Doorstop tradition revived in Russia

[jd]

I wonder if it'll ever be translated...

On 8/9/06, Ya Sam <takoitov at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> "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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