Andrey Bely}}}s }}}Petersburg}}} A Centennial Celebration [Hardcover]

Celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of Andrey BelysPetersburg, this volume offers a cross-section of essays that address the most pertinent aspects of his 1916 masterpiece. The plot is relatively a simple one: Nikolai Apollonovich is ordered by a group of terrorists to assassinate his father, the prominent senator, Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov. Nevertheless, Belys polyphonic, experimental prose invokes such diverse themes as: Greek mythology, the apocalypse, family dynamics, psychology, Russian history, theosophy, revolution, and European literary influences. Considered by Vladimir Nabokov to be one of the twentieth centurys four greatest masterpieces,Petersburgis the first novel in which the city is the hero. Frequently compared to JoycesUlysses, no novel did more to help launch modernism in turn-of-the century Russia.Celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of Andrey BelysPetersburg, this volume offers a cross-section of essays that address the most pertinent aspects of his 1916 masterpiece. Frequently compared to JoycesUlysses, no novel did more to help launch modernism in turn-of-the century Russia.

This collection of studies by American, British,Scandinavian, Russian and Israeli scholars is a welcome contribution to ourknowledge of Belyis extraordinary novel. & What this collection does, and doesbrilliantly, is not so much to promotePetersburgto a wider readership as toprovide a fascinating companion-guide, a complex and erudite Baedecker to theliving world of Belyis invention, a guide which helps us situate it in itsearly twentieth-century Russian and European context. Avril Pyman, Universityof Durham,Slavonic and East European ReviewVol. 96, No. 4

Olga M. Cookeis Associate Professor of Russian at Texas A&M University. She editsGulag Studies. Her recent publications focus on the works of Andrey Bely and on Gulag literature. She is completing a book called