only the largest work of the award, but the author also became the youngest laureate.
The novel takes place in New Zealand at the height of the gold rush. 12 people got together to discuss some rather strange events that happened with their participation. A young guy who owns a huge share of the plots has disappeared. A prospector died and a treasure was found in his hut, and the “night butterfly” embarked on the path of correction. The conspirators tell everything to a stranger who happens to be among them. At the same time, they tell quite strange stories, among which there are blackmail and revenge, and even seance. The entire book is structured according to an astrological structure, which makes it all the more interesting to read this detective novel full of mysticism and mysterious events.
“Three apples fell from the sky” - Narine Abgaryan
Narine Abgaryan is an Armenian writer who writes about her country and its people. One of the most famous books of this writer is “Manyunya”.
And now in the year of the centenary of the genocide Armenian people the author has released a new book that tells about a small village lost somewhere in the mountains and the people who live there. This is a wonderful book about Armenia, traditions, love, death and the intertwining of human destinies. And most importantly, this is a book about incredible strength of spirit and treasures of the soul.
"September Roses" - Andre Maurois
Andre Maurois is considered a classic of French literature of the twentieth century. Author of famous biographies of Hugo, Balze, Dumas and others.
“I Confess” - Jaume Cabret
The book was written in 2011, but was published in Russian and 19 other languages only in 2015.
An antique shop in Barcelona, where among the many valuable things there is an antique violin. Adria, secretly from his father, replaces the violin with his own, after which his father is killed. Adria feels guilty. Many years later, he becomes a scientist and collector, but the mystery of his father’s murder has not been solved, and may soon disappear forever. In addition, Adria is afraid that the love of his life, Sarah, will also disappear. He writes a diary, his confession, because he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
Forbes Life has compiled a release calendar for this year's main book releases
Readers can expect a continuation of Alexey Ivanov’s novel “Tobol”, Elena Ferrante’s “trilogy of unlove”, the second book by Guzel Yakhina and the long-awaited novel by Arundhati Roy. The 2017 Booker Prize-winning Lincoln in the Bardo, Richard Russo's Pulitzer novel Empire Falls, and new stories by Anna Gavalda will be published in Russian. The Forbes Life gallery contains the most interesting new products of 2018 in accordance with the plan for their appearance on sale.
Aleksey Ivanov. “Tobol. Few are chosen"
Publisher: Edited by Elena Shubina
Release date: February
“Tobol. Few are chosen" - the second book of Alexei Ivanov's peplum novel "Tobol". Tsar Peter's reforms plowed up Siberia, and everyone who was "called" to these free lands checks whether they are "chosen" by Siberia. Fugitive schismatics erect their fiery Ship, Russian regiments go for gold to the distant Asian city of Yarkand, the stubborn metropolitan makes his way to the sacred idol of foreigners through the evil darkness of taiga paganism, and the Siberian governor finds himself in the hands of the sovereign. The destinies of the heroes are intertwined, and in the fierce struggle between the old and the new, the history of Siberia and the history of the country are born.
Yulia Zaitseva, co-author of the book “Wilds” and producer of Alexei Ivanov:“In Ivanov’s bibliography, the two-volume Tobol is not only the most voluminous, but also the most daring novel. This is a chess session of simultaneous play on several boards at once, and also blindly. You constantly need to keep dozens of lines and destinies in your head, hear the unique melody of each and persistently and progressively move it towards the finale. It is difficult to decide on an epic; the names of those who dared are known to every schoolchild: Tolstoy, Sholokhov, Grossman... And only a writer with large-scale thinking commensurate with the era can declare himself in this ranks. Ivanov managed to hold two centuries of the Siberian Conquest in his head, bring the game to the finals on all boards and not lose a single game. In my opinion, he turned out to be a grandmaster’s novel.”
Hanya Yanagihara. "People Among the Trees"
Publisher: Corpus
Release date: end of February - beginning of March
Translation from English: Victor Sonkin
After the hotly discussed A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara's debut novel is awaiting readers and critics alike to confirm or deny their impressions of the harrowing story of four friends. Hanya Yanagihara wrote her novel “People Among the Trees” based on real events. In 1950, young doctor Norton Perina travels to a remote Micronesian island, where people live who have the secret of amazing longevity. Perina manages to find out the nature of this phenomenon, and the results of the research promise a revolution in medicine and incredible prospects for humanity. “However, turning a fairy tale into reality is a painful and terrible process, blurring the boundaries between heroism and crime.” Norton Perina's discovery turns into a series of disasters: environmental, social and personal.
Yanagihara's novel is based on the story of the laureate Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine, virologist, pediatrician Daniel Gajduzek, arrested on charges of molesting his adopted children. In an interview, Hanya Yanagihara said more than once that she learned about Gajdusek’s story from her father and was amazed at how cruel and vicious a scientist’s brilliant mind could be. “Men Among the Trees” is a novel told from the perspective of a strong and powerful man. And the book was a success primarily due to the skillfully conveyed voice of evil.
Translator of the novel Viktor Sonkin:“A Russian reader who opens a new book by Yanagihara will most likely have a pre-formed expectation based on the experience of A Little Life, which made such a stunning impression here - on both fans and detractors. And indeed, at least one important topic, the topic of child abuse (I’m not throwing away spoilers, because literally the entire content of the novel is retold in newspaper articles in the very first lines; the essence of this novel is completely different) in the book. But in everything else - in structure, in characters, in supporting ideas - this is a completely different book, not similar to A Little Life. It seems to me that what is especially important is that in A Little Life the reader meets (at least in the present tense) with a huge number of good, kind, noble people. In "Men Among the Trees" there are no such characters at all, not a single one. This is a real “novel without a hero” in this sense. And at the same time, he talks about some incredibly important things: about the search for scientific truth, about being true to oneself, about death and trying to get away from it. Moreover, it is an exciting adventure novel of its own; True, I have a hard time accepting otherwise, but I’m used to the fact that connoisseurs of literature, especially Russian literature, may believe that plot is something outdated and unnecessary in literature. Well, fortunately, Yanagihara has no such illusions.”
Boris Minaev. "Marlboro Cowboy, or Girls of the 80s"
Publisher: Time
Release date: end of February - beginning of March
Writer Boris Minaev, a Russian Booker and Yasnaya Polyana finalist with his novel Soft Fabric, gives the Russian answer to Haruki Murakami. After writing major prose, the Japanese fiction writer pleased readers with a collection of lyrical stories, Men Without Women. Boris Minaev wrote twenty-three personal stories about the lives of young women. “The Marlboro Cowboy, or Girls of the 80s” is a subtle and funny book about youth and how fate is born from absurd accidents.
Boris Minaev: “I have always found it easier to communicate with women than with men. You need to be friends with men in a certain sense - drink heavily, definitely do something together or go to the bathhouse, for example, which I can’t stand, and only then talk about it. And only on certain topics. You can talk to women about everything at once. All these unnecessary conversations, however, always have a second, third, fourth, or even a hundred and fourth meaning, which you won’t immediately understand, but it’s also very exciting. From these conversations, or rather, from their stories, my book was born. Our generation lives in it, and, with a slight glare, it reflects an entire era that formally began in the 1980s, but in fact even earlier, but for some reason still does not want to end. I don't know what that means, maybe we'll all live forever? Actually, that’s exactly what I was trying to understand.”
Julian Barnes. "One story"
Publisher: ABC-Atticus
Release date: March
Translation from English: Elena Petrova
“Almost each of us has a single story that we want to tell. This does not mean that nothing else happens in life: there are countless events that can turn into an endless story. But only one will mean something, only one is worth being heard. And here is my story." With these words he prefaces his new story intellectual Julian Barnes, one of the best modern prose writers.
His new hero, the charming Paul, very much like Barnes himself, begins his story with a philosophical and at the same time very personal question: “Would you like to love more and suffer more or love less and suffer less?” He recalls the story of his great love, the student summer when 19-year-old Paul met married, 48-year-old Susan - and everything in the world ceased to matter. That “one story” that Paul is willing to tell became the defining event in his life.
“The seemingly completely hermetic Booker novel “The Presentiment of the End”, which did not envisage a continuation, received an unexpected development in “One Story,” Forbes Life said editor of the publishing house "Azbuka" Alexander Guzman. - This is a kind of anatomy of first love, which serves as the key to everything that happens to a person further, until the end of his life. And it’s not for nothing that in a recent interview dedicated to the release of “One Story,” Barnes referred to Turgenev: “ Let us remember Turgenev, one of the greatest prose writers who wrote about love. The story "First Love" is based on his own youthful experiences. As a thirteen-year-old teenager, he became madly infatuated with a girl of about twenty, but made a devastating discovery: she was his father’s lover. Paul, the hero of my current novel, says that first love leaves its mark on the rest of your life: either as an example or as a counterexample».
Jun Li. "Kinder than loneliness"
Publisher: Corpus
Release date: March
Translation from English: Leonid Motylev
Kinder Than Loneliness is a powerful novel about the weight of memory and the severity of loss. Chinese-American writer Jun Li tells the story of three characters who are connected by a 25-year-old mystery. The story turns out to be about how the past torments the soul, how hundreds of thousands of little things become torture and determine the present and the future. As one of the characters says, “even the most innocent creature, if driven into a corner, is capable of a heartless attack.”
Yiyun Li's characters live far from each other (in America and China), but once upon a time all three lived in Beijing and were friends with Shaoai, who was daring and independent. After the June events in Tiananmen Square, Shaoai was expelled from the university, and in the fall the girl died under strange circumstances. For three friends, Shaoai's death and a painful cocktail of guilt and suspicion become an obsession and destiny.
Translator of the novel Leonid Motylev: “I listened to the author of this book last spring in the Moscow Dostoevsky library. By that time, I had read the novel, began to translate, and after her speech I asked her whose side she was on: the young rebel Shaoai or the older generation, who believed that “you can’t break a butt with a whip”? She said she didn't know the answer. The reader is left to judge for himself (or refrain from judging). Sadder and more subdued than her harrowing first novel, The Tramps, this book leaves much to the reader's own devices. One feels that Lee's true element is story, and I was not surprised to learn that the author who greatly influenced her was the recently deceased William Trevor, Chekhov's heir. Like Trevor, like Chekhov - and, perhaps, in the traditions of Eastern literature - Lee gives the reader signals without pedaling them, encouraging internal work, to empathy and understanding. Anyone who has reached the last chapters of the novel, for example, must understand for himself why the heroine reacts so strangely to words about chilly skin. And, if we talk about large topics, the reader may think about memory. The memory of the trauma of the events in Tiananmen Square is neither alive nor dead, like a poisoned one, dragging out an interminable existence in Shaoai.”
George Saunders. "Lincoln in the Bardo"
Publisher: Eksmo
Release date: March
Translation from English: Grigory Krylov
58-year-old Texan George Saunders won the Booker Prize for Literature with his novel “Lincoln in the Bardo” in the fall of 2017 for his novel about the American president. It is based on one night in the life of Abraham Lincoln. The president's 11-year-old son, Willie, is buried in a marble crypt in Georgetown Cemetery. A grief-stricken father arrives at the cemetery under the cover of darkness to be with his son. And Willie himself finds himself between the dead and the living, in a ghostly world inhabited by the shadows of the past. Actually, bardo (literally “between two”) in Buddhism means that very intermediate state between that world and this one. Saunders alternates the complaints, screams, lamentations and groans of those around Willie with a collage of historical documents and books, fictional and real, so that the boy’s life is shown against the backdrop of political events of that time. What makes all this postmodernist cutting a real, no-nonsense, fictional novel is an elderly Texan, an amazing stylist, a master of apt aphoristic statements, precise observations and succinct conclusions.
“The novel has been called experimental by critics,” explained Forbes Life Head of the Foreign Prose Department of the Eksmo Publishing House Julia Rautbort, - and indeed, it is interesting not only from the point of view of content, but also from the point of view of form, which a thoughtful reader will certainly appreciate. First of all, it seems to me, he attracts with his clearly expressed humanistic orientation. Saunders said that when he heard the story of the death of President Lincoln's son, he immediately had an image that combined the Lincoln Memorial and Michelangelo's Pieta (a sculpture of the Virgin Mary mourning Christ). President Lincoln, who in the minds of the majority is the national hero of America, the president of the country, appears in Saunders' novel as an inconsolable father mourning his beloved son. This plot motif allows the author to reach a global generalization: what death is and how it should be treated.”
“If we talk about Saunders’ search in the field of form, then it must be said: with every page, every line, the author tests the possibilities of the word, the limits of what is permissible: are the means used sufficient to convey the author’s thought to the reader, where is the boundary beyond which the form becomes not a means, but an end in itself,” said novel translator Grigory Krylov. - For a translator, such a book is a challenge, a pleasure, and mortal torment: dangers and difficulties lurk in every sentence; I hope that with the help of editors and proofreaders they were overcome with varying degrees of success.”
Anne Tyler. "Adopting America"
Publisher: Phantom Press
Release date: spring
Translation from English: Love Sum
Perhaps the deepest and most intense novel by Anne Tyler, one of the main American writers of our time, already well known to Russian readers thanks to A Spool of Blue Thread and The Accidental Tourist. Adopting America is a story that shows the United States from two perspectives: the people born and raised there, and the migrants who came to a foreign country and fell in love with it.
“The book is about what it means to be an American. Two families who would never meet in ordinary life collide at the airport: the Native American Donaldsons and the Yazdan couple, of Iranian origin, Forbes Life said Chief Editor publishing house "Phantom Press" Igor Alyukov. - Both couples are awaiting the arrival of the baby girls they adopted from Korea. The children arrive and the adults decide to celebrate their first anniversary together. This becomes a tradition - two families meet once a year, and gradually their destinies become intertwined. The novel is full of light, tenderness, and amazing observations of life.”
Guzel Yakhina. "My children"
Publisher: Edited by Elena Shubina
Release date: end of April - beginning of May
“My Children” is the second book by the young writer Guzel Yakhina, winner of the “Big Book” and “Yasnaya Polyana” awards for her debut novel “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes.” Yakhina’s new novel about the history of the Volga Germans in the first half of the twentieth century. After difficult trials, Jacob Bach, a schoolteacher, turned away from the world and took a vow of silence. He raises his only daughter Anche on a secluded farm in the wilderness of the steppe. He lives quietly and calmly, writes fairy tales and seeks peace. But the magical fairy tales of Schulmeister Bach are strangely embodied in reality - “and the mute hermit against his will becomes a demiurge, capable of changing the surrounding reality with the power of imagination.” But does this gift protect him? Is it possible for Yakov to write his own destiny and save himself and his loved ones? Talent and love can hardly save you from all-destructive rage, confusion, chaos and cruelty, but there is nothing else to hope for in a terrible hour.
At the request of Forbes Life Guzel Yakhina presented a new novel and answered whether there was any fear about the second novel after the huge success of “Zuleikha”: “There were fears, of course. The attraction of Zuleikha’s story was very strong, and I understood that the new novel would be treated much more strictly. Perhaps this is why one of the central motifs in the novel “My Children” was overcoming fear. If we talk about the philosophy of the novel, for me this story is primarily about the mythological nature of consciousness: no matter what happens in a person’s life, he will look for and find familiar images and archetypes. The main character, a Russian German named Bach, is a witness and participant in the early Soviet era, and sees German folklore stories in what is happening. German fairy tales come to life in a 1920s and 1930s setting. The 24 years of the existence of German autonomy on the Volga are turning into a figurative code for what was happening in the country. I wanted to talk about the world of the German Volga region - bright, original, alive. About a world once created by strangers in a foreign country, but today lost in the past. But this is also a universal story: about the love of a man for a woman, about the passionate love of a father for his daughter, about how great love gives rise to fears in our hearts and at the same time helps to overcome these fears.”
Oleg Ermakov. "Rainbow and Heather"
Publisher: Time
Release date: spring
Oleg Ermakov, winner of the Yasnaya Polyana Prize for the simultaneously melodious and detective-twisted “Song of the Tungus,” wrote a historical novel about his native Smolensk, which the Poles at one time called the castle ABOUT m, and the Russians - a fortress in the west of their kingdom. In the spring of 1632, the young nobleman Nikolaus Vrzosek came here, and in February 2015, the Moscow wedding photographer Pavel Kostochkin came here. Both peer with curiosity at the outlines of the castle-fortress and love awaits both: one for the granddaughter of an icon painter and herbalist, the other for someone else’s bride.
Forbes Life himself told about how two private stories are fused together Oleg Ermakov: “In a provincial town, our contemporary, a metropolitan wedding photographer, comprehends living history- past and present. This comprehension is inspired by the feeling of love. About the same thing happened four hundred years ago with a Polish nobleman who arrived in the remote castle of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - the Smolensk fortress, where at the same time the ancestors of the great Russians served the crown: Glinka and Tvardovsky. And where Yuri Lermontov’s ancestor, Scottish captain Lermont, laid his head. Smolensk is like a meeting place between East and West, a city where “Toledans” professing Russian Quixoteism hold their tea parties. The city, singing with clay calcined in the fire, becomes the fate of both the nobleman Nikolaus Vrzosek and the capital’s photographer Pavel Kostochkin.”
“The plasticity of the letter is amazing, defending the honor of classical Russian prose,” writes in “New World” literary critic Irina Rodnyanskaya, - the frosty winter in the Smolensk forest makes your blood run cold, and you involuntarily bundle up while sitting in a heated room. The genius of the place breathes in a variety of authenticities (the fruit of observational imagination, and not pedantic study): the tactful multilingualism of the book (Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish remarks and sayings; the title is a translation from Belarusian and Polish of the names of the heroine and hero) emanates a very special flavor of the border region, which weans us from historical and political superficiality. But this is not the main thing. The novel is an adventure novel in the sense in which one is accustomed to thinking about the novels of Walter Scott and, not without looking back at them, about Pushkin’s “The Captain’s Daughter.”
Chloe Benjamin. "Immortelle"
Publisher: Phantom Press
Release date: spring
Translation from English: Marina Izvekova
This is a novel about the unpredictability of life, about personal choice and what determines fate more: family and roots or a complete separation from them.
New York, 1969. A rumor has spread in the Lower East Side about the appearance of a mysterious psychic woman who predicts people the day of their death. Four young Golds - from seven to thirteen years old - out of curiosity, set out to find out their future fate. The last to extend her hand to the fortune teller is Varya, the eldest of the children. Looking at her palm, the woman breaks into a smile: “Oh, you will be fine, you will die in 2044.” The happy girl goes out into the street, and her gloomy brothers and sister are already waiting there.
“In the coming decades, prophecies will begin to come true,” said Forbes Life editor Igor Alyukov. - The fate of the children will turn out to be bizarre. Simon Gold will flee to San Francisco, where he will lead a bohemian life. After meeting with the fortune teller, Clara will plunge deeper and deeper into her dreams every year, not distinguishing too much between her fantasies and reality. Daniel, a born leader, will pursue a career as a military doctor. And Varya... Varya will devote herself to studying the problem of immortality, balancing between science and fiction. A novel of amazing depth about the connection between inevitability and freedom of choice, about the intertwining of illusion and reality, about the strength of family ties and the forces that tear them apart. Great book, just great."
Arundhati Roy. "Ministry of Utmost Happiness"
Publisher: AST
Release date: May
Translation from English: Alexander Anvaer
After her debut and very powerful novel The God of Small Things, which delighted Julian Barnes and John Updike, Indian writer Arundhati Roy remained silent for two decades. All these years she was actively involved in social and political activities, but did not write fiction. Arundhati Roy, in her own words, was persuaded by her friend, 1972 Booker laureate John Berger, to turn her new idea into a novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. British publishers are unanimous: Arundhati Roy's second work is "an amazing, multi-layered book - perhaps the best novel we have read in recent years."
“This is an amazing book,” confirmed Forbes Life novel translator Alexander Anvaer. - The author managed to dispel the myth created by the famous sentimental “Indian” films and ancient misconceptions of European travelers. India is by no means just “incense, jewels and gods.” From the very first lines, the reader is bombarded with the terrifying reality of the existence of the marginalized, caste contradictions that still exist, despite the legislative ban, separatism, which creeps out of all the cracks at the first opportunity. There is a feeling of hopelessness, but it miraculously dissipates with further reading. The whole point is that the author loves his heroes. Each character is written out, sculpted with love - even to the last scoundrel and scoundrel, whom the author presents as a living person. After a few dozen pages, you stop perceiving India and its people as something exotic. You see people just like you. And in this realism, authenticity, irony, sincerity, optimism, the guarantee of the long life of this and similar books.”
“The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” is a difficult novel, but you won’t forget it, comments the head of the department of translated genre literature Irina Arkharova. - “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” is like a Persian carpet woven from different stories. Be it the life of an untouchable hijra and a foundling girl with their incredible and impossible love, or the life of a militant Musa, who lost his daughter and wife, who sacrifices his love for a woman for the sake of an ideal. And I think that, despite the complexity and dissimilarity of the characters and the sometimes active demonstration of the author’s political views, this unusual and very difficult novel should have been published in Russian.”
Elena Ferrante. "Lost Daughter"
Publisher: Sinbad
Release date: spring Summer
Translation from Italian: Olga Tkachenko
Good news for fans of the Neapolitan Quartet: Ferrante fever continues. In the new season, the Sinbad publishing house promises to publish three early novels by the most mysterious Italian writer - the so-called “trilogy of unlove.” In addition to “The Lost Daughter,” we are waiting for translations of the books “Troubling love” (working title “Obsessive Love”) and “The Days of Abandoment” (working title “Days of Loneliness”).
“These are three stories that are not related to each other,” explains Irina Bachkalo, Deputy General Director of the Sinbad Publishing House, - only Ferrante’s unique style remains common: it’s as if she puts a large mirror in front of us and helps us see our own destiny in the lives of distant Neapolitan women.”
The main character of the novel “The Lost Daughter,” Leda, is forty-seven years old, she has just gained freedom: her daughters have finally grown up and gone to Canada to live with their father. Leda is not at all bothered by parting with her children and loneliness: finally, there is silence and cleanliness at home and plenty of time for herself and her favorite work. The heroine rents an apartment on the Ionian coast for a month and a half to bask in the sun, leisurely read books, and write articles. However, there is something more interesting than books on the beach. Leda watches the large and not very friendly family of her fellow Neapolitans and cannot take her eyes off the little girl, her young mother and the ugly doll, to which they both pay too much attention... This strange trinity forces Leda to commit an absolutely inexplicable act and invade someone else's life, and at the same time completely rethink your own.
“Naples, a doll, a frighteningly sincere confession of the heroine-storyteller - before us is Ferrante’s creative workshop,” comments by the editor-in-chief of the Sinbad publishing house Elena Golovina. - In “The Lost Daughter,” a reader familiar with the story of Lila and Lenou will probably guess the sketches for the “Neapolitan Quartet.” At the same time, this is an independent, deep, full-blooded text that explores in detail the topic of motherhood in its most dramatic aspects.”
Anna Gavalda. "Fendre l'armure"
Publisher: AST
Release date: May-June
After several novels, Anna Gavalda is finally taking up again the short story with which she once burst into literature, releasing the amazingly powerful collection “I would like someone to be waiting for me somewhere.” In the new seven short stories, her sensitivity, empathy, and ability to reveal her characters and make them not just talk, but live, are again evident.
“Anna Gavalda was always not averse to going into the shadows and giving the opportunity to characters, partly invented by her, partly taken directly from life, to speak in their own voices and independently tell about their turmoil, sorrows and hopes,” says Dmitry Rumyantsev, leading editor of translated literature of the “Genres” editorial office. - In the new collection, which includes seven short and not so short stories, she with extraordinary skill, each time adjusting the language to a new character and widely drawing from colloquial and even slang vocabulary, creates (auto)portraits of people from a wide variety of social strata. All these people have one thing in common: fate did not spare them. They feel bad, lonely, hurt, and they are tired of pretending that everything is fine. They are ready to bare their wounded hearts to the first person they meet, including the reader, and try to gain thanks to this, if not confidence in future happiness, then at least a little peace of mind and a willingness to accept the next battles with honor.”
Gavalda’s characters talk about loneliness, the pain of loss, the magic of meetings and the power of love - they come to the reader “with an open visor”, trusting the most fragile moments of life, when everything literally falls apart and you need to find the strength to start from scratch. Among them is a young man who has just attended his ex-girlfriend's wedding and is on the train home, a little drunk and drained; a businessman, overwhelmed with thoughts of his missing friend, plundering the minibar in his hotel room in Seoul; a truck driver who loses his son and cries out his grief to a dog; the father of the family, summoned to school by an angry headmistress... They all want one thing - to be heard.
Here's what she said about the collection herself Anna Gavalda: “I could say that this is a collection of short stories, stories - there are seven of them in total, and they are written in the first person - but I see the book differently. For me, these are not stories and, to a lesser extent, characters, for me they are people. Real people. There is Lyudmila, Paul, Jean! The rest don't have names. They just say "I". Almost everyone talks about themselves at night; in their state it is difficult to understand what time of day it is. They need to speak out to clarify a lot for themselves, they are completely open, trusting, they destroy the armor. Not everyone succeeds, but I was moved by the way they tried to do it. It’s quite pretentious of me to say that the characters I invented touched me, but I’ll repeat to you once again: for me there are no characters here - only people, completely real people, and it’s them I entrust to you today.”
Sebastian Faulks. "Angleby"
Publisher: Sinbad
Release date: May June
Translationfrom English: Maria Makarova
One of the most widely read British novelists, a master of subtle psychological writing, the creator of “And the Birds Sang...” and “Where My Heart Beats” suddenly spoke to the reader in a previously unfamiliar voice. This voice, according to Faulks himself, he “heard in his head one morning. He simply reasoned and dictated. I sat down and began to write down. I didn’t know what he wanted, and I didn’t suspect that he was my narrator.” Thus was born Mike Engleby, on whose behalf the story is told (a kind of confession or diary), a Cambridge student, a native of the “lower classes”, a lonely sarcastic observer with a phenomenal memory, in which huge gaps gape.
“What did he forget and does he want to remember it? Meticulous in detail, isn't he fooling us - and himself - about the most important things? The reader inevitably thinks about this when one of the students, whom Mike silently adores from afar, suddenly disappears without a trace. But the narrator becomes the owner of her diary, - reveals the details of the plot novel editor Elena Golovina and immediately warns: this is not a detective story at all. - Rather, the writer’s next approach to his favorite theme - the tragedy of human existence, the mystery and fragility of the mind, the nature of time. This time from the dark side, invisible to us.”
This is perhaps one of Faulks' most complex novels: the novel is the confession of student Mike Engleby, suspected of murdering his beloved Jennifer. As The Guardian writes, “Angleby is the most lively hero to come from the pen of Sebastian Faulks. Disarmingly strange and insightful."
Zyulfyu Livaneli. "My Brother's Story"
Publisher: Eksmo
Release date: summer
Translation from Turkish: Apollinaria Avrutina
72-year-old Omer Zülfü Livaneli is one of the most successful modern Turkish writers and is also a film director, composer and a bit of a politician. In the 1970s he emigrated from the country political reasons and until 1984 he lived in Europe, where he began to write. But Livaneli’s real success came with the “Turkish” novel “The Eunuch from Constantinople,” and with each new book he became more and more famous. Literary critics call Livaneli the Turkish Murakami for his ability to combine the everyday and the eternal in his texts.
“Livaneli is not only a skilled storyteller, but also an insidious manipulator,” Forbes Life told book editor Yulia Chegodaykina.- He deliberately sets traps to confuse the reader, cause indignation, surprise and admiration. There is not a single superfluous word in “My Brother's Story”; every detail is in its place and works at the right time. The novel is so melodic that it turns the reader into a sensitive listener. And while reading, you even breathe every once in a while for fear of missing the quietest note.”
"My Brother's Story" begins with a murder and ends with a suicide, Livaneli weaves together stories of the present and the past: stolen love, a prison dungeon, a disaster, a journey and an impossible rescue.
The novel was written five years ago and has already been translated into 37 languages. The book will appear in Russian thanks to the permanent translator of the Turkish nobel writer Orhan Pamuk Apollinaria Avrutina. At the request of Forbes Life, she spoke about the novel and its author: « Poet and director, prose writer and composer, singer, musician and UNESCO ambassador... Here is just a small list of activities of one of the most famous Turks after Orhan Pamuk, Zulfyu Livaneli. Livaneli has a lot in common with Russia; he has visited our country more than once, and has been friends with Gorbachev for many decades, but his books will only now be published in Russian. "The Story of My Brother" is perhaps Livaneli's most cinematic novel. A novel that begins, it would seem, as an ordinary detective story, but turns into “1001 Nights,” the tales of which lure the reader, making him forget about what exactly lured him into the labyrinth of meanings, signs and images. Fear and pity, curiosity and disgust, surprise and reconciliation - these are just some of the feelings that await the patient listener. The language of the novel is incredibly simple - as simple as the language of a storyteller can be - and at the same time this “voice of Scheherazade” beckons and attracts, and the reader does not have time to look back when all three hundred pages of the novel are behind him.”
Frederick Beigbeder. "Life Without End"
Publisher: ABC-Atticus
Release date: August
Translation from French: Elena Klokova
“Life is a hecatomb. 59 million deaths per year. 1.9 people die every second. 158,857 people die every day. While you were reading these lines, twenty people died in the world, or more if you read slowly. Why should we endure this carnage under the pretext of the natural process of life? Before, I rarely thought about death. As I get older, such thoughts take hold of me more and more often,” wrote Frederic Beigbeder in the preface to the new fiction novel.
The curly-haired, charismatic advertiser from “99 Francs” and “Ideal” has matured, the unreasonable young man, confident that love lasts three years, has passed the stage romantic egoist and even managed to sum up the first results of the end of the world. Fifty-two-year-old Begbeder is no longer obsessed with entertainment, business, beautiful girls and club life, he is no longer worried about the age of love, but age itself scares the hell out of him. When you have success and money, you want to stay forever young even more.
Here's what Forbes Life said Galina Solovyova, editor of the Azbuka publishing house: “The bad news: this is not a novel, this is an essay about finding immortality for yourself. The good news is that it’s great that this is not a novel. If you are not too immersed in the topic of life extension, then it is educational. The show off is in place, but you can still feel that our Begbeder is getting wiser... From the new FB novel you can extract a dozen cynically ironic phrases that are perfect for further quotation. He’s good at aphorisms.”
And here are the most interesting quotes from book:
“At fifty, death ceases to be an abstraction.”
“You run in a crowd until you’re fifty, then the crowd thins out, and you stop rushing.”
"Religion- It’s a spa for the soul.”
“Parents are our shield in the face of death.”
“There is something I can’t understand: to drive a car you need to get a license, but to create a new life you don’t. Any idiot can be a father."
Ali Smith. "Autumn"
Publisher: Eksmo
Release date: August
Translation from English: Valery Nugatov
Ali Smith’s lyrical novel “Autumn,” which was shortlisted for last year’s Booker and narrowly lost to “Lincoln in the Bardo,” is the first of four in Smith’s so-called seasonal quartet. She does not hide the fact that she planned to write three more novels: “Spring,” “Summer” and “Winter” - “about how time passes and how we live it, changing with it.” And in this sense, “Autumn” is a very modern text: Ali Smith writes about events today- from Brexit to contemporary artists. But at the same time, “Autumn” will be called a novel about understanding the current political situation. last resort. Yes, Ali Smith’s attentive gaze does not escape the smallest signs of the deformation of society, but the melodic, very beautiful, even poetic novel is primarily about the autumn of life and, of course, about love.
Editor of the novel Dmitry Obgolts: “I would like to call the novel poetic, if the word “poetry” when describing prose were not perceived rather with a negative connotation, like that loose prose, where there is a lot of sublimity, but little substance. “Autumn,” on the contrary, is full of that invisible substance that we call either the fabric of life, the essence of being, or the material from which we and everything around us are made. Smith’s book is that rare case when formal lyricism retains prosaic weight.”
Richard Russo. "Empire Falls"
Publisher: Phantom Press
Release date: summer autumn
Translation from English: Elena Poletskaya
68-year-old Richard Russo is one of the most prominent contemporary American authors, but due to some misunderstanding, his books have never been published in Russian. Meanwhile, almost all of Russo’s novels have been filmed: for example, the film based on the novel “No Fools” with Paul Newman and Bruce Willis has become a cinema classic.
For his novel Empire Falls, Russo received the Pulitzer Prize in 2002. This is the story of Miles Rob, the humble manager of the nondescript Empire Grill cafe. Miles spent his entire life in the small town of Empire Falls, Maine. It once saw better days, but logging is no longer taking place, factories are going bankrupt, and things in the city are going from bad to worse. Even the once powerful Whiting clan, by and large, only had its former glory and decaying real estate left. Miles himself has problems with his wife and not everything is going smoothly at work; he knows that he is unlikely to be able to seriously change his life, but at least he can maintain decency and adequately raise his adored teenage daughter. "Empire Falls" is a very personal and at the same time not a chamber, but an almost epic social novel. Richard Russo shows our best and worst qualities, our own fears and hopes with the grace and compassion of a true master.
“By taking on the publication of Rousseau’s Pulitzer novel, we hope that the writer will have the same successful Russian fate as Anne Tyler, with whom they are in some sense literary relatives,” Forbes Life said dDirector of Phantom Press Alla Steinman. - Richard Russo's novels are deep family tragicomedies. A sad and funny story about the inhabitants of a small town that once flourished, but has now fallen into decay. Most of its inhabitants barely make ends meet, and their lives are a continuous “Groundhog Day”. Miles Robie, like everyone else in Empire Falls, has seen better days, but has long been simply drifting - alas, from bad to worse. As the owner of his run-down diner, he not only observes the life of the town, he is a witness to a passing era. Empire Falls is ruled by the heiress of a wealthy family, a powerful and cruel lady who delights in pulling the strings that weave through everything here. And Miles Robie flutters on one of these threads. There are terrible secrets, universal tragedies, and a lot of humor, but most importantly, the whole book is permeated with warm irony.”
Gabriel Tallent. “My Absolute Darling” (working title: “The One Who Is Absolutely Dear”)
Publisher: Sinbad
Release date: autumn winter
Translation from English: Maria Stepanova
A literary debut that became a world bestseller in 2017, a heart-warming story of a teenage girl’s childhood coming of age. A powerful novel about addiction, cruelty and painful love against the background of the confrontation between civilization and wild nature.
“You need to experience the nearness of death before you begin to truly live, and accept your life as a blessing,” Martin Alveston instructs his 14-year-old daughter. To any other girl this advice would seem monstrous, but she accepts it with gratitude. Her father taught her to shoot at the age of six, she knows how to make a fire and drive a truck, and on her father’s orders she can cut off the finger of an annoying visitor.
Her father teaches her everything he knows, he methodically places weapons in her hands with which her daughter will be able to destroy him. But until she grows up, her father manipulates her with fear, love and shame. As translator Anastasia Zavozova wrote on her blog, “the girl lives in psychological captivity, opens canned food with her teeth, drinks raw eggs and loves his father to death. The only question is: until whose death?”
“From what I have read in recent years, this novel made the strongest impression on me,” Forbes Life told Irina Bachkalo, who bought the rights to the novel for the Sinbad publishing house.-Very difficult reading with scenes that are not easy to read, but it is as if you are responsible for the 14-year-old heroine who lives in the wilderness with her manipulative father - you cannot leave her. You want her to win. This is one of the most talked about books of the year, highly acclaimed by critics and included in all lists of major novels. A book that split the reading camp. “My Absolute Darling” is not a read for sensitive young ladies. And, as Stephen King said about her, the concept of “masterpiece” today is greatly discredited by its frequent use, and should be used only in exceptional cases; "My Absolute Darling" is a masterpiece. This is a book that cannot leave you indifferent - you will either love it or hate it. The power of its impact on the global reading community suggests comparison with A Little Life, but the story itself is much subtler and more poignant. "My Absolute Darling is a book you won't forget."
Maya Lunde. "The Story of Bees"
Publisher: Phantom Press
Release date: autumn-winter
Translation from Norwegian: Anastasia Naumova
This dystopia crossed with a family saga and philosophical novel, has already been translated into more than 30 languages. “The Story of Bees” is the most high-profile Norwegian novel of the last decade, it has received almost all national literary awards and has already become not only a Scandinavian bestseller, but also one of the most beloved books in Germany. This is the first book in Maia Lunde's ambitious tetralogy about the fragility of the balance of the universe and the place of man in it.
“But “The Story of Bees” is not really a story of bees at all,” explains Maja Lunde’s idea Phantom-Press editor-in-chief Igor Alyukov. - This becomes clear already on the first page. Not too distant future, the end of our century. Chinese woman Tao pollinates fruit trees by hand. Manually, because there have been no bees in the world for a long time. And the world has changed irreversibly since their disappearance. It seems that we are facing a dystopia. But this is not a dystopia. Because the next story is about the inventor of a new type of hive, living in the 19th century. In fact, "The Story of Bees" is the story of bee people, the story of families in which very difficult relationships between parents and children gradually result in transformation family relations at all. In the novel by Norwegian Maja Lunde, three family stories - Victorian, modern and futuristic - add up to a larger story about the relationship between mother nature and her negligent child - humanity. This is the first novel in a tetralogy about the modern world, bordering on the future world, a very frightening place.”
A story from the USA that shook up the entire Internet there and almost led to a war between the sexes. We convey it from the first person:
My wife recently announced that she will no longer give me blowjobs and there will be no oral sex on her part at all. The explanation is simple: she never really liked it at all, but in her opinion I can get by. In general, she is right, since I cannot force her to take it into my mouth, since she has every right to control her mouth. But!
We have a tradition that every Friday we have dinner with her parents-in-law. These are people of the old school, very difficult to communicate, but the tradition itself is already more than 10 years old, just as long as our marriage lasts. It turns out that every Friday after work, instead of relaxing, I have to spend time with people I can’t stand. Why am I doing this? To make the wife happy!
So, I told my wife that she can think what she wants, but I will no longer do what I hate - spending Fridays with her parents.
In response, she said that I was an ass and that was absolutely perfect. different situations. I don’t agree - we both stopped doing what we don’t like to do, although doing it made each other happy. And we both have the right to be asses to each other.
So am I an ass?
I told my dad that a guy would come to see me. I went out to the store, when I returned and went to my room, there was no front door! Dad took it off! Like, I’ve been wanting to change it for a long time... My boyfriend and I sat on chairs for 6 hours, playing cards.
But don’t tell me, holy water still has very special properties.
In our Ufa branch we had a bricklayer who was a heavy drinker. The mason is wonderful. The number of cubes of masonry they were given per shift with four assistants did not even fit into my depraved imagination. The helpers, who were also on the deal, prayed for him - the salary was more than twice as high as that of the same workers.
But that's all when the mason is sober. And when he’s drunk, he’s not a bricklayer at all. Moreover, he has a drinking habit “for a month after a month.”
One of the helpers, a man who is both deeply religious and kind, heard that in one of the men’s branches of the convent (I’m not kidding, there was such a thing, but now it’s not), located in a place called “Holy Bushes,” there is such a cool priest that Water blessed by him cures alcoholism in one go. You just need to drink a couple of liters of it and sprinkle everything on top first.
I heard, amid the indelible jokes of my colleagues, that any water would help against alcoholism if it was mixed in equal parts with gramophone needles and turpentine and used as an enema, I went to the monastery and brought from there a two-liter beer bottle with the most holy water, which there was. And he decided to begin healing him in secret from the person being healed, gradually mixing water into his tea. I started with sprinkling. Why did he wait on the fifth floor of the house under construction until the mason came out of the entrance to the change house to change clothes and sprinkled a little holy liquid on him.
The hands, worn out during the day, could not hold the container. Almost two liters directly in the bottle rushed after the small splashes and hit, well not in the center, but casually on the bricklayer’s protective helmet.
A helmet is a helmet, but there was a concussion. The density of holy water is almost equal to the density of ordinary water, that is, close to unity. But when the bricklayer came out of the hospital to ask him for a drink, he was cut off.
So whatever you want, holy water has special anti-alcohol properties. A simple one could hit you in the head so hard that it could kill you.
(C) Naive
I apologize in advance for the obscenity, I tried to soften it as soon as possible so that the meaning would not be lost.
One May day, the deputy commander of the unit for rear services, Major Stepanov, was sitting in the barracks office, smoking and talking about nothing with the political officer, Captain Zeletsky. The major's mood was very high - the next day the lion's share of officers and personnel headed out into the fields - for a field trip for the purpose of practice. This expedition was headed by the unit commander himself, and Major Stepanov remained in charge, delegating concerns about supplying personnel on the road to warrant officer Chernov. It remained to settle minor issues such as the issuance of duffel bags with contents and raincoats. The major decided to call Chernov at the warehouse and give the control center over the phone. There were beeps on the phone, but no one answered the phone. The warrant officer also did not answer on his mobile phone. Stepanov leaned out of the office:
- Orderly, where is Sergeant Nyrkov, let him run here!
“Ensign Chernov took him to the warehouses in the morning, dragged by the major,” answered the orderly.
Stepanov sighed - he would have to go to the utility zone himself, since both the warrant officer and his right hand - the smart old-timer Sergeant Nyrkov - were there, but there was no way to contact him. They probably got wrapped up in there with their things. To hell with it, I'll go. And tomorrow the chaos will begin - there is almost no one in the unit, sit, smoke, and straighten your papers slowly.
The journey to the warehouses took ten minutes. Major Stepanov saw that the padlock of warehouse number one was lying next to the slightly open door. The lock shackle was sawn apart.
- Well, your mother! - said Stepanov, - You, ensign, will buy me a new one from your salary, since you stole the keys, - and the major entered the warehouse.
At first he froze like an Easter Island idol, then he blinked, then rubbed his eyes with his hands. Nothing changed. THE WAREHOUSE WAS EMPTY. His only possessions were the chair on which Ensign Chernov slept, and an empty vodka bottle on the floor.
- Chernov, bitch!!! - the major yelled, frantically shaking Sonya by the breasts, - Where... Where the fuck... EVERYTHING!?!
Prapor opened his eyes, stood up from his chair with difficulty, breathed fumes at his commander and said in a hoarse, fallen voice:
- They screwed up, comrade major!
Stepanov needed some time to digest what was said. And then he was very happy - an extraordinary rank, captain, and maybe even senior lieutenant, loomed before him. First of all, the robbed rear deputy decided to deal with the ensign. Oh, Major Stepanov was a great expert in genealogy and was going to tell the unlucky ensign the whole history of his family and their relationship with large and not so large, horned and hornless cattle. He could tell a similar story to anyone, even if they woke him up after being on duty for a day (and perhaps especially if this happened). However, the major had serious doubts about Chernov’s sanity at the moment. For the same reason, he did not threaten dismissal from the Armed Forces. Stepanov made a Solomonic decision - he loaded the tambourine for the ensign. Humbly accepting the punishment, Chernov fell and fell asleep again. The major jumped out of the warehouse. It seems that our hero was descended from Hercules himself - his cry was so deafening and lengthy...
- DIVKOOOOOO!
Thirty seconds later, the above materialized in front of the major.
- Sergeant, what the fuck is going on here!??
- I don’t know, dragging the major, I’ve been cooking the bottom of Chernov’s Niva in the box since the very morning, and he himself was working in the warehouse.
Rolling his eyes furiously, Stepanov at first almost punished the sergeant using the method tested on the ill-fated Chernov, but realized that Nyrkov was not to blame - he was told to cook, and he cooked.
- Go to the barracks, run. You will return with a political officer and a foreman.
- Eat! - and the sergeant was blown away by the wind.
Stepanov conducted a quick inspection of the warehouse area, and by the time reinforcements arrived, everything became more or less clear. The attackers found a camouflaged loophole in the fence, through which the personnel were dangling in self-propelled guns. At night, after cutting down the lock, they entered the warehouse and took everything out of there. Ensign Chernov, leaving his assistant to shamanize his swallow, came to the warehouse, saw the desolation that reigned there, realized what was what, and couldn’t think of anything better than getting drunk. There were no traces of the kidnappers.
Fortunately for Stepanov, everything he needed for the field exit was in another warehouse.
“Only one chance to catch the assholes,” the major decided, relying on banal human greed. At night, filled with righteous anger, Stepanov with his service weapon and two fighters hid near the second warehouse.
“It’s hit or miss,” thought the major. At about one o'clock in the morning some individuals climbed through a hole in the fence. The major, who, despite his wild nerves, began to nod off, almost missed them. All that remained was to make sure that these were thieves and not soldiers on a spree trying to smuggle alcohol into the unit. When the quiet sounds of a hacksaw were heard from the door of the second warehouse, Stepanov, like a phoenix of retribution, flew out of ambush and shouted:
- Well, stand still, bitches, I’ll shoot!!!
Guests from Central Asia, who at first tried to convince the avenger that they did not speak Russian, but the major, quick to kill, quickly convinced them that cooperation would allow the expropriators to retain the remnants of dignity and teeth. Then there was the carrying of what was stolen from a hostel nearby back to the warehouse, then more bullshit, then the police, testimony, a scolding from the commander (albeit softened due to the lack of losses).
The hole in the fence was tightly walled up, part of it rolled into the fields, and the long-suffering major began to suffer the bullshit that he had dreamed of.
P.S. The soldiers began to go to self-propelled guns in other ways, but that’s a completely different story.
Inspired by yesterday's story about carp and holy water...
My father, like, in principle, many who went through the international school of the USSR, and then survived the invasion of religions, psychics, voodoo and other Kashpirovian ones, was a superstitious person. That time, someone whispered to him that for baptism in January you can get holy water without going anywhere, just pour it into jars and leave it overnight, and the main thing is to leave the window open.
At that time I was about to take exams for an excitation group engineer (at power plants there are such specialties with funny names; my friend, for example, was an engineer for his own needs). Exams for the position of engineer at the Ministry of Medium Machine Building (atomprom) are not the Unified State Exam or even Soviet exams with tickets. That is, there are no tickets or tests. There is literature - a dozen books on operation, safety precautions, measurement standards, etc., but there are no ready-made questions. A commission of 5-7 department heads sits with the chief engineer at its head and asks questions - any questions from books that an engineer should know by heart. This is such a “fun” exam. And it’s clear that I never cared about my father’s quirks at all; my brain melted from the amount of information that I forced into my memory with the same masochistic persistence.
I managed to go to bed at 12, I get up at 4 in the morning, go to the kitchen for breakfast with this damn stack of books and... I find myself in the kingdom of water. Water is everywhere, on the table, on the windowsill, on the floor, in basins, pots and of course in three-liter jars. Batin's life motto - for us Tatars, if only for nothing - in action. Containing my overwhelming feelings about my surroundings, I clear out the table, put my stack of books on it, and begin another primitive download of information into my brain, simultaneously replenishing it. vitality- I mean, I’m having breakfast, leafing through the rules for electrical installations.
The reading was fascinating, but some suspicious rustling made me turn my head towards the window, just in time to consciously take a “holy” shower from a three-liter jar standing on the windowsill. Behind the overturned can, the dissatisfied face of Grisha, a domestic cat who had returned from night orgies, looked out.
Since Grisha expressed an opinion similar to mine about this kitchen Venice, he didn’t get hit in the neck, and I, muttering under my breath, went to change clothes and get ready for work.
***
It was quiet in the reception area, the commission had been sitting for an hour, torturing the station engineer on duty (DIS), the shift manager of the electrical department was sitting next to me - he was supposed to be next and this prospect did not please him, but alas, the door opened and DIS fell out of the office with a red face (well, like Efremov’s - his face is so red), and it was the turn of the shift supervisor. After another 45 minutes, he, just as dejected as Eeyore, came out of that door and I went to be tortured...
I stepped into the office and 7 pairs of eyes looked at me.
“Well, let’s get started,” said the chief engineer, “Alexander Ivanovich, start.”
Subsequent events reminded me of ping pong. Question - answer, question-answer, question-answer. Moreover, I answered automatically, as if watching the exam from the sidelines.
After a dozen questions and answers, the chief engineer asked the heads of departments present who had any more questions.
No one had any questions; I was asked to go to the reception area and wait for the commission’s decision. Two operatives were languishing in the waiting room, awaiting their fate; they were surprised when they saw me.
- Why are you so fast?
- Do you mean quickly? Same as you.
- Only 15 minutes have passed... Did you fail?
- Apparently not...
After 5 minutes of tedious waiting, the secretary announced the commission’s verdict - the DIS and the Shift Manager were sentenced to another retake in a week, and I... from that day on was considered an engineer in an electrical engineering laboratory. Such is the Epiphany story!
About how my love for papers as a child led me to my work) The end of the 80s. My parents and I lived in a private house in the city. Who probably didn't play school in childhood? Mom bought notebooks for 2 kopecks for the entire school year, which I carefully signed and laid them out on the floor in the order the students sat in the classroom. These were stacks of mathematics and Russian language and that’s already 60 notebooks). From the attic or barn, I carried in batches the textbooks that interested me, which my mother used to study or enter a university. I read something, dictated, wrote in notebooks “for the students” and gave grades when I took the notebooks for checking. During the cold season, a polished dark cabinet at home served as my board, but then my mother found chalk scratches on it and I was screwed. And in the relatively warm season I used iron garage, painted with green paint. The little girls from the neighbors also came... taught everyone... wrote, counted... especially loved to “draw” incomprehensible formulas and pretend that we were counting and knew everything. Then my mother scolded me for the notebooks and started buying only enough for one half-year. Then I cut the notebooks in half) In the end, she began to buy them for me as needed. But I found a way out. I was cutting toilet paper into 30 centimeter ribbons, folded them and sewed them together in the middle with thread. When folded, it turned out to be a notebook. It was not convenient to write, the paper was torn, but I played... Hopeless situations It doesn’t happen to me even now))) And when it was almost impossible to enter the room because of the papers, my mother brought a trash can and threw everything out without looking. I remember in those “my paper shortage years” she threw out utility bills, probably from the 70s. And she said under no circumstances to take them out of the trash can! But I still took them out, hid them, and only played them when she was not at home. But this incident taught me one thing: never throw away anything that seemed useless, but related to documents) After half a year or a year, my mother asked: did I take out those receipts, because some problems arose and I needed to look at them -That. I won’t forget her happy eyes when I showed where I was hiding them. Afterwards my dream came true. I worked at a technical school. I taught big kids to be food service technologists. It was a fun time. The students are 8 years younger than me)) I am a small, fragile girl with a long braid, clutching a cool magazine in her hands, and let them into the classroom every day. There was also a senior year. At first, of course, they didn’t take me seriously, didn’t teach me, didn’t talk to me. I put twos in a row for them. They called me to the dean's office and scolded me about the school's grading system. If everyone gets D's, then I myself don't know the subject. The trouble in general... it’s impossible to establish discipline with twos) I’m sitting and thinking about what to do... And the other day I was walking in a new long coat, in new boots with heels, toes up, and while going up the steps I stepped on the bottom of the coat and fell in front of students. At least get up and run and sign up for dismissal) In general, in class again, who files their nails, who paints their lips, who chats. I say calmly like this: my dears, here you are sitting minding your own business and I’m thinking maybe I should bring it here too washing machine do the laundry (and show how I figuratively drag her into the office from the corridor), bring a bunch of laundry (I pretend that I’m stuffing it into this imaginary washing machine) Or maybe I should get some nail polish and paint my nails, so what can I just sit there and nag? (I defiantly shake out my bag) Why am I wasting, I say, my time in vain, although I can also do personal business. I sat down and tidied up my bag. The guys opened their mouths... Soon this couple began, in front of which I had to show apparently this spontaneous performance about what their behavior looks like from the outside. Later, I thought for a long time whether I did the right thing, but there was a result. So I did the right thing) The classes began to go more calmly and during one of the classes I explained the cutting of a pork carcass and had to draw it on the board... I’m not much of an artist... seeing how I was suffering, and then I soon began to laugh myself above themselves, the guys drew each one from the textbook in their notebook as an “encore”, who can draw better) The main thing is the notes and interest in studying))) Then there was probably a test that had to be graded, but I remembered the previous row of bad marks. It was a test for me too)) But it turned out okay.. Only Sasha K. wrote a two, and that was because he cheated. He came to me in the teaching room and said: “How is it possible..?” I answer: “You need to write off less.” And he just tell me verbally word for word. “Sorry, I say, five.” And the most interesting thing I remembered was when I had to put grades in the record book at the end of the year. And it turns out that I came to work with a temperature, everyone is waiting, I don’t think I can interview everyone, it’s stuffy... In the group there was the tallest boy, Ilya, and I asked him to open the window and then the thought came to my head: “The freebie has flown in, the record books are all on table "Everyone is welcome! Evaluated based on real knowledge. I say: “Masha, three or retake,” “Vasya, four or retake.” These are the guys’ real assessments, their real knowledge. I only tormented one girl for a long time... she retested three times for a grade of “three”))) and I still gave this three “reluctantly.” After this year we broke up, I changed jobs. The guys saw me off for a long time, didn’t let me go, and even invited me in a group to the park in the evening to give me a farewell))) Guys, I’m sorry...))) Then I found out that Sasha K. worked in a cool restaurant as a chef, but .. due to some circumstances, he quit and works as a freight forwarder... Eh, Sasha... I’m now, let’s say, an office worker in this field now, papers are my “love”))) And I don’t just throw away any papers, remembering my mother’s receipts) )) And under this New Year I met the mother of the girl whom I taught to write letters and numbers in the garage with chalk as a child. She took her granddaughter to the Christmas tree and told me Thanks a lot for my daughter, that probably thanks to me she loved studying and now has a good job)
My husband is from the Baltic states. I am the Central Black Earth region of Russia)) When we got married, I won’t forget our first gatherings for a visit. It took a long time to get ready))) We came to visit the guests. They ask why it took us so long. He answers, mimicking me:
- Now I’ll paint my lips (the “g” is gagging)
I pick him up and continue in his drawn-out manner:
-What's the l-i-f-tnnnnnnnnno....
Recently, in a discussion, I mentioned that 100 Japanese yen fit into a Soviet 20-kopeck coin, and they asked me to tell you.
This was our first sea overseas. practice. The passenger ship "Khabarovsk" stood on the Nakhodka-Yokohama-Nakhodka line, and mainly transported transit tourists around the world, who had already arrived from Australia to Japan, to the Trans-Siberian Railway.
There were three of us cadets accepted into the staff as engine mechanics: Sunduk, Vava and me. Those who come from the Soviet sixties can imagine the euphoria of twenty-year-old boys who found themselves behind the cordon for the first time in 1984.
Because of this, my first arrival in Japan was especially sad.
In the morning, they announced over the loudspeaker that the crew not engaged in shifts were offered a choice of two options for shore leave. Either as savages, in groups of three to five people under the supervision of one of the commanders, in Yokohama, or on an embassy tourist bus on an excursion to Tokyo.
By lunchtime, Chest and Vava were already walking around Yoka, and I and the Tokyo group remained on the ship to wait for the bus.
We waited long and nervously, but the bus never came for us. The parking lots are short. Having said goodbye to the cloudy and stuffy Yokohama port for ten days, we took the opposite course.
Chest and Vava were overwhelmed with emotions from their Japanese adventures, and gladly splashed them out on me:
-Lekha! – They were already nostalgic, interrupting each other.
- This is complete...! The shopping street is all tiled and there are carpets from the shops right onto the street. And huge baskets of jeans and sneakers on sale!
But their most exciting adventure was an attack on vending machines with drinks.
Vava’s older brother, being a sailor, shared this secret with him.
It turns out that the 20-kopeck Soviet coin has the same diameter as the Japanese 100-yen coin - one to one, and although the yen seems a little more massive to the touch, the machines allegedly accept it as their own. Vava stuffed both pockets with twenties.
On a shopping street popular among sailors in Yokohama, not far from the port, Chest and Vava noticed one of the machines, seized the moment when the leader of the group was out of sight, and stuffed a coin into the slot of the machine.
For 20 kopecks they were able to buy a loud and very alarming siren, which was issued by a machine gun in response to the assassination attempt, and a hundred meters of sprint from the crime scene to a crowded intersection, where they mingled with the crowd.
On our next visit to Yoku, I finally decided to finish the matter with Tokyo, and took the risk of booking a double excursion. The trip took place. Vava went with me, and his two pockets full of coins went with him. I’ll skip the description of the entire tour of Tokyo, thank God now this won’t surprise anyone, and we’ll go straight to these same vending machines in Ginza, where we were brought late in the evening.
It wasn’t even getting dark anymore, breaking away from the group, Vava and I walked around Tokyo at night.
Instead of the faded GLORY OF THE CPSU, pretty Japanese women winked at us from everywhere in neon, shimmering hieroglyphs slid along the walls, music sounded, and lacquered cars slowly rustled past.
Lekha! – Vava whispered to me very loudly, “Look!”
I looked in the direction of his raised hand. Not far away, right at the intersection of two wide streets, fenced on all sides by traffic lights and zebra crossings, a deserted, automatic island glowed with lights.
-Hold it! - Vava, he poured a handful of coins into my palm and we ran to the machines.
They didn't have any kind of drinks. More precisely, we did not know what drinks were there, except for the ones we recognized - cola, coffee, tea and forfeits. Everything is 100 yen.
Endless rows of multi-colored jars, bottles, boxes, bags and cups looked straight into our souls, offering us, and leaving us no choice - to bomb!
I slipped the first twenty kopecks into the slot, and, just in case, prepared to tear my claws out. The coin slowly rang through the labyrinth and fell out into the return pocket. The machine was silent.
The next moment, having accepted the twenty kopecks thrown by Vava at face value, it seemed that the whole island exhaled a magical “K-h-h-h-e!!!” and lit up with hundreds of red arrows. Vava pressed the first one he came across, and a foggy bottle thumped out into the tray.
Bingo! It worked for me too!
Like win-win slot machines, they groaned vying with each other, offering us to taste endless examples of the Japanese food industry.
We sucked up several cans without leaving the cash register, and having filled everything we could stuff in light summer clothes with can-bottles, we galloped to the bus. Then we gladly gave refreshments to all our few fellow travelers, and tried not to piss ourselves all the way back to Yokohama.
And there was one more, last similar experience on our next visit.
Yokohama was celebrating its own anniversary that day, and in anticipation of the grandiose one-and-a-half-hour fireworks display, thousands of Japanese began to gather on the embankment around the sea terminal, starting from lunch.
Having walked around Yoka to our heart's content, we returned to the port when it was already dark and the show was just beginning.
Having discovered a row of vending machines near a deserted grocery store, not far from our mooring site, we decided to try our luck again. Happened. Already in the rain, we hardly dragged two voluminous, spreading paper bags to the ship, and had a drink party. By lunchtime the next day, the crew was told over the loudspeaker that the previous evening a large number of Russian and Greek coins had been found in the vending machines of the port store.
In addition, the Japanese representative who arrived on board warned that if the offenders were detained, they would be brought to justice in Japan.
Fearing a search, Vava and I hastily gulped down the remaining liquids and threw the cans out the porthole.
And, as they say, the end is in the water!
Yes, still! This story raises the question of the ethical nature of our transgression. What we did was bad, of course. Read: stolen. In justification, I can say that I never stole anything before or after this incident - the thought never even occurred to me.
Here it was completely different - risk, excitement and youthful stupidity. With approximately the same mood and success, we hit the poor soda machines on the Vladivostok embankment.
So let the Japanese still say: - Arigato!
Kidding. Now it's a shame, of course. Sorry!
We continue to monitor the sandbox “House and Dacha” (https://forum.auto.ru/housing) of the small site auto.ru. Last time we sent a sketch of how harsh Moscow plumbers have cunning glamorous blondes (The story of Tolya SCB and a certain Lena Lenina). Today is a story from Ogresg1 about tailed animals.
Positional battles with nature
He showed the cats and their mother the room for their further temporary residence. The minimum necessary set for life is available - a tray, a feeding trough with a drinking bowl and one box for all, in my opinion, should represent a hollow, a nest and a cat's house at the same time.
They promised not to drive friends and acquaintances, to maintain peace and order, not to listen to music at full volume, to be quieter than water, lower than the grass.
He turned off the light and said good night: I said goodnight to them, and they said goodnight to me.
Could not sleep...
Suddenly I hear the kittens asking their mother if she is sleeping.
She replies that she is sleeping.
By the rumbling I understand that he is lying.
The kittens are whispering again - what she thinks, and am I sleeping or not.
The cat answered - of course, I’m sleeping.
Then the kittens promised to sleep too, and the cat happily believed.
And so it began!
It seems that they didn’t like literally everything about the arrangement of the apartment - and where I put my sneakers, and that I didn’t remove the fleece, but simply threw it on the back of the chair, that fishing rods had no place at all in this particular corner, they pointed out the trash can - or it’s playing with hide and seek with them and hide in the closet, or it will lie on its side and roll to avoid bedsores, otherwise the cat gods will be angry, they spent a long time showing how to rustle plastic bags correctly, for about twenty minutes they took out from under the bedside table a large rattling Christmas tree ball hidden there, they moused in a tray with granules, and, judging by the sounds, they had already begun to move the furniture... when I stood up and expressed my dissatisfaction to them.
All the little things quickly annihilated, and when the light turned on, there was no one there, only the ball was swaying... A sleepy cat ran up, as if interested in such an early rise, which occurred much earlier than the morning dawn, and adding: “Did you hear? Did you hear? Otherwise I’m completely I didn't hear anything!"
And so three times a night.
You didn’t personally explain the rules to each kitten before signing - they ran away earlier. This means that there is no demand - the kittens concluded. To justify my lifting and to squeeze at least some sense out of them, they placed it in two corners, since the tray was occupied with more important matters - mouse training was carried out in it.
I took my mother outside - without her approving “purr” the kittens hide and do not cause mayhem.
There was silence and harmony, and I fell asleep.
I had a dream about Electronics, and that each cat has a button, and that it is located under the tail, but you have to press it several times with short, sharp presses.
The history is long, pedagogical.
One day a motley group of classmates gathered in one of the mining towns. It’s all the capital’s mother’s boys who tell tales about how they themselves entered universities, how much the tutors hired by their mother fought over them, and how they, too, are now like great scientists at their father’s faculty. But for the miners' children everything was simple - good teachers, good friends in the yard and a tough dad with a belt at the ready. For behind every Mozart there is an “evil” parent with rods. As a result, the entire class of 44 idiots from a provincial working-class town entered the best universities in the capital without any tutors. And this despite the fact that the good Soviet authorities gave the entrance score to the capital’s mama’s boys 18-19 out of 25, and to non-resident proletarian type cattle as much as 24-25 out of 25. This was then social justice in a supposedly socialist state. But this is not about this, but about pedagogy.
As always at parties of young parents, the conversation eventually turned to their children. And the young mothers, interrupting each other, began to brag about the intelligence and intelligence of their children, for whom it was now time to enroll in first grade. And they already read like TV announcers, remember poems by heart, count in their heads like calculators, and dance and play Bach with three hands on the piano. And then the fathers, the miners’ children, began to get up one after another and literally curse at these mothers. Sha, they said. Listen here, crazy mothers. What have you come up with, who do you want to raise from our boys and daughters? Imagine your smart and capable child comes to school. And everything is easy for him there, and he knows and knows everything. What will he get as a result - to fight, to overcome difficulties, to work hard, not to give up in front of obstacles, to fight until victory - why, if you are smart and talented from birth and everything comes easy and simple. Difficulties are bad, it’s good when it’s easy, you have to do and live with pleasure and only the way you like. And he will enjoy walking, playing, hanging out, relaxing and doing all kinds of food on the Indian Ocean coast. And as a result, you will have dull and weak-willed mama’s boys, who can’t do anything without the help of their dads and moms, and are good for nothing except to wag their tongues and dicks. The same sad racket that recently prevented you from entering universities. Your children - it’s up to you to decide how to stress them and not let them relax. Let them go to sports - wrestling, boxing, hockey, swimming, gymnastics. Those who are unable or have a weak heart should go to the coolest schools and study mathematics, physics, and medicine. There's no place for fools there. We don't need child prodigies, we need prodigies in life. Do you understand everything? Execute.
Years have passed. At a conference on aerospace systems organized by the Boeing Satellite Development Center, a little-known company of young engineers and scientists and we, old people from different countries, gathered. As always at such parties, we started talking about our children. And the parents, young and not very interrupting each other, began to brag about the intelligence and intelligence of their children, for whom it was now time to enroll in first grade. And they already read like TV announcers, remember poems by heart, count in their heads like calculators, and dance and make everyone look like kittens at basketball. And then one dad gets up, the other, and they literally start swearing, word for word, repeating the very maxims that you have already read. It turned out that these were the children and grandchildren of those same miners. In their youth they were classic wrestlers, long-time swimmers, climbers and rugby players. Thanks to sports and smart, strict dads behind me. Good genes - in principle, they cannot be killed, but they can be spoiled. As Generalissimo Suvorov said, life is a battle, and we are soldiers in this battle. It's hard for a soldier to train, but it will be easy in battle.
In the current issue of stories: new - 10, repeated - 1, copies - 1, sundry - 2.
If you suffer from insomnia, or you simply don’t know what to do in the evening before bed, then start reading! But be careful, because some books are so interesting that you won't even notice the morning comes!
Photo: goodfon.ru
So, a list of fascinating books that will interest both “avid readers” and novice “book lovers”:
“The One Who Has Come in Large Numbers”, Narine Abgaryan
This is a tragicomedy about a young and ambitious girl who, at the beginning of the difficult 90s, decided to leave her native small mountainous republic and conquer the capital. And she immediately realized that each visitor, whom the author calls “who came in large numbers,” has his own Moscow. Some people see it in the millions of people scurrying through the streets, while others get the opportunity to get close to such people. And some of them protect, protect, care, help, support and simply love. The author of the book talks about his small piece of that very “common” life of a newcomer, which many indigenous residents of big cities have no idea about. And there is room for heroic deeds, the most important of which is to decide to emigrate and accept a new place as it is, and to sincerely love it. And then Moscow will certainly reciprocate.
"The Collector" John Fowles
This is the author’s debut story, and for many it almost chills the blood, because this is a real psychological thriller that excites the mind. The plot is the destinies of two people connected with each other. He is a butterfly collector. There is an emptiness in his soul that he strives to fill with beauty. And one day Ferdinand finds himself a beautiful victim - the girl Miranda. It’s as if she was created to create and enjoy freedom. And he understands that he will give everything to have her. And so, Miranda becomes Ferdinand's prisoner. But will he be able to keep real Life, Beauty, Freedom and all the most beautiful things that can be in the human soul within the walls of the castle?
The story is built on the delicate relationship between the victim and the villain and allows you to rethink many of the stories of world classics that seemed to have long been worn out.
Forrest Gump, Winston Groom
This is the story of a mentally retarded guy, which he himself outlined on the pages of a now legendary book, which formed the basis of the film of the same name. The plot can be called practically the embodiment of the myth about that very “American Dream” that disturbed the minds of millions of young people who lived in the second half of the last century. But at the same time, this is a sharp and even slightly cruel satirical parody of the society of that time, which was not ready to accept people who were somehow different from the mainstream. Forrest Gump was different and therefore became an object of ridicule. But this boy is not crazy at all. He is different, and he has access to what others cannot see and feel. He's special.
Amsterdam, Ian McEwan
The author of the book is one of the representatives of the “elite” of modern British prose. And for the work, which became a real world bestseller, he received the Booker Prize. Viktor Golyshev, who translated this creation into Russian, also received the award. It would seem that the story is simple and very relevant. But how many nuances there are in it, how many thoughts, how many doubts! The main characters are two friends. One of them is a successful editor of a popular newspaper. The second is a brilliant composer of our time who is writing the “Millennium Symphony”. And they enter into an agreement on euthanasia, under the terms of which, if one falls into a state of unconsciousness and ceases to understand what he is doing, then the other will take his life.
"Amendment 22" by Joseph Heller
Although more than half a century has passed since the release of the first book, this work still remains legendary and one of the most popular, and many publications included it in the list of the best novels.
This is not your typical story about US Air Force pilots in World War II. They all find themselves in absurd situations, encounter absurd people and rash actions, and commit incomprehensible acts themselves. And all this is connected with a certain amendment No. 22, which actually does not exist on paper, but states that every military man who does not want to carry out a combat mission is completely normal and therefore fit for service. But in fact, in this story one can see not so much an anti-war novel, but a deep and global mockery of modern everyday life, of society and current laws.
"A Conspiracy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
The author of this book, who, by the way, lived to see the Pulitzer Prize awarded for this creation, was able to create a literary hero unlike any described in satirical literature. Ignatius J. Riley is a creative, imaginative and eccentric personality. He fancies himself an intellectual, but in reality he is a glutton, a spendthrift and a quitter. He is like a modern Don Quixote or Gargantua, who despises society for its lack of geometry and theology. He is reminiscent of Thomas Aquinas, who began his own hopeless war against everything and everyone: representatives of non-traditional sexual orientation, the excesses of the century and even intercity buses. And this image is so interesting, unusual and, unfortunately, relevant that everyone can see a part of themselves in it.
“Monday begins on Saturday”, Strugatsky Brothers
This book is a real masterpiece of Russian science fiction, a kind of embodiment of the utopia of the Soviet era, a kind of artistic fulfillment of the dream of possibilities modern man learn, create, explore and solve the mysteries of the Universe.
The main characters of the book are employees of NIICHAVO (Research Institute of Witchcraft and Wizardry). They are masters and magicians, real pioneers. And they will encounter many amazing events and phenomena: a time machine, a hut on chicken legs, a genie and even an artificially grown man!
"The Girl on the Train" by Paula Hawkins
This book became a real bestseller. This is a mysterious and fascinating story of a girl, Rachel, who, from the train window, watches, as it seems to her, ideal spouses. She even gave them names: Jason and Jess. Every day she sees the cottage of a man and a woman and understands that they probably have everything: prosperity, happiness, wealth and love. And Rachel had all this, but not so long ago she lost it all. But one day, approaching an already well-known cottage, the girl realizes that something is going wrong. She sees frightening, mysterious and disturbing events. And then the perfect wife Jess disappears. And Rachel understands that it is she who must reveal this secret and find the woman. But will the police take her seriously? And, in general, is it worth interfering in someone else’s life? This is for the readers to find out.
"The Book of Life: Tuesdays with Morrie" by Mitch Albom
In the last months of his life, the old professor managed to make several important discoveries.
He realized that death is not the end at all. This is the beginning. And that means dying is the same as preparing for something unknown and new. And this is not scary at all, but even interesting.
Before leaving for another world, the old man passed on such knowledge to everyone who was with him in the last minutes of his earthly life. What's next? Will we find out?
"The Trial", Franz Kafka
The author is one of the most beloved, mysterious, readable and popular writers of the last century. He managed to create a unique artistic Universe, in which everything is completely different from real life. She is sad, dreary and almost absurd, but incredible and bewitchingly beautiful. Her characters constantly become participants in strange adventures, they search for the meaning of life and try to get answers to questions that have long tormented them. The novel “The Trial” is the work that will allow us to most clearly understand the mysterious nature of Franz Kafka’s work.
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
This book can be called strange, scary and incredibly attractive.
In the story, boys brought up in the best traditions find themselves on a desert island. The author told readers a philosophical parable about how fragile the world is and what can happen to people who forget about kindness, love and mercy. This is a dystopia with some symbolic overtones, which explores the behavioral characteristics of children who find themselves on a desert island during wartime. Will they be able to maintain their humanity or will they submit to natural instincts?
"Rita Hayworth or the Shawshank Redemption" by Stephen King
The plot of this book is the story of a man whose horrible dream became a reality overnight. He, innocent of anything, was thrown into prison, into a real hell in which he would spend the rest of his life. And no one has ever managed to escape from this terrible place. But the main character does not intend to give up and put up with what was destined for him by fate. He took a desperate step. But will he be able to not only escape, but also get used to freedom and the new world, and survive in it? By the way, this work by the real king of fantasy Stephen King served as the basis for the film of the same name, which starred Morgan Freeman and Tim Robinson.
The events take place in England in 1960. Jennifer Sterling recovers from horror car accident and realizes that she cannot remember who she is, what happened to her. She doesn’t remember her husband either. She would have continued to live in ignorance if she had not completely accidentally found letters addressed to her and signed with the letter “B”. Their author confessed his love to Jennifer and persuaded her to leave her husband. Next, the author takes readers to the 21st century. Young reporter Ellie finds one of the letters written by the mysterious “B” in the newspaper archives. She hopes that by taking up the investigation, she will be able to unravel the mystery of the author and recipient of the messages, restore her reputation, and even understand her own personal life.
“A lady with glasses with a gun in a car”, Sebastien Japrisot
The main character of the book is blonde. She is beautiful, sentimental, sincere, deceitful, restless, stubborn and clueless. This lady, who has never seen the sea, gets into a car and tries to escape from the police. At the same time, she constantly repeats to herself that she is not crazy.
But those around me do not agree with this. The heroine behaves more than strangely and constantly finds herself in ridiculous situations. She believes that wherever she goes, she can be harmed. But if she runs away, she will be able to be alone with herself and free herself from what she hides, from what worries her so much.
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
The author wrote this book for ten whole years, but it became a real masterpiece. It tells us that art has power and strength, and sometimes it can radically change and literally turn our lives around, and quite suddenly.
The hero of the work, 13-year-old boy Theo Decker, miraculously survived the explosion that killed his mother. His father abandoned him, and he is forced to wander around foster families and completely strange homes. He visited Las Vegas and New York and almost despaired. But his only consolation, which, by the way, almost led to his death, is the masterpiece of the Dutch old master, which he stole from the museum.
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
This book is like a complex mirror labyrinth, in which seemingly completely different and unrelated stories miraculously echo, intersect and overlap each other.
There are six main characters in the work: a young composer who is forced to sell his soul and body; 19th century notary; a journalist working in California in the 70s of the last century who uncovers a conspiracy of a large company; a clone servant working in a modern fast food establishment; a modern small publisher and a simple goatherd living at the end of civilization.
"1984", George Orwell
This work can be classified as a dystopian genre; it describes a society in which a strict totalitarian regime reigns.
There is nothing more terrible than the imprisonment of free and living minds in the shackles of social foundations.
"Blackberry Winter" by Sarah Gio
The events take place in 1933 in Seattle. Vera Ray kisses her little son before going to bed and goes to the hotel for night work. In the morning, a single mother discovers that the entire city is covered in snow, and her son has disappeared. In a snowdrift near the house, Vera finds the boy’s favorite toy, but there are no traces nearby. A desperate mother is ready to do anything to find her child.
The author then takes readers to modern-day Seattle. Reporter Claire Aldridge writes an article about a snowstorm that literally paralyzes the city. By chance she learns that similar events already took place 80 years ago. As Claire begins to explore the mysterious story of Vera Ray, she realizes that it is somehow mysteriously intertwined with her own life.
"Blindness", Jose Saramago
Residents of a nameless country and a nameless city are faced with a strange epidemic. They all quickly begin to go blind. And the authorities, in order to stop this incomprehensible disease, decide to introduce strict quarantine and move all sick people to the old hospital, taking them into custody.
The main characters of the work are an infected ophthalmologist and his pretending to be blind wife. They are trying to piece together the world and find order in this chaos that is gradually enveloping everyone.
“Three apples fell from the sky”, Narine Abgaryan
This book is the story of one small village, which is located somewhere high in the mountains.
Its inhabitants are all a little grumpy, a little eccentric, but at the same time, real treasures of the spirit are hidden in each of them.
This is a witty, sublime and unusual dystopia about modern society consumption, which is programmed at the genetic level. And in this world unfolds the sad story of the Savage, whom the author regards as the Hamlet of our time. He still retains remnants of humanity, but people, divided into castes of social consumption, do not want to recognize him or simply cannot do so.
If we list noteworthy books by contemporary authors, we cannot fail to mention the work “Social network “Ark” by Evgeny Vetzel, which consists of three parts.
The main character falls from the roof, but is reborn again. Having lived a little in the 11th century, he finds himself in the distant future - in the 36th century in Moscow. The author touches on many interesting devices, psychology and sales techniques, modern reflections on life, and reasons to think seriously about rhetorical issues. The second book describes life in America and the theory of one of the options global conspiracy. And the third part tells about the adventures of the hero on another planet where white angels live.
These were the most interesting books that are worth reading even for those who think that they don’t like to read. They will change your views and even your ideas about the world.
P.S. What books do you remember most?
