Sign-In
Cart
PU-239 and Other Russian Fantasies
Paperback
FantasyGeneral FictionHistorical Fiction
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
ISBN13: 9781571310828
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: Feb 1 2011
Pages: 312
Weight: 0.92
Height: 1.10 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.40
Language: English
The acclaimed short story and novella collection by a virtuoso of the dismal comedy of Soviet life--and the basis for the HBO film PU-239 (The New York Times). A PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist.
Ken Kalfus traverses a century of Russian history in tales that range from hair-raising to comic to fabulous. The astonishing title story follows a doomed nuclear power plant worker as he attempts to hawk plutonium in Moscow's black market. In Budyonnovsk, a young man hopes that the takeover of his town by Chechen rebels will somehow save his marriage. Salt is an economic fairy tale, featuring kings, princesses, and swiftly melting currencies.
Set in the 1920s, Birobidzhan is the bittersweet story of a Jewish couple journeying to the Soviet Far East, where they intend to establish the modern world's first Jewish state. The novella, Peredelkino, which closes the book, traces the fortunes of a 1960s literary apparatchik whose romantic intrigues inadvertently become political.
Together, these works of fiction capture the famously enigmatic Russian psyche. They display Kalfus' ability to imagine a variety of believable yet wholly singular characters whose lives percolate against a backdrop of momentous events.
1 different editions
Also available
Also in
General Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
Anniversaries, Volume 2: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, April 1968-August 1968
Johnson, Uwe
Paperback
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts
Plath, Sylvia
Paperback
Philip Roth: Novels 1967-1972 (Loa #158): When She Was Good / Portnoy's Complaint / Our Gang / The Breast
Roth, Philip
Hardcover
Selected Writings: Robert Musil: Young Torless, Three Women, the Perfecting of a Love, and Other Writings
Agee, Joel
Musil, Robert
Paperback