Susanne Fusso - Böcker

Among contemporary Russian writers, Yuz Aleshkovsky stands out for his vivid imagination, his mixing of realism and fantasy, and his virtuosic use of the rich tradition of Russian obscene language. These two novels, written in the 1970s, display Aleshkovsky’s linguistic gifts and keen observations of Soviet life.Nikolai Nikolaevich begins when its titular hero, a pickpocket by trade, is released from prison after World War II and finds a job in a Moscow biological laboratory. Starting out as a kind of janitor, he is soon recruited to provide sperm for strange experiments intended to create life in the Andromeda galaxy. The hero finds himself at the center of the 1948 purge of biological science in the Soviet Union, in a transgressive tale that joins science fiction (and science fact) with gulag slang and a love story. The protagonist and narrator of Camouflage is an alcoholic who claims that he and his gang of friends are just one part of a vast camouflaging operation organized by the Party to hide the Soviet Union’s underground military-industrial complex from the CIA’s spy satellites. As they pass their time on the streets and share their alcohol-inspired fantasies, they see the stark reality of the Cold War in Russia in the late seventies. Nikolai Nikolaevich and Camouflage introduces English-speaking readers to a master of the comic first-person narrative.

Among contemporary Russian writers, Yuz Aleshkovsky stands out for his vivid imagination, his mixing of realism and fantasy, and his virtuosic use of the rich tradition of Russian obscene language. These two novels, written in the 1970s, display Aleshkovsky’s linguistic gifts and keen observations of Soviet life.Nikolai Nikolaevich begins when its titular hero, a pickpocket by trade, is released from prison after World War II and finds a job in a Moscow biological laboratory. Starting out as a kind of janitor, he is soon recruited to provide sperm for strange experiments intended to create life in the Andromeda galaxy. The hero finds himself at the center of the 1948 purge of biological science in the Soviet Union, in a transgressive tale that joins science fiction (and science fact) with gulag slang and a love story. The protagonist and narrator of Camouflage is an alcoholic who claims that he and his gang of friends are just one part of a vast camouflaging operation organized by the Party to hide the Soviet Union’s underground military-industrial complex from the CIA’s spy satellites. As they pass their time on the streets and share their alcohol-inspired fantasies, they see the stark reality of the Cold War in Russia in the late seventies. Nikolai Nikolaevich and Camouflage introduces English-speaking readers to a master of the comic first-person narrative.

To view the familiar from a different perspective is always enlightening. This engaging collection of travel accounts by Russian writers who visited America around the turn of the century offers fresh insights into both the American experience and the Russian mind. The documents, most of which appear in English for the first time, and interwoven with explanatory comments by Olga Peters Hasty and Susanne Fusso.The anthology begins in 1874 with young Machtet, who enthusiastically describes his journey across the prairie to a tiny utopian community in Kansas. Next Vladimir Korolenko gives his impressions of the stockyards of Chicago, and Vladimir Bogoraz observes fellow-passengers coming into New York harbor and traveling on a trans-continental train. With Gorky's visit in 1906, the tone of the Russian visitors' renderings of America changes. Because of the rise of Bolshevism, Russian travelers are inclined to convey negative impressions of America and to focus on its dramatic rise as an industrial power. Gorky's invective is followed by the commentaries of Sergei Esenin and Vladimir Mayakovsky that are also critical of American life but express admiration for American technology and know-how.

Gogol's 1842 novel Dead Souls, a comic masterpiece about a mysterious con man and his grotesque victims, is one of the major works of Russian literature. It was translated into English in 1942 by Bernard Guilbert Guerney; the translation was hailed by Vladimir Nabokov as "an extraordinarily fine piece of work" and is still considered the best translation of Dead Souls ever published. Long out of print, the Guerney translation of Dead Souls is now reissued. The text has been made more faithful to Gogol's original by removing passages that Guerney inserted from earlier drafts of Dead Souls. The text is accompanied by Susanne Fusso's introduction and by appendices that present excerpts from Guerney's translations of other drafts of Gogol's work and letters Gogol wrote around the time of the writing and publication of Deal Souls. "I am delighted that Guerney's translation of Dead Souls [is] available again. It is head and shoulders above all the others, for Guerney understands that to 'translate' Gogol is necessarily to undertake a poetic recreation, and he does so brilliantly."-Robert A.Maguire, Columbia University "The Guerney translation of Dead Souls is the only translation I know of that makes any serious attempt to approximate the qualities of Gogol's style-exuberant, erratic, 'Baroque,' bizarre."-Hugh McLean, University of California, Berkeley "A splendidly revised and edited edition of Bernard Guerney's classic English translation of Gogol's Dead Souls. The distinguished Gogol scholar Susanne Fusso may have brought us as close as the English reader may ever expect to come to Gogol's masterpiece. No student, scholar, or general reader will want to miss this updated, refined version of one of the most delightful and sublime works of Russian literature."-Robert Jackson, Yale University

A Stanford University Press classic.

The essays in this collection range widely not only over Karolina Pavlova's oeuvre but also in their analytical stances. The volume includes close poetic and prosodic analysis, literary history, gender studies, intertextual comparison and biography.

In Editing Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, Susanne Fusso examines Mikhail Katkov's literary career without vilification or canonization, focusing on the ways in which his nationalism fueled his drive to create a canon of Russian literature and support its recognition around the world. In each chapter, Fusso considers Katkov's relationship with a major Russian literary figure. In addition to Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, she explores Katkov's interactions with Vissarion Belinsky, Evgeniia Tur, and the legacy of Aleksandr Pushkin. This groundbreaking study will fascinate scholars, students, and general readers interested in Russian literature and literary history.

In Editing Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, Susanne Fusso examines Mikhail Katkov's literary career without vilification or canonization, focusing on the ways in which his nationalism fueled his drive to create a canon of Russian literature and support its recognition around the world. In each chapter, Fusso considers Katkov's relationship with a major Russian literary figure. In addition to Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, she explores Katkov's interactions with Vissarion Belinsky, Evgeniia Tur, and the legacy of Aleksandr Pushkin. This groundbreaking study will fascinate scholars, students, and general readers interested in Russian literature and literary history.

Some of the greatest works of Russian prose first saw the light in the Russian Herald, the journal founded and edited by Mikhail Katkov: Fathers and Sons, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov. Yet because of his conservative politics and his intrusive editing practices, Katkov has been either ignored or demonized by scholars both in Russia and in the West; in contemporary Russia he has been hailed as the “savior of the fatherland” because of his aggressive Russian nationalism. This book studies Katkov’s literary career without vilification or canonization, focusing on the ways in which his nationalism fueled his drive to create the canon of Russian literature as a recognized part of world literature.