Опубликовано в журнале Дружба Народов, номер 1, 2011
SUKHBAT AFLATUNI. The Year of the Sheep.
Four strangers-passengers and the driver of a second-hand foreign car are stuck in the barkhans on their way from Bukhara to Urguench. Night is going down and no help is being expected from nowhere. To calm down and while away the time the fellow-travellers begin telling to each other stories of their lives and bit by bit it becomes clear that… What becomes clear the reader will know from the writing the genre of which the author has defined as “makams” which are medieval Arab picaresque stories telling of the tricks of talented and educated swindlers.
OLGA TRIFONOVA. Tarnished Biography.
In this long short story love, arts, politics, history and geography are tied in such a tight knot that only life itself is capable to tie up.
In the Search of New Values. Materials of a “round table”.
Culture is ruling the world but nobody or nearly nobody realizes it. The meaning of Culture for modern societies is underestimated by authorities and peoples, it is not apprehended by societies all over the world, in all countries irrespective of their standards of life. This is the subject of discussion at the “round table” “Where the Russian culture is moving to?”
ALEXANDER MELIKHOV. The Drifting Idols.
Thus the well-known prosaist and essayist from St-Petersburg A. Melikhov named the protagonists of his “portrays”, the famous writers Zostchenko, Platonov, Erenburg, Bulgakov, Solgenitzin, Tvardovskij… So different in their ideologies and esthetics, why have they become the ruling influences for their contemporaries?
“Literary First Decade”: Residence and Post.
The leading today’s literary critics and specialists in the study of literature gathered around one round table are discussing the main tendencies, events, books and names of the first decade of the new age.