January 26, 2017

Bacon, comics, and fairy tales on ice


Bacon, comics, and fairy tales on ice

Like Pigs to the Water

1. Over 100 pigs narrowly avoided becoming bacon when firefighters saved them from a burning barn. In a perverse distortion of the story of three little pigs, the building that caught fire was made of brick, and although a wolf couldn’t huff and puff it down, fire could. But most of the pigs still lived happily ever after, carried out in groups by grinning firefighters. Safe from being cooked, the pigs were moved to a nearby sty, and the firefighters hailed as heroes who saved the bacon.

thesun.co.uk

2. A controversial brochure uses fairy tale figures to help immigrants adapt to life in Russia. Cartoons of snow maidens, knights reborn as police officers, and folk heroine Vasilisa Premudraya offer advice on “rules of conduct in Moscow.” The 100-page brochure is causing a stir not just because of its portrayal of migrants, who look notably different from the ethnic Russians depicted as folk heroes, but also because it cost 7.3 million rubles ($122,957) to make. For such an expensive comic book, you’d think Batman would at least make a cameo.

3. What better way to have an epiphany than jumping into a freezing lake? Ice swimming – often in a cross-shaped hole – is how thousands of Russian Orthodox believers celebrate the Epiphany on January 20. Immersed in the festivities, President Vladimir Putin had to sit out (or swim out) that day’s inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said the decision was based on the holiday, rather than politics – though he reiterated that U.S.-Russian relations have a long way to go. If they’re playing hard to get, they should invite the new administration for a dip in a frozen lake.

In Odder News

  • Watch for squirrels. Watch for walruses. Watch for Pikachu? Here’s a sampling of Russia’s strangest traffic signs.
rbth.com
  • Krasnoyarsk has its own Harry Potter. He may be a Daniel Radcliffe lookalike, but he’s doubly asking for it with his choice of spectacles.
themoscowtimes.com
  • What did a Soviet-era zombie look like? This.
calvertjournal.com

Quote of the Week

"Foreign citizens come to Moscow, and we believe they are also fantastic heroes, and they are welcomed by fantastic heroes from Russia."
—Alexander Kalinin, director of Support for Moscow's Working Migrants, on the new brochure with colorful, folktale-inspired cartoons designed to help migrants integrate into Russian culture.

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This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
Turgenev Bilingual

Turgenev Bilingual

A sampling of Ivan Turgenev's masterful short stories, plays, novellas and novels. Bilingual, with English and accented Russian texts running side by side on adjoining pages.
The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas

The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas

This exciting new trilogy by a Russian author – who has been compared to Orhan Pamuk and Umberto Eco – vividly recreates a lost world, yet its passions and characters are entirely relevant to the present day. Full of mystery, memorable characters, and non-stop adventure, The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas is a must read for lovers of historical fiction and international thrillers.  
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Chekhov Bilingual

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Some of Chekhov's most beloved stories, with English and accented Russian on facing pages throughout. 
A Taste of Chekhov

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Dostoyevsky Bilingual

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Bilingual series of short, lesser known, but highly significant works that show the traditional view of Dostoyevsky as a dour, intense, philosophical writer to be unnecessarily one-sided. 
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The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
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Fish
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Fish

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Marooned in Moscow
May 01, 2011

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.

Jews in Service to the Tsar
October 09, 2011

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Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.

The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas
October 01, 2013

The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas

This exciting new trilogy by a Russian author – who has been compared to Orhan Pamuk and Umberto Eco – vividly recreates a lost world, yet its passions and characters are entirely relevant to the present day. Full of mystery, memorable characters, and non-stop adventure, The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas is a must read for lovers of historical fiction and international thrillers.

 
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Life Stories

The Life Stories collection is a nice introduction to contemporary Russian fiction: many of the 19 authors featured here have won major Russian literary prizes and/or become bestsellers. These are life-affirming stories of love, family, hope, rebirth, mystery and imagination, masterfully translated by some of the best Russian-English translators working today. The selections reassert the power of Russian literature to affect readers of all cultures in profound and lasting ways. Best of all, 100% of the profits from the sale of this book are going to benefit Russian hospice—not-for-profit care for fellow human beings who are nearing the end of their own life stories.

Survival Russian
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Survival Russian

Survival Russian is an intensely practical guide to conversational, colloquial and culture-rich Russian. It uses humor, current events and thematically-driven essays to deepen readers’ understanding of Russian language and culture. This enlarged Second Edition of Survival Russian includes over 90 essays and illuminates over 2000 invaluable Russian phrases and words.

Bears in the Caviar
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Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar is a hilarious and insightful memoir by a diplomat who was “present at the creation” of US-Soviet relations. Charles Thayer headed off to Russia in 1933, calculating that if he could just learn Russian and be on the spot when the US and USSR established relations, he could make himself indispensable and start a career in the foreign service. Remarkably, he pulled it of.

Little Golden Calf
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Our edition of The Little Golden Calf, one of the greatest Russian satires ever, is the first new translation of this classic novel in nearly fifty years. It is also the first unabridged, uncensored English translation ever, and is 100% true to the original 1931 serial publication in the Russian journal 30 Dnei. Anne O. Fisher’s translation is copiously annotated, and includes an introduction by Alexandra Ilf, the daughter of one of the book’s two co-authors.

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