The Prussian Bride'One day I found out that my little native town used to be called not Znamensk but Wehlau. Germans had lived here. This had been East Prussia. Then they were deported. A ten-twenty-thirty-year layer of Russian life trembled on a seven-hundred-year foundation about which I knew nothing. So the child began to invent.' The resettling of the Kaliningrad Region (former East Prussia) with Soviet citizens occurred a few years before Yuri Buida's birth in 1954. 'Not a single person was left who could say of East Prussian space and time: "That's me"'. Buida's motley characters - war wounded, bereaved wives, madmen, fearless adolescents and a resurrected minister of state - inhabit a dislocated reality, a dream-like world of double identities and miraculous occurrences. Buida's skill at merging playful fantasy with bitter experience gives to his writing a haunting vividness and intensity. The Prussian Bride is a treasure house of myth and narrative exuberance, with stories that swing between outrageous invention and often tragic reality. It is one of the most exciting discoveries of post-Soviet literature and a worthy winner of a prestigious Apollon Grigoriev award in Russia: it was also shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize. |
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Page 151
... afraid the girl wouldn't last the journey . Who could tell where they'd be taken ? ' He lit up . A lonesome bony old man in a badly washed and unironed linen suit with yellowed lapels and cuffs , wearing a narrow - brimmed straw hat ...
... afraid the girl wouldn't last the journey . Who could tell where they'd be taken ? ' He lit up . A lonesome bony old man in a badly washed and unironed linen suit with yellowed lapels and cuffs , wearing a narrow - brimmed straw hat ...
Page 183
... asks , what'll we answer ? Eh ? We shouldn't be afraid of people , but what about God ? God ! Rita ! Out here now ! " I grabbed Rita's shoulder . She shuddered , then she was • still . Martha was shouting her lungs out . For 183.
... asks , what'll we answer ? Eh ? We shouldn't be afraid of people , but what about God ? God ! Rita ! Out here now ! " I grabbed Rita's shoulder . She shuddered , then she was • still . Martha was shouting her lungs out . For 183.
Page 249
... afraid to do so , thinking that at her age women only wear dresses like that to hang themselves in . . . Pyotr Fyodorovich would hear her moving about , and he even spied on his wife once as she took the dress out of the bundle . But he ...
... afraid to do so , thinking that at her age women only wear dresses like that to hang themselves in . . . Pyotr Fyodorovich would hear her moving about , and he even spied on his wife once as she took the dress out of the bundle . But he ...
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