Far away in Russia, the writers are celebrating. After a decade of post-Soviet obscurity, one of their own is in trouble again. His name is Vladimir Sorokin. The government has charged him with pornography for a novel that features amorous clones of Stalin and Khrushchev, uh, doing it. Intellectuals are loving the attention.
It may sound cynical, but in Russia, persecution is a mark of greatness. It happened to Pushkin, to Dostoevsky, to Solzhenitsyn and to Brodsky. But the fall of Communism left Russian writers out in the cold. Television and mass media took center stage. But now the long-celebrated Russian literary voice is coming alive again. The third in our world literature series: on Vladimir Sorokin and Russia’s tradition of the persecuted writer.
Guests:
Gary Shteyngart, author of an upcoming piece in the New Yorker magazine about Vladimir Sorokin, and of the novel “The Russian Debutante Handbook”
Svetlana Boym, professor of literature at Harvard University.