March 3rd7pm
Are you intimidated by the great (and by great, we mean looooooong) novels of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, Ulitskaya and Tokarczuk? Novels over 500 pages may not be a crime to read, but they can, at times, feel like a punishment to finish. That’s why we're is introducing SHORT(ER) SLAVIC NOVELS, a book club dedicated to Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Belarusian, Czech, etc. novels under 300 pages. All titles will be read in English, so previous knowledge of Slavic languages is NOT required. (Uk)Rain(e) or shine, czech out our Downtown Brooklyn location every month for classic and contemporary Slavic fiction. За встречу!
This month we'll discuss Nina Berberova's portrayal of a very specific generation––one born in Russia, displaced by the Revolution, and trying to adapt to a new home, Paris., Cape of Storms, translated by Marian Schwartz.
“Berberova’s wonderful novel about three love affairs… Like Turgenev and Chekhov, of whom she is the rightful heir, is uncannily shrewd about romance, about its bright promise, without making her characters’ real satisfaction seem trite. — New York Review of Books
Three sisters––Dasha, Sonia, and Zai––share the same father, Tiagen, an attractive, weak-willed, womanizing White Russian, but each thinks differently about her inner world of beliefs and aspirations, and consequently each follows a different path. Dasha marries and leaves for a bourgeois expatriate life in colonial Africa. Zai, the youngest, and an appealing adolescent, flirts with becoming an actress or a poet. Sonia, the middle daughter, completes a university degree but falls victim to a shocking tragedy. Cape of Storms is a shattering book that opens with a hair-raising scene in which Dasha witnesses her mother’s murder at the hands of Bolshevik thugs, and ends with the Blitzkrieg sweeping toward Paris. It is unparalleled in Berberova’s work for its many shifts of mood and viewpoint and secures the author’s place as “Chekhov’s most vital inheritor” (Boston Review).
Reserve your place with a $5 voucher, redeemable on the night of the book club meeting on any product in store.