Опубликовано в журнале Дружба Народов, номер 10, 2010
FARID NAGIM. Earthly Garments.
Farid Nagim has already written about garments. It was a play for reading “Techniques of Selling” (“DN”, 2008, № 9) — about the life of one Moscow boutique. After that he two more times contributed to our magazine. The long short story “Theory of Fallings” (2009, № 10) brought him to the final of the Belkin’s prize. And here again — garments. The author emphasizes: “earthly”. Does it mean that there are some other?
LULA KUNI. Outlines.
You want to know what a Chechen woman (neither a sniper, nor a fighter or even the wife of a fighter) feels living in the midst of what is called “a local conflict”? Plenty of books are written about the Chechen war. But there can’t be too much truth of a war. The long short story of L. Kuni proves this thesis.
MARIA RYAKHOVSKAYA. Icon and Spade.
“Inat is our national feature — stubbornness, spirit of contradiction cultivated during the 500 years under Turkish yoke. Do you know the anecdote? A Serb has fished the Golden Fish. She sais: “I can’t fulfill three wishes — one only”. “Ah so! Then off with you!” — and he hurled the Fish back into the sea”.
Travel notes about people, books and colours of Serbia.
ANATOLIJ TZIRULNIKOV. Bringing Up the Aristocracy of the East Sybiria.
“Living at the back of beyond, not touched by civilization-modernization, what are they to do? To stay at this bank? Impossible. They do not want to stay. Then to row across? There is no other choice than to row across by the whole ethnos, the whole people. But what is waiting them on the crossing? To look at the world by the eyes of an Evenk child and Evenk grown-up tries the author of the essay.
GALINA REBEL. Quo Vadis, Perm?
Literary critic G. Rebel asserts: in the series “Perm as a Text” the volume “Permistics” is not just next in turn, but the key, core, backbone volume. Where are we? What do we believe in? What do we love? What do we want? These questions put in the book are being projected onto the fate of Russia at large.