George Saunders's 'Liberation Day' bears signs of genius but not without disappointment
A collection of short stories wrapped in fantasy, wry humour, and perhaps inadvertent sexism.
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A collection of short stories wrapped in fantasy, wry humour, and perhaps inadvertent sexism.
“As your brother and intimate, I assure you that I understand you and sympathize with you from the ...
Great Russian writers who didn’t do so well at school Russia Beyond (Photo: Public Domain) Let’s face it, even great Russian writers were often not great students. Some were expelled from schools for bad behavior, others refused to hit the books and were so poor at foreign languages and mathematics that they couldn’t even conjugate a verb or solve a fairly simple linear equation. 1. Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) The future author of ‘Eugene Onegin’ was a mediocre student. He went to the Imperial Lyceum in Tsarskoe Selo, near St. Petersburg. Tsar Alexander I founded ...
"Anton Chekhov" (1898) by Osip Braz (Wikipedia); right: Bell tower in a Russian Orthodox church (Brett Johnson/Unsplash.com) Before he became a literary master, Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) sang (like a “little convict”) in the church choir that his father conducted. Punctually the acolyte assisted at the altar, arose early for matins, and ascended the belfry to toll the bells. But for whom? “And what of it?” he asked, recalling from a distance that pious childhood, “it seems to me rather gloomy. Now I have no religion.” Chekhov’s agnostic detachment from dogmas is evident in the d...