Olga Grushina

Eksmo

In 1989, Olga Grushina, a student at the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University, went to study in America, and stayed there. In 2006, her debut novel “Sukhanov’s Life in Dreams” was published. The novel fell into a short but bright period of passion for everything Russian, coming out shortly after new translations of Tolstoy and Gogol and Anna Karenina, which through the efforts of Oprah Winfrey became a bestseller. It won a Young Lions Award, was nominated for an Orange, and was named one of the New York Times' 100 Best Books of the Year. But it has only been translated into Russian now, after the release of Grushin’s second novel, “The Queue” (hardly related to Sorokin, since Grushina herself admits in an interview that Pelevins and street novels stand on her shelves unread). The time and place of action are conditionally Soviet. Thus, the main character of "The Life of Sukhanov", the editor-in-chief of the magazine "Art of the World" in 1985, goes to exhibitions in the Manege, denounces the decaying Western art and walks through the quiet Zamoskvorechye, but suddenly, under the blow of the wind of change, he discovers that he too That was life. All this has little to do with the real 80s, and the novel itself is about a choice that is always there, even if it seemed that there was none.

Lisa Birger

Magazine "Kommersant Weekend" No. 40 dated October 21, 2011, p. 58

Authors:

Elizaveta Birger

Life of Sukhanov in dreams