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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Homeward from Heaven

Homeward from Heaven

Karetnyk, Bryan
Poplavsky, Boris

Hardcover

Series: Russian Library

Literary Fiction

ISBN10: 0231199309
ISBN13: 9780231199308
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: Feb 7 2023
Pages: 304
Weight: 1.15
Height: 0.81 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Homeward from Heaven is Boris Poplavsky's masterpiece, written just before his life was cut short by a drug overdose at the age of thirty-two. Set in Paris and on the French Riviera, this final novel by the literary enfant terrible of the postrevolutionary Russian diaspora in France recounts the escapades, malaise, and love affairs of a bohemian group of Russian expatriates.

The novel's protagonist and sometime narrator is Oleg, whose intense love for two women leads him along a journey of spiritual transfiguration. He follows Tania to a seaside resort, but after a passionate dalliance she jilts him. In the cafés of Montparnasse, Oleg meets Katia, with whom he finds physical intimacy and emotional candor, yet is unable to banish a lingering sense of existential disquiet and destitution. When he encounters Tania again in Paris, his quest to comprehend the laws of spiritual and physical love begins anew, with results that are both profound and tragic.

Taken by Poplavsky's contemporaries to be semiautobiographical, Homeward from Heaven stands out for its uncompromising depictions of sexuality and deprivation. Richly allusive and symbolic, the novel mixes psychological confession, philosophical reflection, and social critique in prose that is by turns poetic, mystical, and erotic. It is at once a work of daring literary modernism and an immersive meditation on the émigré condition.

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