Doorstop tradition revived in Russia

[Ya Sam]

"A RUSSIAN artist is being heralded as the new Tolstoy after his debut novel 
sold out within four weeks in Moscow despite being a daunting 1500 pages 
long.
Maxim Kantor, 48, achieved fame on the Russian underground art scene of the 
1980s and 90s and has 140 etchings in the British Museum.

He decided to write his modern-day War and Peace because he was 
disillusioned by Russia's experience of democracy.

"I always thought I'd write a big novel about what happened to my country 
and to the world," he said.

"It was obvious that in the last 20 years we were passing through a very 
dramatic and important period and big questions needed to be asked about 
freedom and civilisation.

"I had been thinking about it for years. Then one day I was suddenly 44 and 
I thought, if I don't start now, I never will."

He spent four years on the epic work, The Drawing Textbook, which opens with 
the emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev as Soviet leader in 1985 and follows the 
subsequent 20 years of tremendous change in Russia.

Although it traces the fortunes and thwarted loves of one family of 
intelligentsia, it is also a political satire with a huge cast of artists, 
critics, secret policemen, oligarchs and politicians, including Boris 
Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin and Tony Blair.

.....

The book has an unusual structure. Each chapter begins with a couple of 
pages on drawing, which together form a textbook. After every two fiction 
chapters, there is a political chronicle commenting on the economy, the arts 
and world events such as the war in Iraq".


http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19134129-5001986,00.html

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