The Big Green Tent: A Novel
Named a Must-Read Book by New York Magazine, Travel+Leisure, Flavorwire, and Bustle

Long-listed for the 2016 Best Translated Book Award in Fiction

With epic breadth and intimate detail, Ludmila Ulitskaya’s remarkable work tells the story of three school friends who meet in Moscow in the 1950s and go on to embody the heroism, folly, compromise, and hope of the Soviet dissident experience. These three boys—-an orphaned poet, a gifted yet fragile pianist, and a budding photographer with a talent for collecting secrets—-struggle to reach adulthood in a society where their heroes have been censored and exiled.

Rich with love stories, intrigue, and a cast of dissenters and spies, The Big Green Tent offers a panoramic survey of life after Stalin and a dramatic investigation into the possibilities for individual integrity in a society defined by the KGB. Each of the central characters seeks to transcend an oppressive regime through art, a love of Russian literature, and activism. And each of them ends up face-to-face with a secret police that is highly skilled at provoking paranoia, division, and self-betrayal. Ludmila Ulitskaya’s novel ultimately belongs to the tradition of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Pasternak: it is a work consumed with politics, love, and belief—-and a discovery of light in dark times.

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The Big Green Tent: A Novel
Named a Must-Read Book by New York Magazine, Travel+Leisure, Flavorwire, and Bustle

Long-listed for the 2016 Best Translated Book Award in Fiction

With epic breadth and intimate detail, Ludmila Ulitskaya’s remarkable work tells the story of three school friends who meet in Moscow in the 1950s and go on to embody the heroism, folly, compromise, and hope of the Soviet dissident experience. These three boys—-an orphaned poet, a gifted yet fragile pianist, and a budding photographer with a talent for collecting secrets—-struggle to reach adulthood in a society where their heroes have been censored and exiled.

Rich with love stories, intrigue, and a cast of dissenters and spies, The Big Green Tent offers a panoramic survey of life after Stalin and a dramatic investigation into the possibilities for individual integrity in a society defined by the KGB. Each of the central characters seeks to transcend an oppressive regime through art, a love of Russian literature, and activism. And each of them ends up face-to-face with a secret police that is highly skilled at provoking paranoia, division, and self-betrayal. Ludmila Ulitskaya’s novel ultimately belongs to the tradition of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Pasternak: it is a work consumed with politics, love, and belief—-and a discovery of light in dark times.

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The Big Green Tent: A Novel

The Big Green Tent: A Novel

The Big Green Tent: A Novel

The Big Green Tent: A Novel

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Overview

Named a Must-Read Book by New York Magazine, Travel+Leisure, Flavorwire, and Bustle

Long-listed for the 2016 Best Translated Book Award in Fiction

With epic breadth and intimate detail, Ludmila Ulitskaya’s remarkable work tells the story of three school friends who meet in Moscow in the 1950s and go on to embody the heroism, folly, compromise, and hope of the Soviet dissident experience. These three boys—-an orphaned poet, a gifted yet fragile pianist, and a budding photographer with a talent for collecting secrets—-struggle to reach adulthood in a society where their heroes have been censored and exiled.

Rich with love stories, intrigue, and a cast of dissenters and spies, The Big Green Tent offers a panoramic survey of life after Stalin and a dramatic investigation into the possibilities for individual integrity in a society defined by the KGB. Each of the central characters seeks to transcend an oppressive regime through art, a love of Russian literature, and activism. And each of them ends up face-to-face with a secret police that is highly skilled at provoking paranoia, division, and self-betrayal. Ludmila Ulitskaya’s novel ultimately belongs to the tradition of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Pasternak: it is a work consumed with politics, love, and belief—-and a discovery of light in dark times.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781250097446
Publisher: Picador
Publication date: 01/10/2017
Pages: 592
Sales rank: 626,903
Product dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Ludmila Ulitskaya is one of Russia’s most popular and renowned literary figures. A former scientist and the director of Moscow’s Hebrew Repertory Theater, she is the author of more than a dozen works of fiction, including The Big Green Tent, several tales for children, and multiple plays that have been staged by a number of theaters in Russia and Germany. She has won Russia’s Man Booker Prize and was on the judges’ list for the Man Booker International Prize.

Polly Gannon is the director of cultural studies at the New York-St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistics, Cognition and Culture. She holds a Ph.D. in Russian Literature from Cornell University and is the co-translator of Word for Word by Lilianna Lungina. She lives, teaches, and translates in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Table of Contents

Contents

Prologue

Those Wondrous School Years

The New Teacher

Children of the Underworld

The LORLs

The Last Ball

Friendship of the Peoples

The Big Green Tent

Love in Retirement

Orphans All

King Arthur’s Wedding

A Tad Too Tight

The Upper Register

Girlfriends

The Dragnet

The Angel with the Outsize Head

The House with the Knight

The Coffee Stain

The Fugitive

The Deluge

Hamlet’s Ghost

A Good Ticket

Poor Rabbit

The Road with One End

Deaf-mute Demons

Milyutin Park

First in Line

The Decorated Underpants

The Imago

A Russian Story

Ende Gut—

Epilogue: The End of a Beautiful Era

Acknowledgments

Translator’s Note

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